Building muscle and losing fat are the twin goals of weight training and physical conditioning, but the body resists doing both at the same time. They are contradictory physiological processes. Your body has evolved to increase both fat and muscle in times of plenty and to lose both muscle and fat in times of scarcity when food availability is low.
How can you hold increased muscle while shedding loads of fat to get a nice-looking body with six-pack abs? Start with not falling for these 10 common mistakes of diet and exercise that will inhibit losing fat while gaining muscle.
Not Eating Enough
You can’t pack on muscle if you don’t create an anabolic environment, which means you must eat enough to maintain ideal body weight. It does not have to be huge amounts of protein.
Eating Too Much
Many people underestimate how much they eat, as shown In calorimetric scientific tests with doubly labeled water.1 Very low-calorie diets are not necessary, but you do have to count calories at some level to cut your total energy intake to lose fat.
Not Fueling Before and After Exercise
When your body is fuel-hungry, either during intense exercise or when your metabolism has been revved up for the few hours after you exercise and you have not eaten, unless you give it some fuel, your muscle may be broken apart into glucose by the hormone cortisol. The trick is to provide just enough carbohydrates to prevent cortisol from performing this negative task, but not so much to cause your body to slip into positive energy balance (too much energy input).
Eating Too Many Refined Carbohydrates
Carbohydrates per se are not your enemy, but you do have to restrict the consumption of foods that are enticing and easy to consume and snack on and have less than an ideal effect on your appetite. Biscuits, cakes, muffins, candies, puddings, potato chips and crisps, crackers, sugary drinks, etc—these items need to be curtailed substantially.
Eating Too Much Fat of Any Kind
Nutritionally, you may know about good fats and bad fats, but to lose weight (fat weight) getting your fat intake between 20 and 30 percent is a useful approach. Fat has 9 calories per gram compared to 4 calories per gram for carbohydrates and proteins, and it doesn’t matter what fat it is.
Eating Insufficient Protein
You don’t have to go crazy about this and consume protein drinks a day in and day out, but replacing some of those refined carbohydrates and fat with a modest increase in protein should help maintain or enhance your muscle while you’re losing fat. Don’t make it all animal protein, though: dairy and vegetable protein are good options. And you still need to exercise those muscles.
Insufficient Weight Training
As you lose fat, the only way to protect that muscle and bone from going down with it is to place stimulatory stress on that muscle and bone. That means relatively intense weight training workouts at least three days each week.
Weight Training With Insufficient Intensity
You won’t gain much value from spending 50 minutes at the gym lifting light weights with a lot of repetitions. You need to lift relatively heavy (even if not to failure) for each set that you do. Ideally, this should be at least around 65 percent of your maximum lift possible. If you can squat 130 pounds (60 kilograms) maximum, then you should look at training with 85 pounds (38 kilos). If you don’t or cannot measure your maximums, then make sure the final repetition in any set is hard work to complete.
Not Doing Any Cardio
Aerobic exercise helps you burn off those calories. Steady-state cardio at a moderate pace, in conjunction with a good weight training program, will get you in a good place for fat loss. If you do cardio for longer than about an hour you risk breaking down muscle for fuel, and you need to hang onto as much muscle as you can in this scenario.
Insufficient Precision and Application
This may seem obvious, but what we are attempting to achieve here is not trivial. For most successful weight losers, the net loss includes fat and muscle and often some bone as well. This is the result of catabolism, the breaking down of body tissue that defines weight loss. To achieve our muscle maintenance (or enhancement) and fat loss goals, you have to have a clearly documented program and goals, and you have to apply it with precision, which means taking the time to apply each step accurately, logging those steps in a diary and recording energy inputs and outputs in the form of food and physical activity.
verywellfit.com