How To Lower Body Fat Percentage Without Losing Any Fat!

I’m going to tell you how to lower your body fat percentage making you leaner without needing to lose an ounce of fat. You read that right – it’s not a typo. It might sound impossible the first time it runs through your mind, but once it’s been explained it’ll all seem perfectly logical. This method works especially well for men but also women and particularly well for people who aren’t too fat to start and whose muscles are pretty undertrained. Without further ado, let’s unravel the mystery of this article title…

Your body fat ‘percentage’ means the percentage of your overall weight made up of body fat. If you’re having trouble losing fat, you can still decrease your body fat percentage simply by… increasing your muscle mass percentage!

We all have 100% of body weight to work with, so whenever you increase your lean muscle mass – even without losing an ounce of fat – your body fat percentage decreases and you become leaner!

It’s not mere mathematical chicanery. It actually has a very real visual impact on your physique.

A visual explanation to hammer it home…

Right now your muscles are of a certain size and covered by a layer of fat. If you increase the size of your muscles whilst not gaining or losing any more fat, your existing layer of fat assumes a thinner coverage so your muscles look more defined; you look leaner – you are leaner.

Think of it as partially inflating a white balloon (your muscles) and coloring it with a jet-black permanent marker pen (fat). Now, you inflate the balloon much more than it currently is, and as you do so, you notice that the once jet-black color of the balloon is actually becoming lighter, transforming into increasingly lighter shades of grey – because the original jet-black coating of permanent marker (fat, remember) is increasingly inadequate to cover the expanding balloon (muscle) size whilst remaining jet black. It thins out.

How to increase muscle mass…

You increase muscle mass by training your full body with progressive resistance. Much has been written on this subject on this website already which you can look through to increase your understanding, but in layman’s terms it means training with weights or elastic fitness bands of increasing resistance. After you’ve finished reading this article (we’re nearly done) I recommend you have a look around for muscle building advice.

Applying this to specific ‘problem’ areas of your body…

Understand that you cannot/will not ‘burn’ fat in a chosen area by working the muscles in this area – if the dietary/caloric conditions are there to lose fat, you will lose fat wherever your genetics determine you will lose it and there’s nothing you can do to choose where it is ‘burnt’. However, that’s not what this article is about, this article isn’t about burning fat, this article proposed becoming leaner without losing fat, and in that sense you can target certain areas with progressive resistance training to increase muscle size and definition – hereby making the fat coverage in this area thinner (without actually ‘losing’ any fat there).

Word of warning: The leaner you are to start with, the better the results will be and the less muscle mass you will have to build to make yourself leaner. I caution against women (or men) who are very overweight from using this method unless first losing significant fat. If you think your thighs or arms are too big now, they will only become bigger when you add muscle to them which may not be what you want at all. If, on the other hand, you think by adding a little muscle mass this method could work out for you (and you don’t mind the inevitable increase in circumference of your body parts), then go for it.

If this method doesn’t sound right for you or your body, check out the other fat loss articles on this website which focus on how to decrease body fat percentage by actually burning body fat.