7 Tips To Burn Fat & Build Muscle At The Same Time
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Cori Lefkowith, of “Redefining Strength” and “Strong At Any Age” fame, has her formula to share:
Know your priorities
We’ll not keep the 7 tips a mystery; they are:
- Determine your primary goal: decide whether your main focus is losing fat while building muscle or building muscle while trimming up. This choice will influence your calorie intake, macros, and cardio approach.
- Start tracking: spend 7–14 days logging your current food intake, including calories, protein, carbs, and fats, without taking any particular action to change them yet. Understanding your baseline will help tailor your diet and exercise plan.
- Prioritize strength training: focus on strength work over cardio to build muscle. Avoid turning strength sessions into cardio by rushing between sets—allow adequate rest for muscle progression.
- Center your meals on protein: adjust your protein intake based on your primary goal. For fat loss while gaining muscle, aim for 40-45% of calories from protein. For building muscle while losing fat, aim for 30-40% protein, with attention to maintaining sufficient carbs.
- Set your calories: after adjusting protein, fine-tune your calorie intake. However, make only small changes (e.g. 100 calories up or down) and reassess every 2–3 weeks to avoid extreme deficits or surpluses.
- Adjust your cardio: prioritize strength training but use walking as low-impact cardio. Avoid excessive cardio that may hinder muscle gains, and use strategic HIIT sessions if needed.
- Ditch the scale: avoid using the scale as your sole measure of progress. Instead, rely on measurements, progress photos, and how your clothes fit to track body recomposition effectively.
For more on all of these, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
Can You Gain Muscle & Lose Fat At The Same Time? ← we got this question in our Q&A day not long back, and here was our answer. We went for a less numbers-based approach, and a more principles-based approach. Both ways work, so by all means pick whichever method you personally find better suits how you like to do things!
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Long COVID is real—here’s how patients can get treatment and support
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What you need to know
- There is still no single, FDA-approved treatment for long COVID, but doctors can help patients manage individual symptoms.
- Long COVID patients may be eligible for government benefits that can ease financial burdens.
- Getting reinfected with COVID-19 can worsen existing long COVID symptoms, but patients can take steps to stay protected.
On March 15—Long COVID Awareness Day—patients shared their stories and demanded more funding for long COVID research. Nearly one in five U.S. adults who contract COVID-19 suffer from long COVID, and up to 5.8 million children have the disease.
Anyone who contracts COVID-19 is at risk of developing long-term illness. Long COVID has been deemed by some a “mass-disabling event,” as its symptoms can significantly disrupt patients’ lives.
Fortunately, there’s hope. New treatment options are in development, and there are resources available that may ease the physical, mental, and financial burdens that long COVID patients face.
Read on to learn more about resources for long COVID patients and how you can support the long COVID patients in your life.
What is long COVID, and who is at risk?
Long COVID is a cluster of symptoms that can occur after a COVID-19 infection and last for weeks, months, or years, potentially affecting almost every organ. Symptoms range from mild to debilitating and may include fatigue, chest pain, brain fog, dizziness, abdominal pain, joint pain, and changes in taste or smell.
Anyone who gets infected with COVID-19 is at risk of developing long COVID, but some groups are at greater risk, including unvaccinated people, women, people over 40, and people who face health inequities.
What types of support are available for long COVID patients?
Currently, there is still no single, FDA-approved treatment for long COVID, but doctors can help patients manage individual symptoms. Some options for long COVID treatment include therapies to improve lung function and retrain your sense of smell, as well as medications for pain and blood pressure regulation. Staying up to date on COVID-19 vaccines may also improve symptoms and reduce inflammation.
Long COVID patients are eligible for disability benefits under the Americans with Disabilities Act. The Pandemic Legal Assistance Network provides pro bono support for long COVID patients applying for these benefits.
Long COVID patients may also be eligible for other forms of government assistance, such as Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Medicaid, and rental and utility assistance programs.
How can friends and family of long COVID patients provide support?
Getting reinfected with COVID-19 can worsen existing long COVID symptoms. Wearing a high-quality, well-fitting mask will reduce your risk of contracting COVID-19 and spreading it to long COVID patients and others. At indoor gatherings, improving ventilation by opening doors and windows, using high-efficiency particulate air (HEPA) filters, and building your own Corsi-Rosenthal box can also reduce the spread of the COVID-19 virus.
Long COVID patients may also benefit from emotional and financial support as they manage symptoms, navigate barriers to treatment, and go through the months-long process of applying for and receiving disability benefits.
For more information, talk to your health care provider.
This article first appeared on Public Good News and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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The Power of Fun – by Catherine Price
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It’s said that nobody’s dying regret is to wish they’d spent more time at the office, yet many of don’t make enough time for fun.
This book has been published with two different subtitles:
- Why fun is the key to a happy and healthy life
- How to feel alive again
One offers a sensible reason to read this book; the other offers a deeply emotional reason. Both are entirely valid.
Catherine Price sets out in this work to identify what fun actually is (she puts it at the intersection of playfulness, connection and flow) and how to have more of it (she gives a five-step method to build and integrate it into life).
In the category of criticism, this 334-page book is (in this reviewer’s opinion) a little padded and could have been an article instead. But the advice contained within it is sound, and the impact it can have might be profound.
Bottom line: if you find you’ve settled into a routine that’s perhaps comfortable, but not actually that much fun, this book will help you to liven things up.
Click here to check out The Power Of Fun, and feel more alive!
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Veg in One Bed New Edition – by Huw Richards
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We all know that growing our own veg is ultimately not only healthier on the plate, but also a very healthy activity. Cheaper too. So why don’t more of us do it?
For many of us, it’s a matter of not having the skills or knowledge to do so. This book bridges that knowledge-gap.
Richards gives, as promised, a month-by-month well-illustrated guide to growing a wide variety of vegetables. He does, by the way, assume that we are in a temperate climate in the Northern Hemisphere. So if you’re not, you may need to make some adjustments.
The book doesn’t assume prior knowledge, and does give the reader everything we need from an initial basic shopping list onwards.
A particular strength of this book is that it’s about growing veg in a single raised bed—this ensures keeping everything very manageable.
Bottom line: if you have ever thought it would be good to grow your own veg, but didn’t know where to start and want something practical for a beginner, this is an excellent guide that will get you going!
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The Path to Longevity – by Dr. Luigi Fontana
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We’ve reviewed other “expand your healthspan” books, and while they’re good (or else we wouldn’t include them), this is top-tier, up there with Dr. Greger’s books while being more accessible (more on this later).
This book is far more informational than opinionated, and while some reviewers have described the book as motivating them, that’s not at all the tone, and it’s clear that (beyond hoping for the reader to have to information to promote a long healthy life), the author has no particular agenda to push.
One example: while he gives a whole-foods, plant-based diet a “A+” rating, he puts the (often meat/fish-heavy) paleo diet at a close “A-“, depending on the animal products chosen (which can swing it a lot, and he discusses this in some detail).
In the category of criticism… This reviewer has none. Sometimes it seemed something was going unaddressed, but it would be addressed later.
Stylistically, the text is easy-reading and/but has a lot of references to hard science, complete with charts, diagrams, and so forth. The impression that this reviewer got is that Dr. Fontana took pains to convey as much science as possible, with (unlike Dr. Greger) as little jargon as possible. And that goes a long way.
Bottom line: if you’re looking for a “healthy aging” book that has a lot more science than “copy the Blue Zone supercentenarians and hope” without being so scientifically dense as “How Not To Die” or “How Not To Age“, then this is the book for you.
Click here to check out The Path to Longevity, and optimize the path you take!
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5 Steps To Quit Sugar Easily
10almonds is reader-supported. We may, at no cost to you, receive a portion of sales if you purchase a product through a link in this article.
Sugar is one of the least healthy things that most people consume, yet because it’s so prevalent, it can also be tricky to avoid at first, and the cravings can also be a challenge. So, how to quit it?
Step by step
Dr. Mike Hansen recommends the following steps:
- Be aware: a lot of sugar consumption is without realizing it or thinking about it, because of how common it is for there to be added sugar in things we might purchase ready-made, even supposedly healthy things like yogurts, or easy-to-disregard things like condiments.
- Recognize sugar addiction: a controversial topic, but Dr. Hansen comes down squarely on the side of “yes, it’s an addiction”. He wants us to understand more about the mechanics of how this happens, and what it does to us.
- Reduce gradually: instead of going “cold turkey”, he recommends we avoid withdrawal symptoms by first cutting back on liquid sugars like sodas, juices, and syrups, before eliminating solid sugar-heavy things like candy, sugar cookies, etc, and finally the more insidious “why did they put sugar in this?” added-sugar products.
- Find healthy alternatives: simple like-for-like substitutions; whole fruits instead of juices/smoothies, for example. 10almonds tip: stuffing dates with an almond each makes it very much like eating chocolate, experientially!
- Manage cravings: Dr. Hansen recommends distraction, and focusing on upping other healthy habits such as hydration, exercise, and getting more vegetables.
For more on each of these, enjoy:
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Want to learn more?
You might also like to read:
- Which Sugars Are Healthier, And Which Are Just The Same?
- Mythbusting The Not-So-Sweet Science Of Sugar Addiction
Take care!
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The Neuroscience of You – by Dr. Chantel Prat
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The insides of people are rarely so standardized as one finds in a medical textbook, and that’s just as true of the brain as it is of any other organ—and often more so.
Our brains all look quite different from each other’s. Of course there are similarities; a wobbly mass of white and grey matter with tiny blood vessels running through. The constituent parts are (usually!) all present and correct. But… what is “correct”?
Dr. Chantel Prat takes us on a tour of the anatomical features that we may have grown or shrunken over the course of our life, according to how we’ve used them, or not. She also looks at what’s going on when it comes to the smaller scale—from the neuronal to the neurochemical.
We learn the truth (and myth) when it comes to left- and right-brainedness, and we learn how whether we saw that dress as black and blue or white and gold, depends on our circadian rhythm (and thus whether we have wired ourselves for perceiving colors more or less often under daylight or artificial light). And lots more.
The style throughout is very accessible, for a book that goes beyond most “how the brain works” books.
Bottom line: if you’re interested in the workings of your brain (as opposed to: a standardized Platonic ideal of what a brain might be), then this book will set you on the right track.
Click here to check out The Neuroscience of You, and learn more about what makes you you!
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