Sometimes a guy wants to look as slim and skinny as possible. It can be for a competition, a photo shoot, or maybe just a hot date. Whatever the reason, aside from muscle definition, there are two factors that impact how lean and defined you look: body fat and water retention. Obviously, you can’t look shredded if you have a layer of fat covering your muscles. But even if your body fat is in the single digits, excess water can make you look less defined and sometimes even puffy. Minimizing excess water weight is what we are going to explore here today.
Aldosterone is one of the hormones that manages the volume of fluids retained in the body, particularly water. And while water retention isn’t going to be an everyday problem for most men, if you’re a competitive bodybuilder or need to look more defined for a photo shoot or special event, retaining even small amounts of excess water can do all the possible. difference in the world.
First, a little information about aldosterone, which is released by the adrenal glands. Aldosterone is one of the hormones that helps regulate sodium and potassium levels in the body. This, in turn, helps control blood pressure and the balance of fluids and electrolytes in the bloodstream. The adrenal glands make more aldosterone when the body is trying to conserve fluids and salts. This means that higher levels of aldosterone equate to more fluid retained in the body. When aldosterone levels are low, the body retains less water.
Actually, the entire process is managed by the renin-angiotensin-aldosterone system (RAAS). If you’re looking to get super shredded and hard with that contest-ready ‘paper-thin’ skin, then how to manipulate the RAAS is definitely something you want to understand. By learning to manipulate the RAAS, you can influence aldosterone levels and affect how much water your body retains.
A typical strategy that many men use to reduce the amount of water they retain is to lower their salt intake and reduce the amount of water they drink. Cutting back on salt is good, but it only helps up to a point. And unfortunately, because the body always strives to maintain a state of homeostasis (also known as the status quo), drinking less water causes the body’s metabolic systems to conserve water. This actually causes aldosterone levels to rise, so drinking less water doesn’t have the effect you want and actually causes your body to retain more water.
So, with this in mind, we know that we have to look for another strategy. Oddly enough, one of the ways you can manipulate the RAAS, lower aldosterone levels, and reduce the amount of water retained, is to drink more water, not less. This seems contrary to what you want to achieve, but it is not the way the body works. But it’s a bit more complicated than just drinking gallons of water before a competition or event.
Successful manipulation of RAAS to reduce water retention requires time and strategy. Finding the right ‘window of opportunity’ is essential to success. Before you start trying to reduce water retention, you’ll first need to make sure that you’ve already shed unnecessary body fat. There’s no point in going through the trouble of dumping water when there’s a layer of fat underneath. So the first step is to get your teenage body fat percentage low or even in the single digits. Once you get to that point, you’ll be in a position to be shredded by reducing the amount of water your body retains.
The next step is to follow a specific protocol that incorporates manipulation of protein and carbohydrate ratios combined with a period of high water intake (hyperhydration) followed by a rapid, timed period of limited water intake (dehydration). You will begin the hyper-hydration and dehydration phases several days before competition or another event for which you want to look super shredded.
This strategy works because the hyperhydration phase will cause Adosterone levels to drop, which means your kidneys are getting rid of most of the water you’re drinking, which will also cause you to urinate a lot. The targeted period of dehydration will allow you to quickly shed water weight, leaving you super shredded and ultra lean. But because you’re doing it for such a short period of time, the inevitable rise in aldosterone levels and subsequent increase in water retention won’t happen until after the competition or big event.
Unfortunately, getting rid of unwanted fat is much more complicated than simply cutting calories and adding a few extra cardio sessions each week. The problem is that our genetic programming gets in the way, making getting rid of fat much more complicated than we’d like. When we start to cut calories and burn more energy, our body thinks we are facing a food shortage. In response, it unleashes a rush of hormonal responses that are designed to conserve energy and make sure we have fat reserves for the next ‘famine’.
These hormonal responses are what get in the way of our fat loss goals. There are three in particular that inhibit fat loss: estrogen, insulin, and cortisol. When we do the things we do to get rid of unwanted fat, it triggers the release of these hormones. And when released, each of these tells the body to increase residual fat storage, especially around the waist area. However, the good news is that we can ‘fight hormones with hormones’ and manipulate our metabolic systems to overcome these obstacles to fat loss.
The secret to this strategy is to identify the nemesis of each “bad” hormone, or in other words, the “good” hormone that does the opposite of what the “bad” hormone does. For example, testosterone is the ‘opposite’ of estrogen. Testosterone is the male sex hormone and estrogen is the female sex hormone. To combat the fat storage effects of estrogen, we want to increase the amount of testosterone our body releases.
There are several ways to naturally increase the amount of testosterone your body releases. One of the best ways to accomplish this is by lifting weights. In particular, increasing training density has been shown to be an excellent technique for stimulating testosterone production. Training density refers to the amount of work you do in a given period of time. You can increase training density by lifting more weights, performing more reps, or reducing rest periods between sets.
To combat stubborn fat around your midsection, you can really increase your training density through a modified circuit training technique. A key difference between this and other types of circuit training is that here, instead of focusing on doing a certain number of reps, you do as many reps as you can within a certain amount of time for the first set. Then, you increase both the weight and the number of reps you perform for the second set.
Similarly, there are training techniques you can employ to combat insulin and its impact on body fat storage. Here, training techniques focus on increasing insulin sensitivity and potentiating insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1), which counteracts the effects of insulin. Dynamic training, which is based on combined movements, is particularly effective in increasing the amount of IGF-1 in the bloodstream. Higher amounts of IGF-1 override insulin resistance and increase the body’s ability to burn fat.
We can also combat the fat-building effects of cortisol by increasing the amount of growth hormone (GH) our bodies produce. GH is the most effective compound your body produces to affect both fat loss and muscle gain. The more GH your body produces, the more fat you will burn and the more lean muscle mass you will add.
Like the other two fat-fighting hormones, certain training techniques stimulate GH production. Lactic acid training is a particularly effective technique. Lactic acid is what causes the ‘burn’ you feel when you train your muscles really hard. As annoying as that feeling can be, it triggers the release of fat-fighting cortisol and GH. You can increase the release of lactic acid by lifting very slowly and then quickly (but carefully) returning to the starting position. Another way to increase GH production and decrease cortisol production is by sleeping. Yes, a good night’s rest triggers GH production and at the same time decreases cortisol production.
There you have it: three fat-fighting training techniques at your disposal. Include it in your training arsenal and you can fight hormones and with hormones and win the battle against stubborn fat, once and for all.
