Lean, Toned or Muscle?
When a man hears the word “Muscle”, he is probably thinking of big biceps, broad shoulders and a tapered waistline.
A women might be thinking the same thing, which is all well and good as long as it isn’t her sporting the huge guns!
Conversely when a women envisions being “Toned” she is thinking thin, slim and shapely. You know, looking good in a swimsuit.
A man probably has the same idea, as long as it’s not him with the 12 1/2″ biceps and eurosuit.
The common denominator?
Both goals (muscle/tone) really are both sides of the same coin and usually require two components:
- Maintaining or acquiring lean tissue (muscle)
- Losing bodyfat
A common objection (and misunderstanding) among women is that resistance training will “bulk them up” and they will look like a man. In reality this is very difficult for a women (it’s hard enough for men to gain large amounts of muscles) primarily because of lower amount of hormones such as testosterone in women compared to men. While there can be exceptions (“Outliers” as defined by Malcolm Gladwell) it is certainly not the norm for women to get “hyooge” with hard and even heavy weight training. Take a look at Coach Nancy (as I like to do) and you will see what I mean.
When you do not strength/resistance train during “dieting” you run the serious risk of losing large amounts of your metabolic engine – lean/tone/muscle, which has serious negative consequences down the road.
Your bodies main task is to do one thing – survive. When you don’t eat enough calories to maintain your current weight, your body assumes you don’t have enough food, and true to form starts doing what is necessary to stay alive. Unfortunately for you that means it is going to shed the most metabolically active tissue first – your muscle (the lean, tone, good stuff).
Why?
Because muscle requires about twice as many calories to maintain as the stuff we don’t want – excess fat. Plus fat stores energy, so while your body might burn some off to meet your energy requirements it is going to buckle down and keep as much as it can.
Unless…
You resistance/strength train (which is why we focus on such training).
So our goal when losing “weight” is in reality to keep as much as the good stuff (lean/tone/muscle – hereafter known as LTM) and get rid of the bad stuff (excess bodyfat).
Because…
We don’t want to metabolic engine to slow down, which occurs when we lose LTM.
Remember… Lean burns about twice as much energy (calories) as fat, so keep the lean – lose the fat.
We have probably all heard of “Yo-Yo” dieting. A person goes “on a diet”, loses a bunch of weight, goes “off the diet” and ends up fatter than before.
That’s because he slowed down his metabolic engine by losing a bunch of LTM, and when he goes back to eating “normal” his body doesn’t require as much energy (calories) and starts storing the excess as bodyfat – Ughhh!
An Example:
Two women (Matilda and Madeline) want to get into beach body shape for the summer. They are both weighed, measured and their bodyfat % calculated, and how amazingly convenient, they both have the exact same percent of bodyfat, which happens to be 40%
Starting Weight: 170 lbs
Lean Tissue: 102 lbs
Fat Tissue: 68 lbs
Bodyfat: 40%
Six months later Matilda and Madeline come back to be weighed and measured again, and lo and behold both have lost 40 pounds! The scale is my friend, or is it? Let’s dig a little deeper.
| Matilda | Madeline | |
| Ending Weight: | 130 | 130 |
| Lean Tissue: | 82 lbs | 102 lbs |
| Fat Tissue: | 48 lbs | 28 lbs |
| Bodyfat: | 37% | 21.50% |
Matilda and Madeline both weigh the same (140 pounds) but their bodies are nothing alike! Although Matilda lost 40 pounds total, she only lost 3% bodyfat and sacrificed 20 pounds of LTM to do it!
On the other hand Madeline managed to preserve all her Lean/Tone/Muscle and lost 19.5% bodyfat – nicely done!
We will outline how Madeline did it in a minute, but first I want to show you what the difference is.
Fellow fitness pro Leigh Peele has created a guide to body fat percentage, which shows you what different percentages look like on both the male and female body. It is well worth the look at both the page and the website and downloading her free guide.
Click on the link below and scroll toward the bottom of the page, there you will see a visual of what 30%, 25%, 20%, all the way down to 11% looks like (if you download the guide there are more example).
Click this link (go ahead, I’ll wait) Leigh Peele Bodyfat Pictures and Percentages
Pretty dramatic difference between 30% and 20%, wouldn’t you say?
How to get on the “Madeline” plan
There are some basics to preservation of LTM while concurrently losing bodyfat.
They include:
Resistance/Strength Training: As we discussed last time, steady state aerobics does not have the LTM preserving abilities or the fat burning abilities of resistance/strength or high intensity interval training. You must give your body a reason to preserve lean tissue, and when you resistance train your body wants to adapt to that training by preserving/building more LTM.
Adequate Protein Intake: You must have enough material (protein) to both maintain the daily functions of living and build/maintain the LTM. Inadequate protein intake affects your immune system, your hormones, and ability to maintain your structure (LTM). How much is adequate? A loaded question for sure, but a general rule of thumb for healthy adults with no contraindications is 1 gram of protein for every pound of LTM and often higher. So Madeline and Matilda would have been eating around 100 grams (400 calories) from protein every day.
Eat Slow Carbs: Read Low Carb or Slow Carb
Recovery Drink & Meal: Read Post Workout Nutrition Made Easy = Better Recovery = Better Results
Additional Recovery: Getting enough sleep, recovery between training sessions, reducing stress, and taking a whole-food multivitamin are also supportive activities to keep your fat loss fires burning.
So while Madeline is enjoying her new healthy body, Matilda continues to struggle and find herself bouncing on the yo-yo once again. If only she had listened to her coach! 🙂
Don’t Be Matilda!
Coach Dean
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