When trying to lose weight, your main strategy should be to get the body to burn more fat instead of muscle in order to get a lean and well-toned look. Otherwise, fad diets that are based on food deprivation burn up muscle instead of fat and make you look famished. Also, when you start losing muscle, metabolism dips and fewer calories are burnt, making weight loss journey a struggle from there. When the numbers on the weighing scale are going down, make a wish that it’s all fat and you are not losing any muscle because muscles help burn more calories and keep metabolism robust! For every half kg of muscle, the body burns 50 calories in a single day and if you have 5 kg of muscles, it would add up to 500 calories burnt without any effort. So, more the muscles, more effectively the body torches up calories, and lose extra weight in the process. Considering the importance of the connection between weight loss and muscles, read about 6 ways you can preserve muscles and burn fat at the same time.
What’s the Link Between Metabolism, Muscle, and Weight Loss?
Metabolism is the process through which the body torches up calories to release energy. And experts say more the muscles, higher the metabolism because muscles use up a lot of calories (even at rest). As we had mentioned above, when we lose muscle, metabolism dips down, and melting away extra pounds becomes quite difficult. So, when you are trying to improve metabolism and trying to get lean, make a conscious effort to build more muscle and preserve the existing ones.
6 Ways To Preserve Muscle While Losing Fat:
1. Don’t Starve To Lose Weight: Getting into a calorie deficit is imperative to lose weight, but not by crash dieting or starving through the day. When there’s very low amount of calories, the body starts to source energy from muscles – as a result, you would lose more muscle and preserve fat instead. It is important to be on a weight loss diet that is nutrient dense and includes protein, healthy fats, and carbs in correct proportions, all while maintaining calorie deficit. Rati Beauty diet is one such diet which helps you to lose inches as well as overall weight, all while preserving muscle mass.
2. Exercise Regularly: Dieting does help to slim down, but if you want to build muscle and burn fat, you need to exercise on a consistent basis – especially strength training and lifting weights. When you try to weight without exercise, you may lose both muscle and fat.
3. Amp up Protein: We need protein to repair, build, and maintain muscles when trying to lose weight. Protein improves metabolism and prevents overeating as well. There’s a misconception that eggs chicken are not the only sources of protein, here’s a list of “25 Vegetarian Metabolism Boosting Foods For Weight Loss.”
4. Get Healthy Fats in your Diet: Don’t be scared to include healthy fats in your diet because they are needed to improve metabolism, boost immunity, necessary to produce certain hormones, and for absorption of fat-soluble vitamins like vitamin A and D that help with the muscle building process. Healthy fats also fight inflammation in the body – hence pick the right kind of fat by including rich omega-3 fatty acid sources like fish oil, coconut and olive oil, avocados, eggs, peanut butter, etc. in your daily diet.
5. Make Sure you are Getting Rest Days: It’s a good idea to exercise regularly, but working out every single day of the week will prove counterproductive since it causes breakdown of protein in muscles. Experts say working out just 4 to 5 days in a week is enough to get lean.
6. Get Enough Sleep: If you are trading sleep time to watch Netflix, your body will hold onto body fat and burn muscle instead. Human growth hormone, which helps to build muscle and burn fat, peaks at night, when you are sound asleep – compromising on sleep can hamper both muscle repair and muscle growth. Sleep for 7 hours or more to melt fat, look lean and fit.
These were some of the tips that you can employ right now to successfully lose weight and look fit.
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