Am I eating enough to lose weight AND gain muscle?

DorseyJ618

Hello all!

I am 5'3" and currently weigh 162.8. I start p90x today and I wanted to see what your thoughts were on how much I eat.

MFP has me eating 1200 a day to lose 1.5LBS a week, and with the 400ish I burn from my workouts, I plan to eat APPROX 1600 a day. My question is... is that too little? I know you can't bulk if you're not eating enough, but I want to lose weight while I gain muscle.

I appreciate any advice/opinions.

Oh and feel free to add me!

navyrigger46

Can't lose weight and gain muscle at the same time, and at 1200 you'll be cutting. Now, you can gain strength while losing weight, but building muscle requires a surplus and a lot of effort.

Rigger

Aaron_K123

Hello all!

I am 5'3" and currently weigh 162.8. I start p90x today and I wanted to see what your thoughts were on how much I eat.

MFP has me eating 1200 a day to lose 1.5LBS a week, and with the 400ish I burn from my workouts, I plan to eat APPROX 1600 a day. My question is... is that too little? I know you can't bulk if you're not eating enough, but I want to lose weight while I gain muscle.

I appreciate any advice/opinions.

Oh and feel free to add me!

You will not gain muscle eating that little no. In fact eating that little I'd be suprised if you could bring full intensity to those workouts.

Doesn't P90X come with a diet plan? Does it seriously recommend 1600 calories only or are you trying to "push yourself"?

Just to be clear P90X is not really a muscle building program, its more of a cardio and overall fitness type of program. Sure there is resistance training but its so fast-paced bam bam bam its more like a cardio circuit than a heavy lifting routine.

DorseyJ618

The reccomendations are vague. They aren't specific to gender or height. They only go by weight and there's three different "levels" you fit into. The level I fall under reccomends 2400 and I KNOW I wont lose weight eating that much.

Aaron_K123

The reccomendations are vague. They aren't specific to gender or height. They only go by weight and there's three different "levels" you fit into. The level I fall under reccomends 2400 and I KNOW I wont lose weight eating that much.

2400 certainly sounds more reasonable than 1600. I guess I'd ask what your goals are and why you are doing P90X if your goal is just weight loss?

ETA:

Just to clarify what I mean is this. P90X is a pretty intense workout routinue and to do it justice yeah you are going to have to eat more, I would suspect 1600 calories isn't that far off from your BMR which would make it a pretty strict diet in and of itself let alone with heavy exercise. If you want to eat only 1600 calories you can but you should pick an easier exercise regime so you don't overwork yourself. If your goal is strength and fitness P90X is a pretty good program but you will only get something out of it if you eat enough in which case 2000 calories is probably a more reasonable level.

TeaBea

The reccomendations are vague. They aren't specific to gender or height. They only go by weight and there's three different "levels" you fit into. The level I fall under reccomends 2400 and I KNOW I wont lose weight eating that much.

With 28 pounds to go......1.5 pounds a week is really aggressive. Drop your weekly goal (a bit) to 1 pound a week and MFP will give you more calories. MFP bottoms out at 1200 net, so most women can lose weight by eating more.

Aggressive weight loss won't help you support existing muscle. If you want to lose (mainly) fat....eat more.

Aaron_K123

I used the following calculator:

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html

Got that you would probably maintain around 2,400 calories. Eating 1900 would give you 1 pound per week loss and probably enough fuel to get through those workouts. I'd try that.

You won't gain muscle though, none at all, so don't expect that.

DorseyJ618

My goal isn't weight loss alone. I don't just want to be thin, I want to be strong.

I think I will follow TeaBea's advice and adjust my goal to 1lb lost a week

Thank you all for taking the time to help!!!

Aaron_K123

My goal isn't weight loss alone. I don't just want to be thin, I want to be strong.

I think I will follow TeaBea's advice and adjust my goal to 1lb lost a week

Thank you all for taking the time to help!!!

P90X will help with your strength for sure, but you won't gain muscle at a calorie deficit. That said you don't have to gain muscle to gain strength, nucleation of your current muscle tissue and training your CNS for neuromuscular control can give you good strength gains with the muscle you have.

To actually add muscle tissue though takes caloric surplus which would mean eating over 2400 calories per day.

DorseyJ618

I used the following calculator:

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html

Got that you would probably maintain around 2,400 calories. Eating 1900 would give you 1 pound per week loss and probably enough fuel to get through those workouts. I'd try that.

You won't gain muscle though, none at all, so don't expect that.

I appreciate the help. I guess I will worry about building muscle once I've reached my goal weight. I know it all takes time..

Aaron_K123

I used the following calculator:

http://www.exrx.net/Calculators/CalRequire.html

Got that you would probably maintain around 2,400 calories. Eating 1900 would give you 1 pound per week loss and probably enough fuel to get through those workouts. I'd try that.

You won't gain muscle though, none at all, so don't expect that.

I appreciate the help. I guess I will worry about building muscle once I've reached my goal weight. I know it all takes time..

I think that is a good plan.

To give you some context I am currently doing P90X for weight loss (not muscle gain). I chose to use that program to retain my muscle and strength while focusing on losing fat. Once I've lost the fat I want to lose I will up my calories and switch to a barbell heavy lifting program to actually gain muscle.

Currently eating 2200 calories daily, when I switch to muscle building will probably switch to 3000 calories.

DorseyJ618

I think that is a good plan.

To give you some context I am currently doing P90X for weight loss (not muscle gain). I chose to use that program to retain my muscle and strength while focusing on losing fat. Once I've lost the fat I want to lose I will up my calories and switch to a barbell heavy lifting program to actually gain muscle.

Currently eating 2200 calories daily, when I switch to muscle building will probably switch to 3000 calories.

I think by looking at all these before/after pictures I asummed all those people had gained muscle. I realize now that what you said was happening --> "nucleation of your current muscle tissue and training your CNS for neuromuscular control can give you good strength gains with the muscle you have."

Aaron_K123

I think that is a good plan.

To give you some context I am currently doing P90X for weight loss (not muscle gain). I chose to use that program to retain my muscle and strength while focusing on losing fat. Once I've lost the fat I want to lose I will up my calories and switch to a barbell heavy lifting program to actually gain muscle.

Currently eating 2200 calories daily, when I switch to muscle building will probably switch to 3000 calories.

I think by looking at all these before/after pictures I asummed all those people had gained muscle. I realize now that what you said was happening --> "nucleation of your current muscle tissue and training your CNS for neuromuscular control can give you good strength gains with the muscle you have."

You can look at some of my before after pictures. I am tracking my body composition in addition to my weight loss. From that I can say I have neither gained nor lost muscle. From my appearance I look far more muscles but that is because I have lost the fat that was covering the muscle. Also when you do resistance training your muscles will flood with retained water for storage of glycogen and repair making them literally puff up like balloons. This makes them look fuller and larger but its not actually gained muscle tissue.

As for strength gains strength can be trained neuromuscularly. To get what I mean by this picture someone learning how to throw a baseball. They start out lobbing the ball and barely making it over the plate but after 4 months of practice they are chucking fastballs hard over the plate. Do you think they gained lots of muscle in their arm? Doubtful. No that "strength" just comes from training your brains ability to engage the muscle in an efficient and productive manner. Same can happen with push-ups or anything else. Those gains do eventually plateau (you can only get so efficient) but it takes a long time and during that time you will see progressive strength gains.