When people ask how long it will take to get ripped naturally, most are hoping to hear that it can either happen in a month or two, or a solid answer with set rates of fat loss and muscle gains week to week. The truth is that it varies from person to person and depends greatly on what shape you are in when you embark upon your fitness journey. 

Here at Playon Products we want to help you with that journey, that's why our team has done some research into what to expect when working towards that ripped body we are all chasing. The truth is that it will take however long it takes, there are no real shortcuts that will lead to sustainable muscle growth and weight loss, especially when doing it the right way without performance enhancing drugs. One of the major problems with performance enhancing drugs is that any gains you make are likely to disappear once your cycle comes to an end. 

We all want results fast, we live in a world of instant gratification, from fast food to Netflix. Most things these days are available when ever called upon. Unfortunately, this just isn't the case with most of the things that we truly desire, whether its wealth, love or a great body, these things take time to build and the rewards for doing so are much greater.  

Delayed Gratification

The obvious place to start would be to dive into explaining the best techniques for blasting fat and massive muscle gains, but as we want to help you build a sustainable and shredded body, we will begin with something just as important but a bit more mundane, phycology and gratification. Gratification is extremely important to understand when you're trying to achieve anything worthwhile over an extended period of time. 

Instant gratification refers to the natural human desire to want immediate satisfaction, instant pleasure, reward at once or prompt enjoyment. It is natural to want results as soon as possible, it is embedded in our DNA, life for our ancestors depended on making decisions in the moment. Decisions that benefited us immediately were often far more important than decisions intended for long term benefit. When human brains were developing immediate problems such as escaping the clutches of predators or starvation were far more of a concern than losing weight or building muscle. Instant gratification lights up our reward centres in the brain and leads us to making bad decisions or abandoning good decisions due to the process taking too long.

Delayed gratification is the opposite of immediate gratification. It is the process of putting off satisfaction or pleasure in order to gain an even greater benefit down the track. Delayed gratification is clearly the wiser choice so why is it so difficult for us to choose?

In this article Psychologist Shahram Heshmat gives us 10 areas that impact our ability to avoid the urge for instant gratification.

• A desire to avoid delay
• Uncertainty
• Age
• Imagination
• Cognitive capacity
• Poverty
• Impulsiveness
• Emotion regulation
• Mood
• Anticipation

Looking into these areas and doing a self-assessment of your own motivations and shortcomings can help you in making better decisions for the future and can help you plan for success. This is one of the most important aspects to consider when you are planning out your diet and workout schedule as sticking to your plans over extended periods of time is by far the most effective way to get ripped naturally and stay that way! Now that we have covered some of the psychology involved in building a ripped body, we can move onto some of the physiology.

Building Muscle

Building muscle can be a slow and trying process. A beginner can expect to gain around 2 pounds of muscle a month without performance enhancing drugs. The more progress you make the slower it will be to put on muscle mass. A well-rounded workout routine can help to add muscle faster as you will be targeting more muscle groups. To achieve 2 pounds a month of gains you will need to be training with heavy weights 4 times a week at a minimum. One of the catches to putting on muscle which we have covered in an earlier article is that you will need to be in a caloric surplus which will make it harder to burn away fat. A well balanced and nutritious diet is the best way to combat this. 

Burning fat

The next part of building a naturally ripped body is to drop any leftover or unwanted fat. The reason it is best to drop fat after gaining muscle is that it will make it far easier to build the muscle up in the first place. Trying to burn fat and lose muscle at the same time is a very difficult proposition due the way your body reacts to changes in caloric intake. The way to go about this is to adjust your diet accordingly. Cutting out sugars and carbs will help to reduce fat, increase your water intake and eat plenty of veggies, healthy fats and lean proteins. All your meals should be prepared ahead of time, doing so will help to limit poor snap decisions such as stopping into a fast food joint on the way home when you're hungry. 

One of the best forms of exercise for dropping fat is HIIT or high intensity interval training. We have covered HIIT in one of our previous articles. One of the greatest benefits of HIIT is that training in this way will recruit muscle fibres that guard against muscle loss, meaning you can burn away that unwanted fat without damaging your gains!

Getting more sleep

Getting a good night's sleep is almost as important as diet when it comes to burning fat and keeping it off. Research done by the Harvard school of public health (https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/obesity-prevention-source/obesity-causes/sleep-and-obesity/) has indicated that sleep deprivation can increase weight gain. Sleep deprivation can alter the hormones that control hunger. In one study involving a small group of males it was found that those who were deprived of sleep had higher levels of the appetite stimulating hormone ghrelin and lower levels of the satiety inducing hormone leptin. This led to an increase in hunger, especially for fatty foods and carbs. People who are missing out on sleep are also more likely to be tired during the day and therefore less likely to expend energy like their more awake counterparts. 

Conclusion

At the end of the day there is no one answer for how long it will take to get ripped naturally. It will be dependant on what fitness level you are starting at, how much time and effort you put into working out, how strict you are with your diet and how well planned out your routines are. The most important thing is to be happy with the gains you see along the way and to stick to your goals even when you feel like progress is slow. Last of all we must all keep in mind that delayed gratification is far more gratifying in the end!