How to Gain Muscle While Losing Weight

Good news! Despite what you may have been told, you don’t have to spend endless hours on the elliptical to lose weight (yay!). While cardio is important for our cardiovascular health, it is not the only way to shed body fat.

How to Gain Muscle While Losing Weight

Lifestyle

How to Gain Muscle While Losing Weight

Meet our friend, resistance training. Resistance training, or strength training, is a type of exercise where your muscles are contracting against an opposing force. This force could be free weights, weight machines, resistance bands, or even your own bodyweight. And while building muscle might seem counterintuitive when you are trying to lose weight, here’s why it’s actually the secret formula to weight loss.

Why is Gaining Muscle Important for Weight Loss?

More Muscle = Higher Metabolism

Muscle takes more energy than fat for our bodies to maintain. This means that our bodies are burning calories to keep that muscle going, even when we are not exercising. Burning calories by just existing? We love to see it.

Protects the Gains

When you lose weight, typically muscle goes with it. Incorporating resistance training into your exercise routine is going to help keep your muscles strong and let your body focus on shedding fat—not muscle. This leads to a toned, defined physique, showing off all the hard work that you put in.

Improved Everyday Strength

Getting stronger has a major domino effect on your health and fitness goals. Stronger muscles mean you’re in better shape for not just the gym, but everyday activities as well. You’ll notice that it’s a bit easier to hold your toddler with one arm while you cook dinner. Your three trips into the house with groceries turns into two trips. Having the ability to do more throughout your day leads to greater weight loss as your movement increases.

4 Quick Tips: How to Gain Muscle While Losing Weight

Resistance Training

Include resistance training in your exercise routine at least 2-3 days per week. This could look like a dumbbell circuit, using the weight machines at your gym, or even a simple bodyweight workout.

Prioritize Protein

Protein is absolutely essential to gain muscle while losing weight. A rough estimate is to aim for at least 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight every day (eg. if you weigh 150 lbs., eat 150g of protein daily). If you have a significant amount of weight to lose, you can adjust your target to be 1 gram of protein per pound of your goal weight. Not only is protein going to help build your muscle, it is going to encourage fat loss so you can see the muscle, too! Protein is a satiating macronutrient that keeps you fuller for longer, leading to less calories consumed. Speaking of calories consumed…

Calorie Deficit is King

At the end of the day, staying in a calorie deficit is the only way to lose fat. But don’t panic—this does NOT mean you need to be miserable and hungry all hours of the day. Keeping a moderate and realistic deficit of around 200-300 calories per day will help shed fat, while providing enough fuel for your body to continue growing muscle.

Consistency Always Wins

Rome wasn’t built in a day. Neither was muscle! It can take weeks, sometimes months, to see significant change in muscle mass. Stay steady on the course—it will pay off!

HELP! My weight is going up!

When you first start resistance training with the goal of weight loss, you might find that the number you see on the scale stays the same (or even goes up) no matter how hard you work. But, at the same time, you might also notice that your clothes are getting looser! So, what’s going on?

When you gain muscle while losing weight, this is known as body recomposition. Your weight might stay the same on the scale, but you will start to look leaner because muscle takes up less space than the same amount of weight from fat.

This is why it is so important to look at indicators of progress beyond the scale, such as body measurements and the way that clothes fit. Just because the scale isn’t changing doesn’t mean you aren’t making progress.

Weight loss can be a challenging journey, both physically and mentally. Adding resistance training into your routine can be the catalyst that pulls you out of a plateau and gives that extra boost to your metabolism. It’s going to help you preserve your muscle while your body focuses on fat loss. This, while hitting your protein goals and staying in calorie deficit consistently, is going to be the major key to crushing your summer health goals!