How To Keep More Muscle While Dieting

By Joshua D. Glawson

We understand how difficult making life changes can be, especially with dietary changes. When using meal prepping for your temporary or permanent diet, weight loss is easily accomplished. With dieting comes losing fat and water weight, which also means a loss of muscle. You’d certainly feel and look better if you were able to keep more of your muscle as you lose the unwanted weight.

In this post, we’ll explain why keeping muscle mass is important, explain how to possibly keep more of it with three key amino acids, and provide 3 suggestions if you’re new to dieting.

What is Muscle Decay, and Why Does it Matter?

Muscle decay, also known as muscle atrophy, muscle deterioration, muscular wasting, or myopenia, is the decrease in size and loss of muscle tissue. Many things can cause muscle decay, including but not limited to, dieting, aging, inactivity, diseases like cancer or AIDS, illness, malnutrition, forms of arthritis, medications, etc. Muscle decay is typically a symptom of an underlying problem, but it could also be due to general inactivity.

Having a significant amount of muscle is good for a person’s overall health, e.g. bones, blood, brain, joints, spine, organs, less prone to injury, and it allows you to consume more calories without gaining fat as easily, enabling long-term maintenance.

When we lose weight from dieting or making a dietary life change, we tend to naturally lose water, fat, and muscle. Muscles require plenty of calories, water, amino acids, and protein, so when those are reduced so too are the muscles. One common difficulty with weight loss is trying not to lose muscle. By having more muscle mass we certainly look and feel better, and we burn fat at a faster rate than those with less muscle mass.

How to Possibly Reduce Muscle Loss While Dieting

According to extensive global research there may be a way to reduce muscle loss while dieting by consuming mixtures of the following, daily:

• β-Hydroxy-β-Methylbutyrate (HMB)
• L-Arginine
• L-Glutamine

 In most studies, medical staff provided the test-patients with 3 grams of HMB, 14 grams of L-arginine, and 14 grams of L-glutamine per day, along with a healthy diet.

Consuming this trio of amino acids, with a 3-day per week weight-training regimen, showed ‘significant’ results for the test subjects when compared to placebo groups.

In fact, this specific trinity of amino acids is so revered as potentially reducing muscle decay and other treatments that it is being encouraged by doctors for patients who suffer from muscle decay cause by cancer, HIV/AIDS, aging, and other ailments. It has also been demonstrated to possibly help with natural collagen production, healing wounds, immunity, stress, and various blood-related issues including assisting diabetics.

What is HMB?

As we get older and hit our 30s, 40s, 50s and beyond, it is important to stay active and mobile. The body doesn’t always make it easy to do this but luckily there are supplements out there that have been clinically studied to help support, build, and preserve lean muscle tissue.* One of those supplements is HMB.

HMB is a clinically researched, naturally occurring metabolite of the branched-chain amino acid leucine. HMB normally plays a role in the regulation of protein breakdown in the body, helping to preserve lean muscle tissue* HMB therefore can help maintain muscle strength and mass when combined with regular exercise and a healthy diet.* In addition, it can help to enhance recovery from intense exercise.*

What is Arginine?

Many active individuals choose to supplement with the amino acid L-Arginine and there is good reason for that. Arginine is classified as a “conditionally essential” amino acid. In certain stressful situations, such as illness or injury, the body requires higher levels of these amino acids from the diet. Since exercise is basically controlled injury of your muscle tissue, you can see how an arginine supplement can benefit your exercise routine.*

Arginine is a precursor to nitric oxide (NO), a molecule that helps to open up blood vessels, which increases the flow of blood to muscular tissues.* It also plays an essential role in the maintenance of proper nitrogen balance through its participation in the metabolism of ammonia and excretion of urea.* And we always use the natural “L” form amino acids, because we believe that natural is better.

NOW® Sports L-Arginine products are carefully screened for purity and potency and are manufactured with our industry-leading quality assurance procedures. And we always use the natural “L” form amino acids, because we believe that natural is better.

What is Glutamine?

Physical exertion sets off a cascade of stress responses in the body that, if left unaddressed, can make it harder for you to recover and achieve the gains you’re working towards. L-Glutamine not only can help to address the many different stressors that arise in physical exertion, but can also help in a variety of other ways.*

Glutamine is considered a “conditionally essential” amino acid, meaning that when your body is under an inordinate amount of stress, such as during strenuous exercise, it needs more glutamine than it can normally produce internally. Glutamine helps to maintain a positive nitrogen balance, referred to as an anabolic state, which is crucial for any active individual.* It also aids in the production of rapidly growing cells, such as immune system lymphocytes and intestinal cell enterocytes, which can help to off-set some of the stress from physical exertion.* Homeostasis is critical for overall fitness and glutamine helps to regulate the body’s acid-alkaline balance, also known as the body pH.*

NOW® Sports Glutamine supplements are carefully screened for purity and potency and are manufactured according to our industry-leading quality assurance standards. And we always use the natural “L” form amino acids, because we believe that natural is better.

3 Tips and Reminders for Dieting

First: If you’re new to dieting, or you’d like to see better results, give the amino acid combination an honest try. We cannot make any promises, but the research is there to support that a daily combination of HMB, L-Arginine, and L-Glutamine may help you achieve your noble goal of losing fat while keeping more muscle than dieting without them. Of course, you may wish to consult your doctor before starting any new diets or using supplements. Pro tip: mask the flavor or L-Arginine, as it tends to have an off-putting taste, while the other two have no taste when consumed with water.

Second: Try being active at least 3 days per week, and at least 30 minutes each session. Weight lifting has shown more promising long-term results for ridding the body of fat while building lean muscle mass.

Third: Watch what you eat. Whether you are going keto, low carb, vegetarian, macro/micro based diet, etc., be sure to watch what you are consuming as to not throw you off your goals or waste all of your efforts. Meal prepping is the number one way bodybuilders and fitness experts have been able to achieve their goals and maintain them. At Meal Prep on Fleek, we have recipes for most diet plans. 

If you are tired of losing muscle when you lose fat, give this healthy amino acid combination a try, along with your diet change and exercise routine. HMB, L-Arginine, and L-Glutamine are not cure-alls, but they certainly have been shown to help reduce muscle decay.

Be sure to check out our website for more diet and Meal Prepping tips and recipes. We have a community of people ready to help one another achieve and maintain their diet goals. Send us your before and after pictures if you tried this out, we may select your pictures and story to be shared among our followers on social media!  

* These statements have not been evaluated by the Food and Drug Administration. This product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent any disease.