muscle loss and calorie deficits

Quoting myself from just a few posts back- afraid this is getting lost in the sea of text...

What is your take on this article?
http://www.gssiweb.org/Article/sse-59-fat-metabolism-during-exercise-new-concepts

It cites a lot more recent studies (very long list of references), but from my layman's reading (eyes glazed over well before the end) it seems inconclusive as far as establishing a rate. Would like to hear what others get out of it.

What that article states clearly (or not so clearly ...) is that energy from fats has different modalities based on the amount of exercise one carries out. Energy from adipose tissue is not as significant as carb stores or lipids use from stores within muscle.

Which was one of the points I was making from the Hall article - exercise activity levels influence use of fat storage (if you use the lipids in your muscles, I'm going to assume that there is some long term rebalancing that occurs from other available sources - either adipose tissue or dietary lipids).

While it seems that it argues for either fasted excerise due to insulin response post-carb ingestion or low carb diet - the source articles it takes are short term effects - in reality, substrate partitioning pre exercise has been shown to have little value in a "big picture" analysis for most people. It might make sense in extreme athletes or people with medical conditions like PCOS. You'll notice that the same study that shows a increase in fat oxidation with low carb availability also showed a significant decrease in performance.

Anyway, its an interesting article - it almost goes as far as explaining the "afterburn" effect of fasted exercise... Almost.

All I know is that in the last 10 years of being a stay at home mum and no exercise and over eating, i lost alot of muscle, gained loads of fat and gained in total 7 stone! since January I've eaten 1200calories a day, mainly protein, trained 14hrs a week for a few months but had to cut back to 7hrs a week due to shin splints etc, I've lost over 4 1/2 stone so far and gained a lot of muscle! I've been told on here in the past I had this amount of muscle, it was just hidden!! Not true at all! The fact I'm female, was only eating 1200 cals proves u can gain muscle or at least maintain muscle on a calorie deficit if u have enough body fat. When I was UK size 10 before having children, my legs were never as muscular as this so it wasn't hidden by fat before someone says that lol! I think if u are slim with not much body Fat and u eat at a calorie deficit and dont train u will lose muscle mass, but if u have body fat and train on a calorie deficit u won't lose any muscle mass and can even gain some dependant on how much training u do.

Keep in mind that a lot of that leg muscle could likely have been built up during the time that you were in a caloric excess and put onthat 7 stone of weight and that only now that you are back into losing weight that this (not actually so new) muscle is now only being revealed for the first time.


I know from my own progress that I sure as hell built a ton of leg muscle while carrying around 350 #'s just getting around on a daily basis

That makes sense, if you have a ton of fat on your body it'll burn through that first since there is so much available. But if you're leaner and have more LBM than fat, it'll burn some LBM unless you watch your diet and exercise properly, and even then it is probably not entirely preventable at a certain bodyfat% being lean, etc.

Good discussion on here!

In to read later

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