Protein while you diet. It's the Key.

How much protein do you need to ingest per day while dieting to prevent muscle loss? Dieting reduces fat storage, of course, but it also robs you muscle unless you keep protein intake high. Yeah, everybody knows that. Sort of.
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Unfortunately, few people really think about it seriously. The end fate of most dieters is an unacceptable amount of muscle loss. Rather than looking better, dieters often end up looking like slightly smaller, still blobby versions of their fat selves. The truth is you need to eat even more protein during dieting than you do to build muscle.
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British scientists recruited 20 bodybuilders between the ages of 18 and 40 to figure out just how much protein dieters need. All subjects were put on diets where they consumed 40% fewer calories than they normally burned each day. To accomplish this, the first group just ate less of what they normally ate. Proportionately, their protein intake fell to about 1 gram per kilogram per day. The second group substituted protein shakes for carbs and fats and increased their daily protein intake to 2.3 grams per kilogram (about 207 grams for our hypothetical 200-pound lifter).
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The group that ate 2.3 grams of protein per kilogram lost hardly any muscle mass; virtually all of their weight loss was comprised of fat.
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The lower protein group, however, lost virtually equal amounts of fat and muscle. And while the low-protein diet reduced dieter’s levels of free testosterone by 26%, the high-protein group only experienced a 7% reduction.
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Here’s what that 2.3 grams of protein per kilogram would look like, converted to pounds, for various body weights:
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• A 150-pound dieter would need to eat roughly 156 grams of protein per day to maintain muscle.
• A 175-pound dieter: 184g
• A 200-pound dieter: 209g
• A 225-pound dieter: 235g
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Clearly, preserving muscle mass during a diet is a much more daunting (and much more important) task than most of us realized. –