Calories and metabolism

mgonyer123

Can you screw up and/or slow down your metabolism by not eating enough calories?

Liftng4Lis

After a long enough time of under eating, yes metabolic adaptation could occur, but it's usually a pretty negligible difference.

mgonyer123

Ok! Thank you for the quick reply. So the only true problem is losing muscle mass correct?

fireflycities

Losing muscle mass is something to watch out for while you're losing weight, especially if you are losing quickly, or doing a lot of cardio. Make sure you're meeting your protein goals, and do some simple weightlifting.

Mr_Knight

You can easily lose a lot of muscle mass doing resistance training, too. Need to keep the protein up, and if you're working hard, no more than a moderate deficit.

mgonyer123

At the risk of sounding dumb..

How do you know of you're working too hard compared to calories eaten?

I hike 2 or 3 days a week 1-2 miles depending on which kid is with me.

30 day shred when I don't hike (which is cardio and weights) (occasionally when I do hike)

and I lift small weights every other dayish (small pounds but many reps)

On days I do 30 day shred I find it hard to eat the min 1200 calories because I'm not hungry for hours after and then when I am I'm not THAT hungry, you know?

I just don't want to make any drastic mistakes. I've only been at this for 3 weeks so be gentle!

galgenstrick

High rep work is more cardio than resistance training. It's not going to help with preserving muscle mass

mgonyer123

It's not? I thought doing weights helped...define muscle?

Liftng4Lis

Get enough protein and look into a progressive lifting program like SL 5x5.

yellowantphil

mgonyer123 wrote: »

It's not? I thought doing weights helped...define muscle?

I’m no expert, but I think “high reps” is something like 15 reps to failure. You didn’t say how many reps you do, but if it’s way higher than that, you might want to increase the weight some.

mgonyer123

Ok gotcha. I am going to increase when it fits in with the budget. I still find the weights in use while doing 30 day shred still challenging for now.

yellowantphil

I’d recommend browsing the bodybuilding.com fitness plans if you want to find a good weightlifting plan for your goals. Whatever you’re doing already might be fine, but I like to go with premade plans instead of just guessing at what reps and weight to do.

I don’t know if they have any plans that are just for toning, but you could check.

professionalHobbyist

Muscle fitness women

Check them out. It is a section just exactly for women and your questions