Whenever people decide to lose body fat, they make the same dumb mistake: They adopt strategies that make it impossible to preserve their muscle mass. They lose weight, of course, but they lose just as much lean body mass as fat mass. They simply become smaller versions of their unaesthetic selves. They occupy less space, the scale tells them they weigh less, and their doctor might even congratulate them for being closer to their healthy weight, but in reality they arent looking any better, which kind of misses the point. The number one priority when attempting to lose fat should be to keep the muscle you have. Losing muscle mass should not be acceptable. Losing muscle will make it harder to look good when losing the fat, but itll also make it harder to lose fat since muscle tissue is metabolically responsible for most of the fat youll lose. One pound of muscle burns 50 calories per day even at rest, so if you lose 10 pounds of muscle, you will burn 500 fewer calories per day, or 3500 fewer calories per week. Since a pound of fat is made up of roughly 3500 calories, it should put things in perspective. Then theres the issue of insulin sensitivity. If you have more muscle, your insulin sensitivity will be slanted more towards accruing muscle mass. A larger muscle has more insulin receptors, which makes the muscles more insulin sensitive. That means youll tend to store more of what you eat in the muscles instead of as body fat. Lastly, when you have more muscle mass, you can lift more weight and train harder, which increases the amount of calories you burn during a workout. As you can see, its not only important to maintain muscle when dieting, its vital! Here are the biggest mistakes people make when trying to lose fat.
Posted on: Mon, 28 Apr 2014 12:38:46 +0000
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