Adding muscle while dieting

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  • DopeItUp
    DopeItUp Posts: 18,771 Member
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    Also, is this every day, or just weight training days?

    Generally recommended to have high protein all around. You need it on days you lift but you need it on rest days too to support that recovery. I'm about your size and I try to get minimum 175g a day, every day (with rare exception, usually on sundays). Most days I average 200, sometimes spiking to 250.

    As for chicken, generally 1 ounce of uncooked chicken has about 8g of protein. You can expect it to lose a little weight when cooking so it will probably be more like .75 ounces of chicken once it's cooked (especially grilled chicken for example). This is for ultra lean chicken of course (like 99% lean). Chicken with some fat will obviously leave you with less protein per ounce. Just read the label on what you buy and enter it in that way. Most regular (not super lean) chicken is probably like 6g of protein and 2g of fat per ounce.
  • JNick77
    JNick77 Posts: 3,783 Member
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    If you watch what you're eating it's easy to get the protein in. I consume about 280gm's/day and it's not a stretch. Each meal has meat, typically some kind of grilled chicken, supplement in some whey, and then the small amounts of protein in the rest of my food make up the rest. When people eat things like cereal bars and other "low-fat" / "low-cal" snack foods, even some yogurt, they typically lack any meaningful amounts of protein so you hit your calorie goals but you miss out on the protein.
  • ianisgreat
    ianisgreat Posts: 18
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    I'm not a big meat eater, so I really have to try with chicken. Most of the time, I don't really want to eat more than about 4 oz of meat at once.
  • love4fitnesslove4food_wechange
    love4fitnesslove4food_wechange Posts: 6,897 Member
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    I'm not a big meat eater, so I really have to try with chicken. Most of the time, I don't really want to eat more than about 4 oz of meat at once.

    4oz is like 2 bites. Sounds like protein shakes will be your best friend. 3 a day --for snacks --2 scoops each.
  • nml2011
    nml2011 Posts: 156 Member
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    Most recreational trainers don't need any more than 200g of Protein a day but there is no harm in eating more.

    Unlikely to add muscle if on a deficit unless you are very new to weight training then you might see some gains in the first 3 months or so but strength should increase.

    If you want to lean up and gain muscle then carb backloading should work for you but you would need to eat at an excess - I roughly lose 1% bf a month eating 500 -1000 calories over maintenance and stay around the same weight of 89kg.
  • ianisgreat
    ianisgreat Posts: 18
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    Okay, different question. How long do you all rest in between sets of doing something. Let's say I'm doing 5x5 sets of something like...shoulder presses or squats. How long should I be resting between sets, ideally?
  • DopeItUp
    DopeItUp Posts: 18,771 Member
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    I usually rest 4-5 mins between the big exercises like deadlifts or squats. 2-3 between smaller exercises like rows or shoulder press.
  • waldo56
    waldo56 Posts: 1,861 Member
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    Are you in a big rush to lose?

    You can always microcycle bulking and cutting, from the leangains level of extreme of a every other day to a less extreme workout-cycle bulk and cut where every 4-6-8 weeks you shift between bulking and cutting, coinciding with exercise fatigue cycles.

    Over time you'll gain muscle and lose fat at the same time, even if strictly speaking you aren't doing both simultaneously. When you are gaining/losing 0.5-1.0 lb/wk in shorter cycles like that it will appear that you are both losing fat and gaining muscle simultaneously. The fat gains duing bulk cycles will be minimal, bodering on irrelevant.

    Th positive benefit of doing this as opposed to dieting down to a low BF% right away, is that your metabolism will be less prone to protesting. The hardest time to get to a low BF% is after you've been dieting a while, as your metabolism has been adjusting to the loss for a while. Likewise you won't have to deal with stalled out strength gains while in a deficit for long chunks.
  • FullOfWin
    FullOfWin Posts: 1,414 Member
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    If you are training for strength then you rest as long as you need to in order to complete the next set. As you get stronger, this time will increase.
  • ianisgreat
    ianisgreat Posts: 18
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    Interesting, so you do 5 squats...rest 5 minutes, and then do the next 5 and repeat til done.

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