Learning how to keep muscle, burn fat at the same time is a delicate balance between understanding how much food you need to build muscle, without eating so much that it could end up being stored as fat.
Perhaps one of the biggest misconceptions when it comes to building muscle, is that you need to go on some kind of bulking diet, or bloat up to add any significant amount of lean muscle.
But that is the wrong approach, especially for women!
In fact, you do not need to start stuffing your face with unnecessary calories, or put your cardio workout on the back burner. The truth is, you can still build muscle, lose fat and sculpt a great body without sacrificing one for the other. All it takes is following the right diet…
Take it from me, I spent years building a muscular lean body, all without stock-piling on unnecessary amounts of fat weight either.
I transformed my physique, and maintained a weight that was close to my ideal competition weight instead of yo-yoing back and forth
Come competition time, vacation time, or whatever reason you need to put on a bikini, you will not only find it harder to lose the extra poundage, once that added weight is finally off you can be sure your conditioning will not be super tight either.
7 Diet Tricks to Keep Muscle Burn Fat!
Trick #1 – Keep Your Diet Tight
If you want to minimize how much muscle you lose when trying to get leaner, then you need to keep your diet tight all year round. That doesn’t mean you need to be on a strict diet all the time, but you do need to make your diet a lifestyle choice.
And that means using maintenance dieting.
Provide yourself with enough high-quality protein, a moderate amount of complex carbohydrates and essential fats.
There is no reason to gain a lot of unnecessary weight in the off-season, only to lose it come beach season or contest time.
For one thing, taking off a lot of weight takes time, you will have to diet long and hard to lose any added fat weight, which can be a disaster on your metabolism. And not to mention your conditioning will suffer.
Trick #2 – Control the Fat Burning Hormones
When you drop calories in an effort to lose body fat, overtime your fat burning hormones start to shut-off, slowing down your metabolism.
The longer you stay on that diet, the slower your metabolic rate!
But you can trick the body, increases and decreases of important hormones can be manipulated by shifting your calories up and down periodically.
On the days you have super hard workouts, and are lifting heavy, up the calories, and reduce them down on the days when workouts require less energy output. Not sure what your calories should be? Go here!
Trick #3 – Don’t Stay on a Diet
Dropping your calories for too long, can’t only affect your fat burning hormones, but it can also decrease anabolic hormones such as testosterone and growth hormone.
Prolonged calorie deficits has been proven to lower growth hormone levels, testosterone levels and causes muscle breakdown.
Limit your restrictive dieting to 8 to 12 weeks, and use a maintenance diet the rest of the time. Try the Sexy Strong Fit Carb Cycle Diet!
Trick #4 – Carb Friendly
Yes it is true lower carb diets do cause weight loss and can decrease body fat quickly, but you do need some carbs in your diet to help keep you anabolic.
Muscles need energy in the form of glycogen – stored carbs – to function properly. Once the glycogen is gone, the muscle can turn onto it self for energy.
Catabolising your hard earned muscle.
By timing your carb consumption you can ensure you are hanging on to your muscle, while maximizing fat loss.
Post-workout, re-load muscle glycogen. Eat some simple carbohydrates along with a source of protein. Keep carbs to a maximum of 30 to 40% of your diet plan.
Trick #5 – High on the Protein
This is a no-brainer, and you probably already know that regardless of whether you are trying to cut or build, your protein in-take will always be high!
In fact, the only place you ever really need to cut calories is from fats or carbs. Protein helps build muscle and preserve it.
Keep protein to 1 to 1.5 g per pound of body weight! Aim for lean sources of protein like chicken, egg whites, lean red meat and whey protein.
Trick #6 – Cheat…Occasionally
Yes, cheating on your diet occasionally can be of big benefit when it comes to dropping fat and keeping muscle!
The cheat meal can help stimulate the fat burning hormone leptin as well as re-stock your muscle glycogen load. Leptin gets shut off after a few weeks of dieting.
If you want to keep leptin up regulated have a cheat meal.
YES you read that right, have a cheat meal.
Eating carbs can help to stimulate leptin, and when this hormone is turned on, so is fat burning! Limit cheat meals to twice per 4-week cycle.
Trick #7 – Keep Fat High
If you want to minimize your muscle loss, and maximize your fat burning you want to keep a good amount of fat in your diet.
In fact, a diet low in fat can reduce important hormones that help build muscle, not to mention when you eat fat you can actually help preserve muscle tissue and switch the body to utilize fat as fuel.
Eat foods that contain good for you fats such as almonds, avocados, walnuts, and fish.
These simple little tricks are just a few of the insider secrets that fitness models and competitors use to keep muscle, burn fat and keep their condition, whether on or off season.
Until Next Time…
Be Fierce and Rule the World,
Lauren Jacobsen
