Because I am a man that lived being aware of muscular importance, and because my job needs me in top shape, always active and strong, I can not risk losing muscles when I diet, but at this point in my life a diet must be undertaken again. I am slightly overweighed, mainly because I mostly disregarded any rule of healthy eating lately. Unfortunately, this is not the first time I’ve been in this situation and I now have the necessary experience to try preventing muscle loss while dieting.

Alimentation is of course essential. Muscles and diet do not go well together, especially if you are quite sedentary and you’ve just choose a seriously restrictive diet. I choose my diets wisely, I can not risk the loss of muscular tissues while dieting on a solely cabbage soup diet or by trying to eat just fruits and vegetable without any added proteins. I know now that muscles are actually developed by protein usage and if the body lack proteins, then preventing muscle loss while dieting is not possible because your metabolism will start consuming muscular protein to keep the body from starving. In fact, I’ve noticed that whenever I’m on a restrictive diet I lose weight slowly at first, but loose strength rapidly. Well, this is nothing more than the muscular loss that occurs, until the valid proteins from muscles are consumed. Only then the body turns to burning fats.

But preventing muscle loss while dieting is possible. Just because muscles are the ones that get consumed first when you are on a diet it doesn’t mean that I allow them to get consumed. You see, the trick is to constantly solicit them while on a diet, and what better way to solicit muscles than to work them? A constant gym schedule is crucial for me, as a man that wants to remain strong but also wants to eat healthy at least once in a while and occasionally needs a quick or not so quick diet that will decrease the weight to normal levels. I aim to burn fat, without destroying muscles, and I’m pretty sure I have managed to do just that by boosting the exercise schedule whenever I diet.

It’s natural to feel hungrier when you exercise. In fact, I can not keep normal weight loss diets because I do exercise. It’s kind of funny, because I need to eat more than recommended if I want to lose weight efficiently and without loosing muscles. But you see, I burn plenty calories while at the gym, way more than in a usual day, and I believe that the weight shown by my weight scale is to my main focus. I aim to have zero fats and 100% muscles, and that is not necessarily a loss in weight. Of course, it’s absolutely impossible to replace all fats with muscles, and there are persons that don’t even want that. I myself don’t want to look like a body builder…that’s their job. I just want an efficient and fit body, that can remain young for as long as possible, and replacing the muscles or growing new muscular tissue can re-new the skin and inner organs in many ways.

One day, I met an interesting man. He was well in his 50s, and still, he was jogging early morning and from behind, he looked like a teenager. Very athletic and very energetic. I didn’t talk to him; I just passed him and then realized just how old he was. Since them, he remained a living proof that sports are possible at any age and for everyone. It also occurred to me that he is one of the “healthy living” people, eating lots of fruit shakes and raw vegetables, on a constant diet if you wish. Still, he had nice muscles, so sports were the thing that helped him preventing muscle loss. Of course, everything is just my imagination, even the image of him having women-like snacks like salads and then doing some more gym exercises. But, some truth must be in this, because it’s clear that sports and healthy eating keep us younger for longer.

Maybe it would be easier for men to stay connected to weigh loss programs if the society would care for they way they look as much as it cares when it comes to women. I look at my work colleagues, neither of them seems to care what’s happening to their weight, and when I ask them if their wives are happy with them, they simply respond :”Of course she is, I work, I’m a decent man, what more could she want?”. I wonder why women never seem to care about the aesthetic aspect of their partners. Maybe if they did, men would also diet for a living and learn how to diet and still keep great muscles.

Preventing muscle loss while dieting is in my option only a matter of common sense. I mean it’s more than striking that eating something scarce in calories will eventually kill your muscles. And it’s equality stinking that a sedentary schedule will only cause weight gain and muscle loss. Preventing muscle loss while dieting and in general can only be done by building muscles.

Please post your thoughts in a comment below.

Fortunately, I have quit smoking many years ago, and it was the best thing I’ve ever done. However, the weight gain when you quit smoking is not a myth, it is real, and it has happened to me in a way that I never imagined possible. You see, I used to be a rather skinny man while I was smoking (and before staring) and I was one of those constantly laughing at my friends that were struggling with diets and were barely eating anything just to lose a couple of pounds more. I simply could not understand the difficulties they had to go thorough, and because I was a person than could usually eat everything he wanted and not gain a pound, I simply thought they were imagining things, and that things can not go that bad… Until they did… The day I decided to quit smoking was a glorious day, but with all the stress and problems that were on my head at that point I never thought, not only for a moment, about the fact that I will be experiencing weight problems if I am not careful.

To be frank, even if someone would’ve told me that I couldn’t have cared less, because I was overwhelmed by the idea of not touching cigarettes again. But my struggle with nicotine addition is a completely different story…

Weight gain when you quit smoking is going to happen no matter what you do mostly because most smokers are usually malnourished already. Even if this is not visible in the pounds they weight, they surely lack plenty vitamins and minerals and the protein metabolism in they bodies in all messed up. Also, smokers tend to forget about sports, because if they smoke long enough they will feel unable to do some basic exercises. If I tried to run for only a couple of feet, I would feel a burning pain in my chest and the shorted breath stopped me every time. Also, when I was smoking I was consuming a lot less water than normal. Mainly because with every cigarette I lighted I needed something to go along with it and that was usually a cup of coffee. Drinking all that coffee disallowed by body to feel thirsty…or hungry. After quitting, all the thirst and hunger sensation were back and stronger than ever. I was like being born again, and I was happy to see the food tasting better, but never thought about weight gain when you quit smoking issues. Not at that point.

And the months passed, and everyone was congratulating me and the pounds continued to add until it was obvious that I was beginning to fell tired and unwell again. This time it wasn’t the nicotine and coffee that made me feel like that, this time was all that extra fat that was a new addition to by body. Maybe if you are a bit overweighed by nature you feel differently when you gain a bit of weight, but for me this was like a true torture: each pound seemed to weight as much as ten. I was really tired and I went to see my doctor. All my eating, all the fats and sweets caused me to almost double my weight is less than a year. That was huge and the doctor said that I was almost obese. Me, obese!

At this point I had to turn to those friends I used to laugh at back when I had no weight problems. Now it was their turn to laugh, but they didn’t. Instead they helped me lose the weight I’ve gained. You see, having to deal with weight problems their entire lives changed the way they treat others with the same issues, because they understand. I couldn’t understand before, so I was mean to them. We decided that I needed a diet to return me to normal weight. It took me almost another year to do this, and the weight gain when you quit smoking effects are still visible sometimes, because I didn’t know how to stop in time. The frequent eating I did affected my metabolism in so many ways that it is very hard to speed it up efficiently. Anyway, with lost of efforts, I managed to regain a rather normal weight, but I’m on a regular diet plan. Not really a diet but more like a healthy eating plan: I eat cereals, raw foods and foods that are not very processed and fish or chicken, and also seeds. But the main thing that turned my life around was exercising. Without my daily running hour I would still be overweighed.

If I were to quit smoking again now, with all my knowledge against weight gain when you quit smoking I would do everything quite differently. Maybe a minimal weight gain would still occur, but I wouldn’t double my weight for sure. When you quit smoking you can go for a simple detox diet. That should keep you off eating unhealthy stuff because you are stress at least for one or two weeks. The best choice is a meat free diet or a raw food diet. Then, I would try do exercise the very first day I quit. Since the nicotine is gone, why worry I will get tired? I might be hard at first but things will only get better in time. In a word, I would do everything in my power not to let smoking further ruin my life even after I’ve decided to quit.