A holistic look at building muscle & losing weight simultaneously

When it comes to fat loss and increasing muscle mass, it’s not always as simple as cutting calories, eliminating food groups or increasing your food intake. We must look at the body holistically rather than in miniature bite-size components.

Fat loss is apparent when your caloric intake is lower than what you are expending. This starts showing in your body shape, weeks and months after you begin restricting your nutrition, either changing your eating habits or lowering your food consumption. One fast way to lose weight is to gauge the thermic result of certain foods. If you look into the nutritional value of salmon, protein and eggs, you will find that their thermic effect (the number of calories you burn when digested), you will see that eating these will help you lose weight over time. It takes energy to digest these foods, and protein has a habit of keeping you full for more extended periods. What results are you eating less and, therefore, burning stored body fat for energy? This is the shift you want your body to have daily. The best way to utilise your metabolism is to pick the foods with the best thermic effect and keep you full.

Carbs are needed in the diet, although you can get your carb intake from vegetables and fruit. Most people love their carbs and find it hard to part with them when they want to lose weight. You don’t need to restrict carbs when trying to lose body fat. You can pick the right kinds of carbs that will help you achieve your goals. As you might suspect, eating processed carbs like bread and cereals will hinder your fat loss and increase your cravings. Processed carbs do not create a feeling of satiety, and therefore, you may find yourself hungry moments later. That’s what causes an increase in caloric consumption. When supplementing these with natural sources, such as oats, sweet potato and quinoa, you will notice a remarkable difference in your appetite & mood.

If you want to get a little bit more fat loss underway, don’t restrict carbs but use a method called “Carb Cycling” to shift your body ability to burn stored fat as energy. It’s a very successful way to control your body fat loss potential.

My favourite topic is building muscle mass, and this is the perfect opportunity to do so so. Building muscle is not only about what you eat; it’s also about how you train. Everyone should be eating a balanced diet – that’s common sense, but for those who want to add some muscle to our frame, we need to lift weights.

Lifting weights is putting stress on the muscles, which forces them to become accustomed to that stress and grow. The only way to increase your muscle mass is to lift weight – and by that, you need to know how to lift weight properly. Although this blog post isn’t about teaching you how to train, I wanted to stress that muscle mass increases by applying stress (heavyweight) to the muscle. Protein consumption over a long period as you do this helps to repair and grow your muscle. But, carbs do have a part to play in this – as it replenishes glycogen stores. This is where carb cycling will become an excellent alternative for anyone who wants to put on muscle and lose body fat in the process. There is no magic set point for deciding how much of both; that’s something we learn ourselves over time and with experience.

Protein has the potential to become converted to body fat – so go easy on how much you eat. Our bodies can only use so much, and protein is recycled. We don’t need a massive amount of protein. I would say from experience, focus on fresh vegetables first, and then protein second. Carbs follow after this. Think in terms of freshness with every single meal, and you will never fall short of having a nice balance of nutrition which will help you lose weight and increase your muscle mass.

I hope this has helped you. I would love you to upvote it if you did. Please also join me on my various social platforms and do go ahead and download your Empowering habit changer guide. I’m also on Instagram.