Contents
show
Being able to build muscle while burning fat has always been the holy grail of fitness. Nothing beats the aesthetics of massive, but lean musculature. The only problem with building muscle and burning fat is that they are often on the opposite ends of fitness training.
Strength training is straightforward. Follow the principle of progressive overload, and you’re guaranteed to build muscle. Fat loss, on the other hand, often focuses on endurance to burn fat. The problem is when the body breaks down muscle instead of fat.
The mistake most guys make when trying to lose fat is not understanding the rationale behind the process, so they lose fat, but at the same time lose a lot of muscle mass. In this article, we’ll discuss how you can burn fat while retaining muscle mass.
We can’t teach our body to just target fat and avoid catabolism. That would never happen. When you burn fat, it’s always a risk you have to take. What you can do preserve muscle by focusing your diet to build muscle, and complement it with workouts that help increase muscle mass. Sounds simple enough, right? Here’s how.
Your body needs protein to help you preserve muscle mass while in a caloric deficit. Increased protein intake will also suppress your appetite, allowing you to go longer on fewer calories. Don’t fixate on counting your calories and fat intake. As long as you’re reducing your food intake, and you focus on protein as the main bulk of your diet, you’re all good
It’s not enough to focus on weight training to maintain muscle mass and burn fat. You can utilize HIIT and low-intensity cardio to further widen the caloric deficit and accelerate your fat loss progress even with more calorie consumption. This will help you preserve muscle mass and retain energy to support longer, more intense workouts.
Do HIIT training with cardio at least once a week so you can still maintain your progress on the fat loss front. Just do enough so you won’t sap your energy reserves once you get down to weight training. One type of exercise you can get more of is low-intensity cardio, which would have a minimal effect on your training