Discover the secrets to shedding fat without losing your hard-earned muscle in our latest fitness-focused podcast. Join me, Rob Maxwell, as we navigate the delicate balance of trimming down while keeping your strength. You're promised a treasure trove of knowledge, as I break down the necessity of a gradual weight loss plan that safeguards your metabolism-driving muscles. Say goodbye to crash diets once and for all; we're talking smart, sustainable strategies that target those pesky 'bad' calories without leaving you feeling deprived.
Uncover the critical role strength training plays in maintaining muscle mass while on your weight loss journey. Together, we'll explore why you might want to rethink that extra hour on the treadmill and instead embrace the weights section in your gym. I'll share insights on the perfect blend of macronutrients to keep your body in muscle-preserving mode, highlighting the power of protein and the importance of good carbs. Tune in, and equip yourself with a comprehensive fitness strategy that ensures you emerge from your weight loss quest strong, lean, and full of vitality.
Discover the secrets to shedding fat without losing your hard-earned muscle in our latest fitness-focused podcast. Join me, Rob Maxwell, as we navigate the delicate balance of trimming down while keeping your strength. You're promised a treasure trove of knowledge, as I break down the necessity of a gradual weight loss plan that safeguards your metabolism-driving muscles. Say goodbye to crash diets once and for all; we're talking smart, sustainable strategies that target those pesky 'bad' calories without leaving you feeling deprived.
Uncover the critical role strength training plays in maintaining muscle mass while on your weight loss journey. Together, we'll explore why you might want to rethink that extra hour on the treadmill and instead embrace the weights section in your gym. I'll share insights on the perfect blend of macronutrients to keep your body in muscle-preserving mode, highlighting the power of protein and the importance of good carbs. Tune in, and equip yourself with a comprehensive fitness strategy that ensures you emerge from your weight loss quest strong, lean, and full of vitality.
Speaker 1:
Welcome to. There is a Method to the Madness. My name is Rob Maxwell, I'm an exercise physiologist and personal trainer. I'm the owner of Maxwell's Fitness Programs and I've been in business since 1994. That is a long time trying to figure out all the madness. That needs its methods, but I love doing it.
Speaker 1:
I love fielding questions and I'm going to add on piggyback on to the question I had the other day about how to gain muscle and how to lose fat at the same time. But this time I'm going to add on to that because I had a lot of great questions that came out of it and a couple of people have said that that makes total sense to them. But how do you lose fat and at least maintain muscle? And that, my friends, is a lot more doable. So I'm going to talk about that and I hope it helps you. I want to first thank Jonathan and Lynn Gildan of the Gildan Group at Realty Pros. They currently have over 280 five-star reviews on Zillow. They are consummate professionals. They are constantly selling houses and they sell houses because they know what they're doing. If you need help, give them a shout 386-451-2412. So when we lose fat which is a good thing if we need to for sure. How do we maintain muscle? And that is a great thing as well.
Speaker 1:
Too often and I talked about this a little bit in the last episode when people lose fat, they lose too much muscle. Now, you're most likely, unless you're perfect, going to lose a little bit of muscle when you lose fat, and the more fat you lose, the faster you lose it, the more muscle you're actually going to lose. So we want to try to prevent that as much as possible, and it can be prevented. Now the main thing we have to do as we are dieting and I do get a little frustrated sometimes when people like don't like to use the term dieting. It's like, ok, I mean, but we do have to diet to lose weight. In other words, you know a diet is a way that we eat for sure, like if somebody says how's your dog's diet, I seriously doubt anybody's going to say my dog eats 1,000 kilocalories of grain per day, right, I mean you're going to mostly talk about well, he or she eats a lot of dry food, you know sometimes some wet food, or she's on this type of diet, or she's on this, you know, older senior dog diet or whatever. So we are going to talk about how we eat. I mean, yes, of course that's what diet ultimately means.
Speaker 1:
But you know, diet also means restriction as well, and there's just no way around it. Like when we need to lose weight, when we need to lose body fat, I mean there's going to be restriction, we are not going to gain something and not give something up, so we're not going to gain greater fitness and gain weight loss and not give something up. I mean that's just a very entitled way to think about it, right, like I don't want to do this but I want to get this. I mean it just doesn't work that way. I mean, to lose weight, we have to give something up. You know we have to give up the amount of calories we were eating and for each individual, they know where those quote, bad, unquote calories were coming from. Maybe it was too much alcohol, maybe it was too many cheese and crackers, maybe it was too much candy, maybe it was too much chips, maybe it was too much beef or high fatty foods, I don't know. But you are going to have to give something up to gain. So that's just. It goes without saying. So you know, get over it, my friends. We're going to use the word diet and you're going to try not to be offended. So when we diet and we lose weight, we most likely will lose some muscle.
Speaker 1:
Our objective is to lose the least amount of muscle that we can do, that we can lose. To lose the least amount of muscle that we can do that we can lose, because when we lose muscle we actually lower our metabolism. That is going to happen. That is. The primary driver of your metabolism is muscle mass. So, for example, each pound of muscle leads to a difference of about 50 calories per day. That's significant. So if you are currently on a RMR of, say, 1300 calories a day that is your basal metabolic rate and you lose a pound of muscle, well, now you can be down to 1250. So that could be significant. Now you can be down to 1250. So that could be significant.
Speaker 1:
So we absolutely don't want to lose the muscle. We want to maintain the muscle. Like we know, in following, like the prescriptions of the American College of Sports Medicine, like, as exercise physiologists, helping people with weight loss. Like that is our primary objective. How do we help people lose weight, primarily fat, and not lose as much muscle. So, maintain as much muscle as possible. That is our objective. So we have studied it, we have looked at it and we absolutely know how to do that. It's not easy to apply, it's not easy to do, but we know how to do it.
Speaker 1:
So the first thing is we have to lose our fat slowly. If we go on a crash diet and we lose fat in a short period of time like, let's say, you know, many people, especially people of heavier builds they can lose up to seven pounds a week. A lot of it's water, some of it's fat, some of it's muscle, lot of it's water, some of it's fat, some of it's muscle. But that's very fast weight. Right, they can lose 30 pounds in a month. I would argue that probably 15 pounds of that is muscle and 15 pounds of that is fat. We factor some of that out for water, but you get the point. So a lot of it, at least 50% of that, is muscle. That's way too much. And why did that happen? Because the person restricted too much and lost too much weight. That's one of the reasons why that that happens.
Speaker 1:
Now a little side note. A lot of people are taking the weight loss drugs, for example Ozempic and those other types which really I shouldn't even call them that because they're really diabetes drugs. But there are some primarily just for weight loss, but there are Ozempic types, appetite suppressants for the most part and a lot of people. I don't know the exact percentages yet. I don't think anybody knows the exact percentages yet because a lot of people aren't being honest about their weight loss, but there's a lot of people taking them. So one of the major downsides to that is that they're losing a lot of muscle. When they're losing the weight, there's a lot of atrophying going on and in our world you know, it's being termed skinny fat. So people are losing weight, losing a lot of muscle. Definitely not a healthy way to go. Definitely a fast weight loss. And again, when we see the fat weight loss fast weight loss we see a lot of loss of muscle. So we're seeing that a lot with these drugs. Unfortunately, all right.
Speaker 1:
So, end of side note, if your doctor tells you, you absolutely need to do it and you need to listen to your doctor. But I caution people who are making their own calls on that. Um, maybe not the best thing to do from what we understand about it at this point. So the first thing is we lose our weight slowly. Best thing we can do if we need to lose, say, 20 pounds is to try to take off one to two pounds a week. That is ideal, and in the background you can hear that we're getting busy lifting weights. And that's really the main thing we can do to maintain muscle mass as we are losing weight, and that is to strength train. So number one lose fat, lose weight slowly. Number two strength train. Studies show when people strength train while they're losing weight, they maintain their muscle tissue far more than if they didn't. So when people diet alone, meaning no changes in exercise or activity, they will lose weight. They will lose fat. Sure, they're going to lose a lot of muscle.
Speaker 1:
When people do it the old, you know fashion way, so to say, where they diet, meaning again restricting calories and cardio, like that's what people do when they want to drop a lot of weight, whether it be boxers in the old days, not anymore, now we know better, wrestlers, whatever, burn those calories, you know. Dehydrate yourself and restrict calories, burn it up, right. Well, that's even more problematic for muscle mass. So now you lose even more muscle mass. I mean when people overdo their cardio, like too hard and too long, they're cutting into their muscle supplies anyway. So that's not good to begin with, and when you're restricting calories it's even worse, so that's the worst thing to do as far as maintenance of your muscle mass. So then, of course, if that's the worst, then the best thing to do as you're dieting is to strength train.
Speaker 1:
If we strength train while we're restricting calories, studies show we won't lose nearly as much muscle mass as we would if we didn't strength train. I mean plain and simple Strength train, just like you would, not a special way. I mean, that's so silly when people think, oh, high repetitions leads to toning and weight loss and low repetitions lead to bulking and waking. No, none of that's true. I mean, if you're working your muscles near exhaustion, then they're going to quote, grow, unquote, no matter what the rep ranges are. It has nothing to do with rep ranges. The key is that we strength train, whatever our program is and hopefully we're already on a good program of moderate weights and moderate loads and moderate reps and all that good stuff two to three times a week of nice, consistent strength training.
Speaker 1:
If we do that while we're restricting calories, we are going to lose weight effectively and maintain our muscle mass to the best of our ability, We'll still lose some. I mean we can't lose just fat. I mean it's nearly impossible, doable but definitely not practical. And yes, we should still be doing our cardio, of course, but cardio shouldn't be our predominant means of losing weight. Diet is Cardio should be for strengthening our heart, improving our endurance, improving our overall fitness. I love cardio, but when we overdo it, over-restrict our eating and we don't strength train, we're losing a lot of muscle, not good. Strength train we're losing a lot of muscle, not good. And then, finally, we do need to pay attention to our quality of calories if we want to maintain our muscle mass.
Speaker 1:
If we're not taking in enough protein and it doesn't have to be a ton, just enough If we're not taking in enough, there's not enough protein there to repair the muscle fibers. So again, as we begin to atrophy and restrict calories, we lose more weight if the macronutrients aren't there. So proteins one and the other is good complex carbohydrates that's what feeds the muscle. So if those properties aren't there, your body's actually going to go into your muscle cells to provide the carbohydrate, to provide the adenosine triphosphate, the ATP, for fuel, and we call that gluconeogenesis. So when we're on a low-carb diet. That's what happens. Our body feeds off of itself, so we can't be on a low carb diet. Lower calorie, yes, but still enough good carbohydrates, such as whole grains, fruits and vegetables, and enough lean proteins, meaning whether you get them plant-based or you get them through animal products, but it should still be. Lean. Fatty proteins don't do anything for us except make us more fat, because we're taking in all that caloric density of fat. All right. So this was a nice add on to the other podcast and it really clears it up, right. I mean, you know, like I said, it's just comes down to having to do what we need to do lose the weight slowly, strength train and make sure we're eating adequate protein and adequate good carbs, and then we're doing all in our power and then we just have to turn the rest over there, all right, thank you.
Speaker 1:
Overhead door of Daytona beach, the area's premier garage door company. You know what? They go up and they go down. That's what we want, right. That's all we want. We want the stupid thing to work right, and when we have an overhead door, it works. That's the best thing I can say about them. Give them a shout. Overhead door Daytonacom.