How to Avoid Becoming a Fat Thin Person

Whether your goal is to lose weight or just "tone up," your objective should be the same: to lose fat without sacrificing muscle. Otherwise, you’ll just end up as a fat thin person. In past issues of ETR, we’ve told you exactly how to do this: Base all your meals around a healthy source of protein and add resistance exercise to your workout routine. Recent research published in the Journal of Nutrition confirms this approach.

Researchers at the University of Illinois divided 48 obese women into two groups. One group was put on a higher-protein diet, while the other group consumed more carbohydrates. (Both diets contained the same number of calories.) All of the women walked several times a week, but the "high-protein" group added two sessions of resistance exercise. When the study concluded, the high-protein group had lost an average of 22 pounds - almost all of it from fat. The women on the high-carbohydrate diet lost only 15 pounds, and more than two pounds of that was muscle. In other words, 15% of their weight losswas from muscle!

Dr. Donald Layman, the author of the study, summed it up this way:

"Both diets work because, when you restrict calories, you lose weight. But the people on the higher-protein diet lost more weight. There’s an additive, interactive effect when a protein-rich diet is combined with exercise. The two work together to correct body composition; dieters lose more weight, and they lose fat, not muscle."

To maximize your fat loss while maintaining or building muscle, cut back on carbs, base all your meals around a healthy source of protein, and combine interval training with