How To Gain Muscle Without Losing Weight

January 27 2014

How To Gain Muscle Without Losing Weight

So, you want to gain muscle without losing your body’s current weight? This is an all-too-common scenario that many people find themselves in. When you begin an intense physical fitness regimen, your body will naturally lose weight. Thankfully, there are ways to continue building muscle mass while keeping or even increasing your body’s weight; here’s how you do it:

Weight section at a UK-based gym: photo by HealthGauge.

Bulk Up With Nutrition

Before we go into the physical fitness side of things, it’s important to remember that muscle mass and body weight are directly related to nutrition. You can’t expect to achieve your goals without consuming the right nutrition. See the list of nutrition tips below for more information:

• Kick the sodas and drink water — lots of it — throughout the day.
• Focus on lean meats such as chicken and fish.
• Drink 1-2 protein shakes per day for a helpful boost of this key muscle-building nutrient. (see our previous blog post for more suggests on how to increase your daily protein intake.)
• Eat several small, nutritious snacks to keep your metabolism up.
• Eliminate refined sugars from your diet.
• Eat plenty of fresh vegetables.

More Strength Training, Less Cardio

The secret to building muscle mass without losing weight is to increase your time spent on strength training exercises and decrease the time spent on cardio. This doesn’t mean you should completely avoid all forms of cardio exercise, but you should keep them to a minimum.

You can read through the Muscle Intensity Blog to learn more about how to perform strength training exercises, but you really have four different options available: you can use free weights (dumbbells), bench and barbells, weight machines, or your own body weight. There’s really no “best” type of strength training workout, so try to incorporate all of them in your physical fitness regimen.

Watch Your Weight!

If you’re worried about losing weight from exercise, keep a close on your body weight by stepping on the scales each and every day. It’s not a bad idea to keep a notepad or calender nearby where you can record your weight.

If you notice your weight decreasing, try to boost your daily caloric intake by 300. Adding peanut butter, milk and fruit to your protein shakes is a simple way to add more calories and nutrition to your diet.