Submitted by Guest Writer on 8 October, 2011 - 12:38pm
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Jenn Pedde is the community manager for the Online Masters Degree in Social Work program at the University of Southern California in the Virtual Academic Center, which offers a variety of classes in their mental health social work concentration. She’s also an avid traveler, and enjoys photography.
Losing weight is always challenging, but gaining muscle while reducing fat requires careful attention to nutrition and exercise. Before beginning any new fitness regimen, it is wise to have a check up with a doctor to discuss planned changes in nutrition and physical activity to make sure they are healthy choices.
The first step to getting in better shape is to set achievable goals and a timeline for accomplishing those goals. Rarely does a goal of “getting in better shape” result in much. Creating a workout schedule and a nutrition plan and then following through with those plans will help you succeed. Devising these plans requires attention to three categories: nutrition, cardiovascular workouts and weight training.
Nutrition
When trying to lose weight and gain muscle, you must focus on reducing caloric intake but also tailoring what you eat to encourage building muscle. This begins with your schedule of meals. Eating five to six small meals a day stimulates the metabolism. Infrequent, larger meals cause the metabolism to slow down since the body wants to store energy in case another meal is not coming. It is also important to eat within an hour of working out to help aid recovery.
A diet high in protein and low in fat is essential. Experts recommend 25-35% protein, 40-50% carbohydrates and 20-30% fat. Protein helps build muscle, while carbohydrates provide energy for workouts. Some fat is necessary for energy.
Finally, caloric expenditure must exceed caloric intake to lose weight. If 2,000 calories a day is the break even point, start by reducing your intake by 150 or 200 calories a day and monitor the effects after a week or two and adjust accordingly.
Cardiovascular Exercise
Though the ultimate goal is to build muscle, cardiovascular exercise is not only healthy, but also helps with losing weight. Incorporating three to four intense cardio workouts of around 30 minutes each is necessary. It is ideal to schedule these workouts for the morning because they stimulate the body’s metabolism all day, which means a longer period of extra calorie burn. Some experts recommend splitting 30 minutes of cardio into two intense workouts of 15 minutes each as a way to further increase calorie burn.
Running, riding a bicycle or climbing a Stairmaster are all good examples of cardio workouts, but there are countless others. The more parts of the body are moving, the better. These cardio workouts should be intense but should not occur in conjunction with weight training so they do not take away from each other.
Weight Training
The third and final piece, weight-training workouts, is the part that actually results in gaining muscle. Three to four of these strength workouts per week are enough to build muscle while allowing muscles a chance to rest and rebuild. Exceeding that number or working out the same muscles day after day hinders muscle creation because muscles need 24 to 48 hours to recover and grow.
Working out with the focus of adding muscle requires a few components. Like the cardio workouts, strength workouts should be relatively short, usually around 45 minutes, and high intensity. Limiting rest between sets and different exercises is recommended as is performing compound exercises, or movements that require the use of more than one joint. By engaging more than one joint, compound exercises elevate the heart rate and contribute to a more intense workout.
Be careful not to use so much weight that you cannot perform the exercise with good form. Not only does this raise the risk of injury, but it also reduces the effectiveness of the workout.
The best way to build muscle is by lifting a greater weight with few repetitions, and only two or three sets per exercise. Pick one set of muscles, like arms and shoulders, to work out one day, and then work out legs and back the next so the muscles can have a chance to rebuild. To successfully build muscle while losing fat, each of these areas must receive equal attention and focus. Simply working out a lot or eating right will not be enough to accomplish this goal.
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I particularly recommend
I particularly recommend carbohydrate cycling if you are engaging in resistance training and following the above advice, especially if you are genuinely seeking the goal of losing fat and gaining muscle. It is possible despite what many people say!
No need to eat 5-6 times per day
Hi, I like most of what you have to say here, but the idea that your metabolism grinds to a halt if you eat less than six times a day has been overturned. The fact is that the metabolism increases post meal consumption, but it is proportional to the size of the meal. This means that 6 small meals would have the same metabolism raising impact as one large meal. The idea of Intermittent Fasting is that someone can eat no calories for 16 hours a day, consuming all their calories in 2 or 3 meals, and will still have a more favorable body composition.
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