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#159 - 3 Keys To Losing Weight Without Losing Muscle
37 Plays26 days ago
You may be thinking about weight loss the wrong way. If you care about how you look, feel, and perform, then it’s not just about losing weight. It’s about losing fat and maximizing muscle mass.
In this podcast, you'll learn:
• why maintaining muscle is one of the biggest keys to better body composition, strength, metabolism, and long-term results
• Why losing weight as fast as possible is usually the wrong goal if you want to look better and keep the results
• 3 common mistakes people make that cause muscle loss during a fat loss phase
• A simple fat loss checklist to help you lose fat while supporting muscle retention or growth
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Transcript
Introduction & Podcast Purpose
00:00:00
Speaker
Welcome back to the Fit-ish Project with your host, Lathan Bass, where we make fitness and health simple for regular people like you and I. Before we get into the weekly episode, just a reminder, if you can continue to share this with people who you think get some value from this, leave reviews, all that good stuff, subscribe to the show, just continue to help get this. information out to more people who can use it in order to live better and healthier lives. That is the entire goal of this podcast. So I appreciate you if you have done something like that in the past and will do that in the future. Thank you very much.
Weight Loss vs Muscle Retention
00:00:33
Speaker
Getting into the topic for this week, three keys to losing fat without losing muscle. Lots of people have the goal to lose weight and at some point or another, you will probably have the goal to lose some body fat.
00:00:46
Speaker
A lot of people put a ton of emphasis on just losing weight, but they don't really take into account how important it is to maintain muscle during that process. Because you can lose weight without losing a ton of fat. Like you can lose a lot of weight and lose a bunch of water weight or lose some muscle mass and not lose as much fat as you would like. And that's not good for pretty much any reason that you have for losing weight.
00:01:10
Speaker
It's not good. Like if you have goals around wanting to look better, if you have goals around wanting to physically feel better, if you have goals around wanting to be able to perform better within like physical activities or just your overall health and longevity losing muscle mass and losing a lot of muscle mass in the process of losing weight is not a good thing and i'm going to explain in this episode why it's so important to prioritize your muscle when weight loss is the goal some common mistakes that people make that cause them to lose too much muscle so that you can avoid those mistakes and then ultimately give you a burning fat without burning muscle checklist
00:01:49
Speaker
Three very basic things that you can do in order to help you maintain or even build some muscle while losing fat is the goal.
Calorie Deficit & Protein's Role
00:01:58
Speaker
I came across this graphic not too long ago on, i think it was Instagram and it was by the account built by science. And they have a lot of really good posts around fitness, around weight loss, around building muscle, just around all the common topics that people are very interested in.
00:02:13
Speaker
And one of them that they, that I came across that caught my eye was this one about weight loss and specifically about how much muscle you are losing when it comes to weight loss based on your approach. And so it had it broken down into three different categories. And so we know in order to lose weight, you need to be in a calorie deficit.
00:02:31
Speaker
So when it was just specifically about the calorie deficit and people weren't doing anything else, like they weren't focusing on protein or lifting weights or anything like that, it was said that you will lose roughly 20 to 35% of your weight from muscle mass And this is pretty typical to lose a little bit of muscle when weight loss is the goal. Now there's some different scenarios where that doesn't always happen. And as I'll get into here in a moment, there are actually some ways that you can help to even build some muscle while losing fat. But in general, especially if you're not doing any of those things like focusing on a high protein diet or lifting weights, you can expect to lose some muscle mass when losing weight. That's pretty normal and that's pretty typical. the next group in this graphic was a calorie deficit plus a high protein diet and when you did those two things paired together it was said that you would lose roughly 15 to 30 percent of the weight from muscle mass so still not great the last group was a calorie deficit plus a high protein diet plus strength training and in this group it was said you would lose around five percent or even gain five percent of muscle while losing fat
00:03:43
Speaker
So you can obviously see here the best combination of things to do is a calorie deficit, which you need to lose weight, high protein diet, which is going to help to maintain that muscle. And then strength training is a huge, huge piece of this whole puzzle when you want to lose weight, but not just lose weight, lose fat and maintain muscle, which again is going to be extremely important if you have goals around how you look, how you feel, your health, your longevity, the things you can do, all of those different things.
Metabolism & Fast Weight Loss
00:04:10
Speaker
And the basic takeaway from this is that anytime you are going to lose weight you need to make sure that you are doing some things so that you are preserving muscle mass and another really big thing to think about too is not to think about getting the weight off as quickly as you can we see this a lot now with like glp1s or we used to see this a lot too with people who would get like different weight loss surgeries who would lose weight very quickly we or even people who just crash diet and lose weight very very quickly When you lose weight quickly, you are typically losing not just fat mass, but you're also losing some water weight, but you're also losing that precious muscle mass that takes quite a while to build.
00:04:49
Speaker
and we know that losing a lot of muscle mass is not good for a lot of reasons, because when we think about the reasons that you want to lose weight, so the most common one that people will have as part of their weight loss goals is because they want to look better.
00:05:02
Speaker
And when it comes to looking better, looking more tone, looking more lean, looking more athletic, looking more fit, all that simply means is that you need to lose body fat and you need to build or at the very least maintain a good amount of muscle mass in order to look more lean, more tone, more athletic. But if you're stripping away that body fat, you're losing weight, but you're also losing muscle or you don't really have a lot of muscle to show underneath as you strip that fat away. You're not really going to look much leaner or more toned or anything like that. So it gets really important to make sure that you're focusing on muscle as you're losing weight if you have specific goals around how you look. and i can speak to this personally like getting down from 300 pounds down to about 215 i didn't quite look the way that i thought that i would look and i think part of the reason was is that i did have some muscle mass because i was an athlete i was lifting weights but i didn't have enough muscle to look the way that i wanted to look and be at the body fat level that allowed me to really get that look that i wanted to have And so it took me some time to actually spend building muscle after I lost all that weight. It took me some time to spend just bulking and putting on muscle and really focusing in on strength training to build back some of that muscle. And then once I went back into a cut, then I looked a little bit more like how I wanted to look. And the funny thing about this was when I did this, I was similar weights in two different pictures, but they were multiple years apart.
00:06:29
Speaker
But you could visibly tell in one of those pictures that I looked much leaner and I looked more muscular, bigger, all those sorts of things that a lot of us want and are the reasons that we want to lose weight is because we want to look leaner, look more toned, all those different things.
00:06:43
Speaker
and you just need to really really understand that losing weight is important but you don't just strictly care about losing weight you want to lose body fat lose body fat build muscle that is the key here and so when you have goals around how you look muscle becomes really important when you have goals around how you feel or even how like you perform in your day-to-day life or different activities or hobbies or physical things like that muscle also plays a role because Muscle is important for your strength. Obviously, if you have more muscle mass, you're going to be stronger. It's important for your mobility. It's important for injury risk.
00:07:17
Speaker
It's important for a lot of different reasons. So if you're losing muscle mass, you're likely losing strength. You could be losing mobility. You could be at a higher risk for injury and a bunch of other things that happens when you don't have as much muscle mass. We just know that having a good amount of muscle mass is good for your health and longevity. It's good for how you feel. It's good for how you look. It's good for all those different things. And Plain and simple, not having muscle and being weak, it just sucks. Like it's not good for your health. It's not good for any of those other things that we care about. And then when you think about from a longevity perspective, muscle becomes really important, especially in the weight loss process and being able to sustain your weight loss. Because if you think about it like this,
Common Weight Loss Mistakes
00:07:56
Speaker
your muscle mass plays a very, very big role in how fast or how slow your metabolism is. Like body composition, basically what your body is made up of when we think about muscle and fat and those different things.
00:08:08
Speaker
If you have a better body composition, just meaning that you have higher muscle mass and less fat mass, that is a very good thing for your metabolism. The more muscle that you have, the faster your metabolism is gonna be. So if you think about this, if you're losing a bunch of weight, but you're also losing a bunch of muscle mass, you're slowing your metabolism down. And so now in order to maintain that, you're having to do that with a slower metabolism which we know makes weight loss and specifically sustaining your weight loss much more difficult if you have a slower metabolism so the goal is to lose as much body fat as possible maintain or build as much muscle as possible to help keep that metabolism revved up and makes weight loss sustainability so much easier and so when we think about this those are some of the reasons that you really want to focus on maintaining or even building as much muscle as possible when fat loss is the goal. And some of the common mistakes that people will make, there's three really big ones that I see quite often.
00:09:03
Speaker
The first one would be crash dieting. So as I mentioned earlier, if you're losing weight very, very quickly, there is a very good chance that a good portion of that weight that you're losing is coming from muscle mass. And that's not good for a lot of reasons. Whether you're losing it on crash dieting, whether you're losing it because you are using GLP-1s or whether you're losing a lot of weight because you have some sort of procedure, it doesn't really matter. If you're losing weight very quickly, there's a good chance that you're losing some muscle mass.
00:09:30
Speaker
And so when we think about crash dieting, which is something that a lot of people do, they just cut their calories way too low. And so you'll lose weight faster. But again, if you're not thinking long term about this, you're just running yourself into a dead end because if you lose a bunch of weight while also losing a bunch of muscle mass, you're not going to be able to sustain that long term. Your body's going to fight back. And now that you have less muscle mass and your metabolism is trying to get you to eat more because you've been crash dieting. Well, now you're putting on more body fat and that's just a really bad cycle
Strength Training & Protein Needs
00:10:00
Speaker
to get into. So you could end up in a situation where You're actually go back to the weight that you started at, but now you have more body fat and less muscle match than when you started the first time, which again is not good. If you have higher body fat percentages and less muscle match percentages, not a good thing for your health, for your longevity, for how you look, for how you feel, any of that stuff.
00:10:22
Speaker
Big mistake number two is not strength training. As I mentioned earlier with that example of those three different groups, one of the highest leverage things that you can do, which I'll touch more on in the checklist, is just to strength train.
00:10:35
Speaker
If you want to maintain that muscle or even build some muscle, strength training is the best thing that you can do hands down. our body works on a use it or lose it type of principle. So like if we're not using certain capabilities, then our body doesn't really see a reason to stay proficient or keep those certain abilities around. So if you're not sending a signal to your body to hang on to that muscle and that you need that muscle, well, when you have this big energy deficit, when you're trying to lose weight, muscle is an expensive tissue. And so it thinks, well, why don't we just get rid of this muscle if we're not going to use it? Because this is harder to maintain than body fat.
00:11:11
Speaker
So if you're not sending that signal through lifting weights and through strength training in order to keep that muscle round, then that muscle is going to be one of the first things that goes. The third big mistake on this list is something that might actually surprise some people, but this is neglecting getting good sleep.
00:11:28
Speaker
We know that sleep promotes healthy fat loss and bad sleep just makes it easier to lose muscle, just plain and simple, like for a lot of different reasons. you're not gonna have great workouts.
00:11:39
Speaker
Your cravings are gonna be higher. You're gonna be less satisfied and satiated after your meals if your sleep is poor. It just makes the whole dieting process and especially like weight loss itself much more difficult when your sleep sucks. And so when you neglect your sleep while trying to lose weight,
00:11:56
Speaker
It's really, really hard. You're basically just trying to run uphill. Weight loss is already something that is difficult and challenging
Sleep, Stress & Weight Loss
00:12:02
Speaker
for a lot of people. And if you're getting bad sleep on top of that, it just makes that process that much more difficult. So those are the three big mistakes that I see pretty often in why people end up losing more muscle mass than they really want to. And then they end up losing weight, but they're not really looking how they want to look. They don't really feel how they want to feel. their health might improve because you probably will see some health benefits by losing weight. But again, when we think about this long term, it's not a good trade off to just lose weight if you're losing a bunch of muscle mass with that. So we want to make sure that we're setting ourselves up for the best case scenario. And that is why I'm going to get into this checklist here about the highest leverage things that you can do in order to hang on to that muscle or even build a little bit of muscle as you have these weight loss goals. So as I mentioned, the most important thing that you can do to help yourself out and to really hold on to that muscle is to strength train.
00:12:55
Speaker
And when we're talking about strength training here, it's very important to train intensely so that you are sending a strong signal to keep that weight around. Sometimes you'll see people who want to get the weight off very quickly, so they'll basically just crash diet and do a bunch of cardio.
00:13:10
Speaker
Doing cardio is not sending the signal to your body to hang on to that muscle mass because it doesn't take a ton of muscle mass to do cardio in the same way that weights will do that. And so if you're heavy lifting, if you're really pushing the intensity, if you're focusing on that progressive overload and getting stronger, you're sending that strong signal to your body to hang on to that muscle or even build some of that muscle. So Important to make sure that you're lifting, i would say at a minimum, couple times a week. If you can get in three or four times a week, that's probably going be even a little bit better. But making sure that you're taking your sets close to that muscular failure. The goal is to build as much strength as you can, even while weight loss is the goal. And that way you can continue to keep that muscle mass around.
00:13:54
Speaker
A good proxy to have to know if you are hanging on to a good amount of muscle is that you're not losing a ton of strength as you are losing weight. So if you're losing weight, but you are getting way, way weaker in the gym, that's not a good sign. You want to make sure that you are doing this in a way to where you can maintain a lot of your strength or maybe even build some strength while you're losing fat to make sure that you hold on to as much muscle mass as possible.
00:14:17
Speaker
Number two on this list of highest leverage things that you can do, high protein diet. You've been told to eat protein for a very long time now, and I think most of us know that this is important, but you want to make sure that you're getting a high protein diet with an adequate amount of calories. And what I mean by that is just to make sure that you don't crash diet while also prioritizing protein. So when we think about protein, 0.7 grams per pound of body weight is typically what I recommend and what I think about when I'm working with clients or even with my own personal goals. That's kind of like the baseline. So you'll hear 0.6, 0.7, 0.8 thrown around quite a bit. And so anywhere in that range is probably going to be okay. That's going to give you a bulk of the benefits. And then sometimes you'll also hear one gram per pound of body weight thrown around as well. So somewhere in that range of like 0.7 to one gram per pound body weight is going to give you all that benefit. But at a very minimum level, if you are focused on weight loss, I think a really good goal to shoot for is that 0.7 grams per pound of body weight. And then if you get a little bit of extra on top of that, then that's even better.
00:15:24
Speaker
The leaner that you are or the more intensely that you're training, the more important in that having maybe a little bit of extra protein, so maybe going for that one gram per pound of body weight It just kind of depends on where you're at and how intensely you're training, how big your deficit is, those sorts of things. But at a base level, 0.7 grams, if you can get that one gram per pound of body weight, I think that's even better when weight loss is the goal. And then with your calories, just making sure that you are not cutting too many calories. you'll see different numbers thrown around so when we think about a calorie deficit you don't want to go from eating say 2500 calories to eating 1200 calories that's just way too big of a deficit your body's going to start to fight back pretty aggressively and it's not going to be anything that you're able to maintain
00:16:07
Speaker
very well. And so a good rule of thumb that you'll hear people talk about is to knock go over about 30% of your maintenance calories. So if you're somebody who's eating around 2500 calories a day, that'll put you somewhere around like 17 1800 calories you wouldn't really want to go under a more standard number that you'll hear thrown around like a more moderate deficit is typically around 10 to 20 percent which is somewhere around 500 calories less per day like those are some very vague numbers that you can see but as long as you're not cutting your calories so much that your energy just goes way down and you just know that it's not going to be something that you're able to maintain then you're probably going to be in good shape That 30% is something that you want to stick around, especially if this is something that you want to be sustainable. The goal here is as you're losing weight, you want to be eating as much as possible while still being able to lose weight. I think a lot of times people go into a diet or go into a weight loss goal and their whole mindset is about how little can I eat?
00:17:08
Speaker
which especially if you're new to this and you're not really experienced with dieting, I don't think that's the right approach because you're not really teaching yourself what sustainable habits are going to look like. If you're eating as little as possible, you're not really getting a good view or a good picture or being able to practice good habits around the things that come with dieting, like focusing on portion control, like focusing on whole foods, like focusing on getting some fiber in your diet. If you're just strictly just focused on eating as little as possible and that's the only thing you're focused on, You're not really giving yourself a chance to build the right habits while you're dieting. So focusing on just getting a high protein diet and not cutting your calories too low would be number two on the list. And then the third thing, as I mentioned earlier, is just to prioritize sleep.
00:17:53
Speaker
getting seven to eight hours of sleep per night is really good goal to shoot for. Sometimes it's a little bit less, some people need a little bit more, but you can play around with that and see where you feel really good at.
00:18:04
Speaker
But again, if you're getting four or five hours of sleep per night, you're making this whole process harder. It's going to be harder to get good workouts. It's gonna be harder to stick to your diet. You might have stronger cravings. You might have more tendency to stress eat or emotional eat. Now your workouts are kind of sucky. And so again, it just makes the whole process more difficult. But if you can start to prioritize your sleep, you're going to see a lot of benefits. And again, I think this is something that a lot of people overlook. But when you really start to prioritize sleep, it makes the dieting portion of this and the workout portion of this much easier and is going to help you to be able to maintain or even build some muscle as you're focusing on weight loss and getting that fat off.
Fat Loss Checklist
00:18:46
Speaker
And a bonus thing that I would throw on in here to focus on is just to manage stress. This is more of an indirect thing. But when you're super stressed out, it's going to make other things around dieting harder. So like if you're stressed out, it's probably not going to be nearly as easy to stick to your diet as if you had things under control and life was smooth and feeling good. You're going to have more cravings. You're going to be more likely to stress eat or emotional eat. Again, stress is going to mess with your sleep. So then you get into that whole big issue that I just touched on and all the problems that come with that.
00:19:19
Speaker
So again, managing stress is something that you might not think directly affects your weight loss. And indirectly, it has a ton of effect on the things that you do around dieting and just the behaviors that you need in order to be successful with dieting.
00:19:33
Speaker
Stress plays a pretty critical role in that. So thinking about stress is important as well. And so when we think about this checklist, it's pretty simple. But if you do these things, you're going to help yourself out a ton. The first thing being lift heavy weights at least two times a week, if you can get in there three or four times a week. That's even better. High protein diet without cutting your calories too low. So focusing on getting at least 0.7 grams of protein and then not cutting your calories more than around 30%, give or take a little bit when it comes to a calorie deficit.
00:20:05
Speaker
And then lastly, just focus on supporting lifestyle behaviors like sleep, like managing stress. And if you can do those three or four things fairly well, you're going to be able to not only just lose weight, but also lose fat more specifically and maintain that muscle mass so that you look the way that you want to look as you get close to your goal, you feel better, your longevity and your sustainability with this whole process is going to be better. So making sure that you nail those things down and don't just get so focused in on losing the weight as quickly as possible, because that's not going to give you the best long term results. You want to make sure that you're doing this in a smart way and in a way that allows you to
00:20:45
Speaker
Hit those goals, but do it in a way that feels good and that is sustainable. And if you can do these things, check these things off this list, you're going to be in good shape for that. So hopefully this was helpful because I know this is a common topic. I have people asking me questions about like if it's possible to build muscle and lose fat at the same time or just different questions that pertain to this subject. And this is something that I know a lot of people have goals around is losing fat and building muscle.
00:21:11
Speaker
So making sure that you're just doing these things. And as long as you can do this handful of things, you're going to be in pretty good shape. so Just a couple of things
Coaching Services & Conclusion
00:21:18
Speaker
before we tune off here. Just the one-on-one coaching link is in the show notes. If you want some direct help with this stuff, nutrition, workouts, accountability, all that good stuff, continue to leave reviews if you can. And as always, I appreciate you listening and we will see you next week.