So you want to lose weight while maintaining muscle? What do I mean by that? Well there is a valid belief that when you lose weight you may lose strength. What if you do not want to lose strength but would love to drop a few kilos. As a woman over 30 who’s been paddling in dragon boating for five years, you’ve built upper body strength, core stability, and powerful legs. Your lats and traps are well-developed from paddling, and your hips and quads are strong. However, due to a “comfortable lifestyle”, hormonal changes and/or age-related muscle loss, you have a few kilos that need to go. You also want to maintain said muscles as much as you can.

This post is tailored for women with a plan that accounts for women’s specific needs.

The Science of Fat Loss and Muscle Preservation for Women

To lose fat while preserving muscle, women need a moderate caloric deficit (10–15% below maintenance), high protein intake, and resistance training.

• Research shows 1.6–2.2 g of protein per kg of body weight daily preserves lean mass during a deficit (Longland et al., 2016).
• Resistance training, including dragon boating, stimulates muscle protein synthesis to prevent catabolism which is when your body breaks down molecules, like food or muscle tissue, to release energy. It’s like tearing down a building to get raw materials and power. This happens during exercise, fasting, or stress to fuel your body’s needs. (Morton et al., 2018).
• High-intensity interval training (HIIT) boosts fat oxidation without muscle loss (Keating et al., 2017).

For women, hormonal changes like declining estrogen (especially in perimenopause- which is the time before menopause when a woman’s body starts changing hormones) can increase visceral fat and reduce muscle mass, requiring earlier and consistent strength training (Greendale et al., 2019).

The Plan in a Nutshell

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