Muscle Loss During a Fat Loss Diet

Should you be concerned about muscle loss during a fat loss phase? Yes, it’s important for fat loss success, but the risk of it occurring is hugely overplayed in most cases, and said risk is also hugely reduced if you eat enough protein and train properly. Why is it important? Because muscle retention is beneficial for fat loss as it contributes to mitigating the effects of adaptive thermogenesis (down regulation of energy expenditure OR a ‘slower metabolism’). This is your BMR on your scans- we want the composition of weight loss to be max fat loss, and min muscle loss. But is the risk of muscle loss worth stressing over? It depends, the leaner you are, the greater the risk. If you have veins in your abs and you’re trying to get even leaner your risk of muscle loss is high, and you’re going to want to do everything in your power to promote muscle retention. This also means target rates of weight and fat loss should be much slower. If you don’t have even faint abs, the level of muscle loss risk is hugely over played. Your body has plenty of stored energy (fat tissue) that it can utilise first. You shouldn’t lose sleep over losing muscle tissue if you give your body a reason to keep it. If you do the below, your risk of muscle loss is lowered greatly, and they’re not difficult things. Just strategies really…

1. Adequate resistance training that includes enough volume (total amount of work) whilst satisfying the overload principal of relative intensity (proximity from muscle failure you take hard sets). SO LIFT WEIGHT..

2. Consume enough protein which has the full essential amino acid spectrum.

If you’re not lean, and you’re doing the above 2 things… then you shouldn’t be stressing about losing muscle during a calorie deficit. In fact, a study by Sydney University in 2016 showed muscle growth in participants who consumed a high protein diet (2 – 2.4g/kg/day) with resistance training whilst in a 40% calorie deficit (40% reduction of calories below weight maintenance). This scenario is known as body re-composition. In most cases you shouldn’t be losing a notable amount of muscle during a dieting phase. If you are, you need to look at optimising your training and nutrition before you accept muscle loss as an unavoidable side effect of getting leaner.