Hey there #fitfam, welcome back and to our new visitors, thank you for coming! Today we’re going to discuss how to trim fat while maintaining muscle tone. In general, the common perception of fat loss is based on a focus on heavy cardio and reducing the amount of fat on your body overall. This is true for the most part because you can’t target fat with exercise, but you can target muscle development. Let’s consider the most problematic area in men and women, the abdomen…most of us struggle in getting the midsection we want.

If we can reflect on the shelter-in-place and isolation times of 2020, many of us packed on a bit extra and for the most part, it was in the belly area. But the truth is, there was fat depositing itself in other areas such as the arms, chest/breast, thighs and the rear. My path to shedding the fat and not losing muscle was to strategically plan out my attack. I incorporated a reasonable amount of heavy, moderate, and light lifting days with cardio on the other four days with drills such as treadmill circuits, HIIT sessions, ab days, bike riding, and general uptempo cardio to maintain a fat burning cycle while developing lean muscle. This approach can be effective for women by simply rotating between 2 light lifting days and one moderate day. This rotation mixed with cardio allows your metabolism to peak and function at a high level while also allowing your body to maintain muscle tone through consistent exercise. 

The primary focus here is not discard weight lifting to shed pounds and fat. In fact, I’d recommend that you avoid scale watching for the first 30-45 days of the process as the scan will lie to you about your progress. We all know that muscle will be heavy on the scale so though your fat is reducing, your muscle that is left behind is heavier. At the end of the day, be patient with the process!