Maintain Muscle Mass
Lean muscle within the human body helps to more efficiently burn calories, converting fats and foods to energy and helps to speed the resting metabolic rate. Everyone generally knows what actions are necessary to get muscle but many times after muscle mass is acquired, the question becomes maintain muscle mass. Maintaining muscle mass requires a somewhat acrobatic balance between diet and exercise in order to keep what you already have.
Instructions
1. Shock your muscles during your workout. After you have muscle mass, maintaining it often means you have to avoid hitting a plateau in your current workouts by doing them in a different way or by doing separate exercises that work the same muscles. Performing negative repetitions, doing resistance training, and circuit training can help shock your muscles which will constantly keep them in a progressive or static state instead of regressive.
2. Stabilize your caloric intake. When you are trying to maintain muscle mass, it is not only good to eat the same amount of calories a day, but also to eat on a consistent basis. It is recommended to eat every 2 to 3 hours when awake or 5 to 6 miniature meals a day. What this does is prevent your body from going into a starvation state where it breaks down the most elite proteins (your muscles) for energy and stores more food that is coming in on an inconsistent basis because it does not know when its next meal is coming.
3. Ingest the perfect proteins. Protein is an important building and maintenance block when it comes to the upkeep of your muscles. Nature has provided protein in many of the things we consume including eggs, legumes, beans, sprouts, nuts and even many of the dairy products we enjoy.
4. Heat your home. A study by University of Florida and Juntendo University in Japan showed that even while muscles are immobilized, atrophy can be prevented through heat. Heating your muscles helps to stimulate the circulation to that part of the body, so instead of blasting the air conditioner in the summer, consider turning on a fan to keep the air warmer.
5. Continue to weight train. If you are on a weightlifting regimen already, then it is best to continue it. In order to stimulate your muscles, they require some sort of physical resistance to maintain their current mass. Challenging your muscles through maxing out at your lifting ability every other workout is a good way to keep muscle mass.
Tags: your muscles, muscle mass, maintain muscle mass, Maintain Muscle Mass, muscle mass