The Winning Percentage for Weight Loss

If you want to lose weight fast without compromising muscle, you may be tempted to slash your calories, but reducing your calories too much may send your body warning signs that you are starving. A small study of 24 athletes showed that slow weight loss that reduced calories by 19% was effective, but if they cut their calories by 30%, it wasn’t and could be detrimental to their health (1).

So if you typically eat 1800 calories, reducing 19% of your caloric intake would mean cutting back 342 calories. If you eat 1800 calories, and reduced your calories by 30%, you’d be eating 540 fewer calories. That’s a lot! If you want to lose weight and aren’t seeing results, and are eating few calories, you may need to eat more. It may seem counterintuitive to eat more to lose weight, but sometimes, that’s the answer.

Photo: me

Source: Team Beachbody blog posted 3/16/16 titled: How to Lose Weight, Not Muscle: Don’t Starve Yourself, written by Andrew Heffernan http://www.teambeachbody.com/teambeachbodyblog/fitness/how-to-lose-weight-not-muscle?tracking=EML_NL_20160417&code=EML_NL_20160417&subkey=NINAWK@EARTHLINK.NET&ep_mid=2846550&ep_rid=112113996&ctid=10147854896&cid=NL-AUT-TBB-MULTI-TBBNL-20160205&mid=932163734&aid=NL-AUT-TBB-MULTI-TBBNL-20160205-TBBNL&offer=AC2