How to reduce body fat while maintaining weight?

First of all, I want to emphasize that it is very difficult even for professional bodybuilders to gain muscle without gaining fat, or to lose muscle while losing fat. This is very difficult. During the training process of professional athletes, muscles grow faster than fat, and when losing fat, fat is lost faster than muscle, so it gives people the feeling that some people can only grow muscle without fat.

Wanting to gain more muscle or lose some fat is everyone’s wish. Regarding eating, everyone must know that you should not eat fat, high-sugar, and high-calorie foods, and you should eat more protein, vegetables, and fruits. But how many people can persevere? Eating boiled chicken breast with broccoli, lettuce, oatmeal, and boiled eggs every day? Can ordinary people persist for 10 days? The most critical and most ignored problem when it comes to losing fat and building muscle is that it’s too extreme. Too extreme methods cause physical and psychological pressure, which is a kind of devastation in both aspects, and ultimately makes us unable to persevere. Those professional fitness trainers only started strict diet control (no oil, no salt, low carbohydrates) 20 days before the competition, and they couldn't stand it.

So when it comes to eating, I suggest not to be too strict. Don’t touch the high-calorie foods you know, and eat more high-protein, high-vitamin foods and whole grains. Eat, as long as normal people do these two things, their body fat percentage will be well controlled.

If you want to build muscle and lose fat, it is recommended to train for 30-40 minutes with equipment and 20 minutes with aerobics each time. In addition, many people are afraid of losing muscle during fat loss. I recommend taking some branched-chain amino acid supplements before training (added to many protein powders). Its function is to quickly break down during exercise to provide a large amount of energy. Avoid muscle decomposition function, so that you can slow down muscle loss during aerobic fat loss; if you want to gain muscle, it is recommended to take some glutamine supplements (added to many protein powders), its function is to speed up Muscle synthesis speed, supplementing 1 hour after fitness training is conducive to rapid muscle synthesis.

Persistence and self-discipline are the most critical factors in building muscle and losing fat. I look forward to your success. This problem happened to be something I encountered recently. I'm pretty good at controlling muscle loss when losing fat.

The previous picture shows the changes in my body values ??over the past 22 days. For the same machine, you can see the data measured by the same INBODY machine for 22 days from July 6 to July 22. My weight dropped from 89.2KG to 88.6KG, my skeletal muscles increased from 42KG to 43KG, and my body fat percentage dropped from 19 to 17.7.

It just meets your requirement of losing weight without losing muscle. Let’s talk about how I did it. Strength training

I am 36 years old and have been exercising regularly for more than three years. I have never lost fat. I didn’t like aerobics before, so I just did strength training every day. My body fat has slowly dropped from 28 to about 20 in more than 3 years. I follow a four-part training, and perform strength training in the order of legs, chest, triceps, back, biceps, and shoulders. There are no fixed rest days. Generally speaking, I feel When the fatigue period comes, I will choose to train for one day. So far in 2019, I have rested for 11 days.

For strength training, I like heavy weight training. Each training day starts with compound training movements. I usually arrange more than 10 groups, and then do other equipment-isolated muscle training. Now I usually do sets of 110KG for squats, 120KG for deadlifts, and 90KG for bench presses. There is still a big gap between me and the great masters. However, I have made steady progress in the past three years, and all movements are done without protective gear.

Then I recently changed my job in the financial industry. I have to work from 9 a.m. to 6 a.m., and I have to wear formal clothes. Since I am 88kg and too strong to look good in formal clothes, I plan to lose weight.

After changing jobs, I cannot guarantee the training time before. I train from 7 am to 8 am every morning. I will first ensure the heavy weight movements of compound training. Then I will reduce the weight a little bit for other movements, but between sets Only by reducing the interval to less than 30 seconds can you barely complete the previous training volume.

During the 22 days of my fat loss, I maintained one hour of strength training from 7 to 8 o'clock every day. Aerobic exercise

The biggest change in the past 22 days is that I have increased aerobic exercise. I chose to do half an hour of rowing machine around 8:30 every day after meals, because the benefit of rowing machine is that the whole body muscles are involved. By exerting force, you can maintain muscle vitality to the greatest extent and maintain your muscles as much as possible while you are aerobically losing fat.

I guarantee that the rowing pace will be within 3 minutes for 500 meters, and it will end after 30 minutes. It seems that the effect is not bad. Diet

I had no control over my diet before. I could eat as much as I wanted, but I would try my best to choose foods with less sugar and less salt. I made some adjustments in the past 22 days. I placed my carbohydrate intake in the morning and noon. I focused on high protein and vegetables for dinner, and ate a little fruit after meals.

I think this arrangement is very good. For breakfast, I mainly eat milk, cereal, bread and eggs to ensure that I have enough energy for my morning exercise; at noon, I eat the cafeteria buffet at the company, so I can let my stomach go. Eat whatever you want; in the evening, I cook home-cooked dishes with less sugar and salt. I usually eat chicken, shrimp and beef, which are relatively light dishes, with more vegetables, and then I make a steamed egg with 6 eggs. , to ensure my protein intake. Rest

In terms of rest, since I adjusted my fitness time to 7 a.m., I feel better than before. I usually fall asleep around 11 o'clock, get up at 5 o'clock in the morning, feed the cat and prepare breakfast. I feel that my body starts earlier than before, and I can usually start working out at 7 o'clock with full energy.

Maybe this also increases my basal metabolism throughout the day. Summary

If you want to lose fat without losing muscle, I have to do the following based on my above experience:

I have done these things well, and I can naturally Lose fat while retaining muscle. At best, it's just not that fast. If you lose a little bit of fat every week, your body fat will drop a lot in a few months.

I am Xiao He. If you find it useful, please like and follow.

Gaining muscle without gaining weight is equivalent to losing fat without losing weight. This is something that anyone who yearns for a good figure wants to achieve!

The key to your body shape lies in the content of fat and muscle. More muscle and less fat means your body will be more stylish. On the contrary, it would be the other extreme. People who pursue a good figure are working hard on these two extremes!

The proportion of fat in the body is the body fat rate. The lower the body fat rate, the more clearly visible the muscle lines will be. Therefore, most people need to lose fat, not only fitness beginners, but also athletes before bodybuilding competitions. In order to have good-looking lines, fat loss is necessary.

To reduce fat but not lose weight, it must be ensured that muscle gain is completed at the same time, so as to comply with the law of balance. In other words, to gain muscle without gaining weight, you must meet the requirement of losing fat at the same time.

Because the dietary considerations for muscle gain and fat loss are completely opposite. Building muscle requires consuming more calories, especially protein, which is crucial for muscle growth. Caloric surplus will cause muscle fat to grow together.

To lose fat, you need to control your diet and reduce your caloric intake to achieve a caloric deficit. It is very likely that you will lose muscle and fat together.

Therefore, it is very difficult to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. Even bodybuilders build muscle and lose fat separately (build muscle first and then lose fat), which seems inefficient but is actually highly effective.

Therefore, I suggest that if you are a beginner with high body fat, you may have a bonus period of gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time. It is difficult and inefficient to specifically pursue fat loss and muscle gain at the same time.

How to reduce body fat while maintaining weight?

The problem is: if we want to lose fat while maintaining our own weight; then when we lose fat, we need to grow muscles to make up for the weight lost. while maintaining your own weight.

To put it simply, you can gain muscle while losing fat.

But this is difficult to achieve! First, from the perspective of energy balance, the caloric requirements for fat loss are: the intake is less than the consumption (the intake refers to the energy contained in the food eaten that day, and the consumption refers to the calories consumed by exercise and basal metabolism) and increases Muscle needs to achieve: intake is greater than consumption. Both are in opposite states, so theoretically it is difficult to achieve muscle gain while losing fat!

Furthermore, we can observe those senior fitness enthusiasts and bodybuilding competitors. They all divide into two different stages, the muscle gain period and the fat loss period. In fact, many people want to gain muscle to maintain their weight while losing fat. This way, they can prevent their weight from being too light and gain muscle at the same time.

But why don’t senior fitness enthusiasts and bodybuilders who know more about fitness than us novices implement such a method?

There is only one reason: it is difficult accomplish! And even if it is implemented, the effect will not be very good. For example, if your body fat rate has been between 13 and 15 for a long time, it will be very difficult to further reduce your body fat rate.

Then I have to mention that novices can gain some muscle during the fat loss period. Yes, those who have just entered fitness can gain a certain amount of muscle during the fat loss period, but there is a certain upper limit, and the degree of growth will also be related to training and diet. For example: anaerobic strength training and dietary protein intake.

There are many factors that affect weight changes, such as bones, organs, cells, muscles, fat, water, etc. The reason why many people regain weight loss is because they consume water and muscle instead of fat.

Although I have lost weight, my body fat is still so high. This is not called weight loss, this is called losing weight.

Therefore, for those who want to lose weight, the goal is to reduce body fat. Only when the body fat rate is reduced can the real weight loss be achieved.

There are two factors that influence successful weight loss: diet and training.

Let’s talk about training first.

In training, we should focus on anaerobic exercise or HIIT, because these two exercises can directly Equivalent to muscles. Only by retaining muscle mass, or even increasing it to a certain extent, can you lose weight better (one kilogram of muscle consumes approximately 13-15 calories 24 hours a day, and the more muscle mass, the more calories you consume every day). As for aerobic exercise, especially aerobic exercise lasting more than 30 minutes, the body will secrete a large amount of cortisol, a hormone that causes muscles to break down and synthesize fat. If you choose aerobic exercise to lose weight, it is recommended to control the time to about 20 minutes and increase the difficulty.

Let’s talk about diet.

There is no doubt that diet during weight loss requires extra attention. Different from ordinary caloric deficit weight loss, when you want to retain muscle mass to the greatest extent and mainly reduce body fat, we have to eat more protein and reduce carbohydrate intake. It is recommended to consume more than 1.5 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight.

If you want to gain muscle while maintaining your body fat percentage, that is to gain muscle cleanly, gain muscle Does not gain weight. Let’s be honest, just dream.

By the way, unless you spray medicine.

Muscle gain and fat loss are generally contradictory. In terms of diet, muscle gain requires the body to have a caloric surplus, and fat loss requires the body to have a caloric deficit. In terms of exercise, muscle gain requires heavy equipment exercise, while fat loss requires aerobic exercise. For most people, the contradiction between muscle gain and fat loss is irreconcilable. Even for professional bodybuilders, this contradiction is irreconcilable. It is almost impossible for them to achieve the goal of muscle gain and fat loss at the same time. , muscle gain and fat loss should be carried out in stages.

Only in the first three or four months of exercise can you achieve the goal of both gaining muscle and losing fat. But after that, you can only choose to gain muscle or lose fat, not both at the same time.

During the fat loss period, you can only try to retain the muscles without losing them at all. It is not absolutely impossible, but it is very difficult, so difficult that even professional bodybuilders cannot do it.

I saw a video a few days ago that introduced how to increase muscle mass while losing fat. In the case of a 40-calorie deficit, two groups of 20 people in each group conducted a comparative experiment. One group consumed 1.2 calories per kilogram of body weight per day. grams of protein, one group has 2.4 grams of protein. The difference is that the high-protein group supplements a large amount of 50 grams of whey protein after exercise to meet the needs of the body. Both groups performed high-intensity exercise, including 2 days of heavy weight compound training, 2 days of high-intensity HIIT, 1 day of high-intensity aerobics, and 1 day of bodyweight training. The subjects in both groups walked at least 10,000 steps a day.

In terms of diet, carbohydrates accounted for 50% of the total caloric intake. The purpose was to allow the subjects to consume enough carbohydrates during the 6 days of high-intensity training, ensure sufficient physical strength, and avoid insufficient carbohydrates. , leading to muscle breakdown and loss.

After 4 weeks, the subjects in both groups lost an average of 3.5 kilograms of weight. The lean body mass of the low-protein group did not increase, while the lean body mass of the high-protein group increased by 1.2 kilograms. This experimental result overturns the traditional belief that muscle cannot be grown during fat loss. However, we should pay attention to the prerequisites of this experiment. The people participating in the experiment are all people who have considerable exercise experience, and are significantly overweight. They belong to muscle obesity or muscle-fat mixed obesity, not pure body fat rate or visceral obesity. Obesity caused by excessive fat levels makes it impossible for ordinary people to persist in high-intensity training for four weeks.

Stewart-Phillips is an expert in muscle and protein nutrition, and he conducted the above trial.

Although this experiment has great limitations and is not of universal significance, it at least proves that it is possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, but most people cannot do it. At the same time, the muscle-building effect is obviously not as good as the effect of the body's caloric surplus under the same training intensity.

For ordinary people, if they want to lose fat while retaining muscle as much as possible, they must ensure adequate protein intake and create a calorie gap. Generally, a calorie gap of 10-20 is suitable. Calorie deficit suitable for ordinary people to lose weight.

If you want to retain muscles during fat loss, in terms of diet, the protein intake can be used during the muscle gain period, that is, 1.5-2 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, and the carbohydrates should be according to the intake during the fat loss period. The intake is 2-4 grams per kilogram of body weight per day, or about 2 grams, and should not be too low or too high. Calculate protein food calories first, then calculate carbohydrate and fat calories. Carbohydrate calories account for between 35-50. If the intensity during exercise is high, the carbohydrate calories will be slightly higher, but at most it will be 50.

The proportion of carbohydrate, protein and fat caloric intake of ordinary people during muscle gain and fat loss.

After exercise, protein must be supplemented in time. In the test mentioned above, the high-protein group supplemented 50 grams of protein after high-intensity training. Although ordinary people do not need to supplement so much protein, training Prompt protein supplementation after exercise is crucial to retaining muscle.

In terms of training, if you have no sports experience, follow the ordinary method of doing equipment exercises first, and then focus on moderate-intensity aerobic exercise. Both are indispensable. Experienced exercisers can increase the intensity of exercise. As mentioned above, do more high-intensity compound movements. Multi-joint movements such as squats, deadlifts, and bench presses must be done more. Do more high-intensity HIIT every day. Walk at least 10,000 steps and practice six times a week. The important thing is to ensure the intensity of exercise and not to be lazy. Don’t think that doing a few burpees is HIIT. If the heart rate cannot reach 80-90 of the maximum heart rate, it is not HIIT at all. Even if it is achieved in a short time, not many people can persist for 20 to 30 minutes. If you don’t believe it, try it. . It's more reliable to just do ordinary fat-loss exercises. It's not a big deal if you lose some muscle. You can just make up for it during the muscle-building period.

In my experience, most people are unable to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time, and it is very difficult to even retain muscle. I plan to try the method mentioned above after the recovery period, collect information, and redo the exercise plan, but I am afraid of high-intensity exercise. It is really too difficult.

Personally, I think the diet should be high in protein and moderate in carbohydrates! Aerobics - three times on Tuesday, once - an hour is enough! Don’t lose fat too fast! Hope it's useful to you!

The simplest method is to add branched chain amino acid glutamine and aerobic, and the more advanced one is mk2866. The diet is mainly high in protein, and staple carbohydrates should be avoided as much as possible.

Heavy weight training can ensure fat loss without losing muscle, but diet is more important. Increase protein intake and don’t do too much aerobic exercise.