If there is
a holy grail of weight loss, it would be a program that allows someone to shed
fat rapidly while hanging on to or even augmenting muscle. Ideally, it would
also be easy.
A new study
describes a workout and diet regimen that accomplishes two of those goals
remarkably well. But it may not be so easy.
For most of
us, losing weight and keeping it off is difficult. If you consume fewer
calories than your body requires for daily operations, it turns to internal
sources of fuel. Those sources consist of body fat and lean tissue, meaning
muscle. When someone on a diet drops a pound of body mass (a measure that does
not include water), much of that pound consists of fat. But about a third or
more can be made up of muscle.
The problem
with losing muscle is that, unlike fat tissue, muscle burns calories. Having
less muscle means a lower resting metabolic rate, so you burn fewer calories
throughout the day. Losing muscle may also discourage physical activity, which
is important for maintaining weight loss.
So
researchers have long been looking for weight loss programs that produce hefty
amounts of fat loss but diminish any decline in muscle.
For
scientists at McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, that goal seemed to
demand a high dose of protein and also plenty of exercise.
As the
scientists knew, amino acids in protein help muscle tissue to maintain itself
and to grow. Many past studies have suggested that low-calorie but high-protein
diets can result in less muscle loss than the same number of calories but less
protein.
However, the
best dosage of protein in these circumstances has remained unclear, as has the
role, if any, for exercise.
So for the
new study, which was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition,
the McMaster researchers rounded up 40 overweight young men who were willing to
commit to an intensive weight-loss program and divided them in half.
All of the
young men began a diet in which their daily calories were cut by about 40
percent (compared to what they needed to maintain weight). But for half of
them, this consisted of about 15 percent protein, 35 percent fat and 50 percent
carbohydrates.
The other 20
volunteers began a diet that mimicked that of the first group, except that
theirs swapped the protein and fat ratios, so that 35 percent of their calories
came from protein and 15 percent from fat. Over all, their protein intake was
about three times the recommended dietary allowance for most people.
The
researchers handled that switch by changing the make-up of a supplied drink. In
the low-protein group, the beverage contained high-fat milk and no added
protein. For the others, it consisted of low-fat milk and a large dollop of
whey protein.
All of the
men also began a grueling workout routine Functional Exercise. Six
days a week they reported to the exercise lab and completed a strenuous
full-body weight training circuit, high-intensity intervals, or a series of
explosive jumps and other exercises known as plyometric training.
The diet and
exercise routine continued for four weeks, by the end of which time, “those
guys were done,” said Stuart Phillips,
who holds a research chair in skeletal
muscle health at McMaster University and oversaw the study. “All they could
talk about was food.”
The routine
had succeeded in incinerating pounds from all of the participants. The men in
both groups weighed about 11 or 12 pounds less, on average.
[Source: http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2016/02/03/a-diet-and-exercise-plan-to-lose-weight-and-gain-muscle/?_r=0]
