Six tips for building muscle after weight loss
Today, when millions of people have weight problems caused by poor food quality and a sedentary lifestyle, the issue of proper weight loss worries many. This is not so easy to do, given the many temptations around.
Let’s say you have high willpower and have reached your main goal – losing weight. You can see your legs and calmly bend down to tie your shoelaces. But there is another problem – a decrease in muscle mass percentage that goes along with diets.
There are several ways to build muscle after losing weight. They will help you pump your body and simultaneously not return to the previous state with excess weight.
1. Slowly increase your calories.
Many people who lose weight make the same mistake – they start consuming many calories again, believing they will all go to the right places through physical activity. This is not true.
The body may be accustomed to storing fat rather than putting calories into action. As a result, instead of muscle mass, you will gain weight again, and even more than before, because the body believes that you had to starve and you need to stock up even more.
To gain muscle mass, you need to start small. Let it be a calorie deficit that has already become habitual, to which you can add from 100 to 200 calories per day for a week. Then, if you’re still not within the normal range for your gender, weight, and height, you can add 100 to 200 calories a week.
2. Make a protein-based diet.
If there is only one protein, it will not lead to anything good. However, while building muscle mass, this building material for your cells will be consumed in huge amounts.
Therefore, to restore flabby muscles, you need to eat about 0.8 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, and this is the minimum. It is better to increase this value to at least 1.2 grams per kilogram of weight. Additional protein can be obtained from meat, lean, nuts, and certain plant foods like soy.
3. Remove fast carbs and add slow carbs.
Proteins are good, but they don’t provide much energy. You will need carbohydrates, so you do not feel hungry, and again do not go back to consuming excessive amounts of food.
It is desirable to reduce the number of fast carbohydrates, which give a burst of energy for a short time and, at the same time, are actively deposited by the body in reserves. It is better to replace these carbohydrates with slow ones, eating from 30 to 50 grams daily.
The maximum amount of carbohydrates should be in the first hour after the end of the workout to close the carbohydrate window. It will also help prevent the storage of carbohydrates in reserve.
4. Focus on moderate weights and frequent repetitions
Another mistake in gaining mass is trying to lift large weights. Yes, you can become almost a champion in your gym, but soon you will notice how you began to gain weight again, and this is far from just muscles. It’s all about significant loads because the body believes you need a lot of energy in reserve. How to know that you only train so hard a couple of times a week?
Instead, it would help if you focused on moderate or even light weights with high repetitions. Your task is to build muscle, not to become the strongest person in the world, at least at first.
5. Reduce the amount of cardio
Cardio is one of the most effective ways to lose weight. But such training is unsuitable for a person who has already lost weight and wants to build muscle. It’s all about the amount of energy expended and accumulated fatigue. Regular jogging on the track or marathons on a stationary bike will not allow you to pump relief muscles.
Therefore, for a while, it is worth reducing the amount of cardio to almost zero, reducing it to a warm-up and a hitch. It is better to focus on strength training, which contributes to muscle mass growth. It is especially worth abandoning hard cardio at the end of the training because this will interfere with the body’s recovery after exercise and prevent muscle growth.
6. Rest properly between sets
As with cardio, lack of rest between sets or lack of it will lead to fatigue of the body and, as a result, to a slowdown in muscle growth. In addition, the body, as we mentioned above, will want to replenish the spent energy by causing you severe hunger.
Therefore, remember that the rest between sets should take at least 1 minute. The best thing to do is focus on your feelings. You can start if you can do a rep with at least 90% efficiency from the previous one.
