How to lose fat WITHOUT losing muscle

This is just another great article I happened upon that iterates all the main points. There is some fat antagonism here what with referring to excess fat, and by extension excessively fat people, as "ugly" - and boo to off-handed shaming - but otherwise this article is 100% and needs to be read by everyone attempting to lose 'weight'.

http://www.aworkoutroutine.com/how-to-lose-fat-without-losing-muscle/

Important points:

1) Consume enough protein. They say 1 g per lb of bodyweight, but that's extremely excessive. They might mean 1 g per kg of bodyweight, which is far more ressonable. To figure it out, take your weight in kg (weight in lb divided by 2.2) and multiply by anywhere between 1 and 1.8. You shouldn't be doing serious strength training while on a caloric deficit, so the lower end should suffice.

2) Don't overdo cardio. In fact, there's no 'need' to do it at all to lose weight. I would suggest that you do light cardio to improve your physical fitness, but not to lose weight. Remember to EAT BACK YOUR EXERCISE CALORIES if exercising takes you significantly under your deficit. Also remember that *dieting* is for losing weight; exercising is for *maintaining or increasing physical fitness*.

3) Strength train to ensure that you lose as little muscle as possible while on a deficit. And I mean strength train - not endurance with resistance (i.e. low weight, high reps). You need to encourage your body to maintain your muscle mass, which you do by letting it know that you need to keep your current amount of strength. If you don't, it will decrease its muscle mass in order to more efficiently conserve energy, which it will attempt to do while on a deficit. At rest, muscle requires about eight times the energy of fat. Why keep an unnecessary amount of it?

On another note, if it isn't losing as much muscle, it will lose more fat to compensate. Muscle is much denser than fat. That explains why people can lose inches without losing lb or lose lb without losing inches - fat vs muscle loss.

4) Don't maintain too steep a deficit. The steeper the deficit, the more muscle you lose, the weaker you become, the pudgier you stay. It gets to the point at which your body will drop muscle no matter what you do because it needs to conserve energy more efficiently to survive. Dropping muscle mass is its best bet and it will resort to dropping it as fast as it drops fat if it has to. There are no exact rules, but general guidelines are as follows: you can drop two lb per week if you have >75 lb *of fat* to lose, 1.5 lb per week for 50-75 lb, 1 lb per week for 30-50 lb, and .5 or less lb for <30 lb. And remember that this goes for the entirety of the journey! That means that, even if you start out with 100 of fat to lose and start with a weekly 7,000 calorie deficit, you'll need to decrease it as you approach your goal. You'll also discover that your body will hold onto its weight the best it can as it approacjes its personal ideal fat levels, which makes keeping tabs on the deficit even more important.

Lastly:

5) Eating 'clean' DOESN'T MATTER. You WON'T lose fat simply from eating healthful foods. Your body doesn't store fat in response to nutritional intake; it stores it in response to energy expenditure and that's it. It's an evolutionary defense against starvation and that's (primarily) it. That means that simply swapping your 'dirty' calories for 'clean' ones won't cause you to lose fat. However, 'clean' foods are generally lower calorie, so swapping, say, soda with water *and not replacing the calories* will result in a lower overall caloric intake, which can contribute to overall weight loss *if you also maintain a deficit*. Conversely, eating only junk food will cause you to lose *if you also maintain a deficit*.

Now, is that saying that what you eat doesn't matter? Yes and no. For weight loss, no it does not matter. For health, yes it does. Optimally, you should maintain a deficit with 'clean' foods.

And that concludes the (massively long) summary!

Now go read the article. There are lots of helpful links embedded within.