Day 13:Active Rest Day

Today you’ll perform two sessions of cardio to help your body recover from the previous five workouts. And this will help keep your metabolism revving, burning fat instead of muscle.

For cardio, you’ll perform 15 minutes of HIIT in the morning, and then you’ll perform 20 minutes of steady state in the evening. Separate these two sessions by at least 8 hours for maximal metabolic advantage.

As another component of your recovery and continued muscle growth while losing body fat, you’ll up your dietary fat intake. And you’ll cut carbs. Go for steak and eggs for breakfast, and have salmon for dinner. This is the day to enjoy healthy fatty foods that you reduce during the week. But you’ll also need to keep your starchy carbs more moderate to control total calorie intake, but take in as many vegetables as you want.

As far as ratios go, you’ll get in about 1.5 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight, 1 gram of carbs per pound of bodyweight, and 0.55 grams of fat per pound of bodyweight. Recalculate to make sure you have the right amounts of each macro for your bodyweight. The reason for the higher fats is that if you go too low fat for too long, you can start to deregulate hormone production that supports muscle building.

EXERCISE	SETS	REPS	STRATEGY
HIIT	1	3	4 minutes easy/1 minute full intensity for a total of 15 minutes
Steady-state cardio	1	1	20 minutes

POST WORKOUT

After you get in your morning cardio, you should consume a meal higher in fats and lower in carbs. I still get in Whey Isolate with a scoop of fermented Glutamine, chopped nuts, and fruit after my morning cardio. This helps support recovery and fat burning while preventing muscle breakdown. Note that I performed a yoga class for this workout to help lower my cortisol levels. Get in an infrared sauna to support recovery if you can, and even perform some light stretching once your muscles have warmed.