Often when someone is overweight they concentrate on losing weight. They are so focused on the amount of pounds coming off that they rarely stop to think that the weight coming off may not just be fat. If you try to lose weight with your only goal being to get to a certain weight your likely to lose muscle as well.
Losing muscle is not a good way to start a diet or weight loss program because the more muscle you have the more calories your body will burn. Obviously if your overweight and your scale says that you have lost twenty pounds after a months of dieting, you will feel elated. Unfortunately when focusing on losing weight these pounds are a combination of fat and muscle.
In order to preserve your muscle you will need to make sure that you are taking in enough calories to fuel them. At the same time you need to keep your calorie intake at healthy levels to lose fat.
Exercise in addition to a healthy eating plan is essential to losing weight without losing muscle. Cardio is a great way to help burn calories but is not enough to protect muscle. You will also need to incorporate resistance training.
Including resistance training to your overall weight loss plan you will gain many benefits. One benefit is that it builds muscle. This will then aid you in losing more of the fat stored in your body because muscle burns more calories.
Another benefit of resistance training is that you will not have to cut your calorie intake to nothing in order to lose weight. Between your cardio workouts and resistance training you will be burning tons of calories, plus the more muscle you build the more calories you burn. This means that you can eat and be full.
That’s right no more starvation diets that don’t work in the long run anyway. The catch is that you still need to eat healthy. You will be able to eat much more then you would normally but you will need to start replacing your high fat calorie and fat foods with healthier choices. After a few weeks of eating healthier you’ll start to enjoy it more.
If you’re overweight it is always a good idea to lose that unhealthy fat. It’s just as important to make the decision to work hard with cardio and resistance training to avoid muscle loss. Its always a good idea with any weight loss plans to make sure you have a well rounded plan to succeed.