Page 68 - Eat Stop Eat by Brad Pilon PDF Program

Fasting and your Muscle Mass

The other great myth about dieting and fasting is that you will lose your

muscle mass while you diet. Based on the available research, this is completely false.

Preserving muscle mass seems to be a very important thing in the diet industry right
now and for good reason. Muscle makes up a large proportion of your lean body
weight, and for this reason muscle is a large contributor to the amount of calories you
burn in a day.

While the idea that muscle burns massive amount of calories is a bit of stretch (every
pound of muscle on your body only burns about 5 calories per day, not 50 like
commonly stated), the fact that you can build or lose muscle makes the metabolic

contribution of muscle very important. Not only that, you cannot deny the effect that
muscle has on your body image. Being lean AND having muscle definition typically
makes people feel good about themselves.

Luckily, not only does reducing your caloric intake not cause your metabolism to slow
down, it also does not result in a loss of your hard-earned muscle.

There is one imperative rule that goes along with this statement: You have to be
involved in some sort of resistance exercise, such as lifting weights. Now, to be
clear, you do not have to weight training at the exact same time you are fasting, but

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