My exercise "trap" and weight loss - a graph

EvgeniZyntx

I've been working on the last 10 lbs for a while and actually no longer care much as to when I will lose them - I am focusing more on composition, health and performance goals. But along the way, I moved away from being sedentary to being much more active - on a good week, I'm running, climbing or going to the gym 5 or 6 times. This post is really to share, not my great activity level, but what can happen on the bad weeks and if I let myself go.

I do have weeks were I drop down to almost sedentary, work, other activity can destroy my planning and leave me dropping work-outs. So a look into my TDEE and activity gives me a few pointers.

Here is a graph showing calories I can eat and various possible scenarios.



I'm currently fairly active and place myself in the yellow box in the middle. If I stop working out my TDEE would pretty much drop to 2230 or thereabouts.

The dashed line shows were I can expect to evolve, while maintaining an activity, if my weight loss is "typical" and includes a bit of lean body mass loss. In other words, if I don't take care to maintain LBM, I can expect that a 10 lb loss will result in about 250 cals less of food calories at maintenance (at 2610). Hmm, not great!

This is why resistance training of some form is very important in weight loss. If I can minimize my LBM loss, I can expect that I will retain most of my TDEE as shown by the empty circles. To keep my path on the dark green arrow I really have two choices - increase my activity level or try keep my LBM. Again, resistance training of some sort is a must.

The risk, as I cut and eat less and lose weight is that I'll drop my work outs and find myself at the bottom of the TDEE bucket - sure, I can survive with a TDEE of 2020 (bottom of red arrow) but it will make staying at that weight more difficult, I'm likelier to gain weight back with a low TDEE and, frankly, I prefer having 700-800 more cals available.

So how about bulking and moving things towards the right? Just how beneficial is it to TDEE? Well, when we gain weight using a recomposition protocol we try to minimize fat gain but it always occurs. Assuming a typical conservative gain (my assumptions are listed at the bottom) I can expect over a bulk of 5-10lbs to only gain about 50% LBM, the rest is fat. The open circles show the slight improvement I can expect with those gains. It is less than what I thought, but a few cycles can show up as a gain of 100-200 cals per day, not bad. And let's not forget the pluses of esthetic, strength, ability, etc...

Thinking of giving up and just eating your way back to an old TDEE? Well, LBM gain is slow, so any rapid gain is likely to be mostly fat. A quick gain of 5-10 lbs, (without resistance training) will give me at best a TDEE of 2910 (full circles) - oh, but if I dropped everything and just gained those 10 lbs? Woops down to the bottom right of the graph - ten lbs fatter and a TDEE of 2250 or about 620 less than what I can eat today.

So I'm in the exercise "trap" - I better stay active or rapidly eat less if I don't want to find myself gaining.

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assumptions:
- gains with resistance training in bulk 50/50 LBM/Fat
- gains without training 90% fat
- weight loss with LBM sparing results in 20% LBM loss (conservative), very slow loss while can show no effective loss.

TL:DR: Eat the food, work out, be consistent or face the consequences.

Otterluv

Great write up, thank you so much for taking the time to do it.



And FINE, I'll go to the gym today. Or run. Or something. Even though I don't really wanna', and could totally come up with a zillion excuses, err, I mean "reasons" not to.

LiftAllThePizzas

Yep, that's true of pretty much anything worth keeping, you have to keep maintaining it.

The good news is that if you stop for a while, and lose some LBM, you can gain that amount back pretty quickly.

prattiger65

Nicely done. That is about as simple and plain as it gets. Don't wanna be fat again, here are your alternatives. Thank you for sharing.

DopeItUp

Yep, that's true of pretty much anything worth keeping, you have to keep maintaining it.

The good news is that if you stop for a while, and lose some LBM, you can gain that amount back pretty quickly.

Muscle memory FTW?

richardheath

Interesting analysis. Thanks for sharing!

EvgeniZyntx

Yep, that's true of pretty much anything worth keeping, you have to keep maintaining it.

The good news is that if you stop for a while, and lose some LBM, you can gain that amount back pretty quickly.

I'd say it depends on a lot of factors and if you've been yoyo'ing it's going to be a it harder than someone straight overweight with some LBM worth keeping.

jofjltncb6

In...

...for later...


...after I find my nerd hat.

LiftAllThePizzas

Yep, that's true of pretty much anything worth keeping, you have to keep maintaining it.

The good news is that if you stop for a while, and lose some LBM, you can gain that amount back pretty quickly.

Muscle memory FTW?

Hehe, yeah, I think. But I can never remember whether that term is supposed to mean memory of motor skills or a metaphorical "memory" of the former size of a muscle.

LiftAllThePizzas

Yep, that's true of pretty much anything worth keeping, you have to keep maintaining it.

The good news is that if you stop for a while, and lose some LBM, you can gain that amount back pretty quickly.

I'd say it depends on a lot of factors and if you've been yoyo'ing it's going to be a it harder than someone straight overweight with some LBM worth keeping.

True. By "a while" I meant slacking or missing a few weeks/months.