Come wintertime, most of us excel at a few things: sipping whiskey-soaked beverages that make our insides warm and fuzzy. Trading AMRAP (as many reps as possible) workouts for AMHCAP (as many holiday cookies as possible) ones. And, in a possibly related story, putting on some weight. This can be a downer, regardless of your personal fitness goals, but especially if your 2019 resolution involved putting on a few pounds of muscle.

The bad news is that if you’re hoping to tone up and build size in the new year, you’ll need to do a lot more than just curtail your involvement in winter-induced gluttony.

1. Start with the basics

Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither is a stellar physique. If you’re looking to put on a decent amount of size but you have no proficiency with basic movement patterns, make sure you fix that first. Focus on mastering things like loaded squats, deadlifts, lunges, and presses—all of which challenge a number of different muscle groups at once—to get started. Isolation exercises really shouldn’t be the heart of your program. In other words, biceps curls can wait.

2. Get strong to get huge

Muscle strength and muscle size are not the same thing, and if you don't pay attention to the former, you're never going to be successful with the latter. Most guys who want to put on muscle and not lose weight typically aren’t as strong as they could be.

To avoid this fate, start off with workouts that involve lower numbers of reps—between 6 and 12—and use a moderate to heavy weight. This will hit a pretty decent middle ground between training for strength and for size. Think of this phase as insurance for your body, which helps to prevent injury as you boost the intensity of your training and prepare for the serious hypertrophy (read: muscle-building) stage to come.

3. Eat, and then eat some more

When you're tearing down your body inside the gym, fueling becomes more important than ever; if you do it properly, you’ll have enough energy to recover, rebuild, and still get back in for your next workout. But we're not just talking about chicken breast, brown rice, and protein shakes. While you can salvage lean mass by eating a low-calorie, high-protein diet, you won’t see any explosive or noticeable growth.

Aspiring muscle growers prioritize nutrient-dense foods. Eat as many fruits and vegetables as you can tolerate, and shoot for unprocessed plant-based carbohydrates, including quinoa, amaranth, millet, and starchy vegetables like squash or sweet potato. Good lean proteins include beans, lentils, fish, nuts, seeds, and eggs. Yes, chicken breast is still fine. All meat is still fine! Just don't confuse a cutting diet, which are often low in calories and high in protein, with a muscle-building diet, which includes a fair portion of carbohydrates.

Two other pro tips: Chew your food thoroughly, which helps make nutrients available to the body immediately, and try to drink at least 50 percent of your body weight in ounces of water each day. Hydration is always your friend.

4. Don't cross-pollinate exercises

There are professional athletes out there who are great at more than one sport. But you, in all likelihood, are not one of them. If building muscle is really your top priority for 2019, take some time to focus on lifting weights and not doing a whole lot else. It’s possible to put on muscle while still including long endurance work, but for most people, that balancing act will be more trouble than it's worth. Those Saturday morning ten-mile runs, like biceps curls, can wait for a few weeks.

5. Consistency includes variety (and breeds success)

Routines don't become routines overnight; they become routines because people go weeks or months or years without changing a thing. To ward off boredom, it's a very good idea to mix up the weights, or change the occasional rep scheme, or combine several core movements into one. just to keep the body guessing. But always remember: proficiency before creativity. Don’t go hitting thrusters—that’s a squat into a press—before you’ve got the squat 100 percent down.

Why? “You’ll need to fall in love with the press, deadlift, squat, and more—and if you're going to do this over the long term, you'll need to fall in love with all those things more than once.

The perfect six-pack is not a myth. In fact, you already own it – it’s just hiding under belly fat. And since you can’t spot-reduce fat in specific areas, the key to losing belly fat is reducing your overall body fat percentage. The magic number is 10% to put your abs centre stage, but there are myriad health benefits to lowering your body fat percentage.

Firstly – and quite simply – you will live longer. The higher your body fat percentage, the lower your life expectancy. Being overweight or obese significantly increases your chance of dying from heart disease, diabetes or cancer, as well as suffering many other health problems.

But losing weight doesn’t just help you live longer – it also helps you get more enjoyment out of your longer life. Multiple studies have shown that losing weight increases your mood and positivity, makes food taste better, improves your libido and sex life, helps your brain fire on all cylinders and reduces expenditure on unhealthy habits.

1. Reduce your daily intake of liquid calories

When you’re trying to lose body fat, one thing that will undoubtedly help your cause is to stop drinking so many calories – especially those high-sugar, nutrient-light drinks. 

2. Get enough kip

“Seven to eight hours is the target,” says fitness model and PT Alex Crockford. “When your body is at rest is when your muscles grow and recover after exercise.” If you’re training like a demon but sleeping like a nocturnal ’90s raver you’ll burn out and end up packing on the pounds.

3. Eat more

Yes, you read that right. The key, though, is what to load up on. Add two fistfuls of green veg to every meal. They're nutrient-dense but low on calories – so they'll fill you up without being fattening, and keep you healthy. 

4. Drink a glass of water with every meal

It'll keep your body hydrated and full, and keep your metabolism online. 

5. Enjoy eating out

Don't be the man ordering steamed chicken breast – as long as you're getting a decent hit of protein and green veg, the steak and spinach is fine. Just leave the frites for another day.

6. Get stronger

Not everyone's first priority, but lifting more weight will make any workout more intense. By adding 1.5kg worth of muscle to your body you have the potential to burn 1,050 extra calories a week, according to a study by the University of Michigan. Aim to progress in big, compound lifts like the power clean and squat, and every workout becomes a fat-burner.

7. Slow it down 

Low-intensity steady state cardio (LISS) lowers the stress hormone, which is great as cortisol  turns you into a fat-storage unit. Plus, a long slow jog will burn more calories than a short, sharp circuit. Even better, LISS can act as active recovery the day after an intense session so you get the best of both worlds. 

8. Get a taste for spicier food

Capsaicin, the compound that gives chilli peppers their heat, will also play merry havoc your metabolism. Add paprika to your home-made burgers – you, uh, do make them from scratch, right? – and turn them into a fat-burning feast.  

9. Increase your vitamin D levels.

This doesn’t include sitting in the sun for hours on end. Vitamin D absorbed from food is essential for the preservation of muscle tissue. You can get 90% of your recommended daily intake from a 100g piece of salmon. So eat plenty of fish, eggs, milk and cereals to get your intake up.

10. Get your fibre on

Research has shown that some fibre can fire up your fat burning by as much as 30%. These studies have found that those who are consuming the most amount of fibre are gaining less weight over a period of time. It’s best to aim for around 25g per day – start by adding wholegrains to your diet.