Health Tips Nutrition

Is Your Dieting Destroying Your Muscle?

August 27, 2009
By J White

During dieting, many dieters place their primary focus on losing weight at all cost. When they look in the mirror and pinch their sides they just want all of that to go away. To accomplish this some dieters are willing to try just about anything.

What many of these people don’t realize is that their dieting methods may be causing them to lose much more than just fat. Many are also losing a significant amount of muscle mass as well. Without realizing it, they are making it harder to lose those extra inches.

The Importance of Muscle

Muscle allows you do the basic things that you take for granted, such as picking up a glass, or carrying groceries to your car. Without them you would have less ability than a mold of jelly.

In addition to the basic mobility it allows us to have, there is another important aspect to maintaining your muscle mass. Muscles burn more calories than fat, so having more muscle on your body helps to burn extra calories. It is when you start to lose them that your metabolism starts to slow down, which results in fewer calories being burned and more fat being stored on your body.

Dieters who use practices such as fasting, or are consuming significantly low calories each day are the most at risk of losing muscle mass. The reason for this is that your body needs energy, and it is going to get that energy one way or another. So if muscle cells have to be broken down to supply it, so be it. These bad dieting habits are a self-defeating practice that many dieters have not considered as a consequence of their behavior.

Preserving Muscle

To preserve muscle, do not go to far below your basal metabolic rate (BMI). This is just the minimum amount of energy that you would need to consume to maintain your body weight if you were to just lie around in bed doing nothing all day.

By keeping your calories in this range, any activity that you perform will result in excess calories being burned. Plus, when a moderate exercise program is applied, you are able to lose even more weight more quickly, which is the main objective of those extreme dieting measures that some of your are willing to try.

To determine your basal metabolic rate, you can use this BMI calculator. Once you found the value, use it as a guide to help determine a safe amount of calories that you should be eating to help preserve as much muscle mass as possible during your diet.

The amount of calories that you go below this value will depend on your body weight. Those with higher body fat will be able to go further below this amount than those with a smaller amount of body fat to lose. Just make sure that you consume balance meals to ensure your body is getting all its needed nutrients, especially the amino acids that come from protein.

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