One of the biggest problems when people try to lose weight is that they often sabotage themselves. They either use the wrong type of exercise or don’t exercise at all. You don’t always lose fat when you lose weight, you often lose both fat and muscle mass. If you want lose body fat, while you preserve muscle, you need the right diet and exercise program.
Losing fat starts in the kitchen.
No matter how much you workout, if you’re overeating, you won’t lose weight. You simply can’t out exercise a bad diet. If you’re complaining about weight loss over a burger and fries, you need to rethink a few things. You have to have a healthy diet with adequate protein for building muscle tissue and timed carbs and protein to help your workout better. The amount of protein you need is based on your weight, it’s approximately 1.5 grams per pound of body weight. It varies by sex and activity level. You also need healthy fat, which should be about 20% of your diet. Healthy fat comes from food like avocados and nuts.
What type of workouts are you doing?
If you’re doing only cardio, like running, you’re doing yourself a disservice. Yes, running burns tons of calories, but those calories come from both fat and lean muscle mass. You want the most lean muscle mass possible, since it burns more calories for maintenance than fat tissue does. That means the more you have, the higher your metabolism will be. Instead of just doing cardio, focus on compound strength building exercises. It burns the most fat, while building muscles in the process. Do strength building interval training for cardio and strength building benefits.
Watch out for overworking your body.
If you think that more is always better, rethink that position when it comes to strength training. Your body needs 48 to 72 hours for those micro tears in the muscles to heal. Doing strength training every day can actually decrease the benefits you receive, especially if you’re doing intense strength building. Over-training or eating a diet too low in calories means your body won’t have the glycogen needed to rebuild muscles. Strength training three times a week while building muscle mass is the right way to go.
- When you eat makes a difference. If you eat carbs earlier in the day, you’ll have time to burn them off, so they aren’t stored as fat when you sleep. A light meal three hours before you workout or a snack an hour or so before that has protein and carbs can make your workout more effective.
- Don’t get discouraged if you’ve exercised for months and still don’t have that ripped look. You actually may, but it’s hiding under a layer of fat. You have to lose the weight for people to see it.
- Stay hydrated. Often thirst masks itself as hunger, so if you’re even mildly dehydrated you’ll want to eat. If you’re adequately hydrated, you’ll have more energy to burn more calories, too.
- Don’t skip sleep. When you lack sleep, the body creates more of the hunger hormone and less of the hormone that makes you feel full. Your body also needs sleep to repair muscle tissue, and build them bigger.
For more information, contact us today at Prime Performance Fitness