This One Mistake Is The Biggest Reason People Fail To Get Lean.

Most people want to change the way they workout when they want to get leaner. They think they should do more reps and less weight with the idea that it will tone their muscles. Along with that, they want to cut their calories. If you do both of those, you will lose your gains. You will become skinny and weak. Here is what you should do instead.

Instead of switching the way you workout, keep doing the same style of training. Ideally, you want to be training to build muscle and become stronger, and you should definitely do the same style of training when cutting. This is because your body needs a reason to keep the muscle you have, let alone grow in the first place. If you were to switch to a low calorie diet and use less weight in the gym, your body won’t see a reason to keep the muscle you have. In fact, it will start eating at your muscle for energy because it doesn’t need it anymore.

You will need to be in a calorie deficit to lose fat though. This doesn’t just mean to eat less. You can be in a deficit by cardio, eating a little less, or even raising your basal metabolic rate. Basal metabolic rate (BMR) is essentially the amount of calories you burn while at rest. Increasing your muscle mass will increase your BMR. Keep your training the same level of intensity, but make sure you are in a deficit. Essentially, you want to be burning more calories in a day than you consume. Calories are energy for your body, so if you don’t consume the energy it needs, it will use your fat as energy. Over time, this will result in you losing fat because your body uses the stored fat as the energy it needs.

What you should take from this is that just because you are cutting doesn’t mean you should be doing workouts for “cutting.” You don’t need to do light weights and high reps to get lean. You should keep your training the same in terms of the goal being to build muscle and become stronger. You will lose your fat by training the same but in a caloric deficit. You will lose fat AND muscle by training with high reps and lower weight in a caloric deficit. (which is what you don’t want to do)