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Home » How to lose weight safely » How to Maintain Muscle While Losing Weight | Mark’s Daily …

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Losing weight is insufficient terminology. Its too vague, too unspecific. When a person sets out to lose weight, just what are they trying to lose? Bone density? Muscle mass? Organ weight? Of course not theyre generally looking to lose adipose tissue. People want to burn body fat, and they want to do it without negatively impacting the more beneficial sources of (corporeal) gravitas. Simply put, you want to lose fat, not muscle. The only problem is that the popular methods for shedding weight often result in excessive (but really, any amount is excessive) muscle loss, too. Im talking, of course, about precisely the practices I rail against in the Primal Blueprint Chronic Cardio, ultra low-cal/low-fat ascetic dieting, and other trappings of Conventional Fitness Wisdom. Granted, adhering to any, individually or in concert, will probably help you lose weight, but a ton of it will come from your lean mass (not to mention bones and organs). That said, if youre going for skinny-fat chic or the waiflike, undernourished look, feel free to run fifteen miles a day and live off canned tuna and rice cakes. The scale will drop, and you wont be weighed down by that pesky musculature any longer.

But you dont want that (do you?). You want a strong, lean body. You want to maintain your agility, your power, your strength, and your agreeable appearance. You want to burn fat while maintaining (or even building upon) your existing muscle. Heck, if youre mostly interested in burning fat, you need the muscle. Muscle is a hungry, wasteful thing. It craves protein and fat to run effectively, along with a bit of glycogen every now and then to fuel up. Next to the organs and the brain, your muscle mass is one of the biggest consumers of energy in the body, and the more you have, the better your fat loss. Its a delicious cycle the right kind of exercise spares muscle and burns fat, and more muscle with reduced body fat allows you to do the right kind of exercise.

To make sure youre losing the right kind of weight, you have to chart your progress. Its a little more complicated than just watching your total weight, though. In fact, you dont even really need the scale anymore. Well, you can keep it around, but dont get too comfortable; your meetings will be fleeting and infrequent from here on out. Spend a little quality time alone, if you must. Get your fill of each other, because youre going to be using an entirely different set of barometers to monitor your weight loss: eyes, ears, belts, and weights.

Check yourself out. Dont hover in front of the mirror, though. Strip down to the bare essentials and take full body snapshots, making sure to space them out every few days. A lot of people tend to obsess over minor daily fluctuations, but youre not going to see a whole lot of visual differences that quickly. Five days, six days, or definitely a week, however, can be enough time to notice a difference in a direct comparison. Look out for misshapen lumps, sagging chests, flabby underarms all signs that youre losing muscle and maintaining fat.

If youre doing it right, you should be getting noticed. Whether its a significant other, a co-worker, or friends, people will compliment you. Heed their words. When people say, Youve lost weight! (and theyre not your grandmother clicking her tongue in disapproval) and, You look stronger and healthier! it means youre on the right track. Take it as a sign.

Losing fat and maintaining muscle means dropping pants sizes. Using an extra notch on the belt is good. Having to buy an entirely new belt is better. Using a hole punch to create new holes because you cant afford a new belt is pretty bad but at least youre still losing fat.

The best way to ensure youre maintaining muscle mass is to chart your progress in the weight room. Muscle loss is accompanied by a reduction in strength, so if you find yourself failing to hit the marks you used to destroy with ease, youre probably eating muscle. Its a bad sign if youre dropping weight and doing fewer pull-ups than before.

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How to Maintain Muscle While Losing Weight | Mark's Daily ...

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Home » How to lose weight safely » How to Maintain Muscle While Losing Weight | Mark’s Daily …