How to Maintain Muscle Mass While Losing Weight
Strength training and weight loss go hand-in-hand in terms of overall health and appearance. Men and women must understand the interplay between diet and exercise in order to achieve their dream physique. Learn to appreciate the blueprint for fitness success before beginning your own workout regimen.
Things You'll Need
- Comfortable workout clothes
- Gym membership or home equipment
- Healthy and balanced diet
Instructions
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Sculpt With Diet and Exercise
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Perform a self-assessment of your fitness levels and body type with the help of a licensed medical professional. The doctor should order a physical examination that measures vital information related to height, weight and blood composition to determine whether your body is actually fit for exercise. Your physician may even advise that weight loss is essential to challenge the adverse effects of particular conditions and diseases, such as obesity, diabetes and high blood pressure.
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Set realistic goals that are designed to inspire maximum effort and consistency. Your fitness benchmarks should be related to time frame, diet, athletic performance and appearance. Begin your routine with broadly defined goals, such as simply avoiding fast food and spending one hour at the gym every other day. Narrow your focus down to tangible benchmarks concerned with clothing sizes and exercise repetitions, while gauging how your body reacts to the fitness regimen.
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Limit and eliminate the unhealthiest segments of your diet in order to drop weight, yet provide adequate nutrition and material for muscle growth. Manage your alcohol, tobacco, saturated fat and sugar consumption to improve metabolism and limit these dangerous sources of weight gain and cardiovascular disease. Clear lungs and arteries make the body more receptive to exercise by allowing more blood and oxygen to be transported into cells.
Focus on foods that are high in proteins and carbohydrates, yet low in fats and sugars, such as fish, chicken breasts, fruits and vegetables. The National Institutes of Health says that adequate protein consumption is especially important for athletes needing to repair muscle fibers that have been damaged through exercise. Daily protein intake should be at least 70 percent of your body weight in grams.
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Sculpt your body with strength training three to five times per week. Target prioritized body parts two times per week for ideal shape. Alternate muscle groups between sessions to allow your muscles time to rebuild themselves and grow. Men and women that are concerned with toning lean muscle mass should lift smaller weights for higher repetitions. Athletes that are concerned with bulk should lift heavier weights for fewer repetitions.
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Overlay weight training against cardiovascular work that is done three times per week. Running should not be done for distance. Rather, focus upon running shorter distances with higher intensity in order to enhance fast-twitch muscle fibers that are associated with explosiveness. Doing so promotes a cut, or "ripped," body image.
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Keep notebooks in order to record data specifying dietary intake and exercise repetitions. Refer to these records often to track progress and establish new precedents. Review the data with your physician to determine whether additional lifestyle changes, or even prescription drugs, are necessary fitness solutions.
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Tips & Warnings
Focus on long-term healthy eating patterns, endurance and strength gains, rather than total body weight. Overall body weight may drop initially, stabilize and even begin to increase again as you build lean muscle. In fact, Monash University identifies the body mass index as a misleading statistic that often describes muscular and physically fit individuals as overweight.
Losing weight while preserving muscle mass is predicated upon the quality of your diet, rather than simply counting calories. Therefore, regular exercise is vital to ensure that unused nutrients do not convert themselves into stored fat.
