A Fat Loss Program for Muscle Definition

When referring to bodybuilding, most people have in mind muscle development. Of course, gaining muscle is extremely important, but most of the times losing fat is also required to achieve a balanced, muscular and defined body. Losing fat is only possible when combining proper nutrition, cardiovascular exercise and weight training. Find in this post the basic guidelines for developing your fat loss program.

Controlling your nutrition is mandatory for losing fat. You have to adjust your diet in order to consume fewer calories than needed, by creating a small deficit of at most 500 calories per day with respect to your daily maintenance caloric requirements. Don’t go beyond this since diets that severely restricts caloric intake promote loss of lean body weight as opposed to fat. When cutting down on calories, you should keep the protein intake up in order to avoid muscle breakdown (about 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day). Control the amount of fat you eat, but don’t eliminate it from your diet. Focus preferably on essential fatty acids and avoid saturated fats and junk food at all. The main reduction on calories should come from carbohydrates. Stick with low GI carbohydrates, especially those rich in fiber, and limit high GI ones (except immediately after training). In addition, drink plenty of water (3 or 4 liters of water per day).

You should eat several small meals throughout the day (every 2.5-3 hours) instead of 3 big meals. This prevents blood sugar level fluctuations, helps control hunger, ensures constant nutrients flow to your muscles, increases metabolism, and avoids excess calories that could be stored as fat. Each meal should include a serving of protein and just enough carbohydrates to replenish glycogen stores in the liver and the muscles. In addition, make the meals smaller as the evening approaches in order to accommodate to the reduction in energy usage that occurs as the day goes on.

In order to increase the amount of fat you burn, you should incorporate to your program some aerobic exercise like cycling, swimming, jogging, rowing, etc. Perform 3-4 cardiovascular sessions per week, lasting 30-40 minutes. Avoid sessions in excess of 1 hour since anything past this promotes muscle breakdown. If you really want to do more cardio, split it up into several shorter sessions. Preferably perform your cardiovascular sessions first thing in the morning on an empty stomach. In this way, you ensure that your insulin level is low. Remember that eating causes an insulin response which inhibits fat burning.

Optimal fat burn is achieved in the 60-70% heart rate zone. Lower intensity (50-60%) burns more percentage of fat calories, but the total amount is not very high. Higher intensity (70-85%) burns more fat calories, but muscle protein wasted is also higher. Thus stay better in the 60-70% zone or use ‘interval training’, which consists of varying the training intensity during the exercise by moving between the different heart rate zones. This has demonstrated to be very effective for losing fat.

Incorporating weight training to a fat loss program is indicated in order to maintain muscle while burning fat. Building muscle is important for giving a muscular and hard look to the body once definition is reached. In addition, muscle is an active tissue that consumes energy. Thus the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn. This does not apply to fat tissue, which does not consume energy at all. You can use your regular workout oriented to muscle growth, but being immersed in a low carbohydrates diet will decrease your performance in the gym. For this reason, probably this is a good chance to train with high reps (12 and above) and stimulate those forgotten slow-twitch muscle fibers, which are more involved in fat burning because they get their energy more from fatty acid oxidization. Training these muscle fibers also leads to development of more mitochondria, providing a greater ability to oxidize fat.

You can find further advice for designing your fat loss program in the article “How to Replace the Love Handles with a Rock-hard Washboard” by Matt Danielsson and in the “Losing Fat” section of Muscle 101.