Realistic combined levels of fat loss and lean mass gain

Realistic combined levels of fat loss and lean mass gain

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otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Wednesday 22nd June 2016
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Back in 2012, I dumped a load of weight. I did it through diet and a lot of cardiovascular exercise, using MFP to target a net daily calorie intake of 1200 cals. It worked, and I got a lot fitter and a lot thinner, but I didn't keep up the lifestyle and it gradually came back.

In January this year, I was back up to where I started at 95kg (15st) and Something Had To Be Done. So I upped my exercise and cut my calories to a net intake of 1500/day and by June was down to 79kg (12.5st). That's still fat (I'm 168cm/5'6, albeit with short legs and a long torso, but still, fat). I think the best way to avoid putting it back on, apart from not slipping into bad habits - which won't happen given the unwanted change in circumstances I had this year - is to increase the amount of muscle I'm carrying. I'm not aiming to look like a bodybuilder, just don't want to be skinny and weak. So I've added resistance training and modified my diet a little.

I have absolutely zero experience of resistance training, so I've taken on a PT for 3 months. Partly to show me the ropes, partly for motivation. At the moment we are into the third week of doing two sessions a week of weights (quite like), one session a week of core and boxing (enjoy), one session of core and HIIT (kill me now). I'm still aiming for 1500 cals/day net of exercise but I've further increased my protein consumption to around 2g/kg/day.

It seems to be doing something. I'm tracking my weight and body composition with a set of Withings scales (I know the limitations of the technology, but it should give an indication of what's going on) and being a geek and an ex-biologist I like numbers. I've plugged the data into Excel, done a little maths, and the numbers are quite interesting.

From January to June, I lost on average 700g of weight a week. Which would imply an effective daily calorific deficit of ~770 cals. That wasn't entirely even - my wife died in February, and I barely ate for a week or two, and then didn't give a st what I ate for a week or two, but overall I think it probably evens out. I could never figure out how to get the bf% working on my old scales, so I don't have data for that period.

For the period since I started the training, I've got some noticeable trends in daily measurements. There's noise, but that's easy to deal with statistically. I'm really interested in what happens to them over the coming months, but what we are doing appears to be working. Fitting trendlines by regression and using the regression coefficients to calculate smoothed weekly changes in total, fat and lean masses, my overall rate of weight loss has reduced from c.700g/week to c.420g/week. The body composition data, however, suggests that I am still losing about 700g/week of fat but gaining about 280g/week of lean mass. The actual changes calculated from starting and ending figures alone are greater than that, but individual data points are too volatile to be relied upon. It's early days, I don't have much data yet and I can't be sure how my body is going to react going forward, but if that trend continues I should be at about 16% body fat and 73kg by the end of the three months, having lost 9.3kg of fat and gained 3.5kg of muscle. I'd be pretty happy if it worked out like that, to be honest.

My gut feeling is that those numbers are feasible but not sustainable. 280g/week would be about 14.5kg a year - most estimates seem to suggest that someone completely untrained training hard and not running any calorie deficit at all would do well to manage 11kg in a year. It will be interesting to see to what extent it can be maintained.




BenjiA

300 posts

209 months

Wednesday 22nd June 2016
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Wow. Good work, keep it up and let us know how your progress goes against your expectations. I'm doing something similar, but with a much more scattergun approach, eat much less during the day, mainly protein and salad and doing a mixed cardio and traditional legs/arms/chest weights programme on different days.

Good Luck!

otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Wednesday 22nd June 2016
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Cheers, will update as I (hopefully) progress.

If anyone wants a copy of the spreadsheet for their own use, ping me a PM.

DuncanM

6,105 posts

278 months

Wednesday 22nd June 2016
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Im very sorry to hear about your loss, and wish you luck on what sounds like a great plan smile

otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Wednesday 22nd June 2016
quotequote all
Cheers Duncan. I guess this is part of the process of working out who I am now. A fat unfit middle aged bloke is not part of that, even if I am stuck with the middle aged bit. Also, it gives me something to do, distracts me, and is good for my state of mind.

DuncanM

6,105 posts

278 months

Wednesday 22nd June 2016
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otolith said:
Cheers Duncan. I guess this is part of the process of working out who I am now. A fat unfit middle aged bloke is not part of that, even if I am stuck with the middle aged bit. Also, it gives me something to do, distracts me, and is good for my state of mind.
It's a great plan, and a perfect way of keeping your body and mind busy.

Please keep us updated smile

AndStilliRise

2,295 posts

115 months

Thursday 23rd June 2016
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Buy yourself a bike and the weight will just shred off.

otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Thursday 23rd June 2016
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AndStilliRise said:
Buy yourself a bike and the weight will just shred off.
I've got one, that's mostly how I did it last time. I'm still using it, but I'm adding other forms of training in.

DuncanM

6,105 posts

278 months

Thursday 23rd June 2016
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I like the fact you're working on adding muscle, it's a much better plan.

otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Thursday 23rd June 2016
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Cheers - the idea is to make it easier to sustain.

popeyewhite

19,618 posts

119 months

Friday 24th June 2016
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otolith said:
but if that trend continues etc
It won't.

You'll plateau after getting a bit stronger (neural adaptation) and putting some lean mass on. You'll need to increase your weight training sessions to something like 4 x 40 mins a week. Get a time served bodybuilder to train you, not some PT that has quals but zero experience of training for muscular hypertrophy.



otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 24th June 2016
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Yes, that's a fair point, and I'm mentally prepared for that eventuality. The training plan is to move progressively to more strength training sessions, fewer reps, heavier weights, which seems reasonable to me?

otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 24th June 2016
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And - I was waiting for you and the others to turn up - what's realistically attainable?

popeyewhite

19,618 posts

119 months

Friday 24th June 2016
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otolith said:
Yes, that's a fair point, and I'm mentally prepared for that eventuality. The training plan is to move progressively to more strength training sessions, fewer reps, heavier weights, which seems reasonable to me?
Sure some sort of periodisation (resistance training cycle in this case) is good. However, normally a hypertrophy routine finishes with more reps less weight. A typical growth routine for a bodybuilder looks like - strength (4x5/6 sets x reps), power (4x2-4), hypertrophy (4x8-12). Often bodybuilders skip the power section for fear of injury. In your case though I'd do a few weeks circuit training/weights first and morph this into sets of 8. After 3/4 weeks increase the weight and drop the sets so you're at the (start) strength phase of the cycle. I forget how much time you said you had but what I've described will take 4 months.

How much lean mass will you put on? There's no set formula as growth depends on a number of variables - intensity, technique, recovery, diet and your age. All that depends on you getting a good teacher, but you could put on up to a stone of lean mass in 3-4 months.

Like the way you work the stats btw, smile

otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Friday 24th June 2016
quotequote all
Thank you, that's very interesting. I should say, she isn't a bodybuilder but her partner is, and reviews her plans.

She said the objectives for the first four weeks were technique, endurance and fat loss. I was hoping that with the resistance training and high protein intake I could minimise muscle loss during this phase, but it appears to be doing better than that with some growth, albeit perhaps not at a sustainable level.

Do you think a moderate calorie deficit and high protein intake is likely to continue working?

popeyewhite

19,618 posts

119 months

Friday 24th June 2016
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If you're determined enough, it will work. If you're mainly concerned with muscle hypertrophy I'd ditch any endurance work, whether resistance training or cardio. It will just make your body want carbs. First 4 weeks of technique looks good, then start with the standard hypertrophy cycle.

otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Saturday 25th June 2016
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thumbup

MurderousCrow

392 posts

149 months

Wednesday 29th June 2016
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This might sound sniffy; it's really not meant to.

The two most important factors governing changes in body composition are diet and exercise. As such, your approach should be to use data and evidence to best guide your progress. You're intelligent and able to use data, and your biologist background is a massive plus, so why rely on the often tenuous opinions of forum inhabitants for such important training variables?

Forums are rarely sources of solid empirical evidence. Useful for tips, for encouragement, or to guide beginner progress in a very general way, but I'd suggest that even the most qualified strength coaches would be reluctant to offer anything more than broad nutrition and training advice over the 'net.

Good sources of research and analysis on nutrition in strength training include Alan Aragon and Brad Schoenfeld, Mike Israetel, and of course the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (free to access):

http://jissn.biomedcentral.com

Respected sources of opinion on strength training include Dan John, Greg Nuckols, Bret Contreras, Chad Wesley Smith and Greg Everett.

The two Gregs in particular provide excellent resources on their respective sites, including exercise instruction and breakdown. Nuckols is a powerlifter, Everett an Olympic lifter and notable coach. They know their st.

http://strengtheory.com/

http://www.catalystathletics.com/

Opinion, but reflecting your stated preferences it may be wise to look into receiving some high-level strength and conditioning coaching, once you feel ready (I'm inferring from your post that your PT is not greatly qualified in this regard, my apologies if I'm wrong). The UKSCA website will provide details of nearby suitably qualified coaches:

http://www.uksca.org.uk/find-a-coach.asp

Sorry to read of your loss, and congratulations on your excellent progress so far.

Luke

otolith

Original Poster:

55,899 posts

203 months

Thursday 30th June 2016
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Thanks Luke. I'd love to have the time and resources to do a proper literature review. I spent the first three months of my PhD sat in the library, it would be great to be able to do that, but... I have been reading papers, though - as you say, although there is some good, well referenced writing, there is a lot of stuff written on the web which clearly isn't evidence based. I suspect that most of it originates from people selling their products or services as if they have some arcane secret that others don't. And those studies have certainly informed the approach I've taken and give me reason to expect it to work.

What I was looking to add, though, was personal experience outside of controlled trial conditions. Also, I'm slightly obsessive about this at the moment, to some extent I'm treating it as a little experiment with my own physiology, so I wanted to talk about it with people who won't think it's an entirely weird thing to be doing laugh

Kiwi LS2

202 posts

116 months

Thursday 30th June 2016
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MurderousCrow said:
....
Good sources of research and analysis on nutrition in strength training include Alan Aragon and Brad Schoenfeld, Mike Israetel, and of course the Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition (free to access):

http://jissn.biomedcentral.com
....

Luke
Thanks for this link, really interesting site. Will look at the others later too but for anyone else thinking of clicking it the info is laid out really well, it's easy to read and understand and does get very sciency but provides clear, rational explanations.

Good one, cheers.