This ****’s confusing for a newb! Advice please

Hellohoney79
Hellohoney79 Posts: 6 Member
in Fitness and Exercise
Me: 33 y/o female, 5 ft 5 in and 153lbs. My goal – lose 30lbs of fat. I don’t really care what my final weight ends up at; it’s all about being fit and trim. I currently have pretty much no muscle tone and at 153lbs my weight has been guessed to be in the 170-180 range….. I do not carry this 30lbs well and would much rather weigh in close to where I am and have the muscles to wear it well!

So – I have been trying to figure out the best approach. Everything I read says “1. You can’t gain muscle at a deficit” and “2. You can’t lose fat eating at a surplus”

Am I trying to lose weight? Am I trying to gain muscle? Can I do both at the same time? Do I need to eat at a deficit and do cardio to drop down to 120 and then put on 30lbs of muscle eating at a surplus? Is there a middle ground of food/weight lifting/cardio that can let me “do it all”????

I just had my first day back at the gym today and it was AWESOME. Did some cardio, lifted a bunch of heavy things (well, heavy for me) and I want to get this figured out to go all the way. I have much to learn and am working on it, but figured I would see if there were some different perspectives to consider.

Replies

  • kingneptune45
    kingneptune45 Posts: 8 Member
    Hello HelloHoney79,

    Your question is very valid and is something I too was very curious about when I started sometime ago. Let me tell you this first I am no fitness expert but read tons and tons of articles and talk to a lot of people.

    So here is the skinny in order for you to loose the fat and maintain the muscle you have and obviously shape your body as you desire you are going to have to do 20-30 min of High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT). If you are unfamiliar with this you can Google it and find varies ways of doing this. But I will give you an example of what I do (again I am no expert, but this works for me), I do a 5 min warmup then go into a sprint for 1 min then jog for 2 min (continue this rotation for 6 times) finishing with a 5 min cool down. The intent of the is to "jack" your heart rate up for a min then drop it and continue the process.. this way you are constantly burning fat. By running or doing any aerobic type of cardio more than 30 mins you begin to burn muscle. Also it is very good that you are lifting weights... a lot of women shy away from weights not truly understanding the benefits. But I would also suggest that when doing your weights make sure your rest in between sets are no longer than 30 secs. This will keep the muscle tight.

    Also.. PLEASE make sure you are EATING more than 1200 caleries a day. I know when I first joined MFP EVERY woman who signed up the app put them at 1200 please adjust it to fit your lifestyle and because you are lifting you probably should be eating around 40% Protein, 40% Carbs, 20% Fat.

    Good luck and Let me know if I can help with anything....

    King Neptune
  • bridgie101
    bridgie101 Posts: 817 Member
    I've been building up my muscle tone again, on 1200 a day. But I'm over forty, and the muscles were already there. They're work related muscles not body building muscles. :p

    I do know that you can develop your muscles on a calorie controlled diet, and you can certainly tone up. Unless you're trying to bodybuild you can do quite a lot with your body. Bodies are quite resilient and very good at adjusting.

    Why don't you work out what diet you want to be on, then go to the gym. If you don't find you're improving at the gym, raise your calorie goal.
  • Hellohoney79
    Hellohoney79 Posts: 6 Member
    I know 1200 cals for me is not sustainable.....

    So my BMR is 1401 - my TDEE is 1682. I am figuring I will need to start at 1200 cals plus excercise cals in order to see some weightloss. Hoping that as I get more fit I can lessen the deficit and jump up to my tdee for cals - guess we will have to see how it goes!

    thanks for the advice above :)

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