how do you prevent burning muscle than fat?

It would help to have an idea of roughly how much protein you eat in a day. Protein is essential for maintaining or building muscle. I think the recommended protein value is 1g per kilogram you weigh, but if you are working out then 1.5g-2g per kg is better.

But remember, your body is unique, there is no set rule. It is just trial and error to see what works for you.

Hope this helps.

It doesn't matter when you eat, so long as you eat enough and not too much! Few people eat too little protein, so it's unlikely to be your diet unless you're somehow restricting your protein intake.

The best way to improve your body fat to lean muscle ratio is to weight train. Use heavy weights that you can only do 8 repetitions of before your muscles tire. If you're a gym member, get someone to show you a routine, otherwise buy a book or DVD, or check out exercises on YouTube. Don't be afraid of building big muscles, it just won't happen unless you train like a bodybuilder.

The protein recommendation is 0.8 grams per kilogram of body weight for the average person and up to 2 grams per kilogram of body weight for body builders and extreme endurance athletes. How much exercise you do determines how much protein you need. That being said, you also have to make sure you are getting enough carbs to reload your glycogen stores after exercise. Glycogen is stored in the muscle in 3 x as much water and registers as Lean Body Mass when doing a body composition analysis, so it may appear to be muscle loss and fat gain when it is actually just a loss of glycogen and water from your workouts. Without knowing your specific changes over time, I can't begin to estimate if that is the case or not though.

As for how to maintain (or gain) muscle while losing fat, here are my recommendations:

--Eat no less then 80% of the total calories you burn
--Start with 60% carbs, 20% protein, and 20% fat and adjust based on your exercise program and any physical issues or after 3 months of not seeing results.
--Weight train at least every other day but make sure you alternate muscle groups if you weight train two days in a row
--Follow weight training with cardio
--When weight training, pick a weight that is so heavy that the last 1-2 of a set of 10 is difficult to finish, then do 2-3 sets per exercise
--When doing cardio, don't work so hard that you can't keep going for at least 30 minutes; You should be breathing hard enough that you can talk but not sing; if you had to estimate how hard you are working on a scale of 1-10, 1 being laying down doing nothing and 10 being working so hard you feel like you are about to have a heart attack, workout at a 5-7.
--Don't do straight cardio, it burns muscle and fat, so be sure you mix it with at least 20 minutes of resistance, calisthenics, etc.

Check out my blog for a comparison of ways to determine body composition. My last post was all about the various types of analysis and pretty detailed.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/TrainingWithTonya

The thing with the scale for determining body fat levels is that it will change based on your hydration level. I tell my clients to use it only at one time during the day so they are approximately the same hydration level. Weight will fluctuate the same way, which is why we recommend weighing at the same time of day when you weigh because you can't compare a weight in the morning with a weight in the evening. Even though it does fluctuate with hydration level, I'd still trust the scale (done at the same time each day) over calipers or online formulas though. Generally speaking the calipers and measurement formulas don't look at your visceral (internal) fat but only at the topical (just under the skin) fat. The visceral fat is much more dangerous and what we need to focus on decreasing.