It is important to understand that not all weight-loss is the same. While the numbers on your scales may be decreasing, you must ensure your losses are coming from the right place.
When you embark on your journey to health through low carb dieting supported by hCG treatment, your focus should not be on weight-loss, but on FAT-loss. These are two very different things. Your entire body weight is calculated from a number of factors – fluid, bones, organs, muscle, fat, glycogen (stored carbohydrates) and body waste.
What you should be focused on is reducing your body fat percentage, not just your total body weight.
Less calories – but not too few!
The single, most effective way to reduce your body fat percentage is to create a calorific deficit. It may sound simple – consuming fewer calories than you burn? However, it is a bit more complex than this, and there are a few factors you need to consider in order to get the balance right.
For safe and healthy weight-loss, you should aim to consume enough calories to support the ideal weight you are working towards. If you do not consume enough calories and create too high of a calorie deficit, your body will have insufficient fuel to function correctly. When a large calorie deficit occurs, your body begins to conserve energy by burning fewer calories and slowing down your metabolism. Too few calories can also result in your body starting to burn muscle for fuel, rather than fat – and nobody wants that!
When a calorie isn’t a calorie
Regardless of what you may have heard, some calories are simply far superior to others. If you are creating a calorie deficit through your low carb diet, you need to eat nutrient dense calories. Eating 500 calories of bacon or 500 calories of vegetables will result in very different outcomes when it comes to reducing your overall body fat percentage. Stay tuned for our next article where we discuss why not all calories are the same!
It really is no secret that protein is the number one macronutrient when it comes to reducing body fat and building lean muscle through dieting. Your muscles are fueled by protein, and as your body fat percentage decreases, protein becomes even more important to maintaining your lean muscle mass as your body starts to seek out alternative fuel sources.
Build up your muscle base
Although increasing your lean muscle mass may see your ‘weight-loss’ slow down slightly, you will experience much faster fat-loss instead. That is a great trade off if you ask us!
Strength training is the most effective way to reduce your overall body fat while building your lean muscle mass. Don’t worry, you won’t have to hit the weights every day to prevent muscle loss. Simply switching one or two of your cardio work outs a week with weights is enough to prevent muscle loss and keep your body burning excess fat stores instead.
So remember to stick with a diet of high quality, nutrient dense food and maintain the correct calorific deficit as recommended by your doctor. Along with light weight training, this is your best chance of keeping your body in fat burning mode and leaving those new muscles in tact!