If you’ve ever tried to lose weight without the success you feel you deserved, then please read this article…

More Muscle = Higher Metabolism
Whenever people decide to lose body fat, they often make the same mistake: They adopt strategies that make it impossible to preserve their muscle mass. The number one priority when trying to lose fat should be keeping muscle. Losing muscle mass is never a good idea. Doing so will make it harder to continue losing fat since muscle tissue is metabolically responsible for most of the fat that you’ll lose.

If you starve yourself or do a lot of aerobics you will lose weight, of course, but you will lose just as much lean body mass as fat mass. You simply become a smaller version of your previous self
Sure, you’ll occupy less space, the scale will tell you that you weigh less, and your doctor might even congratulate you for being closer to your “healthy weight,” but in reality, you aren’t looking any better, which kind of misses the point.

Ten pounds of muscle burns 50 calories per day even at rest, so if you lose 10 pounds of muscle, you will burn 50 fewer calories per day, or 350 fewer calories per week. That can make a significant difference in the long run.

If you lose 10lbs of fat and replace it with 10 lbs of muscle, the scales tell you that nothing has changed. But your shape will have transformed dramatically. And your energy will be massively improved. You will look better in the mirror. And your clothes will fit you better.

When you have more muscle mass, you can lift more weight and train harder, which increases the amount of calories you burn during a workout.

Maintaining or even gaining strength is the absolute best way to make sure that you’re not losing muscle mass. If you keep pushing weights, you will keep your muscle mass. If you reduce the amount of weight you’re lifting, the body will “assume” that you don’t require as much strength and that it’s okay to lower your muscle mass. Why? Because muscle uses a ton of calories every day and the body will see it as expendable. In short, MUSCLE BURNS FAT!

The moral of the story? Do everything in your power to at least maintain your strength when dieting down, and this will not happen if you stop lifting weights.

If you do decide to add cardio to your fat loss regimen, some form of high-intensity training is best (such as sprints and HIIT).

Do not go on a severe low-calorie diet, this is starving yourself. You may appear to lose weight initially, but how long do you think someone can sustain that? More importantly, how long do you think it’ll take the body to adapt? The body will adapt to that level of deprivation and activity level in 4 to 6 weeks and fat loss will come to a screeching halt… and that is if you can make it 4-6 weeks! You’ll feel depressed, have unbearable hunger, zero energy, and basically stop enjoying life. And then there is the muscle loss from such an excessive approach. So, what happens when fat loss stalls with this approach? What can you do to get it started again? You have nothing left to cut from your diet, and unless you can afford to devote your whole agenda to training, you can’t ramp up the activity any further (you won’t have the energy anyway). You will have slowed down your metabolic rate. (which is the exact opposite of what you want to do!) This means you will gain even more fat if you go back to what you previously ate, because you are burning less for energy and storing more as fat.

So, keep lifting those weights and go on a ‘Healthy Eating Plan’, not a ‘Diet!