HOW TO LOSE FAT WITHOUT LOSING MUSCLE 

It's a fun mathematical problem for you: How do you subtract one thing but gain another? Shedding fat from your frame is not an easy feat, but losing fat while gaining muscle could be the greatest fitness challenge of your life. Yet, while losing weight and not muscle are two different goals, you can do both. Don’t let anyone tell you that it’s impossible, because it’s been done. If you’re ready to learn how to lose fat without sacrificing muscle, keep on reading. 

Weight Loss & Fat Loss Are Not The Same Losing weight 

is exactly what it sounds like: It means that the number on the scale is getting lower. “Your total body weight is comprised of lean body mass and fat mass,” says Anna Em, certified personal trainer and creator of The Weight Training Goddess. “Your lean body mass is made up of muscle mass, water mass, bone mass, organs, and tissue. Therefore, if you lose weight, you could be losing fat or lean body mass.” What’s more, losing body fat while gaining muscle requires somewhat conflicting approaches. The traditional path for losing body fat is caloric deficit via diet and exercise. “Gaining muscle typically involves a caloric surplus, which supports the development of new tissue,” says Elliot Upton, a National Academy of Sports Medicine certified personal trainer at Ultimate Performance and Head of LiveUP Online Coaching. “To muddle things even further, fat and muscle are closely linked, making it difficult to prioritize losing one without impacting the other,” says Jonathan Jordan, a certified personal trainer, massage therapist, and group fitness instructor for Equinox in San Francisco, CA 

How to lose fat while maintaining and building muscle:

 Maintaining and building muscle while losing fat requires much of the same as just losing fat: You need to eat a balanced diet and exercise regularly, incorporating strength training into your workout routine. These are consistent routines that you can try to maintain on a daily basis. In other words, you want to think beyond a fad diet that promises quick results.

 And don’t forget these additional tips:

1/Choose Your Diet Wisely:

 Now that you realize losing weight is not the goal but burning fat is, let’s discuss the diets that target fat without subtracting too much weight. It doesn’t matter if you are vegetarian/vegan, following a ketogenic or paleo diet, or have other dietary restrictions. 

You need to focus on lean protein from either plant or animal sources,

 cut out processed sugars and other empty calories, 

avoid eating too much salt, and limit poor quality fats.

 You might even consider intermittent fasting, which has been proven to help with fat loss while promoting muscle maintenance. 

Intermittent fasting has benefits like: Boosting human growth hormone production Regulating insulin sensitivity Modulating the levels of ghrelin, the hunger hormone Decreasing triglyceride levels Decreasing inflammation and limiting free radical damage The best part to intermittent fasting is that it is flexible, so you can work the eating and fasting periods around your personal schedule. 

 If intermittent fasting seems too strict for you, try cyclical eating instead, where you cut your calories for one or two days in a row then have a high-calorie day.

 Your activities should also reflect the number of calories you are eating. 

2/ Eat Enough Protein::

Aside from choosing a diet that supports your fat loss goals, you need to consider your macronutrient ratio. Losing fat without losing muscle requires eating enough protein but not too much. You want to fall into a range of 0.8-1.3 grams of protein per pound for your current body weight. For those who are overweight or obese, you need to use your healthy goal weight. Anything over this range could result in an overload of macronutrients. It doesn’t matter if you’re overeating fat, carbohydrates, or proteins, too much of any macronutrient results in it being stored as fat in the body. But why is protein so important? First, protein boosts your basal metabolic rate, helping you burn more calories throughout the day. Second, it helps repair your muscles and supports muscle growth. 

Thirdly, protein promotes satiety, which keeps you from overeating. 

3/Pay attention to carbs

A low-carbohydrate diet is unnecessary for weight loss, and may even impair muscle maintenance and potential growth by limiting exercise performance, Milton says. However, in one study from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign found that when women followed a 1,700-calorie diet for 10 weeks, those who maintained a 1.4:1 carbohydrate-to-protein ratio (171 grams of daily carbs 125 of protein) lost more fat while losing less lean mass (aka muscle) than those who maintained a 3.5:1 carbohydrate-to-protein ratio 

4/Try intermittent fasting:

 Intermittent fasting (IF) is basically only eating for a certain period of time during the day. For example, those who follow the 16:8 plan eat for 8 hours a day (like between 8 and 12) and fast for 16 hours. “IF can help train your body to burn body fat, reduce insulin resistance and avoid metabolic conditions like diabetes,” Jordan says. “Not every protocol is for everyone, but the evidence increasingly validates this as an effective way to improve body composition for many folks.” 

5/ Stay hydrated:

Drinking enough water is vital not just for losing fat and maintaining muscle, but also for just being healthy overall. “Staying hydrated impacts metabolism, performance — virtually every body function,” Bazilian says. “It carries the nutrients we need to the cells and the cellular debris back from the tissues to the kidney, liver, or back to the intestines to be transported out of the body.”

 Workouts that prioritize fat loss *and* muscle gain

 Keep these tips in mind when creating an exercise plan that works for you:

*Get your cardio in :

Aerobic exercise is key for losing fat, but it doesn’t have to mean a daily HIIT class. High-intensity workouts can of course be great, but low impact and low intensity workouts can be equally beneficial. Need some ideas? Bazilian recommends long walks, jogging, running, biking, dancing, Zumba, cardio boxing, swimming, rowing, and jump rope. “Aerobic doesn’t have to be hard, but it needs to be sustained, working up toward 45 to 60 minutes of sustained exercise,” she explains. “If you’re just starting out, do it in smaller bouts respecting your limits. This also helps with making your cells more receptive to taking in blood sugar and helps with insulin sensitivity, which can help the whole fat burning (and not fat storage) on a physiological level.” 

 *Lift those weights:

 Cardio is necessary for burning fat, but strength training is necessary for building and maintaining muscle — actually, it’s also necessary for burning fat. “A well-structured, progressive, and challenging resistance training program is one of the most effective tools for fat loss and body recomposition,” Upton says. “Not only can lifting hard and heavy expend a decent amount of calories session to session, but as opposed to cardio, it actually builds muscle tissue, which will increase your basal metabolic rate.” In other words? You can eat more and still lose. The ultimate goal! When getting into a strength training routine, you want to consistently switch things up rather than fall into a pattern. Upton says that the possibility of so many variables is what helps you challenge your body and progress. “Some of the variables we can change are reps, sets, weight, tempo (speed during the movement), or total time under tension, range of motion, rest, angles, machines vs. free weights,” he says. And don’t just focus on one part of your body — targeted fat loss doesn’t work. “Doing a systematic, but simple, head-to-toe routine — shoulders, back (between the shoulder blades) and lats, biceps, triceps, abs, thighs, hips/buttocks, hamstrings, and calves — can be very productive,” says Bazilian. 

 *Don’t be afraid of the heavy weights:

 Ditch those 2-pound dumbbells. Lifting heavy is key, says Upton, as increasing the weight better stimulates the muscle growth needed to improve body composition. For those who are new to weightlifting, Upton recommends starting out by performing full-body workouts three times a week and following the core training principle of progressive overload. “Progressive overload is simply the incremental increase of stress placed on the body when training,” he explains. “Remember, muscle growth comes from forcing the body to adapt to new and more challenging stressors in training. If you do not constantly challenge the body and give it fresh stimuli to adapt to, then it will never grow or improve.”

* Do compound exercises 

Upton calls big compound exercises “a great bang-for-your-buck way to recruit more muscle mass in training and burn more calories.” Compound exercises include moves like squats, deadlifts, and pull-ups. “Prioritize these moves over isolation exercises like leg extensions and bicep curls if fat loss is your goal,” he says. “These types of exercises stimulate the greatest release of human growth hormones, which help to preserve lean muscle mass,” Anna says. She points out that they’re also ideal for anyone in a rush since they work so much of your body so quickly. 

 *Take it slow:

 You’re excited about your new workout program, so you go really hard, really fast… and then you end up injuring yourself or overworking your body. “Nothing stops you faster than injury,” Bazilian says. “Get a game plan and tackle this one day at a time at a level you are able to do.” She recommends seeking help from a personal trainer or physical therapist if possible, or even just following a free or low cost online program and app created by real experts.

* Make recovery a priority  :

Letting your body recuperate from all of this work couldn’t be more important. “One of the common reasons people lose so much muscle when they are dieting or trying to lose fat is that they train way too much, and this results in creating too much muscle breakdown, as opposed to improving performance and increasing muscle mass,” Upton says.