Debunking the Myth

heybales

What are you talking about? The net intake is the only relevant number when it comes to weight loss / gain. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I consume around 2400-2700 calories / day depending on my activity level, but my net is usualy in the 2200-2300 range. Why would the gross intake be the relevant number?

Because it is only with the gross intake number that you can do the math to see what the TDEE must have been to cause the gain or loss observed.

Unless you had a metabolic cart with you during exercise - you can't get real NET figures that allow doing great math with.

Take a good months worth of data when you still lost weight. Valid starting and ending weigh-ins, so hopefully no change to workout during that time.

Total lost for 4 weeks x 3500 (assuming only fat) = total calories you had to have been in deficit daily average compared to true TDEE to cause that weight loss.

Total eaten average daily for those same 4 weeks = total intake daily.

Total daily intake + observed deficit = true TDEE for that time period.

Now do it for a month more recently.

Your excellent logging makes this a great routine, and may want to use this for your whole time period.
http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/EvgeniZyntx/view/mfp-extractor-and-trend-watcher-the-program-post-589839

Forgot to add.
Take the calculated TDEE at that time, divide by your BMR at that weight, there's a personal activity factor for whatever the workouts were at that time. Semi-useful just to see how activity may change summer to winter, ect.
Especially when you compare say a winter month with different workout routine and no weight lost or rather a gain.

Huffdogg

What are you talking about? The net intake is the only relevant number when it comes to weight loss / gain. I'm not sure I understand what you're saying. I consume around 2400-2700 calories / day depending on my activity level, but my net is usualy in the 2200-2300 range. Why would the gross intake be the relevant number?

Because your caloric burn is nearly impossible to really nail down and is a vital part of the TDEE.

QuietBloom

OP, you say you are counting calories and exercise using TDEE. But your exercise calories are showing up in your diary. If you are doing TDEE you don't put in your exercise calories because they are included in the calculation you did when you figured out your TDEE.

So when you say you are netting below your TDEE (and MFP is subtracting your exercise calories from your net) that means you are counting your exercise calories twice.

The other way to use MFP is to set a NET goal, add your exercise calories, and eat them back.

Two totally different scenarios.

Edited because bah! typos.

bacitracin

I am finally ready after 2 years of experimention to firmly say that the prevailing concept that a caloric surplus is necessary to build muscle is untrue.

Dang, I coulda told you that two years ago.

Fithealthyforlife

Now, while I fully agree that you can gain muscle while eating at a deficit, you have to have the extra bodyfat at the start. Your body will burn up that fat to supply some of the missing calories, also, you will lose fat, and gain muscle, but every time you gain a pound of muscle that means the scale can't go down a pound that week even if you lose a pound of fat that week. Its all math, and in the end the final number on the scale is going to be made of fat, muscle, skin, bone, water, blood, hair, etc. If you lose fat and gain and equal amount of anything else, the number on the scale won't change. Your bodyfat percentage might, your measurements might, but the scale won't.

Note the reason my ticker shows 53 pounds lost, instead of 51 pounds, is because my ticker starts from my highest weight, while the paragraph above is only dealing with weight loss/gain in the last 6 months.

This is the truth...fat substitutes for food intake. Slight deficit + extra fat to supply missing energy = slight net surplus. Try doing that if you're skinny...you'll lose muscle, even while lifting.

jollyjoe321

Of course if you want to get bigger faster, eat more, but I am much happier making slow gains while maintaining a six pack than benching 285 lbs. with a beer gut.

Yup, totally agree

shmoony

OP, you say you are counting calories and exercise using TDEE. But your exercise calories are showing up in your diary. If you are doing TDEE you don't put in your exercise calories because they are included in the calculation you did when you figured out your TDEE.

So when you say you are netting below your TDEE (and MFP is subtracting your exercise calories from your net) that means you are counting your exercise calories twice.

The other way to use MFP is to set a NET goal, add your exercise calories, and eat them back.

Two totally different scenarios.

Edited because bah! typos.

I must do a really bad job of explaining myself. I don't use TDEE as a method of establishing my intake, I use MFP. That doesn't mean I don't have a TDEE. I don't know why this is so hard to understand. I know what my body needs calorically (net) to maintain my bodyweight. I maintained for 1 year at that amount. Honed it in and sat steady at a certain weight and body comp for a long time logging and tracking meticulously. I then started lifting more intensely and upped my protein ratio. I started gaining muscle mass. Period. It's not that complicated.

Fithealthyforlife

But OP, those muscle gains were during a time of fat burning, were they not? 35 lbs worth, right?

So you agree that the fat that was burned supplied the extra energy for the muscle gain, do you not?

And you agree that now at 5.x% body fat, you can't eat at a true deficit (hard to know exactly what that is of course) and still gain more muscle from here on out. You agree, right?

jwdieter

But OP, those muscle gains were during a time of fat burning, were they not? 35 lbs worth, right?

So you agree that the fat that was burned supplied the extra energy for the muscle gain, do you not?

And you agree that now at 5.x% body fat, you can't eat at a true deficit (hard to know exactly what that is of course) and still gain more muscle from here on out. You agree, right?

OP is not the obese lady. OP gained weight. If OP continues to eat over maintenance, he'll continue to gain weight. Since he's just slightly over maintenance and lifting, he's gaining weight slowly, but it's mostly muscle.

I must do a really bad job of explaining myself. I don't use TDEE as a method of establishing my intake, I use MFP. That doesn't mean I don't have a TDEE. I don't know why this is so hard to understand. I know what my body needs calorically (net) to maintain my bodyweight. I maintained for 1 year at that amount. Honed it in and sat steady at a certain weight and body comp for a long time logging and tracking meticulously. I then started lifting more intensely and upped my protein ratio. I started gaining muscle mass. Period. It's not that complicated.

It's not hard to understand. You're using MFP's NEAT method. Just means you can't say "I eat 2200 net calories, and this is well below my TDEE, so .." anything. Because comparing those numbers doesn't work. When you use numbers that do work together, the story is just a success story of minor weight gain while eating slightly over TDEE:

"I went from 148-155 over several months while eating 2400-2700 calories/day."

If you think you're eating the same amount, expending more energy, and suddenly gaining weight.. well, a lot of things are possible. You changed at least two variables at the same time (exercise and meal composition). If you're accounting for increased burn in a net approach, just might be overcounting the increase. Or perhaps the switch to increased protein reduced intake of a certain type of calories you weren't metabolizing efficiently, so the effective calorie intake increased. Who knows.

But at the end of the day, the intake (~2550 /day) seems quite reasonable for a slow gain for a 40yr old male ~150 who doesn't engage in endurance sports training.

Fithealthyforlife

The previous post is great. It also cleared up something (that an "obese lady" hijacked the discussion at some point, apparently).

Nonetheless, the point about maybe not metabolizing something is also a good one. A calorie isn't a calorie, necessarily. That's why different macro ratios produce slightly different results.

Also, some people are more resistant to fat gain than others. This is apparently (according to studies) because the body produces more movement, etc. (NEAT) to try to burn off fatty acids before/during/after storage. Relative hormone levels likely play a role in this, as does the person's behavior. So, you can actually have a situation where an individual resists body fat gain even when eating a small surplus. But then they begin weight lifting, and they gain muscle, because the calories are prioritized to where they're needed. If the person didn't know they were eating a slight surplus, then they would think they were gaining on maintenance or a deficit. Honestly, I believe hitting maintenance calories is impossible. You're either in a surplus or deficit. Maintenance is an infinitesimally-fine line that's hard to walk. But that's ok, b/c our bodies can handle (some people better than others) a very slight surplus by just increasing movement a tiny bit to burn it off. Homeostasis. And if some of that movement consists of resistance training, you will gain muscle. At least that's the current theory as I understand it.

But I do think the intention of this thread was simply to say that eating like a sumo wrestler isn't required. And that's very true.

QuietBloom

But OP, those muscle gains were during a time of fat burning, were they not? 35 lbs worth, right?

So you agree that the fat that was burned supplied the extra energy for the muscle gain, do you not?

And you agree that now at 5.x% body fat, you can't eat at a true deficit (hard to know exactly what that is of course) and still gain more muscle from here on out. You agree, right?

OP is not the obese lady. OP gained weight. If OP continues to eat over maintenance, he'll continue to gain weight. Since he's just slightly over maintenance and lifting, he's gaining weight slowly, but it's mostly muscle.

I must do a really bad job of explaining myself. I don't use TDEE as a method of establishing my intake, I use MFP. That doesn't mean I don't have a TDEE. I don't know why this is so hard to understand. I know what my body needs calorically (net) to maintain my bodyweight. I maintained for 1 year at that amount. Honed it in and sat steady at a certain weight and body comp for a long time logging and tracking meticulously. I then started lifting more intensely and upped my protein ratio. I started gaining muscle mass. Period. It's not that complicated.

It's not hard to understand. You're using MFP's NEAT method. Just means you can't say "I eat 2200 net calories, and this is well below my TDEE, so .." anything. Because comparing those numbers doesn't work. When you use numbers that do work together, the story is just a success story of minor weight gain while eating slightly over TDEE:

"I went from 148-155 over several months while eating 2400-2700 calories/day."

If you think you're eating the same amount, expending more energy, and suddenly gaining weight.. well, a lot of things are possible. You changed at least two variables at the same time (exercise and meal composition). If you're accounting for increased burn in a net approach, just might be overcounting the increase. Or perhaps the switch to increased protein reduced intake of a certain type of calories you weren't metabolizing efficiently, so the effective calorie intake increased. Who knows.

But at the end of the day, the intake (~2550 /day) seems quite reasonable for a slow gain for a 40yr old male ~150 who doesn't engage in endurance sports training.

Yeah, that was where he lost me I guess.

QuietBloom

The previous post is great. It also cleared up something (that an "obese lady" hijacked the discussion at some point, apparently).

Nonetheless, the point about maybe not metabolizing something is also a good one. A calorie isn't a calorie, necessarily. That's why different macro ratios produce slightly different results.

Also, some people are more resistant to fat gain than others. This is apparently (according to studies) because the body produces more movement, etc. (NEAT) to try to burn off fatty acids before/during/after storage. Relative hormone levels likely play a role in this, as does the person's behavior. So, you can actually have a situation where an individual resists body fat gain even when eating a small surplus. But then they begin weight lifting, and they gain muscle, because the calories are prioritized to where they're needed. If the person didn't know they were eating a slight surplus, then they would think they were gaining on maintenance or a deficit. Honestly, I believe hitting maintenance calories is impossible. You're either in a surplus or deficit. Maintenance is an infinitesimally-fine line that's hard to walk. But that's ok, b/c our bodies can handle (some people better than others) a very slight surplus by just increasing movement a tiny bit to burn it off. Homeostasis. And if some of that movement consists of resistance training, you will gain muscle. At least that's the current theory as I understand it.

But I do think the intention of this thread was simply to say that eating like a sumo wrestler isn't required. And that's very true.

I think it is likely that our body's handle the line it by decreasing and increasing caloric intake through hunger signals (in part at least). I ate an enormous meal Thanksgiving day and the next two days I had no desire to even try to hit my calorie goals. I just wasn't hungry. I don't remember that I moved around any more or less than usual.

SoLongAndThanksForAllTheFish

First of congratulations to OP and the others who posted their strength gains with loss of weight! I really think that's the way to go if you are starting out losing. Next, I think the issue is the same as in most weight loss topics: that most people are mis-informed on how a body can react to strength training, and almost everyone has measurement errors, probably EVERYONE has measurement errors in both food and calorie burns, but there may be one person out there who doesn't...he's using a micro calibrated scale on every food item he's followed through its growth and processing with pre-consumption calorie verification and living and exercising inside a thermally controlled and measured hydrostatic chamber somewhere...but even he still has an error range.

As to if you are obese or overweight, you can easily gain strength and some muscle while losing scale weight by increasing weight training at a mild deficit. Its not unusual or improbable, its actually typical. However, the problem comes when you have to "prove" what is going on, and where the strength is coming from; how much is actual muscle that is put on, or is new neurological firing patterns which achieve greater strength by firing more motor groups in unison that were previously disorganized? And, how trained is untrained? You can do different kinds of neuromuscular training on athletes and see improvement which isn't necessarily more muscle too, and they are very "trained". Plus, you put on more muscle to move that extra weight around, but was never really "trained" as you gained the weight.

Next, body fat measures are also very very inaccurate, I'm sorry to say there are many articles about this and the percent they are off can easily encompass the ENTIRE muscle gain you are claiming and then some. Personally, because the error margin is so large, I don't think its really (almost ever) worth getting one done unless you are an "elite" level athlete. Now I'm not saying you didnt gain some muscle, just saying you'll never have the "proof" you want of how much muscle you gained, and therefore cant claim you debunked anything (unless you are referring to no strength gain during weight loss, which is just a myth of the misinformed anyways that an obese person cant lose weight while gaining strength). But that doesn't mean you didn't make some strength gains, probably built a little muscle here and there, and can take pride in that, and are chugging along towards your goal, good job, keep it up.

AcrylicDreams

I'm so confused. What's TDEE?

heybales

I'm so confused. What's TDEE?

Total Daily Energy Expenditure

Literally what your body burns each day doing everything.

Obviously if you eat less than that, you burn away fat reserves, or muscle if eating too little. Eat more, you add them, or muscle if doing lifting.

Since that usually varies, you usually estimate what the week looks like, and get a daily average.

QuietBloom

I'm so confused. What's TDEE?

https://www.google.com/#q=TDEE

IronSmasher

I assume this has gone past page one and been over analysed, because people often claim to break the first law of thermodynamics and therefore solved world hunger, removed the need for gm foods, solved energy crisis, limitations on space travel, time travel...
Rather than they can't log an accurate diary?


Edit- Sorry, not done.

There's a guy, who doesn't bother with measuring spoons, or logging dinner on a Wednesday, claiming that he has created energy.
That within his body, in an area of FL, he made the entire universe heavier.
And you're talking about noob gains and macros?

I'm seriously tempted to punch a kitten.

Fithealthyforlife

I think it is likely that our body's handle the line it by decreasing and increasing caloric intake through hunger signals (in part at least). I ate an enormous meal Thanksgiving day and the next two days I had no desire to even try to hit my calorie goals. I just wasn't hungry. I don't remember that I moved around any more or less than usual.

Of course, if you're just eating based on how you feel, then of course hunger will regulate your energy intake!

But in other cases, it has nothing to do with hunger. Some of us are actually not going by hunger/satiation at all; we're actually logging every day and eating to a certain calorie level for muscle gain...to some degree regardless of when/whether we're hungry or not.

A surplus feels fine and dandy to me when I'm working out; I am very calm and can sit fairly still without fidgettng a lot on a workout day. But if I eat the same amount and just sit around a lot for a few days (which would be a pretty big surplus in that case), I start getting jittery and find myself moving more to burn off the extra calories. I'm not doing it on purpose. My body just hates fat gain since it's used to being lean, so it's getting rid of some of the extra by sneaking in subtle added movement.

geebusuk

Fat loss and Strength gain is not uncommon at all.

Fat loss and Muscle gain is a totally different ball game.

I would suggest that going from the pictures there is some muscle gain.
However that's pretty subjective, while the figures listed for lifting are rather more objective.

neandermagnon

I am finally ready after 2 years of experimention to firmly say that the prevailing concept that a caloric surplus is necessary to build muscle is untrue. I know this is going to get a lot of backlash since it has been the belief for so long amongst the general public, but I am now living proof that muscle and strength gains can be acheived through an intense lifting regiment and a closely monitered intake even with a slight caloric deficit. Without getting into too much detail about mself, I can just tell you that I net under my TDEE every week, and every week I get bigger, stronger, and more defined. The key is simply lifting heavy weights to the point of misery, and eating a crap load of protein. Of course if you want to get bigger faster, eat more, but I am much happier making slow gains while maintaining a six pack than benching 285 lbs. with a beer gut.

then you must be a mutant. because if Homo erectus's bodies built muscle while in a surplus they would have died in the first food shortage, therefore Homo sapiens bodies don't work like that, because we inherited the genes that enabled people to survive the pleistocene, not die in food shortages because their body's building muscle during food shortages. From an evolutionary point of view, it's an epic fail. But evolution is a dynamic process, and you could be a mutant. There's not currently any natural selection against this trait, so you'll be fine until the zombie apocalypse, then you and everyone who inherits this mutation will be the first to die when the food runs out (which will be about the time the corpses of those that died because they couldn't run away from the zombies get to the point where they're no longer edible, or they've all be eaten by the other survivors).

btw I'd rather be able to bench 285lb and have a beer gut, than to have a six pack. But that's just me and my priorities. In fact I'd happily sign a pact (hopefully not with the devil though because I'm kind of good like that) to never ever have a six pack ever in return for having a 285lb bench press.

Oh and there's always the "you're eating more than you think you are" factor, which statistically speaking is a lot more likely than you being a mutant.