Started again from scratch

stewarm01

I have a question for anyone. My stats first. I just restarted over again 9 weeks ago. I'm 5'9, 46 years old. Male. I've lost 42 pounds so far to my current weight of 220lbs. My plan is to lose weight and build up muscles.

I was going to get to 180lbs then start lifting weights to get 10lbs of muscle to a final weight of 190lbs. I don't really want to be too light.

I've only been doing cardio right now, walking 6 miles daily 6 days a week. Counting calories heavily.

So my question, am I doing this correctly, lose fat first and build muscle? I really don't want to stop losing weight while I'm doing so well right now. Averaging 4.6 lbs per week.

Thanks

amusedmonkey

This isn't the best way to do it. Introducing resistance training during dieting will help you preserve muscle mass. Preserving muscle is easier than building it. The extreme dieting you are doing isn't helping either, it's a recipe for muscle loss. You may hit your desired weight and find yourself needing to work much much longer than you anticipated to build your muscle back up.

A muscle-geared plan would include starting resistance training yesterday, eating enough calories to fuel it (includes eating back your cardio calories), and eating enough protein to build/maintain muscle.

In fact, if you're new to lifting, and if you slow your weight loss to a reasonable deficit while eating enough protein, you can build muscle now! You may reach 190 and be satisfied with your muscle mass and not need to diet down to 180, who knows, depends on how much muscle you've lost already with extreme dieting.

stewarm01

Thanks for the info., yes I'll be new to lifting. I need to do some reevaluating.