The biggest problem in the fitness world: how to lose fat without losing muscle?
There has always been a problem in the fitness industry: how to lose fat without losing muscle? For a bodybuilder, the most precious thing is muscle. I work hard every day and train hard for nothing else, but I hope that my muscles will be more obvious and the edges and corners will be more distinct.
If you want sharp edges and corners, you need to reduce the body fat rate, while maintaining the muscle content as much as possible to ensure the fullness of the muscles. What should I do to maintain muscle mass while reducing body fat percentage?
This sounds impossible, because building muscle requires a caloric surplus, while losing fat requires a caloric deficit. Losing fat while gaining muscle is equivalent to having both fish and bear's paw, and reasonable training methods and plans are required to have both fish and bear's paw.
By adjusting the diet structure and planning training methods, you can perfectly achieve muscle building while increasing fat loss and gaining a perfect body shape.
There are many ways to lose weight in the fitness industry. It seems that as long as you want to lose weight, this prescription will definitely help you. However, everyone has different constitutions, physical conditions, and living habits. One prescription cannot achieve such a miraculous effect. effect.
But studies have shown that all obese people have one thing in common, a lot of body fat and very little muscle.
For weight loss, it's not about body composition, muscle is important for everyone. High muscle content and low body fat rate are not just as simple as looking good.
Muscle can promote metabolism, increase hormone levels, and maintain good health. For dieters, the biggest benefit of muscle is that it allows you to burn more calories.
There is one key point in maintaining muscle mass while losing fat: alternate strength training and aerobic training. The study found that when the trainers alternated strength training and aerobic training, the trainers lost 7.2kg of fat and increased their muscles by 3kg.
This study shows that it is possible to lose fat while maintaining muscle mass. Aerobic training burns a lot of calories and allows you to lose fat, while strength training builds muscle mass.
Just changing the training method is not enough. We need to change from the following points in order to reduce fat while maintaining muscle.
- Do full-body strength training
The best way to maintain muscle content is to carry out strength training, which mainly trains the three major muscle groups, and conducts proper whole-body circuit training, so that every skeletal muscle of the body can participate in the training.
Strength training 3-5 times a week can maximize muscle retention while losing fat.
- High protein diet
The basic building block of muscle is protein, and muscle loss is approximately equal to protein loss. It is necessary to reduce calorie intake during weight loss, so it is necessary to increase the proportion of protein in total food calories. Appropriately increasing the protein content is conducive to increasing the feeling of fullness, and the intake of protein can also provide materials for muscles, allowing muscle tissue to better build muscles.
- Don’t lose weight fast
Fat loss and gain are opposite in terms of caloric principles. Increase requires excess calories, while fat loss requires reduction of calorie intake. If you're losing weight quickly, you're more likely to lose muscle and fat than just fat.
The human body needs 2,000 calories a day. If you only eat 1,200 calories a day, the calories are far from enough. In the case of severe calorie shortage, the body will start autophagy to decompose muscle and fat to provide energy for the body.
- Eat less and eat more
Don't keep the previous eating habits, change from three meals a day to five meals a day, this is not to let you eat more, but to let you divide the amount of the day into 5 servings.
This can reduce the burden on the body, increase the speed of digestion, and allow the body to better absorb protein.
It is not an easy task to maintain muscle mass while losing fat, but as long as you stick to the above methods, you can do it perfectly.