Weight loss and muscle building are two widely divergent fitness goals involving different exercise and diet requirements as well as widely different biochemical processes. A large number of people wonder whether it is really possible to lose unwanted body fat and build rock-hard muscles at the same time.

Burning of fat and building of muscles involve two different metabolic functions with absolutely contrasting requirements. While muscle building requires you to consume more dietary calories than what you can burn in a day, weight loss requires fewer calories intake than what gets exhausted each day.

There exists a very fine link between losing weight and gaining muscles. In order to develop big powerful muscles, you will need to undertake strength training exercises to improve your muscular strength and endurance. As a result of your training, your muscles start to get stronger and bigger. As your muscles continue to grow strong and big, they would require more nutrients and rest. Muscles are metabolically very active and as you continue to develop more muscle tissues your body’s metabolic rate increases and the fat burning process becomes more efficient. As a result, you tend to lose unwanted fat from your body and gain lean muscle mass.

While you are trying to lose the excess body fat, you must be careful about not losing your lean body mass. You need to preserve your muscle mass and your energy levels by taking in adequate amounts of protein and carbohydrate drinks to compensate for the proteins and carbohydrates lost during or immediately after a workout while you are on a low calorie diet.

For building muscles, you need to maintain your body in a calorie surplus state by consuming more number of calories than your body is able to burn every day. In addition to this, you must also undertake the correct resistance exercises and strength training in order to stimulate the numerous cells involved in the development of muscle tissues.

Each time you workout, you must remember to go for progressive resistance, meaning that you gradually scale-up the weights used or increase the number of repetitions so that your muscles are able to bear the increasing amount of weights that are being thrust upon them.

Do not over-train your muscles because this can have counter effects on your muscle building program. Ideally, you need to workout at least three times a week and alternate it with two days of rest period to allow repair and growth of damaged muscles.

However, if muscle building is not your only priority, and you want to achieve both weight loss and muscle building goals, then you must adopt a different strategy. You must try to burn the excess body fat by taking a low fat diet and maintain the lean body mass by consuming a high protein diet (at least 2 gm/kg of body weight is recommended). You can even adjust the amount of protein intake depending on the intensity of your workout.