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Lose Fat Without Losing Muscle
How to lose fat but keep muscle
By The Guide Building Muscle While Losing Fat
There first thing that needs to be emphasized in this article is that losing weight and losing fat are not the same thing. Losing weight can be measured scientifically to be a number of things that include water, glycogen, fat and obviously muscle. But however complicated one can get in this discussion the bottom line when losing fat and not muscle is all about counting calories and making sure that you are living in a calorie deficit. What this means is that if you measure the calories that you take in and the calories that you put out you need to be taking in less than you are putting out.
The reason this works is that when your body is running out of calories it starts to call on the fat stores which is why it is there in the first place. The problem with living on a calorie deficit is that this energy that is called for in the form of fat can also be in the form of your precious muscle.
So the objective is to train your body to use the fat as the primary source of energy when it needs extra calories and not burn the muscle. In order to achieve this you need to help the process along as much as you can in order to lose fat and not muscle.
The first step is to make sure that you are eating plenty of good quality protein but not too much. There have been many studies done on this subject and whether the volunteer is weight training or not there is significant less muscle loss when more protein is eaten on a daily basis.
Related studies on how much protein is the correct amount of protein seems to show that having one gram of protein per kilogram of bodyweight is the ideal. The next important point when looking to lose fat without losing muscle is to make sure that you are not losing your strength.
It may sound obvious but you will lose muscle if you do not maintain your current level of strength when going on a calorie deficit. If you are currently training with weights and you want to lose fat fast then you just need to make sure that you do not train with lighter weights.
There are some personal trainers and weight trainers who mistakenly believe that in order to lose fat you need to do more reps with a lighter weight. But this will make you weaker and losing your strength will result in muscle loss there is no doubt about it.
The reason that this precious muscle will be lost is that your body will burn off the extra muscle it does not need for energy as the first choice because of the readily available muscle glycogen available. It will do that before it starts again to burn the fat that you might still have on your body.
For example, if you currently bench press 200lbs, your goal throughout the duration of your fat loss phase is to end up bench pressing that same 200lbs (or more if possible) when you're done and all of the fat has been lost. The same goes for every other exercise in your routine.
The problem with training on a calorie deficit is that it affects everything. It unfortunately directly affects your recovery rate, your work capacity, your volume tolerance, performance, etc. The result will be that you are simply forced to reduce sets and reps in order to maintain your strength.
The reason why this is important is that living on a calorie deficit and not completely recovering from your workouts will lead to strength loss and that will lead you to muscle loss.
You can avoid this by adjusting your weight training program to compensate for the drop in recovery that always comes with being in a caloric deficit. That means reducing training volume (the total amount of sets, reps and/or exercises being done), reducing training frequency (the total amount of workouts being done per week and per muscle group), or a combination of both.
As mentioned, recovery, work capacity, volume tolerance and overall training performance in general go to crap as a result of being in a caloric deficit. The best way to help your body cope with all this extra load is a by good nutrition of pre and post workout nutrition is practically built around improving these very aspects of training and recovery.
The result is that the meals you eat before and after your workouts JUST as important (arguably even MORE SO) when your goal is losing fat without losing muscle as opposed to just building that muscle in the first place. It is strongly advised that you do not put yourself on a too severe calorie deficit.
For more information on how to build muscle while losing fat checkout...
The Guide Building Muscle While Losing Fat - If you'd like to get bigger and stronger without putting on fat or if you just want to lose fat without losing that hard-earned muscle... this program is the fastest and easiest way to do it.
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Lose Fat Without Losing Muscle