3 Signs You’re Losing Muscle Instead of Fat

1. You are losing a lot of weight

There is a limit of fat that the organism manages to eliminate per week – and that number is around 1 and a half kilograms. If the scale is showing a loss greater than that every seven days, it could mean that your body is using, in addition to stored fat, muscle fibers as a source of energy. Another answer to the lower hand has to do with water being eliminated by the body.

Read more: 12 foods to gain muscle

2. You are feeling weak and lazy

Keep an eye on your performance at the gym. Not being able to do the usual series or the kilometers that you used to walk effortlessly can be a sign of loss of lean mass. It’s common for this to happen during restrictive diets or if you’re not doing your strength training correctly.

A lot of people focus on the volume of sets to the detriment of strength. “It turns out that research shows that, to avoid the loss of muscle fibers, what really works is the intensity of the training”, says Eder Rosendo, physical educator and technical coordinator at Bodytech Iguatemi Alphaville, in São Paulo.

Read more: 3 habits you must abandon if you want more defined muscles

3. You are in a bad mood

Did you know that, to function properly, your brain uses 20% of the calories consumed during the day? Hence the importance of eating properly, after all, among the many essential functions of the box, one of them is to control what happens to our muscles (from contractions to increasing mass).

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But what is the relationship of Bad mood With all that? When you deprive yourself of fuel throughout the day, the brain is the first to suffer, causing irritation and mental confusion. That is, mood swings are a sign that the gray matter is not getting enough energy to perform its functions, including those related to the maintenance of lean mass.