Are You Losing Muscle As Well As Fat?

This month, I want to _______

How would you fill in that blank?

Although I don't know you, I'm guessing that you'd like to finish the month with more muscle or less fat than you have right now. Maybe you're after a combination of the two.

This applies to people who say they don't want to lose weight, but just want to look "more toned." Think about it — what's a more toned body, if it's not one with less fat and more muscle?

Yes, I know I've talked about this subject many times. In fact, I've done it so often that I'm worried you're getting annoyed at me right now for bringing it up again.

However, I think useful information bears repeating, especially when new theories about diet and exercise seem to appear every week, and experts continue to argue about the "best way" to do things.

The problem with most health and fitness "news" is that it's nothing more than "noise." Newspaper headlines, magazine articles and TV babble about the latest diet, exercise gimmick or fitness fad isn't just useless. It's actually worse than useless, because it distracts you from the things that are really important and misleads people into thinking they know something.

This mass of confusing and conflicting information leaves many people so confused about what to eat and how to exercise that they end up doing nothing.

Sometimes the real problem isn't too little information but too much.

Maybe I'm wrong, but I don't think that a lack of good information is preventing you from reaching your goals. The fundamental principles you need to lose fat without losing muscle have been out there for some time. And they won't be changing anytime soon.

One good illustration of these principles comes from a research team led by Dr. Donald Layman, professor of food science and human nutrition at the University of Illinois.

In the study, researchers compared the effects of a high-protein, low-carbohydrate diet against a high-carbohydrate, low-protein diet combined with exercise in 48 obese women. Both diets contained 1,700 calories, 30% of calories from fat, and about 17 grams of fiber.

However, women on the high-protein diet substituted high-protein foods (e.g. meats, dairy, eggs, and nuts) for foods high in carbohydrate (e.g. breads, rice, cereal, pasta, and potatoes) to get about 30% of their total calories from protein (1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight).

Women on the high-carbohydrate diet ate about half that amount of protein (0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight) and got about 60% of their daily calories from carbohydrate.

The women also followed two different exercise programs.

Exercise in group one involved voluntary "light walking activity." Women in this group averaged about 100 minutes per week of added exercise.

While group two walked a minimum of five days per week, they also did resistance exercise (30 minutes of weight training) twice weekly. The exercise was supervised and averaged 200 minutes or more each week.

After four months, both groups of dieters lost weight. Not surprisingly, body composition tests show that women who did resistance exercise lost less muscle and more fat.

• High-protein dieters who did resistance exercise group lost an average of 22 pounds and less than one pound of muscle.
• High-carbohydrate dieters who also did resistance exercise group lost an average of 15 pounds. But they also lost over 2 pounds of muscle.

So, nearly 100% of the weight lost in the high-protein group was fat, while around 15% of the weight lost in the high-carbohydrate group was muscle. This was due mainly to their low protein intake, which averaged just 0.7 grams per kilogram of bodyweight per day.

What about the group who only did the walking?

The high-protein dieters in this group lost an average of 19 pounds. However, over 4 pounds came from muscle. The high-carbohydrate group lost 17 pounds, but nearly 6 pounds came from muscle.

"Both diets work because, when you restrict calories, you lose weight. But the people on the higher-protein diet lost more weight," says Professor Layman. "There's an additive, interactive effect when a protein-rich diet is combined with exercise. The two work together to correct body composition; dieters lose more weight, and they lose fat, not muscle."

The main weakness with the study is that calorie intake was self reported. This is a notoriously inaccurate way to measure calorie intake, and goes a long way to explaining why the high-protein group lost more fat than the high-carbohydrate group.

Anyway, that's enough of the theory. Let's get to the practical application.

If you want to lose fat without losing (or even gaining) the precious muscle tissue you've worked so hard to build, here's what to do...

• Don't let daily calorie intake drop below 8 calories per pound of bodyweight (e.g. a 200-pound person wouldn't eat less than 1600 calories per day).
• Set your protein intake at a level that's adequate to preserve muscle (around 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight). This number assumes that you're doing some form of resistance exercise twice a week, which I consider the bare minimum for anyone wanting to lose fat while preserving muscle.
• Get around 20-30% of your calories from fat, ensuring that you get roughly 2 grams of the essential long-chain omega-3 fatty acids.
• Adjust your carbohydrate intake according to how active you are without exceeding your daily calorie intake goal.

If you're a subscriber to the Members-Only Area, there's an easy-to-use Calorie Calculator in How To Burn Fat Without Losing Muscle that works it all out for you. These guidelines are not ideal for people who are extremely overweight, as those with a lot of fat to lose can generally sustain a larger calorie deficit than leaner individuals without running the risk of losing muscle.

Now, although these numbers are based on the results of several well-designed studies, I've had e-mails from a couple of readers who think that the recommended level of protein is too high.

"On a 1600-calorie diet," wrote one reader, "200 grams of protein comes to 800 calories, or 50% of someone's total calorie intake. Isn't that a bit high and not what you intended?"

Firstly, I should point out that the 8 calories per pound of bodyweight number is a suggested lower limit and not a figure I consider optimal. But if somebody does little or no exercise, their calorie intake will need to be on the low side if they're going to lose weight at a decent rate. Normally, I'd recommend a figure nearer to 10-12 calories per pound of bodyweight (depending on how much exercise you're doing), which would change the percentage of calories from protein.

Second, I don't consider expressing nutrient intake in percentages to be a particularly accurate or effective way to evaluate your diet. That's because they depend to a large extent on your total calorie intake.

For example, let's say that you consume 200 grams of protein per day. On a 1600-calorie diet, that comes to 50% of your total calorie intake, a number that some would consider too high. But when that same 200 grams of protein comes from a 2300-calorie diet, the percentage is only 35%, a number considered by even the Institute of Medicine (an organization that helps the US Government set dietary guidelines) as a safe level of intake.

What about exercise?

In my opinion, an optimal fat-burning exercise program will include some form of cardiovascular exercise. But I don't think it's essential, particularly if your diet is set up correctly.

If you only have a limited amount of time to spend in the gym, resistance exercise will do a far better job of preserving lean muscle and boosting your metabolic rate than even the most intense cardiovascular workout.

Most of the routines in How to Fight Fat and Win II, for example, combine resistance and cardiovascular (both steady state and interval exercise) exercise. But the two-day routine comprises just two total-body resistance workouts. That's right – NO aerobic exercise!

In other words, even if you only have the time (or motivation) to exercise twice per week, it's still possible to lose the love handles, flatten your stomach and improve your muscle definition — as long as those two workouts are set up correctly.

A nutrition and exercise program based on these simple principles will work for most people. Chances are it will work for you too.

Reference
Layman, D.K., Evans, E., Baum, J.I., Seyler, J., Erickson, D.J., & Boileau, R.A. (2005). Dietary protein and exercise have additive effects on body composition during weight loss in adult women. Journal of Nutrition, 135, 1903-1910