Q: Hello Mike, I built up unwanted muscle through a personal trainer; muscle that I did not care for. Now I am in desperate need to get rid of the muscle. I am aware that one cannot simple spot reduce muscle but I am willing to lose weight and muscle until I am satisfied with the muscle having been burned. I have read in your articles that certain diets and calorie reduction can burn both muscle and fat and even just muscle. I have tried going to the gym to "burn" off the muscle, however, I am already weighing in at around 125 pounds I am also 5'7; The muscle just doesn't seem to come off no matter what I do when it comes to exercize. So as my second option I am looking into dieting but I do not know what or which diet will cause me to keep losing the muscle until I am satisfied with the results. I also turned to pro-longed fasting as a last resort in order to get rid of the muscle if I have to but I wanted to ask another expert before I turn to the whole stop eating idea. I'd rather not go through it but I will if I have to so I can be happy with myself again. Please help me. Thank you.

A: Sorry to hear about your troubles. One thing I would note that at 125 pounds and 5 foot 7 inches you are already borderline medically underweight and it seems to me you can't possibly have a whole lot of muscle mass on you.

Unfortunately losing muscle mass without losing weight would be a very slow process. You'd basically want to not do any resistance training at all (endurance cardio is still OK) and and just wait for your body to stop maintaining the muscle mass that's not being used. It will be a very slow process. A much faster way is to combine the above with undereating and losing weight but I believe it would be a serious mistake for somebody like yourself because you are so light already. It is very possible and even likely that you will develop health problems if you drop your weight much lower! I cannot recommend it at all.

My suggestion to you would be is to examine which aspect of your physique you are unhappy with. At your height and weight and combined with what you call excessive muscle mass you very clearly have very low body fat. Low body fat is likely to create very high level of muscle definition, which many women find unattractive. If that is the case with you I would consider not trying to lose muscle mass (because, as I said, you simply cannot have that much extra muscle mass at your light weight) but instead gain some body fat! It would increase your body fat and lower your muscle definition which may well result in more acceptable physique for yourself. And it would also increase your weight to healthier levels. I would strongly urge you to consider this approach if what you call unwanted muscle mass is really high muscle definition due to low body fat.

If you choose to go this route you will still not want to do any resistance training (because you'd want to gain fat, not muscle) but simply eat more, though preferably still healthy foods. You should be able to tell whether this approach is improving your physique fairly quickly, as soon as first 5-7 pounds gained. So if you decide that it's not what you want you can always stop gaining weight. Good luck!