Taking My Muscle Building To The Next Level- Need Advice/Tip

NikkisNewStart

I posted this on my blog too... any info you can share would be greatly appreciated friends!

Need some advice- credible, reliable advice... please don't tell me what your mom's brother's friend's cousin's sister did... lol. I am already very knowledgeable on the subject but I do not know everything and one of the main reasons I love MFP is that I have the chance to share what I know with others and learn from their experiences and expertise as well.

Goal: Continue to build muscle.

I have been in maintenance for just about 2 months now and am holding steady at 128 lbs and I'm 5' 7. I'm not interested in dropping more weight as that isn't conducive to my muscle building agenda.

I have been eating my maintenance calories PLUS all exercise calories. My ratios are 45% carb, 30% protein, and 25% fat which equates to 205 g carbs, 50 grams fat, 136 g protein at my base calories of 1810 calories.

I am still feeling like maybe I am too carb heavy. For those who primarily strength train like me... what is your take?

dxing

You're not, if your goal is to build muscles like you say it is.

NikkisNewStart

You're not, if your goal is to build muscles like you say it is.

Thank you for this! Sometimes it helps to get reassurance from someone on the outside looking in. I appreciate you taking the time to input.

Angela4Health

I just started maintenance last week and I'm in the same boat as you. I'm trying to build more muscle now, and my ratio is the same as yours, particularly because even though I'm doing a lot more strength training now, I'm also still doing a lot of cardio. I too wondered if I should lower my carbs to 40 though, so thank you for posting this, I can really get a lot of out of the responses as well.

NikkisNewStart

I just started maintenance last week and I'm in the same boat as you. I'm trying to build more muscle now, and my ratio is the same as yours, particularly because even though I'm doing a lot more strength training now, I'm also still doing a lot of cardio. I too wondered if I should lower my carbs to 40 though, so thank you for posting this, I can really get a lot of out of the responses as well.

I still do a good amount of cardio too- because I enjoy it if nothing else... lol I usually do a 5k on the treadmill- just part of my routine and then spend another hour with the weights. I have steadily increased the amount I am lifting... it is just a slow process and like everyone else- I want results like yesterday! lol

dxing

40% is pretty low for muscle building but it's still acceptable. I wouldn't lower it anymore, but if you're worried about putting on fat, I would always boost cardio before lowering your macros. Sure, it's time consuming, but you have to sacrifice if you want to reach your goal.

jennyb31

I do a 40/40/20. Im not maitnence weight yet but it seems to be helping me lean out and just reduce body fat cause Im not loosing alot of weight but Im seeing good results from training.

JDMPWR

Pm'd you a little rundown. Hit me back.

NikkisNewStart

Thanks JT... wrote you back... thanks for your reply Jenny and Dx. A lot to think about & time for some trial and error.

ltf304

I am not at maintenance level but pretty close. I try to stay about 40/40/20 but honestly, most days I go over on carbs. I eat healthy foods but I eat so much on workout days that it just goes over. I keep decreasing body fat so I don't see this as a problem as of yet. Like you said, it will just take time to see what happens. I am in the same boat.....its kind of like a scientific experiment. haha. Sorry I'm kind of nerdy.

myofibril

I am still feeling like maybe I am too carb heavy. For those who primarily strength train like me... what is your take?

Manipulating your carb macro can be a useful way of keeping your BF% down if you find you are finding you are putting on too much fat whilst on a bulking phase. Alternatively you could introduce moderate amounts of cardio. However, if you go overboard on the cardio then it may be counter productive: essentially you will have opposing anabolic and catabolic states.

I don't think your carb % is the issue (I agree with others that it's a little on the low side though) if you are not progressing. It's either your training routine isn't primed for muscle building or the more likely explanation is your not eating enough. Obviously you need a calorie surplus for growth.

Personally, I think you should simplify your approach. Eating your TDEE and adding in exercise calories seems unecessarily complex. You could consider simply estimating your average intake over say a week to include exercise and then add 300 calories to that to get a daily average. Tweak as necessary. Alternatively multiply your bodyweight in lbs by 16 and eat that every day. Again tweak up or down as necessary depending on results,

DianaPowerUp

Have you read/heard of the book "New Rules of Lifting for Women"? Anyway, they advocate a 40/30/30 split, but they do say that everyone is different, and you kind of need to see what works best for you. For me, I find that I do better with 30/40/30 (more protein, less carbs). Carbs tend to get me puffy and then the scale goes up.

Right now I'm experimenting too, having passed my "goal weight" - I'm adding more calories/carbs to see what happens. I'll check my weight again next wk, and if things are going the wrong direction, I'll know where to cut back. I'd like to build more muscle, and lean out just a bit more, but it gets tricky - the balance b/t eating enough to put on muscle without gaining fat!

NikkisNewStart

Have you read/heard of the book "New Rules of Lifting for Women"? Anyway, they advocate a 40/30/30 split, but they do say that everyone is different, and you kind of need to see what works best for you. For me, I find that I do better with 30/40/30 (more protein, less carbs). Carbs tend to get me puffy and then the scale goes up.

Right now I'm experimenting too, having passed my "goal weight" - I'm adding more calories/carbs to see what happens. I'll check my weight again next wk, and if things are going the wrong direction, I'll know where to cut back. I'd like to build more muscle, and lean out just a bit more, but it gets tricky - the balance b/t eating enough to put on muscle without gaining fat!

Yes, I've read it but I think I need to read it again! lol I read it early on in my weight loss journey but I thought "why am I reading this, I'll never get there."


I don't feel like my body fat % is going up but I got down to 126 and now I'm back up to my maintenance weight of 128 and going up just freaked me the F out... lol So now I'm like... am I puffy, am I putting on fat... and I'm second guessing myself.

To always want to lose weight- finally getting there and going into maintenance- then seeing the scale go up is like... a psychological nightmare.

NikkisNewStart

I am still feeling like maybe I am too carb heavy. For those who primarily strength train like me... what is your take?

Manipulating your carb macro can be a useful way of keeping your BF% down if you find you are finding you are putting on too much fat whilst on a bulking phase. Alternatively you could introduce moderate amounts of cardio. However, if you go overboard on the cardio then it may be counter productive: essentially you will have opposing anabolic and catabolic states.

I don't think your carb % is the issue (I agree with others that it's a little on the low side though) if you are not progressing. It's either your training routine isn't primed for muscle building or the more likely explanation is your not eating enough. Obviously you need a calorie surplus for growth.

Personally, I think you should simplify your approach. Eating your TDEE and adding in exercise calories seems unecessarily complex. You could consider simply estimating your average intake over say a week to include exercise and then add 300 calories to that to get a daily average. Tweak as necessary. Alternatively multiply your bodyweight in lbs by 16 and eat that every day. Again tweak up or down as necessary depending on results,

I ate close to 2400 calories yesterday and that's about average for the days I work out... what exactly is a surplus (since I've been in MFP-speak for almost a year)... would that be my maintenance calories, plus exercise calories (I use a Polar HRM), plus 300? Or would that simply be maintenance plus 300 or like you stated, body weight times 16... b/c body weight times 16 is about 2048 and that's still lower than I ate yesterday... but I guess it would average out on rest days instead of me eating 1810 on those days... just do a daily intake of the 2050?

I know I am overanalyzing everything but that's just the way I'm programmed. It took a LOT of hard work and effort to drop this weight and now that I'm in a place I want to be and ready to keep pushing- I would kick my own butt if I do something diet or exercise wise to just screw it all up.

volfan22

[/quote]

I still do a good amount of cardio too- because I enjoy it if nothing else... lol I usually do a 5k on the treadmill- just part of my routine and then spend another hour with the weights. I have steadily increased the amount I am lifting... it is just a slow process and like everyone else- I want results like yesterday! lol
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I have been researching the mix of cardio and weight training as I have recently added weights to my routine. One of the things that is consistent is that cardio before weight training is not good for building muscle. I am trying this to see if it helps me as I have plateau'd in my weight loss since adding weights. Like you - I was running/cardio prior to weight trainig for about 45 minutes.

This was posted in a thread on another website - he is replying to a person that has basically your same question - I thought you might like it:

"Pre-workout cardio depletes blood, liver and muscle glycogen, reducing the available ATP for lifting weights, thereby diminishing the quality of the weight-lifting. The point of cardio is either to increase daily caloric expenditure, to promote cardiovascular health, or both.

In your case, your goal is expenditure. Since 1 hour of vigorous weight lifting is equivalent to a 6mph run for the same duration, it could well be said that any cardio is redundant on lifting days, if in fact a mere 500-700 calorie deficit is your goal for said day (not a 1000-1400 calorie deficit). Additionally, when a deficit is created on lifting days, a greater percentage of protein is converted into glucose, reducing the available proteins available in the blood stream for synthesis. So, cardio prior to workouts reduces both your catabolic and anabolic benefits.

The recommendation would be to separate cardio from weight lifting as much as possible so that the 24 hour period subsequent to lifting when protein synthesis rates are highest will have a greater amount of available amino acids. When said 24 hours is completed, then introduce cardio to create the desired deficit for fat loss.

Hope that helps.

cliffs: cardio pre-workout = bad for muscle."

dxing

I have been researching the mix of cardio and weight training as I have recently added weights to my routine. One of the things that is consistent is that cardio before weight training is not good for building muscle. I am trying this to see if it helps me as I have plateau'd in my weight loss since adding weights. Like you - I was running/cardio prior to weight trainig for about 45 minutes.

This was posted in a thread on another website - he is replying to a person that has basically your same question - I thought you might like it:

"Pre-workout cardio depletes blood, liver and muscle glycogen, reducing the available ATP for lifting weights, thereby diminishing the quality of the weight-lifting. The point of cardio is either to increase daily caloric expenditure, to promote cardiovascular health, or both.

In your case, your goal is expenditure. Since 1 hour of vigorous weight lifting is equivalent to a 6mph run for the same duration, it could well be said that any cardio is redundant on lifting days, if in fact a mere 500-700 calorie deficit is your goal for said day (not a 1000-1400 calorie deficit). Additionally, when a deficit is created on lifting days, a greater percentage of protein is converted into glucose, reducing the available proteins available in the blood stream for synthesis. So, cardio prior to workouts reduces both your catabolic and anabolic benefits.

The recommendation would be to separate cardio from weight lifting as much as possible so that the 24 hour period subsequent to lifting when protein synthesis rates are highest will have a greater amount of available amino acids. When said 24 hours is completed, then introduce cardio to create the desired deficit for fat loss.

Hope that helps.

This is true only if the cardio is intense and for extended periods (I agree that 45 mins is too long prior), moderate cardio for a short period of time is fine to warm up before weightlifting.

On a related note, there seem's to be a belief that cardio isn't good for building muscle, and some people are afraid that it even burns muscle. This is mostly untrue; cardio doesn't burn muscle, it's probably your diet that's doing that. People often notice that they lose muscle when dieting, and then you realize they're eating at an extreme caloric deficit, which is anywhere under 20% maintenance. They did a study on long distance runners where they measured their body mass over a period of time. Interestingly enough, the runners did lose muscle. But it was ONLY in their legs, and of course, this is because of over training. The extended cardio that they did seemed to have no effect on their upper body in terms of muscle loss.

myofibril

just do a daily intake of the 2050?

It's up to you really and what you feel comfortable doing. You could try eating say 2,100 or thereabouts per day and not worry about fluctuating between different calorie intakes for workout / non workout days. I have tried both approaches over time and they both worked. However, having a set intake per day was less stressful as it involved far less thinking and planning. Might be different for you.

The actual number isn't something to be hung up about. It's just a baseline. Where it takes you is important. If you find that after a few weeks your weight and BF% has stayed the same then clearly it is your maintaining. If your weight is going up but your BF% has stayed the same that is a very good thing. It means you are gaining LBM - what you want. If that happens keep doing it. You may need to play around with the amounts to get a good balance but it is easy once you have a sensible baseline.

In reality I think it is likely that both your weight and BF% will increase whilst you are attempting to build. It would be great if our bodies partitioned all calories towards muscle building alone rather than fat storage but generally they don't tend to work that way. You could try a clean bulk where fat gain is kept at an absolute minimum but that can be a painstaking and frustrating process. Alternatively you could break down your goal into two distinct phases: adding muscle (which will probably include some fat gain) followed by a short fat loss programme where you maintain what you have built whilst stripping away the fat you have gained. For most people this tends to be the most viable approach.

I can understand that you may freak out when you see the scale going up but in fact it's exactly what you want if you are focusing on muscle building (and as long as BF % is kept in check.) As you know scale weight and body composition are two different things.

Have confidence in your ability and you will succeed.