How To Avoid Gaining Body Fat While Trying To Lose Weight

Hello! Welcome to the body by Patrick podcast. My name is Patrick Ocheni. I want to talk about how to avoid gaining body fat while trying to lose weight. And yes, it is possible to gain body fat while you’re trying to lose weight.

When you start your fitness journey, you want to make sure that over time you are analyzing your progress to measure that you are indeed heading on the right track. Gaining fat is not just about overeating, you can also gain fat by under eating especially if you’re getting fitter over time. So, this is why you’ve got to do a progress analysis.

Your goal, as you’re trying to get in shape especially if you’re trying to lose weight, is to increase your muscle mass. Why? Because muscle again is active tissue. This is what’s going to help you boost your resting metabolic rate or your basal metabolic rate. Your basal metabolic rate is essentially how many calories your body needs to function to do all eight bodily duties.

You want that to be high and that accounts for about 65% of your metabolism. So, when you’re trying to lose fat, you want to make sure your muscle mass is increasing, the higher your muscle mass, the higher your basal metabolic rate.

You do not want to do too much cardio when trying to lose body fat.

If you’re trying to lose body fat and look fit like an athlete, doing too much cardio is not good for you it will actually burn through your muscle and thus affect your resting metabolic rate, which is something that we do you not want.

As you’re trying to lose weight, you want to make sure that as you are getting fitter and in better shape over time, you are eating enough calories. Don’t think that because you’re trying to lose weight, you’re going to keep your calories the same or reduce it. That does not work.

A lot of gimmick programs out there that tell you, oh, eat a thousand calories and you will lose weight. Oh yeah, you will lose weight, but guess what? You’re gonna ruin, destroy, kill your basil metabolic rate because your muscle mass is going to be depleted. Your body is going to cannibalize it, which is not what you want.

Remember, you want to eat at minimum, the amount of calories required to maintain your basal metabolic rate. How much additional calories you eat over time depends on how much lean muscle mass you’ve gained.