Many love the look of a toned body – and for good reason!
A toned body looks strong, healthy, and athletic. It makes you feel confident to show off your body, it makes you feel like you belong on a fitness magazine cover.
The terms that gets thrown around a lot are “body toning” or “muscle toning”, but in reality, there are no such exercises that can help you “tone your body”.
The secret actually lies in a mix of exercising and dieting. Let’s break down how you can achieve “muscle toning” through these two things.
But first off, what even is a “toned” look?
You’ll notice toned people have these two things in common:
- Visible muscles but relatively smaller compared to bodybuilders (Imagine big chunky guys in the gym)
- Well defined muscles
This means they have built enough muscle on their body, and they have a low enough body fat to show it.
Imagine an apple on the table, the apple is your muscle. Then, place a piece of cloth over it, the cloth is the layer of fat on your body.
- If the cloth is as thick as a blanket (high body fat), you only see a bump, you don’t see the actual shape of the apple.
- If the cloth is as thin as a piece of paper (lower body fat), you can see the outline of the apple clearly.
The second scenario is exactly what gives people a toned look: Some muscle with low body fat!
Now let’s figure out how to do both of that.
Exercise to build muscle: Strength training is king
To look toned, you need to have at least some muscle. Strength training is the best way for us to build muscle.
But not just any strength training, you need to apply progressive overload in your sessions. That means for every next session, you’ll have to make your muscles work harder than before. That’s the only way for your body to stimulate muscle growth.
For instance, you want to build muscles on your biceps, so you start doing bicep curls. In your first session, you do 10 repetitions of 5 lbs dumbbells. In your second session, you should aim to increase either the weight or the repetitions. I like to train myself up to 12 repetitions before increasing the weight as 12 reps is the ideal rep range for muscle growth. As time goes on, you’ll get stronger as your body adapts by building more muscle.
Many people are reluctant to do strength training in fears of looking too bulky. The truth is building muscle is hard, and genetically harder for females! You’ll see progress if you’re consistent, but you won’t grow bulky overnight.
What if you’re happy with your muscle size already? Well, you’ll still need strength training to maintain your muscles without progressive overload. That means you’ll still have to show up and get your work done, but you don’t have to worry about going heavier.
As long as your body isn’t shocked with more weight or repetitions, you’re unlikely to see muscle growth.
If you don’t consistently strength train, over the course of time your muscles will deplete and you’ll have to rebuild them again.
Now to show those muscles, your diet is important 
Remember the apple and blanket and analogy? This is the part where you reduce the thickness of the blanket to show your apples!
To strive for a toned look, you must have low body fat. You can have all the muscle in the world but if you have high body fat, your muscles will never look defined.
To reduce your body fat, you’ll need to be in a caloric deficit, that means eating around 300 calories below your maintenance calories.
On top of that, you’ll need to make sure you’re eating a high protein diet. As you lose weight with a caloric deficit, you’ll lose both fat and muscles. Those precious muscles you’ve built can be kept if you consume enough protein. Aim for 0.8-1.0g of protein per pound of bodyweight. Here’s a more extensive guide on nutrition and calories.
Recommended exercises for a toned body
There are two types of exercises I’d recommend for a toned body: Compound exercises and running.
Compound exercises are exercises that work your full body instead of a specific body part, such as bench press, overhead press, squats, and deadlifts. They’re great as they work multiple parts of your body at one go, and its intensity helps maintain or build your muscles as you lose fat at the same time.
Running on the other hand doesn’t help you build muscle, but it is a crazy calorie burner. Here I share more about my experience on picking the right workouts for weight loss, and why running works. Just be wary that running too much can make you lose muscle, so keep your protein intake high!
By the way, heard of spot reduction?
Spot reduction are exercises claimed to burn fat in specific areas of the body. Unfortunately, this is a big myth and just a marketing ploy.
Think of the blanket analogy again, you can’t reduce the thickness of the blanket in specific areas only, you’ll have to reduce the overall thickness of the blanket!
The truth is everyone’s body stores fat easier in different places, some in their belly, some in their arms, or even their legs.
By doing more ab crunches, you won’t reduce the belly fat. You will instead build ab muscles, and to reduce the fat around it you’ll need to do it through a caloric deficit.
The next time you see an influencer talking about spot reduction, just ignore them and move on. It’ll be hard to achieve a toned body by following their advice.
So to get a toned body, just focus on the basics: Build muscle and show them by losing fat! Be consistent and you’ll be on your way to look lean and strong.
I hope you’ve found this article useful, and let me know if you have any questions in the comments below.