How To Diet Without Losing Muscle
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!
My clients in Houston, TX, are really all over the world, know I love strength training for women and men. While many people don’t do strength training after a certain age, particularly women, the benefits of strength training in older women is extremely important. Older women tend to avoid it because they often believed it was not only unladylike, but dangerous and built bulky muscles. Those things are not true and luckily, people are finding out that strength-training can make a big difference in health and physical appearance.
No matter what the goal or how great the workout, if you want to get fit, consistency is key for success. How many times have you tried on clothing and not been happy with the appearance, only to vow to get back into shape. That enthusiasm wanes after a few weeks and instead of working out every other day, you start to skip days, then weeks. You might have a week where you’re back on track, but it’s like starting from scratch, since you took a break. Try doing something every day at the same time to help you get fit. It’s all about developing a habit.
If you’ve heard about how healthy a juice cleanse is, you may be listening to the proponents that believe it helps detox the body of harmful chemicals. Others may use juice cleansing as a way to start a program of healthier eating and preparing for cutting calories. A juice cleanse can be ongoing, choosing to drink only fruit juice, vegetable juice and water for three days a week, instead a one time option. The type of juice is normally made from organic fruits and vegetables and made at home. It isn’t from processed juices found on the grocery shelves.
Everyone in Houston, TX, has ample opportunities to eat unhealthy foods, which are often labeled processed food. That’s because it’s the easiest way to describe them. But not all processed foods are bad for you. When you read processed food, you often think of the junk food aisle and chips, pork rinds, burgers and fries come to mind. Not all processed foods are bad. In fact, some of the healthiest processed foods should be included in your diet. Processing can include everything from cleaning and freezing food, to highly processed that contain ingredients that look like they came out of a chemistry lab.
If you’re exercising and improving your fitness, it’s good for your health and can reduce the risk of many diseases, including diabetes and heart disease. However, to create a health-focused workout plan, rather than a plan simply to get those curves and muscles you want, you need to focus on things like injury prevention, movement and longevity. It’s called functional fitness and requires that you work on endurance, strength, balance and flexibility. It will help you as you age and even slow the aging process, too.
Whether you workout with me in person in Houston, TX, or opt for the online option, you know I focus on looking good, while getting fit and healthier. One good side effect of a healthy lifestyle that helps you look your best is improved cognitive functioning. Not only does exercise enhance your brain power, there are foods that help boost your memory. You don’t have to be old to want to improve cognitive functioning and memory.
I have had clients at RC Fitness in Houston, TX, who put on weight easily and are overweight. They find it hard to take off those extra pounds. It’s not that they eat more than others. It’s that they have a hormone imbalance, which makes it harder. If you feel like you’re trying your hardest to shed those extra pounds, but your body is fighting harder to keep them, that may be the case. You can control many of the factors when you know what to do. Hormonal imbalances make it especially hard for women going through menopause, when hormone levels are regularly changing. There are ways to identify the problem and control it.