Weight loss / Muscle retention auestion

[DeepGreen]

For the longest time, I've been doing a ton of cardio and weight lifting. I want to lose fat, but retain my muscle.

I have been reading a lot of posts that this is an ineffective method; its better to be on a calorie deficit, reach your goal, and then go on a calorie surplus, and weight lift.

However, I have been finding good results on my current routine. Shredding the weight AND retaining the muscle (and in some places, muscles growing / getting more defined).

Most of the time I am at a deficit, but the days I am lifting, I try to increase my food/protein intake. Is this an effective approach, or am I setting up myself for a plateau and a screwed up metabolism?

Keep in mind, I do cardio every day, and I weight lift 4 days a week. I don't count calories, but I generally try to have 4-5 meals a day, trying to get everything from the major food groups.

 

[sirant]

If it aint broke, dont fix it.....

Thats pretty much my feeling. if you feel good and you are seeing results why should you stop?

You still have 80 pounds to go, so things may change in the future. I was in the same place as you. I lost a bunch of weight, starting seeing a lot more definition and muscle and things were going great. Then I hit a wall and plateaued big time. Didnt lose a pound for over a month. Thats when I had to change up my plan to keep making the fat go away. I think it is a natural progression. You may find in the future calorie counting becomes more important than now.

But in the meantime, ride the wave. If it makes you happy and keeps you motivated, what more could anyone want?

sirant

 

[Wrangell]

For the longest time, I've been doing a ton of cardio and weight lifting. I want to lose fat, but retain my muscle.

I have been reading a lot of posts that this is an ineffective method; its better to be on a calorie deficit, reach your goal, and then go on a calorie surplus, and weight lift.

However, I have been finding good results on my current routine. Shredding the weight AND retaining the muscle (and in some places, muscles growing / getting more defined).

Most of the time I am at a deficit, but the days I am lifting, I try to increase my food/protein intake. Is this an effective approach, or am I setting up myself for a plateau and a screwed up metabolism?

Keep in mind, I do cardio every day, and I weight lift 4 days a week. I don't count calories, but I generally try to have 4-5 meals a day, trying to get everything from the major food groups.

Actually, the more relevant issue is one of losing a significant amount of fat and trying to GAIN significant muscle mass - all at the same time.

This is a very difficult, if not impossible, thing to do. However, it is possible to lose fat,and RETAIN your muscle. As had been explained many many times in the forum, consuming an adequate maintnence level of calories from food is a better approach if you want to retain muscle while losing fat. Don't make your calorie intake from food the primary contributor to the deficit you're trying to create - if at all. After only being on this forum for a short time, I'm amazed the extent to which people here are fixated on and the extent to which there are cutting carbs/calories from their diet while training to retain muscle and lose fat. Most people don't take in nearly enough calories while training IMO.

It's better to get the calorie deficit total from contributions of calorie expenditures from cardio and weight sessions themselves as well as the post-workout metabolic " bump " you get from doing both. In other words, you can eat more but if you train more and train harder, you will lose fat and retain muscle.

 

[Steve]

While I agree with the above post, being so *careful* with someone that has a lot of weight to lose is not a necessity. Losing muscle is not something you have to worry about as much with a bigger person, when compared to their leaner counterpart. The beauty of partitioning and the p-ratio.

Going into deeper calorie deficits becomes a vialble option for someone with a lot of weight to lose. The only way to do that is to reduce caloric intake, unless you plan on running LISS for hours on top of hours, every single day, which is futile and certainly not optimal for the goal at hand.

Personally too, I have found best success with my clients and myself, a deficit created from a combination of activity and food reduction works best in terms of optimal progress.

 

[DeepGreen]

Thanks all for the replies.

The only thing I do not understand, is why a bigger person cannot utilize that excess fat for potentional energy for muscle production. I can understand the dilemma of a "skinny" person (or someone who already has a huge amount of muscle on them) trying to bulk up, and creating calorie deficit and NOT gaining any muscle mass, but I am having difficult time seeing why a bigger person cannot utilize the energy they already have stored in their bodies.

No, i'm not saying you can convert fat --> muscle, but, do you kind of get my point?

 

[Alibran]

It sounds like you're asking if you can "release" some of the energy stored in fat in order to build muscle. Is that correct?

I think that's a really interesting question, and it would be fantastic if you could, but I think the answer is likely to be "no".

 

[Wrangell]

Thanks all for the replies.

The only thing I do not understand, is why a bigger person cannot utilize that excess fat for potentional energy for muscle production. I can understand the dilemma of a "skinny" person (or someone who already has a huge amount of muscle on them) trying to bulk up, and creating calorie deficit and NOT gaining any muscle mass, but I am having difficult time seeing why a bigger person cannot utilize the energy they already have stored in their bodies.

No, i'm not saying you can convert fat --> muscle, but, do you kind of get my point?

Here's the skinny on fat.

Fat is the default primary fuel your body needs to get energy for exercise. If you don't train too hard and don't get out of breath while exercising, it's mostly fat your body uses to power your workouts - cause to burn fat, you need oxygen. If you get out of breath while training, it uses more carb based energy ( glucose and glycogen) and less fat ( if any at all ). So, fat is a key nutrient as a fuel to supply energy for exercise. So fat is important becuase you utiliize fat, primarily, as an energy source.

Now, don't confuse nutrients you need for fuel/ energy - such as fat - with nutrients and other things you need to opitmize a growth in muscle tissue....for building muscle.

This topic - " how muscle grows " - is a thread topic all unto itself - and one I suspect Steve has already covered before in this forum...and I suspect he can direct you to where his post on this is .

Suffice it to say, your muscles get bigger by means of a process called hypertophy and primary physiological / nutrient contributors are things like protien, carbs, insulin ( growth factors ), and testosterone. Fat does play a role in muscle building, but more indirectly, only so far as it can help increase testosterone levels and help protein along with maintaining nitrogen levels.

In a nutshell - fat doesn't build muscle, if that's what your thinking.

 

[Steve]

Let's keep this simple.

Why doesn't our body utilize our existing fat stores as energy, to aid in hypertrophy (muscle building)?

You have to remember this very simple fact. Having an abundance of food at arm's length is a rather new dilemna, in the grand scheme of things. I mean, go back a thousand years and you were not able to eat, how we eat today. And 1000 years isn't that long even. Go back 10,000 years and wow, things were much, much different.

We did not have a continuous foods supply. Excess food was not an issue and humans had to develop the ability to survive periods with low to no energy.

Because of this, our bodies want to store excess energy as fat. It is calorically dense and easily stored. On the flip-side, muscle is energetically costly. This means adding new muscle is not a *cheap* process in terms of energy (calorie) utilization.

Add to this, ultimately, aside from the base level of muscle that each of us has, additional muscle is worthless in our *body's mind.*

When the early man found a huge stash of food, he would gorge until he was full and then some. It doesn't take science to tell us that this will result in a gain of fat. He did this so that when the winter came and everything died or ran for the equator, he had enough energy to maintain life during this period.

Mind you, this went on for more years than you can fathom from your short time here on lovely Earth. Adaptation is an amazing thing. It takes a VERY long time to happen. Extremely slow process.

We adapted for survival during a time when food (energy) was scarce.

Back when, if the body decided to use a ton of energy to make muscle instead of fat, you would have stored less gross energy in a tissue that is harder to extract energy from, and ultimately it would have died during food-scarce periods.

To add to this, this is why we have many systems in place physiologically that ensure we don't under-eat. Stop eating for a few days. See how hungry you become. See how your cravings shoot through the roof. The endocrine system, primarily, is amazingly responsive to under-consumption of food.

Flip this. With over-consumption (something that is commonplace this day in age) not so much. Our bodies are relatively weak at detecting over-consumption due to the times long ago.

So, in a nutshell: Our bodies like storing fat for survival even though we don't need it today. Our bodies don't like storing muscle.

Hence, you will never find a human that is able to convert fat to muscle. At least not in the 21st century. Things might be different in the 31st.

 

[DeepGreen]

Thanks all for the wonderful advice.

I've decided I would continue with my current routine, eating roughly 1500-2000 calories a day, doing a ton of cardio and continue weight lift.

I am not eating to the point of starvation, yet, I am exercising enough to make a calorie deficit. (and who knows...the amount of food I am eating, i *might* gain some muscle....i hope :/

and steve: wonderful insight on how powerful the human body is, and how we evolved. You made some valid thoughts I've never even thought about, and gave me a whole new look on how our body/metabolism functions

 

[Wrangell]

Thanks all for the wonderful advice.

I've decided I would continue with my current routine, eating roughly 1500-2000 calories a day, doing a ton of cardio and continue weight lift.

Noticed you are 239 lbs. How tall are you ?

Reason I ask - you need to take in something close to 20 calories per pound of bodyweight to ensure you retain your muscle mass ( which varies of course, depending on much body fat you're carrying ) .

I am not eating to the point of starvation, yet, I am exercising enough to make a calorie deficit. (and who knows...the amount of food I am eating, i *might* gain some muscle....i hope :/

You BMR alone is 2,200 calories...and this doesn't include calorie allocations for your cardio and weight training.

You can't make significant gains in muscle mass AND make significant drops in body fat at the same time.

And unless you take in enough calories, you can't sustain the muscle mass you already have.

 

[TomO]

Reason I ask - you need to take in something close to 20 calories per pound of bodyweight to ensure you retain your muscle mass ( which varies of course, depending on much body fat you're carrying ) .

I'm sure you didn't mean this, Wrangell. This would come to 4,780 calories a day. The poor guy would gain over a pound every 3 days at that rate.

 

[Wrangell]

I'm sure you didn't mean this, Wrangell. This would come to 4,780 calories a day. The poor guy would gain over a pound every 3 days at that rate.

This is the context I had in mind, simply to highlight that hard training requires a lot of calories to sustain mass ....

" Dr. Susan Kleiner cites a Gail Butterfield study: "Each day strength-trained athletes needed......... about 20 calories per pound of body weight just to maintain their muscle mass ...........- about 4,000 for a 200-pound person. Apparently even more—25 to 30 calories per pound of body weight—is required to build muscle." That’s 5,000 to 6,000 calories for a 200-pounder. But protein is worth only four calories a gram. Supplements such as BigMax that include complex carbs from maltodextrin, as well as protein, help active hard-gainers like you get all the protein and calories they need to grow.

Source: Dr. Kleiner, The Physician and Sportsmedicine, Power Eating. "

.......my mistake, I should have said " it has been suggested ".

In any event, I wasn't suggesting he himself take " 20 calories per pound of body weight just to maintain muscle mass " - obviously, taking into account his lean body mass and activity level etc. etc. would help better determine what is appropriate requirements are.

 

[DeepGreen]

I am about 5'7 wrangell, and you do make some excellent points.

What type of weight lifting should I be doing with weight loss. I heard lighter weights and high reps were the way to go. Any suggestions? Or is my current routine fine (i do 3 sets of 8-12 reps...i go to the point where i *burn out* on the 3rd set...i should also add, i do a warm up set with at a very light intensity)

 

[Steve]

See my thread under the "weightloss through exercise" section of this site. It is called "workout" and is stickied in that section.