Reached weight goal… how to gain muscle

danieltcastillo5643

Hello! Happy to say I reached my weight goal at 190 lbs. lost 40 lbs in 5 months.
Now I’d like to tone up and gain muscle.
I lost my weight at 1610 calories a day.
What daily calorie count should I switch to? I’m 53 years old. 5’10”. I have some muscle like substance on me that hadn’t been used in years. But I would like to gain a bit more. How do I do this?
Am I approaching this the right way?

Thanks in advance!

Daniel

mar_sbar

Hi, and congrats on your progress so far. The best way to determine your calorie goal is to figure out your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), and that will tell you the number of calories per day you need each day to maintain your current weight. Going forward, consume that maintenance amount and be sure to stick to a consistent lifting program along with some regular cardio. You may already be doing this, so just stay consistent with that. Note: with any muscle gains, there will also be inevitable fat gain, so you will need to reassess how you look and feel in a few months. If you think you've gotten a bit fluffy, switch to a slight caloric deficit and keep up with the lifting and cardio. I hope that was all helpful in giving you a starting point.

AnnPT77

The best way to determine your TDEE is to look at how much weight you lost in the most recent 4 weeks or thereabouts. Multiply the pounds lost by 3500, the approximate number of calories in a pound of body fat. Divide the resulting number by the number of days in the time period you considered. Add those calories to your 1610 (assuming you averaged fairly close to that 1610 the whole time). That total, 1610 + calories represented by the weight you lost, should give you a reasonable personalized estimate of your weight-maintenance calories. Test-drive that calorie level for a month or so, look at the results and tweak again if necessary.

You for sure want to add a good progressive lifting program and follow it pretty faithfully, and get good overall nutrition, especially but not exclusively ample protein. (Ample protein: Probably minimum 0.8g/day/pound of healthy body weight, up to 1g. More is fine within reason, but that's likely enough.)

Then just settle into that routine and be patient, because muscle mass gain is a gradual process.

If you add exercise - lifting for sure, ideally cardio, too - you will need even more calories. Keep watching the scale trend, the average over several weeks. If you're still losing weight, use the arithmetic above to add more calories as needed, based on that trend.

That's a simplistic answer, but that should be the general approach that will work.

Best wishes!

I2k4

Very good basic how-to from AnnPT77 above. My loss was comparable but much less quick and entirely without a scale or calorie tracking, taking over a year (to go from 40" wardrobe panic to comfortably under 36" pants). But the "weight" loss was. as often, also loss of muscle and it needed some serious thought about food and exercise to recover that (pandemic lockdown gave me lots of time for it.) It was then I bought a scale to calculate "targets" and meticulously tracked food intake long enought to get a good ballpark sense of enough calorie and protein "surplus" to gain muscle or cardio-vascular health on exercise, or reduce them when I'm doing less. On my own scale weight in the 185-190 pound range ballpark maintenance is around 2200 calories and protein for muscle building around 170 grams. I would guess the diet that lost your "weight" is not nearly enough to build muscle mass and would impede strength gains and even wear you down under much cardio work. I found the exercise of seriously tracking calories and macros for a while was invaluable, but not an ongoing lifestyle requirement. I also found that trying serious exercise programs of various modalities usually in three month blocks really produces gains, but extended focusing on one generally means weakening in others that are worth keeping up.

(I replace the happy-talk no-shame term target "weight" with the more precise and sobering "fat" as against valuable lean mass, as big muscles and strong bones, especially entering later middle-age.)

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