There is a little bit of a misconception when it comes to the HCG Diet and what happens to muscle mass. We know that we lose fat at an astounding rate. So what happens, do we lose muscle as we lose fat?

The answer is yes and no. Let me explain, and there are two parts to this.

The First Part:

The first thing to understand is why our body has built up muscle if the person is very overweight. The body grows and adapts to suit its needs. If a person is holding an extra 50kg of fat, then the body has to naturally grow its muscles in order to carry this around every day. This is done gradually as the weight is put on. This is why obese people can have almost superhuman strength despite being not fit or have done any weight training at all. Think about if you had to carry a 50Kg sack of wet sand on your back all day every day. Eventually, it would get easier, and your back and leg muscles would grow to cope with the weight.

As this person starts to lose weight there becomes less of a need to have the required strength in their muscles, and the muscle will start to reduce. Because of the excess fat, it is very hard to see any muscle loss and can only be noticed using LBM (Lean Body Mass) and body fat percentage tests.

The Second Part

If a Person is not greatly overweight, let’s say 12 Kgs, and they are concerned that the muscle that they have built up by going to the gym will be “burnt away” by doing the HCG diet. And this is a very common scenario. What happens to this muscle?

Some of the muscles gains may go away over the period of Phase two of the HCG diet. But, this is no different than not going to the gym for 26 days or 40 days or whatever it may be.

When somebody is doing the HCG diet, it is not recommended to do any heavy exercise. If they do, it can stall the weight loss.

The Weightloss process itself will not “burn away muscle”. Muscle and fat have two completely different roles in the body. Muscle is the strength; it is built up of fibres that grow, tear and rebuild themselves as needed. Fat is stored by the body for fuel, and it is this fuel that burnt up when we lose weight. We are forcing the body to use it up instead of hanging on to it for a raining day.

So what’s the best advice if you have been to the gym and you don’t want to lose any gains that you have made, but… you want to shift that stubborn bit of fat around the belly.

This is the best way to do it and this the advice I always give.
Ask yourself; what is your priority right now?

If you have tried to lose that bit of weight for six months and it’s just not happening. Then stop the weight training for 26-40 days and do the HCG Diet. Yes, you may lose a small amount of strength, but lucky for us and millions of years of evolution we have muscle memory which makes it extremely easy to catch up to where we left off. Two weeks back at the gym and you will set.

So when you compare four weeks of the HCG diet plus two weeks of catch up training, it is a lot better than weight loss struggles for six months or so. And Maintaining weight loss is a lot easier than doing weight loss.

You can do the HCG diet while training, but you have to make some adjustments. Check out this article here for more info.

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