I often get emails from guys asking me how they can lose their man boobs and look better for an event that's fast approaching.
It could be a birthday party, a wedding, or a trip to the beach.
The event could be as soon as within a week's time, a few days, or even tomorrow!
In this article I want to tell you what you can do to look leaner in less than a day.
If you've got a few days or a week, the approach will be different and I'll cover those timeframes in a future article.
Here are 6 things you can do to look better in less than a day.
1. Do an intermittent fast
Right this instant, start an intermittent fast. If the event is 24 hours away and you can't fast that long, then time the start of your fast so you fast as long as you know you will be able to.
So if the event is 24 hours away and you know you can handle no more than a 16 hour fast, start your fast 8 hours later when there's 16 hours left before the event.
If the event is just a few hours away, then fasting will still help.
You can learn more about intermittent fasting here:
https://chestsculpting.com/intermittent-fasting-for-fat-loss-how-to-fast-to-lose-weight/
2. Eat low carb before your fast
If that wedding is 24 hours away and you plan on doing a 16 hour fast, then for the 8 hours before you start your fast, avoid sugar and carbs as much as possible. Eat only meat/fish, high fat dairy, healthy fats like coconut oil, eggs, nuts and seeds. No fruit, and minimal or no veggies. Definitely no sugar or grains.
Sugar and carbs cause water retention (notice how you feel thirsty after a high carb meal), and this makes you look fatter, it'll make your man boobs and belly stick out more.
3. Minimize water intake
Sure, being hydrated is healthy, but if you want to look lean pronto, then it helps to shed some water weight.
Boxers, MMA fighters, and martial artists, commonly dehydrate themselves to rapidly lose weight before a fight, so they can fight in a lower weight class. I've seen HUGE guys shrivel down within a few days, just through dehydration.
There's nothing wrong with going without water for 24 hours. If you must drink water, take small sips to quench your thirst.
Usually with intermittent fasting you are allowed to drink water, but did you know that when Muslims fast during Ramadan, they are not allowed to drink water? Studies have shown there are huge health benefits associated with Ramadan fasts, so going without water during an intermittent fast isn't likely to take away from the benefits of intermittent fasting.
This is of course, only a short-term strategy for that special event you've got coming up. In the long-run, it's better to keep yourself well hydrated. You will burn more fat that way and grow more muscle. So after that pool party, be sure to fully stock up on your body's supply of precious water.
Another way to dehydrate yourself is by sweating. You can go to a sauna, or do your workout (see #4 below) in a hot room wearing thick clothes.
Spitting can help dehydrate you too. Keep a pot next to you and spit into it throughout the day. Or go on the world's largest steamship, meet a hot girl called Rose, and win her heart with a spitting contest (just looked on IMDB, holy cow! Did the Titanic movie seriously only get 7.8 out of 10 on IMDB? I thought that movie was amazing!)
4. Have an ANAEROBIC workout just before the event
You can do whole body resistance training (either weight training or bodyweight training) in the hypertrophy range, or do HIIT.
Anaerobic means without oxygen. When you train anaerobically, your muscles don't get the oxygen they need during the workout, and there is a lot of muscle microtrauma. This results in extra blood flow and fluid distribution to your muscles for several hours AFTER the workout.
Your muscles get bigger during and after a workout because of increased blood-flow and increased fluid distribution to the muscles.
Train right, and you can make that pooling of fluid in your muscles last for several hours AFTER your workout, so you look pumped and muscular at that birthday party.
When your muscles are bigger, the overlying skin and fat is forced to stretch more over a wider surface. When this happens, your man boobs and belly look smaller.
More importantly, fluid is pulled away from your man boobs and from behind your nipples, making your man boobs smaller, and your nipples tighter. So as all that extra fluid in your body is pooled in your muscles, your man boobs look less perky and more flat.
Right now, as I'm writing this article, it's 3.28pm, and I had my bodyweight workout (just doing squats and dips at the moment) at 10am. I can still feel that pump in my muscles, my body looks better and more muscular than normal, and it's been 5.5 hours since my workout!
The most important muscle groups to train for this purpose are:
1. Your legs
The muscles in your legs are by far the biggest muscles in your body and training them results in the biggest metabolic changes, and the biggest amount of fluid redistribution.
That pumped up look all over your body is largely influenced by these whole-body metabolic changes and fluid distribution to your muscles.
Even if you are only interested in pumping up your arms, training your legs will make that arm-pump bigger.
2. The muscle group underlying the area you want to look leaner
If you want your chest to look better, where your man boobs are less noticeable, then train your chest using an exercise like dips, push-ups, or the neck press.
Be sure to stick to the hypertrophy range, as this results in the most prolonged post-workout hormonal, metabolic and blood-flow changes.
Training your legs is just as important here though. If you want to pull fluid away from the fat cells and blood vessels in your man boobs and behind your nipples, then know that the muscles in your legs are a far bigger set of fluid storage barrels than the pectoral muscles in your chest.
3. The antagonizing muscle group to #2
As I explain in this article, if you train your chest, it's important to train your upper back, in order to improve your posture, where your shoulders are held back in a neutral position.
If you train your abs, be sure to train your lower back too.
Generally though, the more muscle groups you train, the better, because it means more fluid will be taken away from fatty areas like your belly and man boobs, so it can pool into all those working muscles.
If you decide to do HIIT, most HIIT exercises hit the whole body hard, so there's usually no need to do a separate chest exercise to pump the muscles of your chest if you want to shrink your man boobs for that event. But it doesn't hurt to add in a good direct chest exercise like dips, for added effect.
If you need guidance on the best way to perform weight training, bodyweight training, or HIIT, then check out my programs:
The Chest Sculpting Blueprint (for weight training)
Bodyweight Chest Exercises For Losing Man Boobs
In my experience, doing an anaerobic workout for this purpose definitely works better than doing even a very long cardio session.
Sure, you'll burn a whole bunch of calories and burn some fat during a cardio session, you'll also lose lots of water and your body will be thinner by the end of the cardio session. But what you won't get with cardio, is that increased tone and fluid redistribution in your muscles, where your muscles are bigger and pumped up for several hours following the workout. You won't benefit so much from the shrinking effect this fluid redistribution has on your belly, man boobs and nipples.
You may look better for an hour or two after your cardio session, but from what I've seen, the man boobs start to stick out again much sooner after a long cardio session than after a short burst of high intensity anaerobic training.
5. Have a cold shower
Cold showers are good for you. They boost your immune system, activate fat burning brown fat cells, boost muscle growth, help speed up recovery after a workout, and more.
In the short-term, for that event you've got coming up, a cold shower will really tighten up those nipples and shrink your man boobs for a good few hours.
It does this by forcing the blood and fluids away from the surface of your body, in order to conserve heat.
You can have your cold shower after your anaerobic workout, or if you don't have time for the workout, just the cold shower itself will help you look leaner for that event.
6. Wear a compression shirt
This is by far the easiest method AND the most effective.
It's a no-brainer in my opinion.
If you want to look leaner FAST, then your best bet is to get hold of a good compression shirt and wear it to that birthday party.
The only limitation is a compression shirt can't make you look better topless. But hey, if you ARE going to a pool party, a compression shirt means you can turn up looking great in a t-shirt and say you can't go into the pool because of a temporary skin condition, rather than turn up in a sweater, or not turn up at all.
And here's another thing a compression shirt can do.
If you want to dehydrate yourself through sweating, the right type of compression shirt can also help you sweat MORE while keeping you dry.
The Malx Compression Shirt, which I wrote about here, has moisture-wicking technology, which wicks moisture away from your body and spreads it through the fabric so your sweat dries quicker than if you were topless. This means you lose MORE water through sweating.
The Malx Compression Shirt is the one I recommend for my clients. It has a good balance between compression and comfort, and it has that moisture-wicking ability. It's not too compressing like gynecomastia compression shirts, the likes of the Esteem Apparel shirt, yet more compressing than sports compression shirts like the ones made by Under Armor.
I wrote an article recently about why this is the best compression shirt for a guy with man boobs, you can check it out here:
https://chestsculpting.com/whats-the-best-gynecomastia-compression-shirt/
Or you can get this compression shirt here:
https://chestsculpting.com/malx-compression-shirt
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Though these methods can help you substantially lean down for that event tomorrow or even later today, please don't expect any miracles, they won't transform you from a Jubba the Hutt to a Chris Hemsworth. But the good news is you can look better than you do now.
Use the above steps, do your best for this event. If you don't look as good as Chris Hemsworth at that birthday party and the girls aren't swooning all over you, remember the frustration you feel, and use that frustration to fuel your LONG-TERM strategy for losing your man boobs and leaning up so you look great wherever you go.