If you’re trying to live a healthier lifestyle, eat a more balanced diet, or cut calories to lose weight, it’s normal to lose some muscle along the way. However, losing too much muscle can lead to decreased strength, decreased mobility, and negative effects on your overall health.
What’s the solution to losing weight without losing muscle?
Here are 7 ways to help you burn fat while preserving lean muscle mass:
1. Eat enough calories
Losing weight means cutting calories, but cutting too much will cause your body to go into “starvation mode,” prioritizing fat retention and muscle breakdown.
Women should aim for 300–400 calories a day, and men for 400–600 calories a day in the early stages. While you want to cut calories, especially from unhealthy foods, cutting too much too soon is not only unsustainable, but can also be detrimental to your muscle growth and recovery.
2. Eat variety and get enough protein
Protein is the foundation for maintaining lean muscle while losing weight. Lean protein sources like fish, chicken, eggs, or turkey help keep you feeling full longer and limit muscle loss when you eat fewer calories.
Research shows:
- People who eat 1g of protein/kg per day lose an average of 3.5 pounds of muscle.
- People who eat 2.3g/kg lose just 0.66 pounds of muscle.
Many factors can influence how much protein you need, including your weight, gender, and activity level. However, most current evidence suggests that the recommended 1.6g of protein per kg of body weight per day is sufficient to maintain lean muscle mass while restricting calories
3. Build a varied workout plan
There’s nothing wrong with finding an exercise you enjoy and sticking with it. However, you’ll need to incorporate both strength training and aerobic exercise if you want to burn fat without losing muscle. Interspersing a few exercises can help vary the intensity and provide new benefits.
You may prefer a fixed workout, but to maintain lean muscle, you need to combine both strength and aerobic training. Alternate compound exercises like squats, deadlifts, chest presses, pull-ups, etc. to activate multiple muscle groups at once and burn more calories than isolation exercises.
4. Lift weights
You want to work as many muscle groups as possible, so a full-body workout is a great idea rather than focusing on specific muscle groups.
Cardio is important for fat loss, but lifting weights is key to maintaining lean, toned muscles. Increasing the amount of weight you lift can also stimulate muscle growth, which is essential for improving overall muscle mass.
Full-body workouts are always more effective than focusing on just one muscle group. You should also use progressive overload, which means gradually increasing the weight, reps, or difficulty, so that your muscles continue to adapt and grow.
5. Don’t forget rest days
Overtraining causes your muscles to break down more than they can recover. When you don’t give your body a break, you lose muscle faster than you lose fat. Give your muscles time to repair and rebuild. This is what makes them stronger over time.
While it’s normal for some muscle to break down when you’re overtraining, not allowing your body to rest and recover after a workout can be harmful. Instead, focus on improving your performance over time and building muscle mass slowly.
6. Lose weight slowly, avoid crash dieting
Losing weight quickly also means losing muscle quickly. Research shows that crash dieting can actually cause you to lose muscle mass, not fat. People who consume extremely low calories, also known as crash dieting, lose more weight, but most of it is muscle mass. In the long run, this can leave you feeling tired and weak.
Losing muscle can also lower your basal metabolic rate (BMR). BMR determines how many calories you burn at rest, and when your body has less muscle mass, you need fewer calories to maintain it
7. Get enough sleep
Lack of sleep disrupts two hormones that control hunger:
- Ghrelin increases → makes you hungrier
- Leptin decreases → reduces satiety
Making sure you get enough sleep and reducing stress levels to get a good night’s sleep is important for fat loss and muscle recovery after exercise.
Research shows a significant relationship between poor sleep quality and subsequent weight gain. Even adding a few hours of sleep can help us lose more fat, and not getting enough sleep can cause you to lose more muscle tissue
In short, losing weight without losing muscle is not too difficult, but it requires patience, smart eating and proper training. When you provide adequate nutrition, exercise regularly, rest properly and develop healthy living habits, your muscles will be protected, while excess fat will be reduced naturally and sustainably.
