Relatively light people trying to get leaner

Great thread. I am one of the ones trying to lose the last bit of fat after a fairly large weight loss a few years back (45lbs) so this has been a good insight. I am currently 160lbs at 5"8' and definitely the strongest I have ever been. When I was losing the weight initially, I was only really doing running. I lost the weight alright but I lost a LOT of muscle as well. If I had my time again, I would be implementing some resistance training about half way through my weight loss.

I am now at the point where I think I actually want to put some more weight on (which is a huge mindset change for someone who was always large) but it is hard to change the patterns of eating to gain weight. I am not so much scale obsessive but BF% caliper obsessive :P I only measure once a week though at least.

My workouts consist of mma training, resistance training (currently Wendlers 5/3/1 on DL, Bench, squat and Overhead press) and usually finish with some HIIT.

Will continue to train the above and add some more food to diet soon to get some hypertrophy (with any luck :P)

This mindset change has basically come about after a fairly long time trying to lose last bit of fat without losing LBM. Keeping 1g/lb protein and having a moderate deficit I would say. As you say, small deficit means it would take a fairly long time to notice any difference.

I've gotta tell ya... I'm completely impressed. I would never expect anyone on here to know who Wendler is, let alone be following his 5-3-1. It's a great setup... so good for you. Oh, and congrats on your success thus far!

Not 30 reps per set -- 30 total reps -- so maybe 12 the first set, 10 the second, and 8 the third. Make sense? :huh:

Ohhh, okay. That's perfectly fine assuming you weren't just using super light weights and stopping at those rep numbers arbitrarily.

so....if your metabolic rate is low -- how do you get it back to the 100%?

Couple of things:

Metabolic rate can be considered total daily energy expenditure. TDEE is comprised of basal metabolic rate (BMR), thermic effect of activity (TEA) and thermic effect of food (TEF). Some will add spontaneous physical activity and non-exercise activity thermogenesis to this, but that's beyond the scope here.

So...

TDEE (otherwise known as maintenance) = BMR + TEA + TEF

As one loses weight, TDEE is always going to drop. Less tissue to move around and support means a lower BMR. Less food being eaten means less digestion and utilization and therefore a lower TEF. Sure, activity may increase (TEA) due to structured exercise that generally accompanies a weight loss attempt. But this isn't going to offset the reductions in BMR and TEF. Plus, the net TEA may remain the same once you factor in other adaptations to dieting associated with TEA (if someone is interested, just ask but I think it's unnecessary).

Either way, you're never going to get back to 100% of what you were unless you gain the weight back. Make sense? This is why calorie requirements go down as weight falls.

However, there's an adaptive component to metabolism that goes beyond bmr, tea, and tef. By that, I mean when metabolism is tested is dieted down individuals, the weight and activity predicted metabolic rates tend to be higher than what the rate actually is. This is what I call the "hormonal lag" that's associated with prolonged under-feeding. Hormones and nervous system activity respond to the chronic stress of underfeeding by going into what some deem a survival mode. In reality, it's just your body's way of trying to maintain homeostasis.

Most of the research indicates that you're never going to totally erase this "hormonal lag" which is why when you have two people of equal weights/stats, yet one is naturally there and the other dieted down to there... the dieted down individual, even after years, tends to have a lower caloric expenditure.

Of course it varies from person to person... this can't be applied to each and every person who diets down. It's a general observation if you will.

There is some evidence indicating that bringing calories back up to maintenance and reducing exercise can help "reset" some of these negative adaptations, which is why I said when I come across someone who's been taking the jackhammer approach where they're trying to beat their body into submission over extensive periods of time I'll generally remove the stress. This seems to give the body "reassurance" that it's not on the brink of starvation and gives it chance to "reset" some of the metabolic adaptations. Will it bring things up to 100%, metabolically speaking? Doubtful.

Welcome to the catch-22 of dieting.

Of course you could always toy around with thermogenics to make up for the metabolic slowdown... but not everyone is okay with that.

On the flip side... if someone's metabolism is slow due to clinical issues (low thyroid is a big one), they need to get tested and medicated more often than not.

Please tell more about thermogenics :bigsmile:

http://www.drumlib.com/

Start with that.

These would be things like ephedrine and caffeine. I'm sure many of you have heard of the EC stack.

There is a time and a place for it's use with caffeine for SOME. Not most though. Never unless you have everything else on the nutrition and exercise front dialed in. And frankly, I've never used the stack personally.

And yea, there are dangers associated with it's use. Most are blown way out of proportion and/or over-hyped.... but it can be very dangerous for select populations with contraindications.... like hypertensive individuals.

Some stupid people abused it back in the day which sent out the media-tards to highlight how dangerous it is. In reality what was dangerous were the stupid people using it.

For anyone who is using this or is going to... I'd start with 10 mg of ephedrine and 100 mg of caffeine taken once per day and go from there based on how you react.

Most of the research on the topic uses a dosage of 20 mg ephedrine and 200 mg of caffeine taken three times per day. This is your upper limit. Start at the lower and work your way toward the upper gradually.

OMG this is the thread that I've been searching for since feeling like I've been getting NOWHERE with this whole weight loss thing.

I suppose I should start threads more often around here. On MFP I'm generally more reactive than proactive when it comes to posting.

Thanks so much for sharing all this info, will have to re-read and re-read again to absorb it all before I can start to put some tips to use. I currently do 3 hour spin classes and 2 body pump classes a week, keep my calorie intake around the 1300 mark and STILL can't lose the last 4kg that I've set as my goal. I've been wondering if perhaps my current weight is just my 'default weight' and that's where I'm going to stay.

I'll definitely be looking at getting a weights programme set up and perhaps moving away from the pump classes, 4 years of it and I'm not seeing any real difference in how much I can lift or muscle definition. Grrrrr......

Thanks for proving my point! This is a story I hear time and time again. Especially from women who do the BodyPump classes. They're either too intimidated by the real weight room or have illogical fears of becoming bulky, so they stick with the cardio-weights indefinitely. And while the scale *might* fall assuming nutrition is dialed in... they're not noticing any real changes muscularly speaking - which is what creates the lean look most are going for.

Do you have a website with any suggested weights training programmes for woman to follow? I'm 29, 163cm and 62kg...

I'm not a big "prepackaged program" guy. Plus I'm not flashy. I make a living off of educating folks as well as *customizing* programs to meet their individual needs and concerns. So it's hard for me to simply slap together a list of exercises, sets, and reps and say "have at it" to the masses.

I have a website but I don't post links to it here as I'm not here for self-promotion.

My recommendations on exercises, sets and reps are going to depend heavily on the person's current stats, their experience, their goals, the access to equipment, etc. And even if I did throw a list of exercises, sets and reps out there for people to see... it's useless beyond a certain point as no program works indefinitely. That's why things need to be adjusted based on client-specific feedback.

If you haven't read the article in my MFP blog yet about the basics... I'd start there. If you have specific questions from there, please ask.

http://www.myfitnesspal.com/blog/stroutman81/view/resistance-training-foundation-19725

Thanks a million! I think I might do some more reading and certainly look at changing things around a bit. I love body pump for the music and energy, but maybe it's time to update the ipod and do my own thing in the scary part of the gym

Be sure to read the article I linked to. That should put you ahead of the curve as far as a starting point goes. Good luck! Though you don't need it. You only need confidence, belief and desire.

Steve, the reason there are so many people who have 1200 as their goal is that they're trying to go for the max weight loss MFP is set up for, which is 2 pounds a week. This formula deducts 1000kc from their "maintenance" , but never goes below 1200 a day. So, instead of people entering that they want to lose 1 pound or 1/2 a pound a week, they want it fast...right now...max speed ie: 2 pounds per week. :noway:

Ohhh, that makes some sense. Well it makes sense as to why it works out to 1200 for most people. But the rational behind the calculation doesn't make a lot of sense.

They should change that... I'm not sure if it'd be worth making a suggestion. It's apparent just in this thread that it's leading a lot of people astray.

A VERY general rule of thumb is you can aim for a rate of weight loss of 1% of total weight per week. But even that is sketchy once you get down into the "light population who's trying to get leaner." In my experience, which is shared by a few professionals who've done this for as long as I've been alive, the reality is more like 2-4 lbs per month in lean women trying to get leaner.

That's 2-4 lbs of fat loss. Which, given the wonkiness of water flux in light, dieting females, can be completely masked on the scale.

Eating to generate a faster rate of weight loss will typically lead to "bad things" metabolically speaking. It goes back to that whole "beating your body into submission" bit. So ideally, the calculator on MFP would either disallow someone from selecting something so ridiculous. Instead, they could make it a percentage of total body weight per week. Or just use a simple percentage off of maintenance, say 30% or so. Whatever.

Not trying to bash this place. I love it here. But that doesn't make a whole heck of a lot of sense and I have a feeling it's leading more people astray than it's helping.

I think 1200 is too low for most people, myself.

Definitely.

They say 2 lbs is the max rate of weight loss, right?

If you're 500 lbs, I'd say that rate isn't high enough.

If you're 200 lbs, it's probably just about right.

The further under 200 lbs you go, the less applicable the 2 lb per week calculation becomes.

Also, the program adds back their exercise calories to bring them up to 1500 or 1600 or so. This is to maintain their deficit. So the average works out to a higher number actually.

Sorry, I'm responding as I read.

But I see so many people around here skimping out on their exercise calories. There seems to be a lot of confusion and I can tell you that a light female trying to get leaner isn't going to do well, more often than not, with a daily deficit of 1000 calories.

Anyhow, thanks again for the clarification.

I also do not agree with the 1000 calorie deficit a day. I'd say 250 for people trying to lose a little weight, and 500 for people trying to shed big weight. I think it leads to the feeling of starvation, so people might give up too easily.

I mean I've run people on protein sparing modified fasts where they deficits were in the thousands of calories per day. But in these cases, I was dealing with, say, a 400 lb client with a total daily energy expenditure of 5,000 calories.

Using a PSMF, their diets consisted of nothing other than protein, essential fats, and unlimited fibrous veggies. These are the basis of health. But this way of eating was temporary for reasons we won't delve into here. The absolute size of the deficit is meaningless in my opinion. The relative size of the deficit is much more meaningful as it will take into account someone's size and therefore total daily energy expenditure.

For those reasons, a reasonable rate of weight loss for a 500 lb person would be 5 lbs per week. Assuming they're losing nothing but fat, that's a deficit of 17500 per week or 2500 per day.

On the flip side, a 125 lb person might see a reasonable rate of weight loss at 1 lb per week. And for reasons already discussed, that's be pushing things.