How to lose weight or fat and not muscle: A
complete guide
Well you often hear people saying they want to lose weight or
they want to lose fat. However, both terms have same meaning that is they want
to lose fat as none of us
certainly want to lose muscle. I am a strong believer that without doing hours
of your own personal research and education it can be next to impossible to
ever get to the bottom of information that is thrown at us. In this article, I
shall try to give you “what to do and why to do” version of weight loss or fat
loss. This article will offer you some important suggestions to lose fat and
build a retain amount of muscle mass. Well you won’t need a Ph.D. in exercise
physiology or chemistry to understand this either. However, losing actual body
fat takes longer, because the only way to burn excess body fat is to create a
calorie deficit and that can be much trickier that it sounds.
Here
are a few things to consider when weight loss (fat) is your primary goal while
retaining muscle:
1. Be in calorie deficit:
The process of gaining
muscle or losing weight/fat is solely depend on the factor that how many calories
you consume per day to the number you burn per day. If you wish to lose fat
then your calories intake must be lower than what you are burning and vice-versa
in muscle gaining phase.
There
are two ways to create a caloric deficit. You can either eat fewer calories or
you can eat the same amount of calories and increase your activity level to
burn more calories. Since we're looking for fat loss without muscle loss, that
activity should focus primarily on strength
training and less cardio training.
"Top 5 muscle building supplements"
"Top 5 muscle building supplements"
So, for
successfully losing fat without losing muscle you need to be in a calorie deficit and
you need to emphasize on strength training over
cardio when you're in such a deficit in order to maintain your muscle, which, is
what gives you that sexy and athletic shape.
Last,
it's important to note that just because you need to create a caloric deficit
doesn’t mean that you have to starve yourself or eat an incredibly low calorie
diet as was used in the study discuss above, which involved obese individuals.
So the goal in order to achieve fat loss without muscle loss, is to be in a
caloric deficit without starving yourself, make sure that your diet delivers
plenty of protein and focus your exercise efforts on performing regular
strength training.
2. Include fasted cardio in the morning:
Fasted cardio in the
morning is optimal because the body is in catabolic state, insulin levels are
bottomed out, hormone sensitive lipase (the fat cell releasing enzyme) is fully
active while lipoprotein lipase (the fat storage enzyme) is dormant. GH is
still coming off its overnight high, a major fat burning hormone. At this time
there is less glucose in your blood stream to be burned, vs. after having just
ate a meal, leaving fats as the go-to substrate. Keep the session under 45
minutes.
3.
Drink water before meal
Water is an appetite suppressant, drinking it before meals can
make you feel fuller, therefore reducing the amount of food you eat. Preload 16
ounces of water 30 minutes before meal. You have heard the benefits of drinking
warm water first in the morning helps in losing weight. Moreover, you can
replace calorie filled drinks with water if you feel water tastes boring just
add a slice of lemon. A glass of warm water with a slice of lemon is one of the
best recipe for weight loss.
3. Track your
Carbohydrates:
When in a calorie
deficit, you must consume less calories from carbs sources as they are considered
as fuel for the body hence you cannot completely neglect or remove carbs from
your diet. In simple words don’t consume when you don't need them! The best
times to give yourself larger portions of carbs is when you first wake up and
before and after workouts, as you can be sure it will be put to use and be
burned off, not stored as fat. However, if required consume no more than 25-35
grams in other meals if you must have more carbs based on your job and or
lifestyle and even then, make them high fiber vegetable based carbs. Give
yourself the proper carbohydrate fuel to get the day started, get through a
workout and the carbs to recover from the workout, that's it. However you
should stay away from trace carbs or sources like starches, sugar, sodas etc.
4. Don't starve
yourself:
Letting you starving causes loops to enter the
diet; you get impatient and look for anything to eat. It's human nature when
you feel starved. Even if it's the right thing to eat, you end up eating way
too much of it. Eat often enough to stay full even if it's lots of veggies and
water.
5. Eat Citrus Fruits:
Eat citrus fruits if you must eat fruits as they are acidic and
raise insulin less than most typical fruits (exception of pineapple). Plus they
contain flavonoids such as naringin, found in oranges and more so in grapefruit
which also help with fat loss by extending caffeine's effects. Do not eat
grapefruit with prescription meds as it may have negative side effects. Kiwi,
mango and strawberries also fit the bill as good citrus fruits.
7. Protein Before Bed:
Around 45 to 60 minutes before bed, eat casein protein whether in
the form of powder or cottage cheese (2% fat or less) to fight late night
hunger cravings; its void of sugar, low carb (lactose) and high protein, plus its
got calcium which can help you sleep. Your body does not just turn off your
digestive system at night. If calories are controlled during the day and
exercise is intense enough, you will process and use foods like this even at
night.
8. Weight Training to
retain Muscle:
Maintain some form of weight training at least
3-5 times a week or your body won't have a single reason to hold lean muscle,
it will burn muscle faster than the recession is burning away at the stock
market, even more so if you're doing substantial amounts of cardio each week. Do
some compound movements like squats, deadlifts, bench presses,etc in order to
maximize your fat loss process as well as it will help in retaining muscle.
However, focusing only on oo much cardio and no weights means a soft skeleton
body in no time.
9. HIIT Training To break
the Plateaus:
If long duration steady state cardio (45+
minute session) stops working, throw in a shorter High Intensity Interval
Training (HIIT) 01 to 02 times in a week and go with that as a plateau buster.
10. Refeed Rather Than Cheat:
When you really feel like you're hungry all the time and
weight loss is not keeping up, "refeeds" are far more effective then
cheat meals or cheat days at kick starting your metabolism. However, those reefed
days does not mean to consume lots of junk or empty calories. Refeeds are just a
single very high carb meal of slow and medium digesting carbs.
11. Pop some vitamin D
In the busy lifestyle and hours of job sitting
at a place leads to people deficient Of Vitamin D cause lot of health issues.
This vitamin itself has number of health benefits including fat loss. Supplementing
vitamin D daily may help you drop pounds. Research suggested that
vitamin D appears to boost the effectiveness of leptin, a hormone that signals
the brain that you're full. Because it's difficult to get D from food,
Shalamar Sibley, M.D., an assistant professor of medicine at the university,
says you may need to take a vitamin D3 supplement.
12. Add
Caffeine
Caffeine is a substance commonly found
in coffee, green tea and cocoa beans. It’s also a popular ingredient in
commercial fat-burning Supplements and for good reason. It can help boost your
metabolism and help your body burn more fat. Research shows that caffeine can temporarily
boost your metabolism by up to 16% over one to two hours. In
addition, several studies have shown that caffeine can help your body burn more
fat as fuel. However, this effect appears to be stronger in lean people than
obese people. Unfortunately, consuming
caffeine too often could make your body more tolerant to its effects. To reap
the benefits of caffeine, you don’t need to take a supplement.Simply try
drinking a few cups of strong coffee, which is an excellent source of caffeine
with many health benefits.
13. Sip green tea
This healthy brew acts like a diet drug in a mug, but without
the negative side effects. A review of studies concluded that regularly sipping
green tea can help you drop pounds. This weight loss is the result of EGCG, a
compound known to reduce fat absorption. Experts say that drinking three to
five cups of the regular or decaf variety every day may help you lose weight.
Conclusion
These rules only work when adhered to in the strictest sense. If
you give the rules 100% compliance you will get 100% of the effect. If you give
a sad effort then you get sad results. I don't mean to be blunt but I do mean
to be honest and straight forward. Results only come to those who do what it
takes to get them, not to those who look for short cuts and magic pills.
