lose weight gain muscle part 1

One of the biggest problems people have when they are on a diet is losing lean mass – ie. muscle and other useful tissue that is not fat. If you lose muscle while on a diet, you will become weaker, less capable of burning calories, and look like a smaller version of your flabby self. Losing muscle while dieting is also responsible for seeing your body fat percentage decrease by only tiny amounts (despite seeing many pounds lost on the scale), stay the same, or in a worst case scenario – increase.

My goal as part of the Burn the Fat Summer Challenge is to learn how to preserve my lean muscle mass while I work to burn fat. To do this, I have been reading Tom Venuto’s Holy Grail, and following up on some of the cited sources.

I am going to do a couple part series on what I have learned so far. Most of this focuses on the work of Dr Dan Benardot, and I hope you find this useful. Let me know what you think!

How Do You Burn Fat Without Losing Muscle?

While there are multiple factors involved in preserving muscle while burning fat (some dietary, some exercise, and others lifestyle), there are a couple topics I want to discuss – meal frequency, meal size, and the overall size of your daily calorie deficit (through exercise and diet.)

In order to lose fat, you simply must burn more than you eat. If you burn an average of 2000 calories per day, then eating 1600 calories per day would result in weight loss – ideally, mostly from fat. However, for most people this is rarely the case. Typically, most dieters tend to lose equal amounts of lean mass (muscle) and fat. This is counterproductive to your goals.

The first thing you want to avoid is cutting your calories very severely. This is something many of us are guilty of. Most people are familiar with the idea that if you cut your calories below a certain point (usually your basal metabolic rate) you will go into “starvation mode”, slow your metabolism, and lose primarily muscle mass. What people do not realize is that even at higher calorie levels it can be difficult to prevent muscle loss while in calorie deficit.

How Many Calories Should You Cut Per Day?

In Timing of Energy and Fluid Intake: New Concepts for Weight Control and Hydration by Dan Benardot, PhD, RD, LD, FACSM, (ACSM’s Health and Fitness Journal Vol 11/No 4), it is recommended that for maximum muscle preservation, calorie deficits should not exceed 300-400 calories per day – including calories burned through exercise.

What You Need to Know

Keeping a smaller daily deficit  will result in a slower rate of weight loss, approximately 2/3 to 3/4 of a pound per week. However, this loss will be as close to 100% fat as possible, provided you observe the next two dietary rules – eating frequently so you avoid extended periods of extreme calorie deficits, and eating small sized meals.

One thing you need to keep in mind is that if you keep your daily deficit smaller, you must also track your calories eaten very closely. When you are only in a deficit of a few hundred calories per day, underestimating portion sizes on any calorie dense food (think fats, sugars, and carbohydrates – so peanuts butter, butter, cheese, bread, grains and pasta) by even a small amount throughout the day (10-50 extra calories each time) – can completely eliminate your daily deficit! This is a big deal and one of the main reasons many people think they are dieting but fail to lose weight.

How can this problem be avoided?

Two options – 1) You cut out most calorie dense foods just so you don’t have to agonize over every little drop of oil, or rounded tablespoon of peanut butter. 2) You buy a food scale, weight your food, and track your calories using a program like fitday.com.

I use a combination of both techniques. I weigh all portions of protein(chicken, steak, etc), starchy carbohydrates (like potatoes), and healthy fats like avocados, nuts, etc and log the calorie counts in fitday as these are some of the more calorie dense foods I consume. I avoid most calorie dense foods like pasta, bread, peanut butter, and oils as I do not want to worry about blowing my deficit. I do not measure portions of low calorie foods (usually fibrous vegetables like fresh baby spinach, steamed broccoli, roasted green beans, etc) every single time as I found after weighing my average portions, that in general the calories in each serving were between 6 calories and 50 calories. So, in general I estimate those portions on most days and log the foods in Fit Day to maintain a general idea of how much I am eating.

In my next post I will go into further detail on why you want to eat frequently throughout the day. In the meantime, if this is a topic that interests you, I recommend you also check out Tom Venuto’s Holy Grail.