Food Smarts

When you want to achieve it all — fat loss, muscle maintenance and improved metabolic rate — it’s a matter of following sage nutrition tips. After all, anyone can lose weight by drastically cutting calories. But that doesn’t mean it’s the most effective strategy for losing body fat. In fact, it’s not. That’s especially true over the long run. Severe calorie restriction leads to loss of muscle tissue and water weight, ultimately reducing your metabolic rate. This means it’s then easier to add body fat when you return to your normal eating patterns.

These three crucial tips are all you need to know to get the most from your diet: body-fat loss, muscle maintenance and metabolic support.

1. Only cut calories moderately.

You should only reduce your calorie intake about 20 percent below your baseline for bodyweight maintenance. That means an active woman who consumes 2,000 calories a day should consume no fewer than 1,600 calories per day. The good news is that you’ll keep muscle, lose body fat and you won’t starve yourself, either.

2. Eat multiple small meals per day.

Taking in six meals a day will help you in multiple ways. First, it will keep a steady stream of nutrients in your body. Second, it will help keep you from feeling hungry. Third, it will rev up your metabolic rate. And there’s a fourth: It will also help you burn more calories because digesting food takes calories. The more often you eat, the more you burn. That explains why the flip side, eating only one meal a day, leads to body-fat storage.

3. Consume more fats and protein.

As well as including complex carbs in your diet, you need to include fats and protein. Fats provide satiety, and protein gives you amino acids that help prevent muscle-tissue breakdown. In addition, consuming protein also boosts metabolic rate, increasing your body’s ability to burn body fat.