The result is your body gets good at making muscle, storing sugar, and producing energy and bad at storing fat. If you send signal 2 energy is needed without simultaneously sendind signal 1 food is abundant then you lose weight at the expense of muscle, which slows starvation during the percieved famine. Just because you're in a calorie deficit doesn't mean you're burning fat. In the scenario when you are jogging a lot and dieting to lose weight, the body breaks down muscle for fuel rather than fat.
Even if you lose weight, you'll look in the mirror and you'll see someone who is "skinny-fat". So there you have it Doing that will send the two signals in big ways that will turn you into a muscle-building, fat-burning Betty. Now that we've discussed the two signals, let's get into the 5 steps of upgrading your female fat loss diet plan.
I could, of course, fill a book on way that you can upgrade your diet to increase the burning of fat and we have spoken at length about strategies and tactics for improving your diet in our podcast Cut The Fat Podcast. In this article, I will give you five ways to make big changes relatively quickly. Starting with the first rule, which, I will admit, is redundant and not about diet at all, go figure This rule is so vitally important that I'm going to revisit it even though I did a whole article about it and just spend a few paragraphs hashing it out.
The body is capable of ridiculous amounts of fat loss when it is busy digesting real food and building lots of muscle. If you don't get this, you'll never be fully satisfied with the results even a "good" fat loss focused diet will deliver. As you move closer to forty, and later into menopause, sending these muscle-building signals becomes exponentially more important. A pound of muscle burns three times as many calories each day compared to a pound of fat 6 calories versus 2.
If you build 10 pounds of muscle and lose 10 pounds of fat, you'll burn 40 more calories per day at rest.
I know, that's not much. People are often shocked to hear just how little the metabolism increases by building muscle. Muscle is made up of protein, fat, and sugar building blocks. So, if we add up the energy locked away in the muscle building blocks, it amounts to about calories per pound think about the amount of calories in a 1 pound steak. So, in building that 10 pounds of muscle, 7, calories from food you consumed is locked away. There is also an energetic cost to building a pound of muscle. Although it's hard to find hard numbers backed by research, I've seen 2, calories are burned in the manufacturing of a single pound of muscle.
That means you'll burn 28, calories making ten pounds of muscle in addition to the 7, calories locked away in the muscle itself, and then you get the dividends paid daily in the form of 40 extra calories being burned just to maintain those 10 lbs of muscle. Most people are not bed-bound, so odds are if you build 10 pounds of muscle you're going to move that muscle through physical activity and with each contraction, you "waste" calories that would not have otherwise been burned if the muscle did not exist.
It has been proven that muscular bodies are quite inefficient in burning energy a good thing if your goal is burning fat and waste a lot of energy in movement. This is great for burning fat, and explains why the body is so quick to get rid of muscle when you follow a classic starvation diet. Muscle is expensive. We've said before that just because you're in a calorie deficit doesn't mean that you're buring fat. Your body can, and often does, burn muscle and even organs as fuel when you are in a calorie deficit.
Likewise, just because you're in a calorie excess doesn't mean that you're storing fat. If you give the right stimulus, your body can use those calories to lay down and build new muscle just like wood can be used to build a fire or build a house. When the body is in an "anabolic" state, it is building up.
When it is in a "catabolic" state, the body is breaking down. Most of us are walking around in a catabolic state where a calorie deficit will burn muscle more than it will burn fat when we are functioning in a calorie deficit. If we can trigger "muscle mode" through resistance training, metabolic resistance training, and HIIT, then we can send the body into a perpetual state of muscle growth and repair.
One week is all it take to get your diet on track
When the body is in muscle mode, a few hundred extra calories in excess of our metabolic needs may actually lead to more muscle growth rather than the growth of fat stores. For example, let's say we're a jogger and haven't touched a weight in years. If we have a calorie excess, the body doesn't care about laying new muscle because there's no stimulus to do so. So, over the next month, you'll divert those calories into fat cells where you can gain almost 2 pounds a month. Now, let's say you are a listener of Cut The Fat Podcast and you've overhauled your workout plan to prioritize resistance training and HIIT over cardio.
Your body is in muscle mode, so when those extra calories enter your body, your metabolism sees it as a great opportunity to build new muscle with those calories.
Meal Plan for Fat Loss and Muscle Gain {for Women} • The Body Bulletin
So, you get stronger and fitter rather than fatter. Now let's say that you're in muscle mode AND you have a calorie deficit. Your body is going to say, let build muscle using the building blocks and fuel that's coming in from food and live off of the fat rather than the muscle. So you can burn fat while simultaneously building muscle, a process that has been proven to take place by bodybuilders all over the world.
Muscle Mode Theory states that when your body is in an anabolic state, it will expend as much fuel as needed to repair muscle and that fuel can and will come from fat not from lean tissue. If your body is NOT in muscle mode, there is no buffer for calorie excess. If you eat more than you can burn - it's stored as fat. If you eat less than your body's needs, your body will fuel the energetic needs mostly from muscle, not from fat.
Putting your body into muscle mode will buffer any calorie excess you consume by giving the body the very attractive option of building muscle over building fat.
The Woman's Meal Plan for Getting Lean
You don't get this option without some form of relatively intense resistance training, which we discussed in Part 2 of this Series The Female Fat Loss Workout Plan. So, YES, a female fat loss diet plan starts with a rocking metabolic exercise plan! Let's move on This is where a lot of women go wrong with their diet They simply do not get enough protein in their diets to meet the metabolic demands of their female fat loss workout.
Imagine running out of wood half-way through building your dream home. Do you think you could finish the project? The same thing happens with muscle, organs, and other tissues when your body doesn't have enough amino acids building blocks , especially the essential amino acids the amino acids that your body cannot make , your body will not rebuild and your metabolism will suffer.
It is very common to see women eating insufficient protein especially in women who are on a classic low-calorie diet. This becomes doubly important when you implement a resistance training program into your female fat loss exercise plan. I have tried many different amino acid products on the market. Hands down the most effective amino blends is the Perfect Amino XP. Warning: It ain't tasty but it IS effective.
The 5 Rules Of The Female Fat Loss Diet Plan
The recommended dose is 2 scoops once daily after workouts on days that you exercise and in the morning on days that you do not exercise. Most of your protein intake should come from food and not powders, if you eat three meals daily you should consume one to two palm-sized portions of protein per meal depending on activity level. Some people like to add protein shakes or bars between meals, although you can experiment with protein supplements between meals, it may be unnecessary for most women unless you are working out a lot and those workouts are super intense.
These types of protein snacks are also great for people who get famished if they skip a snack.
One strategy that we recommend in many women, which will overlap with the next rule, is replacing some of the carb calories with protein calories. So, you might toss out the bread and double up the chicken breast in your meal. One thing is clear We discussed this in detail already when we spoke about the two signals we send to burn fat. Review: Food is abundant and we need energy to go get it. I don't care what camp you come from; keto, paleo, low-fat, low-carb, Weight Watchers, etc. If you successfully burn fat without losing muscle, it's because you optimized insulin levels to the point where the fat was selectively starved away.
Without optimizing insulin, body fat will not shrink - at least, not without also shrinking the muscle.