
We know that a healthy weight that is maintained through your adult years is powerful in fighting the aging process and diseases that are associated. Still, North America has seen an epidemic of overweight, obesity, and diabetes. People have been on diet after diet and most have been unable to achieve their desired goal and maintain it. Diets don’t work because since people don’t stick with them, they can cause our bodies to store more fat overall. But what if there was a way to focus on keeping muscle, which burns more fat, while we lose weight?
What is the connection between an amino acid called leucine and burning fat more efficiently and consistently? First, let’s look more at the mindset because it is powerful in determining our successes in all areas of life, including weight loss. There is an abundance of discouragement and frustration with failed diets that have defeated folks across age groups. People are afraid to go on diets because when they go off they always gain back the weight and sometimes even more.
Research has found an important clue in the search for why many diets are not successful. When someone starts a diet that reduces calories, his or her body thinks it is going into a time of famine. The body is built for survival so it turns on the famine response, which is to conserve calories. The body conserves calories by storing fat to use in the future, and begins to use protein and body muscle to burn for daily energy. This actually causes a loss of muscle in the body.
This is not to be confused with a healthy calorie restriction diet where less calories are consumed on a long-term basis and people who maintain this lifestyle are active and retain muscle. Scientists believe this is the best way we know to live longer and healthier, with a much higher chance of not developing any diseases of aging. The problem is that the majority of people can not cut their calories 30 or 35% and maintain that permanently because they are too hungry on such a regimen.
Since most people do not stick to the current diet they may be on, they go back to their normal level of calories consumed. The problem is that they have lost muscle, and the ability to burn calories more efficiently, and so when they start eating more again, the extra calories turn to fat. The body now has even more fat than before since that muscle was lost.
People who have gone on repeated diets are in a cycle of losing muscle and gaining and re-gaining fat. Here is why they struggle. A pound of fat burns only 2 calories per day. So if you are 20 lbs (of fat) overweight, and you multiply 2 by 20, you are only burning 40 calories per day. If that extra weight were muscle, it would burn 50 calories per pound and result in 1000 calories.
A person damages their metabolism with this kind of yo-yo dieting, making it almost impossible to lose weight. The reason why weight loss and weight management programs with amino acids called leucine are different is because leucine helps the body build and repair muscle tissue. The body keeps the important muscle (that burns fat) as inches and pounds are shed.
Those who use a leucine powered program can actually retain 100% of muscle mass, a healthier option. This means the weight that can be lost is all fat. Muscle retention improves the body’s ability to burn fat, and improves metabolic rate. Inches and pounds can be lost instead of muscle.
Some athletes take leucine because it initiates protein synthesis in the muscles for muscle building. In weight loss, this muscle building counteracts muscle breakdown when eating fewer calories. The power behind this leucine helps keep more muscle and lose weight from fat. Muscle takes up less space than fat, so the inches come off successfully.
The discovery of leucine to burn fat and keep muscle was the result of years of scientific research and testing. Diets should also be about building good health and product safety although history has proved that many are not. A diet driven by leucine is healthy for our bodies plus it is safe for us. In an age when our daily food intake is not optimal and we lack nutrients essential for good health, it is an added benefit to use leucine to build good health in a weight loss or management program.
For more science and weight loss information, see more about leucine to burn fat and keep muscle.




