Lose Fat without Losing Muscle

Lose Fat without Losing Muscle

It’s a common scenario that you’ve probably experienced time and time again, your goal is to lose fat but you also end up losing a lot of muscle.

This is a very regular pattern because of the way our bodies metabolism works. We need to have a deficit in calories in order to lose fat weight, but we need to have a calorie surplus in order to gain muscle.

The balance becomes very challenging so let’s look at some powerful ways to make sure that we keep as much muscle as we can when we are trying to shed some of that excess weight.

Lose Fat without Losing Muscle: Tip 1

Yes you definitely need to cut the calories when it comes to losing fat, but the smart approach is to cut out the unnecessary calories as much as possible and maintain the nutrient rich foods.

An easy example would be to use a much smaller slice of cheese in your sandwich and instead put more veggies.

This kind of simple approach will go a long way in cutting your calorie intake and still feed your body with a ton of vitamins and minerals.

Lose Fat without Losing Muscle: Tip 2

You’ll notice that cutting calories often means that your hunger is never satisfied. The simple trick here is to replace carbs with protein simply because protein takes longer to digest and will give you a much greater sense of fulfillment from what you are eating.

You’ve probably heard me say it quite a few times on this blog but this is where a protein smoothie can really help and if you want to keep the calorie count down then try one of these great tasting low calorie varieties of protein: Optimum 100% Natural Whey or Muscle Pharm Combat Powder.

Now for the night time, a special protein works best because it is slower to digest which means that it will continue to feed your muscles throughout the night and not allow them to be broken down. This type of protein is called Casein protein and my favorite version of this is >Optimum 100% Natural Casein.

Take note that casein protein is harder to drink cold, but if you have it with some warm water or milk it gives it an amazing creamy texture and if you get the chocolate flavour it is just like having a hot chocolate!

Lose Fat without Losing Muscle: Tip 3

Along with the essential amino acids that you get from protein, other amino acids such as glutamine and BCAA’s also help greatly with not losing muscle mass.

Most meats and dairy products are high in glutamine and BCAA’s but you can also make it easier with keeping the lower calorie consumption and try supplementing with Muscle Pharm Recon or Scivation Xtend.

The best part of supplementing with glutamine and BCAA’s is that they also promote muscle recovery and reduction of muscle soreness as well as keep your immune system functioning at its best.

Lose Fat without Losing Muscle: Tip 4

Now let’s talk about your training. Although long endurance activities like running, and biking help with burning fat, a lot of times what happens is that your body also starts burning muscle for fuel.

The challenge therein lies that you have to have perfect pre-workout nutrition along with some calorie consumption during exercise (i.e. electrolyte drinks like Gatorade or better yet Gaspari Nutrition SuperPump MAX).

You can either go this route or try high intensity cardio training instead where the duration is much shorter and hence reduces the likelihood that you will go into a catabolic muscle burning state.

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