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Calories Count
The caloric deficit is the basic principle you need to understand to lose fat. For you to start losing fat, you must be consuming fewer calories than what you eat. Certain diets will help you control your food intake, but what you want is a low-calorie diet that gives you enough protein to maintain your muscle mass. All weight-loss diets focus on reducing your calorie intake and force your body to use up stored fat for energy.Protein

Low volume, high-intensity strength training
It’s a common misconception that increased reps on weight training will help you maintain muscle while burning fat. In fact, these exercises are counterproductive in retaining muscle mass. Low-intensity weight training with more reps is just cardio done differently. What you need is to maintain the intensity just as it was when you were aiming to build muscle. That way, you can give your body a solid basis to maintain muscle mass.Condensed Muscle Training
Condensed muscle training is all about keeping your workout intervals tight, and allow fewer rests in between to sustain muscle mass while burning fat. This type of training is akin to circuit training, and the difference is the shorter rests in between. If you are used to a long pause in between reps, try reducing your rest period to a point that would still be sufficient to give you enough power and stamina to perform the next set.Smart Cheat Days
To put it simply, Smart Cheat Days is just using your cheat days strategically to maintain muscle mass and your fat loss goals on track. With a controlled, lean, low-calorie diet, your body will adjust accordingly, and your hormones will adapt as they should, and using cheat days strategically will give you more control over the psychological and physiological aspect of dieting to maintain your progress. Take a day or two of smart cheat days where you eat just enough calories to match your maintenance diet or even a slight increase – it wouldn’t matter much. The point is to restore a bit of your energy just enough to replenish your glycogen levels and boost your energy and mood. Take into consideration that you can also increase your protein intake at this time to help you with your muscle retention goals.Conditioning workouts
