I know you don’t want to hear this but…
Fat loss is a slow process.
If you’re trying to lose fat faster, you might not like the result.
And when we strive to see weight loss faster on the scale, ultimately all we’re doing is LOSING MUSCLE.
Which is generally the exact opposite of what we are trying to do.
Especially as we get older!
Because guess what?
It IS a harder process as we get older.
It’s harder to build and retain lean muscle.
It’s harder to lose fat.
Now note…I didn’t say impossible.
I said harder.
Honestly part of why it is harder is because we’ve approached losing fat in the past in the wrong way.
We’ve tried to out exercise and out diet time.
Spending hours in the gym, as we slash our calories lower isn’t what “used to work.”
It’s why we’re now stuck.
It’s why we’re now seeking to lose fat and so worried about losing our muscle.
So don’t just accept muscle loss and weight gain.
But it is time to buckle down and embrace a true lifestyle change.
That’s why I want to first go over WHY we tend to lose muscle during a fat loss phase
and what we can do to protect our lean muscle while leaning down as much as possible.
And for those of you thinking…
“I only have a few pounds to lose…It shouldn’t be that hard…”
WRONG!
It’s harder and a SLOWER process to try to avoid muscle loss as you lose those last few percentages of body fat.
Because the leaner we get, the more our body wants to avoid depleting its fat stores, which are basically stored energy to make sure we are able to continue surviving.
So we can’t just slash our calories lower or train harder to try to get the scale to budge faster.
Doing so will sabotage our success.
Because muscle requires more calories to be maintained.
That’s why we often WILL lose some muscle during a weight loss or fat loss phase…
We just don’t have enough fuel coming in.
But while some muscle loss can be expected, we do to so much to prevent this from happening and even at times GAIN lean muscle while losing fat IF we focus on those fundamentals and don’t rush the process.
Because slashing your calories lower as you train harder will make your body do what it can to function off of less.
We lose muscle because it becomes an optimal source of FUEL.
It not only provides amino acids our body may feel it needs, the building blocks of protein that contribute to so many functions within our body besides just building muscle, but it also COSTS us energy to maintain.
When we eat less and burn more calories, our body finds ways to conserve energy.
Losing muscle is one of those ways as well as our brain telling us to move and fidget less.
Even bodily process such as hormone production are impacted as our body conserves energy to function as efficiently as possible off the restricted energy intake.
What our body is NOT doing as long as possible, is utilizing our fat stores.
It wants to hang onto those as fast as possible.
So when we push to see faster results on the scale,
often we’ve depleted stored glycogen that our muscles hold,
we’ve lost water weight because of depleting the stored glycogen and we’ve even lost muscle…
What we haven’t lost is MORE FAT from what we would have lost had we not tried to rush the process.
And often we’ve even lost LESS…
Especially as we get older.
Because our body doesn’t have the optimal hormonal environment it did when we were younger…
Not to mention previous dieting and training practices like this have already created metabolic adaptations and put us into a position where we have learned to survive off of fewer calories.
Basically if we don’t commit to dieting and training in a new way that matches what our body needs now, we’re not going to see the fat loss results we want.
But there are diet and workout changes you can make to help yourself not only reverse what’s going on
but also protect that amazing lean muscle and even BUILD IT….
The thing is…
What I’m going to recommend you’re probably going to hate.
And your brain will rebel against doing it.
So let’s look at 4 tips to burn fat while protecting your muscle.
00:00 - Burn fat not muscle
01:30 - Why we lose muscle
04:15 - Eat more
06:30 - Protein intake
07:20 - Lifting vs cardio
09:00- Step off the scale