If you want to look your best, you need both a healthy diet and regular exercise. As you’re working out, you’re building muscle tissue, but you’re also burning calories. That means you’re actually burning fat tissue. You want more muscle tissue and less fat tissue, since muscle tissue burns more calories than fat tissue does, so it makes it easier to lose weight. If you’re building muscle tissue and burning fat, you may even find your weight loss is slower. That’s because muscle tissue weighs more per cubic inch than fat tissue does. So how do you diet without losing muscle? One thing is certain, it takes exercise.
The real goal is to lose fat, not necessarily lose weight.
Not only can pounds come from increasing muscle tissue, they also can add up if you have water weight gain. It’s one of the reasons people gain weight before their menstrual cycle or lose it rapidly with a cleanse. You won’t lose real pounds with a fad diet, it’s just temporary. Switching to a healthy diet that can be sustained for life is the only answer.
You need the right type of exercise.
Since exercise burns calories, adding it to your fat burning goal is important. However, it’s important to have the right type of exercise. If you’re doing constant cardio, you’ll definitely be burning calories, but those calories come from burning all types of tissue, both fat and muscle tissue. Add one or two days a week of strength building to your workout schedule. Make sure you have at least a day between them. You’ll burn calories from fat, not burn muscle tissue.
Eating the right types of food is important.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to realize that eating a diet of candy bars and fried foods is not only going to put on weight, but definitely isn’t good for you. Finding the right types of food to help you shed those pounds of fat, without burning off the muscle tissue is important. Eating sources of lean protein, eliminating processed food or food laden with sugar and cutting out food high in bad fat is important.
- Intermittent fasting can help. One method of intermittent fasting is to limit eating to eight hours a day, fasting the other sixteen. It can boost your human growth hormone, help insulin sensitivity, modify the production of the hunger hormone and also help reduce inflammation.
- Quality protein in your diet is extremely important. Not only does protein help you feel full longer, it also is necessary to build and maintain muscle tissue.
- Exercising to lose weight and build muscles is another key factor. You need to do strength and muscle building workouts, rather than cardio that burns both fat and muscle tissue as energy.
- Don’t over-train. You need at least a day between strength building workouts. These types of workouts cause micro tears the muscles and require time to heal. Over-training can actually cause loss of strength.
For more information, contact us today at Reggie C Fitness!