Lose muscle doing exercise

jparis14

Hey guys!
What do you think: if all you did was cardio and body weight exercises, but you still ate sufficiently, could you loose muscle mass? As compared to eating sufficiently and lifting weights everyday?
Thanks and feel free to add me I'm new
JP

cwolfman13

any time you diet you are going to lose some muscle mass...it's inevitable. resistance training of some kind (of course body weight training would qualify) helps to mitigate this as well as maintaining a reasonable energy deficit and adequate protein intake.

DavPul

vague question is vague. does eat sufficiently mean at a surplus? or a small deficit? does body weight exercise mean 3 sets of 10 bodyweight squats and pushups or is it hill sprints and single arm handstand pushups with a pulse and a 5 second hold?

musclegood_fatbad

If you are in a deficit, you will lose some (more if you are not lifting and poor macros). If you are in a surplus, probably not but you would not gain the muscle that you would lifting.

yopeeps025

Yes

jparis14

@DavPul my bad for being vague... What I meant by eating sufficiently was hitting your macros and eating at a slight surplus.
What I meant by exercises was body weight only, no weights, just calisthenics.

jparis14

@cwolfman13 thanks for the reply dude. So I'm guessing you would be an advocate of lifting heavy when you cut.

jemhh

jparis14 wrote: »

@DavPul my bad for being vague... What I meant by sufficiently was hitting your macros and eating at a slight surplus.
What I meant by exercises was body weight only, no weights, just calisthenics.

It still depends on the bodyweight exercises you do. If you are using advanced progressions, you can build muscle with bodyweight exercises. Pinterest 100 squat challenge =/= advanced bodyweight squat.

cwolfman13

jparis14 wrote: »

@DavPul my bad for being vague... What I meant by eating sufficiently was hitting your macros and eating at a slight surplus.
What I meant by exercises was body weight only, no weights, just calisthenics.

as long as your body weight routine provides for progressive overload, you can put on muscle mass in a surplus...you aren't going to lose muscle mass in a surplus. That is where the difficulty can come in though...sufficiently challenging yourself with body weight gets trickier than just loading up more weight on a bar bell.

jparis14

@musclegood_fatbad word so would say if you are at slight surplus and did body weight exercises your whole life, you could keep the muscle gains you made when you were lifting weights when you were younger, without touching weights?

BigGuy47

jemhh wrote: »

It still depends on the bodyweight exercises you do.

Absolutely. There's a huge difference between doing jumping jacks and banging out L-Sit Chin ups. Both are considered bodyweight exercises.