Calories and Strength training

I have been doing strength training for about 3/4 months now while losing weight.   I seem to remember reading somewhere that unless you eat quite a bit more you won't gain muscle.

So if I am eating 1200 to 1600 calories a day (I zig zag) I am not building muscle , just losing weight? I am a bit confused on this since I can lift heavier than what I started with a few months ago.

Thanks!

Well... I would claim that you can lose weight and build muscle.  Most of the talk about needing more calories to build muscle is probably based on the body building model.  Unless you are trying to stack on like say 10lbs of muscle I would state that you can build muscle and lose weight no problem.  If you are stronger than you were some muscle is being created.  Keep up the good work.

Your body does NOT go into positive nitrogen balance (i.e. retain protein and build muscle) without being in a calorie surplus.

 Strength and muscle size is only about 2/3 correlated, increased neural eficiency, motor unit recruitment and muscular coordination account for the final third, so it's possible to become significantly stronger by improving the neural component without any increase in muscle mass whatsoever.

 Complicating the picture is your training age - beginners to strength training with their newbie metabolisms can in fact add some muscle even in a calorie deficit, but only genetic superiors like Duke can keep on doing that sort of thing beyond the initial few months.

 Thing about calorie deficits though, is that while you generally can't build muscle in a deficit, you sure can lose it if you don't strength train.

Thanks for the replies.

I was going insane trying to figure out that basic question.   I don't want to lose muscle while I lose weight ,, plus I enjoy using free weights now.

Original Post by melkor:

Your body does NOT go into positive nitrogen balance (i.e. retain protein and build muscle) without being in a calorie surplus.

 Strength and muscle size is only about 2/3 correlated, increased neural eficiency, motor unit recruitment and muscular coordination account for the final third, so it's possible to become significantly stronger by improving the neural component without any increase in muscle mass whatsoever.

 Complicating the picture is your training age - beginners to strength training with their newbie metabolisms can in fact add some muscle even in a calorie deficit, but only genetic superiors like Duke can keep on doing that sort of thing beyond the initial few months.

 Thing about calorie deficits though, is that while you generally can't build muscle in a deficit, you sure can lose it if you don't strength train.

 Ok Melkor,  I am pretty sure you know more about this stuff than I do, but I am a very inquisative person.  Now losing fat takes eating less calories than you burn.  Building muscle takes protien.  Why cant you do both.  I have lowered my calorie intake and added alot of protien to my diet (mostly after working out).

It would seem to me that as long as your body has protien to rebuild muscles then it would do it when needed reguardless of calories.  Are our bodies so single purposed?  I would think with all of the other things our bodies do this would be easy.  Your input would be appreciated.

Sorry, I'm not trying to steal the thread from the OP, but I think my question might fit in here.

I had a lot of weight to lose, so I have been doing marginal strength training just to try to maintain what muscle I have, and a higher precentage of cardio.  Now, I'm almost done with the weight loss (or "fat loss" I should say) and want to get serious about strength training.

I understand the science behind muscle building and calorie intake.  My question is, how do I find that balance of eating enough calories to build muscle, but not eating enough calories that I start to gain fat again, or is that really not an issue if I'm doing the training correctly?  I've lost 120 pounds, and I'll be damned if I'm putting any of that back as fat, so I'm afraid to go back to a surplus.  How much of a calorie surplus do I need to safely gain muscle?

If there's been another thread that addresses this, please feel free to kick me over there. :)  Or recommend any good books, articles, etc.  I've gotten skinny (skinnier, anyway) and now I want to get muscles!

justlaura took the words right out of my mouth.  I too have lost a lot of weight, am starting to get serious about strength training and under no circumstances want to gain any weight back.  Input and advice would be greatly appreciated.

one of my first questions on this forum. i lost weight a few years ago (put it back on) but i was doing cardio & lifting as well. while i did gain some muscle, the gain was nothing like i had in the beginning of this year when i was not dieting. but i would say that i was/am eating almost the same amount of protein.  im trying to find a nice balance myself. 

and as for protein being the most important part of building muscle i found this article awhile back which kind of sheds light on getting all nutrients to help maintain muscle, especially while dieting. http://www.submityourarticle.com/articles/Jon athan-Perez-1252/gain-muscle-weight-7503.php

while i never believe any and everything i hear about on this subject he makes a point about carbs needed to provide energy to muscles for them to grow and that it is fats that also help build hormones for creating muscle. i am not saying that his whole point is debatable, as im sure some of you can pick it apart, but there's some sense in it.

 

 

Original Post by meganr:

justlaura took the words right out of my mouth.  I too have lost a lot of weight, am starting to get serious about strength training and under no circumstances want to gain any weight back.  Input and advice would be greatly appreciated.

 You don't want to gain any weight or you don't want to gain any fat? because if you're adding muscle the number on the scale is going to go up.  If you don't want to gain weight don't eat more calories than you burn.

If you want to add muscle then your probably going to have to gain some fat along with it, the key is to minimize the amount of fat that is put on and maximize the amount of muscle.  If you eat a slight calorie surplus (100-200 calories over maintanance) and lift heavy weight regularly you should slowly add muscle with limited fat gains.

Awesome, floggingsully, thank you! :)  That answers my question perfectly.

(To clarify for myself, I was just concerned about gaining back too much fat from eating a surplus.  But a few pounds' worth of muscle weight?  Gimme!) :)

Thanks again.

Original Post by meganr:

justlaura took the words right out of my mouth.  I too have lost a lot of weight, am starting to get serious about strength training and under no circumstances want to gain any weight back.  Input and advice would be greatly appreciated.

 That is my point exactly! I have lost 20lbs and am paranoid that I will put it back on.

I have another question that sort of goes along with this.  I know with having a calorie deficit I wont gain muscle but I am toning/shaping what I have correct? I have starting noticing how my arms are looking a lot better (yea!).

this is a good thread-- i don't care about the scale, i care about the percentages-- and by eating too low (700-800kcal for 2-3 months) i added fat instead of muscle while training- now, weeks later, it's finally back to fat loss and minimal mass creation/maintenance really...

my question is for how long do you have to consistently stay at the high protein level to maintain mass and lose fat? i mean, my diet is like 45% protein 45% carbs and 10% fat on average- i just don't get fat into my diet unless it's from chicken or egg whites really-- i mean, when i hit the right body fat percentage- can i change my diet or am I looking at a lifetime of eating this high of a protein mix & will I have to maintain a higher calorie intake to maintain the body fat percentage I want? what kind of diet do you eat then? i have no idea what maintenance calories would be like or the breakdown of prot/carb/fat!?

i really want to get down to 10-13% body fat & then put on some really nice mass- but i want to lose this fat & I am getting bored with how long it takes-- it's sooo slow to lose fat! gaining muscle is so much more fun!

i guess, when i get there-- ? what happens to how i eat then?

Lessee - for primary reference, read this Journal of American College of Nutrition metastudy on protein needs for various levels of activity. You'll see that you need both a calorie surplus and adequate protein intake to gain muscle - building new tissue is an anabolic process which requires an energy surplus. Dieting is a catabolic process designed to have a controlled, selective destruction of excess adipose tissue, (but if you exceed your body's capacity for energy mobilization from fat you lose muscle tissue) and the two states are mutually incompatible.

 Now, your body is always balancing those two states - every time you move you expend energy which requires your body to break down something for fuel. You'd rather this was muscular glycogen stores or fat, but your body does also use some muscle protein. If it didn't, we'd simply keep on growing muscle until we literally exploded.

 The main thing is whether you spent the majority of your day in an anabolic or catabolic state, and whether that was a controlled or uncontrolled one. Controlled catabolism we call a diet, uncontrolled we call it starvation - it's the same process but it's completely indiscriminate if your deficit gets too large. (more than 31cal/lbs of fat mass)

 Controlled anabolism we call building muscle - we have a small, controlled calorie surplus that mostly goes to building muscle. Uncontrolled anabolism we call getting fat - we have an uncontrolled, large calorie surplus that mostly goes to build fat.

 Even with zero exercise whatsoever, 13% of the weight increase comes as muscle, which is why us former obese folks have surprisingly large amounts of musculature underneath the fat. With weight training and controlled nutrient intake the partitioning improves to a reasonable maximum of a 3:1 ratio of muscle to fat gained - doing better than that requires that you're either on drugs or you're Jasontarin.

 Here's a possible drill for finding your own optimum calorie intake when building muscle that I outlined a while back:

It partially depends on how efficient your body is at building muscle, and that's a function of your individual metabolism.

To build muscle efficiently, you need to have a consistent calorie surplus of 250-500 over maintenance, on both lifting and non-lifting days.

 To find out just how much over maintenance you need is a matter of experimentation; start at 200 cals over maintenance every day for a week, and add 100/week thereafter until you get to 500, and see how much over maintenance your body is capable of using to build muscle.

 Keeping a training journal and a food log helps with that - if you have one of the Tanita scales that measure BF% you can see exactly the calorie level that adds more muscle without too much more fat. You'll always gain some BF along with muscle, can't be avoided. That's why bodybuilders alternate bulking and cutting cycles, to build muscle and then lose the fat that came with it.

 If you don't have a BF% scale, you can use this semi- accurate test and record the trend lines. It's not going to be terribly precise, but you can actually use it to get a rough notion of how your body fat percentage alters over time - the trick being that you record your calories-over-maintenance and compare that to how much muscle mass you gained.

 Increase calories until you didn't add more muscle mass than you did last week, and there's your optimal calorie level :)

 Most people will end up with their optimum being about 350-450 calories over maintenance so you can just skip straight to there if you're not quite as detail-obsessed nerdy as I am ;)

 You spend 8 weeks or so straight on your optimum calorie surplus and gain anywhere from 4-6 lbs of muscle depending on what your body can use, and a couple pounds of fat, then spend 2 weeks dieting this fat off - this is called a build and burn.

Thanks! I am learning tons , I never realized about the build and burn.  That makes total sense.  My biggest fear has been that my body would gain fat instead of building muscle. 

So,, if I want to start to build muscle I need to get to my goal weight first correct? 

Not neccesarily, it's possible to have a slow recomposition if you're at or near calorie maintenance most days, and if you've only got a few pounds to lose this may be the better strategy.

 On the face of it this'll take longer than to diet down and then build back up, but it's far easier to do a maintenance recomposition than to diet down to very low levels of bodyfat both from a physiological and psychological standpoint.

 You do need to get out of the "obese" category before doing this though - you will only be able to get the 3:1 ratio if you're in the healthy to athletic range of bodyfat.  Once you're there though, you can either build and burn, or do a lean recomposition by eating at maintenance and relying on energy turnover in your body to slowly lean you out over time, depending on your personal goals - a lean recomposition is vastly better for athletic performance, though slower than the B&B strategy.

 Increase calories until you didn't add more muscle mass than you did last week, and there's your optimal calorie level :)


couldnt that take a long time to figure out?

Yup, especially if you're a genetic superior like Duke or Jasontarin who can add far more muscle than most people in a shorter timeframe - the average does lie between 350 and 450 calories somewhere for most people so for a "close enough" figure you could just start there.

Once again - Melkor, Floggingsully, everyone, thank you so much for the info!  This is exactly what I needed to know.  

Once again echoing justlaura, many thanks for this great info!

Ditto!!