Am I burning muscle?

O

Overkill

New member
Hi all, I am relatively new to working out with the intention of losing weight. Back when I was younger (22 now) I used to play sports, so working out was nothing more than training for a competition, with weight loss coming naturally.

Anyway, I have recently decided that I desperately need to get back into shape, so I am starting slow with a small HIIT routine on the treadmill. What I do is walk at 3.5 mph for 5 minutes, and then jog at 5.0 mph for 2 minutes, alternating for about 35 minutes.

I wear a heart rate monitor during this workout and have noticed that my heart rate remains at around 180 bpm throughout the workout, and the caloric counter reads that I burn around 600 calories during this workout.

This seems like alot to me, and I am worried that I might be burning what muscle I have instead of the fat. Am I correct in my assumption or do you think I can expect some fat loss?

Thanks
 
Yes, in order to maintain his new body weight he will have to eat more. Although if he stops working out, he'll lose the muscle over time anyway because that is just the way the body works.

It's not rocket science though. Eat clean, eat enough that you don't feel hungry all the time, but not enough to be stuffed after a meal either. If you start putting on body fat, eat less or do more cardio per week. If you have a hard time putting on muscle, make your meals a little bigger and work harder with the weights. Over time you'll find you body's "sweet spot."
 
It depends a lot on what you eat. If you don't starve yourself completely, and make sure that you're getting enough protein, you won't have to worry about burning muscle.
 
Keep your workouts reasonable, get enough rest, and get plenty of protein. As you gain muscle mass, your metabolism will require more calories, so you lose fat naturally. Let nature take it's course.
 
Muscle requires food/calories to repair itself and to simply exist. Using the muscle burns even more calories. Our brains burn about a 1/3rd of our total daily calories.. so it isn't just 'muscle'. But gaining muscle is a good way to increase our metabolism and thus lose fat, and keep it off.
 
There is nothing such as muscles burn! What you are doing is just good! If u want to build some more muscles! Then do one day cardio one day strength training
 
If you're on a caloric deficit but want to limit your muscle loss, weight train to at least maintain your strength.
 
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