A three-pronged approach -- cardiovascular exercise, healthy diet and resistance training -- can help you maintain lean muscle while dropping fat. Once you learn to balance your lifting with your conditioning, and support them both with diet, you will experience rapid weight loss and improvements in general health and fitness. If your goal is to improve as an athlete, you need to not only become proficient in these areas, but master them all as well. Consult your physician before beginning any diet or exercise program.
Strength Training
Resistance training is the cornerstone of a structured program because it allows you to build muscle, strength and power while burning fat. In cases of strict dieting, a good lifting program will help maintain your lean muscle mass, avoiding the decrease in metabolism that would occur if you lost muscle. Your program should revolve around heavy, compound lifts such as the squat, bench press, deadlift, military press, chin-up and row. These exercises work the majority of the muscles of your body and should be done with a high degree of intensity and short rest periods to stimulate your endocrine system to release the hormones that promote muscle growth without storing fat. Train your entire body each workout, but only three times a week on nonconsecutive days, to give your muscles time to rest and recover.
Aerobic Exercise
You need not do anything fancy for aerobic exercise. You can start out by just going for a walk for 30 minutes every morning. If you perform your aerobics in the morning, you can lift in the evening for an additional metabolic boost. Do not do excessive cardiovascular work, as this can cause muscle loss. Instead, break it up over multiple sessions a week or increase the intensity. If you get to the point at which you can tolerate sprinting, interval training is a great way to burn fat in little time. Simply run 50 yards, turn around and walk back, then repeat until you are tired. In this case, "run" means full sprint. Jumping rope is another excellent method of aerobic exercise, and can be utilized for intervals as well.
Diet
If you are engaging in lifting as well as aerobic exercise, you will need far more protein than an inactive person. This means you need to get protein from quality food sources such as beef, milk, eggs, chicken and fish. Fish, particularly oily fish, is an exceptional choice as it is high in omega-3 fatty acids, which are essential for hormone production and regulation. Omega-6 fatty acids are essential as well and can be found in vegetable oil, flax, nuts and seeds. Your diet should contain enough healthy fats to ensure proper hormonal function at all times, so avoid a very low-fat diet. You should get enough carbohydrates to support your activity levels and recover from exercise, but no more. Excess carbohydrates will be stored as fat, so avoid large quantities of carbs and highly processed sugars found in junk foods at all times.
Post-Workout Nutrition
This area is often overlooked, but is essential for optimal recovery and performance. Following an intense workout, which does not mean light aerobic session, your muscles are depleted of glycogen, your blood sugar is low and your insulin levels are high. This means your body is primed to absorb nutrients, particularly carbs. This is the ideal time to consume a simple sugar such as dextrose, which will be used to refill muscle glycogen and will not be stored as fat. Also, consuming an easily digestible protein at this time will not only help you recover, but also help you build or maintain muscle as well.
References
- PubMed.gov: Acute Testosterone and Cortisol Responses to High Power Resistance Exercise
- "Journal of the American College of Nutrition"; "Beyond the Zone: Protein Needs of Active Individuals, Individuals"; Lemon; 2000
- PubMed: Dietary Omega-3 Fatty Acid Supplementation Increases the Rate of Muscle Protein Synthesis in Older Adults
- PubMed.gov: Decrease of Serum Total and Free Testosterone During a Low-Fat High-Fiber Diet
- PubMed.gov: Dietary Supplements Affect the Anabolic Hormones After Weight-Training Exercise
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