By Superior fat loss by combining training methods — here’s how
Everybody responds differently to cardio when weight training. The impact of food also plays a massive part in how your body reacts to this. The weight loss and muscle building game — is a frustrating one. Losing body fat whilst gaining muscle is a tricky thing, but not impossible in the least. From experience, I would try hard and not combine the two. The reason behind this is it can become a spinning wheel situation for months on end. You lose some body fat, gain some muscle, then lose some of the muscle you gained. It’s a never-ending and frustrating battle. Our bodies naturally use muscle or fat as fuel. It takes hard work and effort to build muscle, despite being male or female. Thus, constantly monitoring your protein intake, lifting weights appropriately, and ensuring you get adequate rest for the muscle to grow. Genetics also play a massive part in your ability to get lean or put on muscle. You will gain muscle according to genetics and your gender. The body requires food to grow muscle; that’s obvious, but how much food is determined by your body. You will not know the answer to this unless you do some experimentation and monitor this progress with proper testing. A wonderfully trained personal trainer or coach will have an idea of where to start — but it’s still a work in progress with anyone. It’s not that easy for most populations (especially women) to gain muscle mass and lose body fat simultaneously. Your time and energy would be better spent focusing on the main event (weight training for hypertrophy) and leaving the fat loss when you are happy with your gains. Of course, we always want to kill two birds with one stone.
Nutrient timing is crucial
If you want to take your journey down this pathway, applying correct exercise and nutritional timing will help you become equipped to increase muscle mass while shedding body fat. You must take advantage of the body’s hormonal states day by day to plan for this. You could try periods of intermittent fasting (mainly for fat loss purposes). Another method is eating more on days where you will be weight training — primarily using heavyweights (think more protein to increase your potential for muscle mass). This will be your best bet at combating the spinning wheel syndrome.
How to put this all together
If you want to burn more body fat without sacrificing muscle mass, I highly recommend the combination of low and high impact cardio in conjunction with your weight training schedule. Opt to perform low impact cardio when you are weight training. This could be walking an incline on the treadmill for 35–45 minutes. Then on your non-weight training days, opt for sprint intervals. Don’t overwork your cardio on weight training days, as you won’t have enough energy to lift towards your maximum capacity. Overall, this means you will be performing cardio about 3–6 days per week. Yes, this is a lot, but they must be scheduled into your program if you want results. Cardio is always recommended in the morning, whereas weight training is better performed in the evenings. This may or may not be possible for you, but why not try it for a month and see if you are getting some results. When you schedule weights in the evening, it gives you a lot of leverage to burn body fat stores in the morning from fasting and replenishing glycogen stores when weight training in the afternoons. This is where your diet comes in, which is also crucial for your results. So again, low carb, high protein should be your strategy. This is a tried and tested bodybuilding regime that works well for competitors, and it will work well for you. Remember to schedule cardio and weight training for about 6 hours for recovery, maximum fat burning and more potential to increase muscle mass and decrease body fat stores. Good luck, and let me know how you go. If you would like to read more articles like this or start writing your own, please sign up via my link. I’d love to see you on the other side. Sign up here for your medium subscription