People often think you can have muscle or lose fat, but you can’t have both. Read this article to learn how to keep both while dieting!
“Are you on a diet? You’re going to lose all that muscle you’ve been working so hard to gain.””Really? Are you telling me that if I try to lose weight, I’m going to be weak and skinny?”Yeah, man, that’s why I live in perpetual bulk!”
Conversations like this can be heard in gyms all over the world. It comes from the notion that when you try to lose fat or go on a cutting cycle, you lose a lot of the lean muscle tissue you’ve worked so hard to build.
While it’s true that during periods of severe calorie restriction muscle mass goes away pretty quickly, there are ways to retain almost all of your muscle when you’re trying to get slim.
Here are 4 things you can do to keep as much lean muscle tissue as possible while trying to get beach-ready abs or glutes pumped up for competition.
Keep your protein intake high:
During “cutting back” you must limit calories, which ultimately means reducing macros. It is important that you eliminate fat macros and carbohydrate macros and try to keep as much protein as possible.
Why? Because it is obvious that protein consumption causes muscle protein synthesis in the human body1,2. There are strong arguments for which type of protein/amino acid most stimulates muscle protein synthesis, but that is redundant for this question.
For this argument, it is sufficient that protein as a nutrient causes an anabolic signal to increase muscle protein in the human body. This effect is stable and reproducible in various populations.
Consider one recent high-protein caloric restriction study from Dr. Stuart Phillips’ lab. In this study, researchers recruited 40 overweight (BMI >25) young men (mean age 23 years) to participate in a single-blind, prospective study.3
Participants were randomized to a high-protein diet (2.4 gkg/day) or a high-protein control diet (1.2 g/kg/day) that restricted energy by about 40%.
Participants also began an exercise program 6 days a week for the duration of the study (4 weeks).
Looking at the results of the study, we see that, as expected with the 40% calorie restricted diet, both groups lost body weight, with weight loss being similar between the groups, but lean body mass remained the same in the control group, but increased in the high-protein group. This means that the high-protein group was losing fat and increasing lean body mass at the same time.
This shows us the possibility of a higher protein intake during periods of caloric restriction.
Read also:
Fat Loss Motivation: 9 Tips to Keep You on Track
Lifting heavy weights at a high volume:
If you want to maintain as much muscle as possible during contraction, you need to lift weights and do so at high volume. We’ve learned a lot over the past decade that workout volume is the biggest dictator of muscle hypertrophy.
To get the biggest growth signal from training, you need to maximize volume through a combination of weights, sets, and reps. However, there is a U-shaped curve where too much volume can be detrimental and cause more muscle damage than can be recovered during contraction.
This is where the art comes in. Find a workout volume that is heavy enough to cause some growth (probably 60-85%), and a combination of sets and reps to get enough volume.
use nutrient timing:
Here’s the thing. Choosing when to take your nutrients doesn’t really matter when you’re in a calorie surplus or gaining mass. In fact, I would guess that it contributes at most 2.5% to your success or failure throughout most of your training life.
During the cutback it is probably a more significant factor. I would call it a 5% contributor to maintaining muscle mass.
Why is timing your nutrient intake during a contraction more important? Because you want to minimize loss and maximize possible muscle gain. If you have a certain amount of calories throughout the day, you want to make sure they go toward your main goal: maintaining lean muscle tissue.
Although the post-workout period has been proven to be much longer than the old scientific advice of 60 minutes in terms of muscle growth, there are still good reasons to try to use this post-workout period to get the calories in and start the recovery process faster.
From my perspective, it boils down to the following basic idea. During the contraction, I’m going to do everything I can to keep my muscle tissue dry. If there are any little tricks or tools I can use to maybe get a little better results from my contraction, I’m going to use them. Smart timing of nutrients can help reduce catabolism after a workout.
Sleep:
To paraphrase Donnie Shankle’s phrase, “You have to sleep.” Sleep is one of the most important aspects of recovery, without any ifs, ands or buts. During low-calorie workouts, the ability to recover, especially to repair and maintain muscle tissue, is reduced.
On average, athletes sleep significantly less than their non-athletes, and studies show that increasing the amount of sleep from 6.0-7.2 hours a night to 8 hours a night or more can significantly improve athletic performance.
Getting enough sleep will pay huge dividends for maintaining those 16-inch biceps you’ve been flexing and eating for the past 12 months.
1) Establish a routine:
Establish a set time when you go to bed each night. Your body will begin to adjust to bedtime and wake-up time. This will help maintain consistent sleep throughout the week. Even when the weekend comes around, I highly recommend sticking to the same sleep schedule as during the week (although this can be tricky because of late-night holidays).
2) Create a sleep-friendly environment:
This is a very important point. Sleeping in a cool, quiet and very dark room is ideal for sleeping because any blue light (even from a backlit clock) or sound can affect your sleep.
Most people notice a dramatic change in their sleep when they eliminate these two simple things.
Completion:
Cycles of contraction don’t have to result in loss of muscle mass. If you’re smart and follow these principles, you can get slimmer while maintaining your hard-earned biceps and quadriceps.
