How to Preserve Muscle During Weight Loss

You’ve been dieting for a while now and are proud of the gradual results you’ve been seeing on the scale. Then you make the dreaded discovery: not all the body mass you’ve been losing has been fat. Have you taken the steps you need to preserve muscle during weight loss?

That’s the opposite of what you want to accomplish. The goal, after all, is to burn fat but to preserve muscle during weight loss. Muscle mass is not only important for your overall health, balance, joint support and many other body functions, but they’re also huge natural fat burners. The more lean muscle you have on your body, the more fats and calories your body will burn regardless of whether you’re active or idle.

If you want to make sure you’re burning body fat while you preserve muscle during weight loss, consider the following:

• Do cardio early in the day

Doing cardio first thing in the morning after only a super-light high-quality carb-based breakfast is a great step to ensure that you’re burning the right form of energy and that it preserves as much muscle as possible. The goal is to do cardio while your insulin levels are as low as possible, without working out on an empty stomach, which is harmful to performance. Thirty to forty five minutes is a great amount of time to dedicate to your early morning cardio. Then, once you’re done your workout, fuel up with a meal that contains protein and high quality carbohydrates.

• Eat the right carbohydrates at the right time

Carbs are not the enemy. We do need them and benefit from them. In fact, if you eat too few carbs, your weight loss can suffer. That said, eating low quality carbohydrates or eating them at the wrong time can impact your weight loss and muscle preservation. Eat carbohydrates surrounding a workout – both before and after – and they’re most likely to be burned instead of stored as fat. Moreover, while your body is focusing on burning this readily-available energy, it won’t turn on itself and burn muscle instead.

• Pay attention to your hunger

It’s far better to eat right, consuming moderately sized meals and snacks throughout the day, than to eat three large meals with nothing in between. If you let yourself get hungry, you’ll not only feel uncomfortable and will likely be moody, but you’ll risk telling your body to start burning anything it can for fuel, including fat, yes, but also muscle.

• Avoid eating foods containing both high fats and carbohydrates in large quantities

Both carbs and fats are good for your health and weight loss, but eating them in high quantities at the same time can work against your goals.

• Use thermogenics properly

If you really want to get the most out of diet pills containing thermogenesis-promoting ingredients, take them about a half hour before your cardio workout.