Dr. Tabatha Barber explains why fasting doesn't cause muscle loss. Your body burns liver glycogen and stored fat from your hips, belly, and arms before it touches muscle, so you're safe as long as you have fat to lose.
Some of the pushback I hear about fasting is I don't want to lose muscle. I'm afraid to lose muscle. And there's a trend right now to eat a lot of protein so that we can build more muscle. Here's the deal. When you have stored fat to burn, you're not going to tap into your muscle and lose muscle first. You're going to burn through all the glycogen stored in your liver, all the fat stored on your hips and on your belly and on your arms before you get into that muscle. You're not going to lose muscle as long as you have fat to burn.
