Building muscle and losing weight often interfere with each other, since you gain weight as you add muscle and need extra calories for muscle growth. If you are looking to tone muscle or add some extra muscle for better sports performance, you can do so without adding significant weight. If you are significantly overweight, you can lose weight while you trade fat for muscle.
Calories and Weight Loss
For every pound of weight you want to lose, you'll need to burn 3,500 calories. As an example, you'll need to burn 500 calories more each day than you eat for seven days to lose 1 lb. of weight.
Nutrition and Muscle Building
To fuel muscle-building workouts you'll need to eat carbohydrates, or carbs. Your body calls on glycogen and glucose---the forms in which your body stores carbs---for exercise. After you damage muscle during a workout, the repair process makes your muscle bigger. To help with this process, after workouts you'll want to eat lean protein which contains amino acids that help muscle recovery.
Nutrient Timing
Throughout the day, eat a mix of carbohydrates and protein that gives you about two-thirds carbs and one-third protein. If you're eating less than three hours before your workout, decrease your protein and increase carbohydrates. Immediately after your muscle-building workouts, eat more lean protein and avoid fat which can slow digestion and absorption of nutrients.
Grazing
Eating every few hours throughout the day while you are losing weight keeps your metabolism up, decreases hunger pangs that can lead to overeating, prevents long fasts that create a blood insulin response that promotes fat storage and weight gain, and provides muscles with the nutrients they need for effective workouts.
Diet Plan
A grazing plan for muscle building and weight loss can consist of five to six meals and snacks each day. Eat breakfast each morning. In addition to preventing overeating, breakfast replenishes the glycogen stores you burn in your sleep. If you do not have enough carbs when you start your workout, your body may break town muscle tissue for energy, rather than using stored fat. Eat a mid-morning snack that's carb-heavy if you are working out before lunch, or eat lean protein if you worked out after breakfast. Eat a lunch with carbs, lean protein and healthy fats from foods such as nuts, fish and olive oil. Lean proteins contain less fat and include turkey and chicken breast, cheaper cuts of beef and fish. Eat a mid-afternoon snack that is based on whether you'll be working out soon. Eat dinner with a similar mix of nutrients that you ate for lunch. Eat your dessert later in the evening to distribute your calories---if you eat too many calories at once, your body may not be able to metabolize them all and will store some as fat. Protein shakes are suitable snack choices.
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