SHOCKING NEWS FROM THE WORLD OF SCIENCE: If you want to work out hard and lose weight without losing muscle, a high protein diet helps.

ll of the men also began a grueling workout routine. Six days a week they reported to the exercise lab and completed a strenuous full-body weight training circuit, high-intensity intervals, or a series of explosive jumps and other exercises known as plyometric training.

The diet and exercise routine continued for four weeks, by the end of which time, “those guys were done,” said Stuart Phillips, who holds a research chair in skeletal muscle health at McMaster University and oversaw the study. “All they could talk about was food.”

The routine had succeeded in incinerating pounds from all of the participants. The men in both groups weighed about 11 or 12 pounds less, on average.

But it was the composition of that weight loss that differed. Unlike most people on low-calorie diets, the men on the high-protein regimen had actually gained muscle during the month, as much as three pounds of it. So in these men, almost all of the 11 or 12 pounds they had lost over all had been fat.

Who could have seen this coming?