Already read it. Good stuff and highly recommeded!

Thank you! You had sometime previously posted a link to a different article on this site that led me to finding a bit of a Q&A that enormously reduced my stress over my slow weight-loss (17 months to lose 50 pounds). I took the advice on the site and started a spreadsheet that showed me how I am on an incredibly predictable pattern. Seems simple but I would never have thought of it in this way. Thanks to both you and Sara for helping us by giving great resources - I would guess a lot of people are like me, and pretty intimated to reach out to folks on here who are in such good shape, thus causing us to not say "thanks" - but truly, thank you.

Below is what helped me so much:

And while the above applies to both men and women fairly equally, women have an additional issue which is the changes in water balance throughout the month due to the menstrual cycle. As I discussed in Body Composition Recommendations, some women can shift fairly significant amounts of water over the duration of their monthly cycle. That will tend to overwhelm all but the most extreme rates of fat loss.

Trying to measure fat or weight loss in women on a week to week basis is often a futile endeavor and females may have to measure only once per month (ideally at the same point in the cycle) to get any sort of consistent or comparative measures. Women should generally pick a specific point in their cycle and make all measurements then to track changes month to month.

Another option is to measure weekly but only compare the same week of the cycle each month. So week 1 of the cycle would be compared to week 1 of the cycle a month down the road, week 2 is compared to week 2, you get the idea. What doesn’t work is comparing week 1 to week 3 because the body may be holding a ton of water during one of the weeks and not during the other making comparison impossible.

The body recomp article is great but I found it to answer the question vaguely. My thoughts are that this "rare situation" is not so rare. Overweight beginners are everywhere and often the starting point of many if not most people that come to MFP.

I recently ran across this blog, which while agreeing with the body recomp post, focuses more on the overweight beginner and which puts in perspective a weight loss, LBM gain study at calorie deficit : http://muscleevo.net/calorie-deficit/#.UM2R9mt5lP4

In summary, I think it might be useful to state.

1) Some muscle gain is possible in overweight individuals beginning weight training while eating at reduced calories.
2) Beyond this initial period, gaining during calorie restriction is difficult and inefficient.

3) A conclusion I must make: Resistance training should be begun early when overweight and trying to lose to not only protect muscle mass but also profit from this "beginner gains". It is likely easier to show some initial gains at high bf% for a variety of reasons including non-exercise activity recruitment, etc... And this should be taken advantage of.

You make a good point about the 'newbie' and 'significantly overweight' individual gains not being very specific in Lyle's article even though he does address the possibility of gains being made by those individuals. To me, the issue comes with quantifying the gains. For example, in the article you gave the link to, there were a bunch of limitations of the study as pointed out in in article, the main one being, the actual measurement of BF% and therefore the LBM. Another one is the large standard deviation of the results.

The other thing to note are that the individuals were in a very optimal position to make gains at a deficit. They were men, new to training and bordered on obese.

To balance out the assertion, there was a study done on obese men and women looking at the effects of resistance training combined with a VLCD compared with one that included no resistance training and the LBM was only maintained (actually they lost a slight amount) in the group who resistance trained. The group was older and were on a larger deficit so the conditions were less ideal, even though their BF% was higher on average. Also, there is the same issue with the lack of accuracy of determining BF%, but I think it highlights the fact that potential gains are very hard to quantify.

http://www.jacn.org/content/18/2/115.full


Regarding your third point - I think this is an important one to highlight. I often see people making posts asking if they should wait to strength train until they hit goal weight. Not only would they benefit from preserving as much LBM as possible by starting as soon as possible, but they would also get the benefit of 'newbie' gains on a deficit.

Thanks Sara, nice read.

I also believe that one of the biggest weaknesses I see in this ongoing discussion on the boards is the quantification of gains or just LBM maintenance. Given the issues in measurement of LBM but also all the protocols of weight loss this is going to be difficult area in a lot of research but also for individuals.

Also, something I'd highlight from your post and your reference clearly points to is that LBM gain at large deficits is apparently much more difficult. If there are to be LBM gains, it seems that this is only going to occur at smaller deficits like the Aragon's "Culking".

And for the "overweight beginner" (that I was) and a few of the people on my FL that have achieved a successful body transformation by slow fat loss and muscle gain by this type of "culking" the other element we have not talked about is psychological; "Spinning your wheels" is certainly an possible issue - since it is difficult to see and remember body composition changes at small calorie restricition - we are likelier to feel that nothing is moving forward when the %bf change measured or the weekly weight change between two measures varies at rates smaller than variation due to water retention, food digerstion, etc. If the change is occuring but only really visible on a monthly level, it can be discouraging. Constantly asking "is this working?" isn't a good strategy.

The other point where I am very uncertain is efficiency. Are these slow "culking" methods efficient vs "cutting/bulking"? I don't really know but on the KISSSSS™ Principle - "Keep is Simple Says Sara & SideSteel" (I think you'll like that) I think it does not matter - if one method is slightly faster than the other - a few weeks or months don't matter as long as person following it sticks to it.

And to underline the newbie gains - strength training isn't just perserving LBM or creating newbie gains - the research I've read when looking at resting energy expenditure of LBM and strength training points to a big picture of increased metabolism possibly due (but I have not seen clear proof of this) to neurological effects of this training, hormonal balance for lower BF%, etc... This well-identified metabolic change does suggest more reasons for "lifting heavy" - physical activity places a good metabolic burden in place - It's just easier to create a real deficit at a specific calorie intake.

no idea what any of this means

no idea what any of this means

Did you read the article?

yes, but obviously i'm not a smart enough person to understand it

no idea what any of this means

Did you read the article?

yes, but obviously i'm not a smart enough person to understand it

Cliffs:

You can get some gains on a deficit if you are new to lifting and/or significantly overweight but these are limited and finite. Otherwise, you need to eat at a surplus to gain muscle mass.

So that means that while on a deficit, combining lifting and cardio I will be losing fat. Should I be seeing a change in my body from lifting though the gains will be slim to none?

Bumped to put this topic in my feed and read later....

Bump so that I can read all this GOOD info!

It's....it's about me!

Is this linked in the big sticky of linked threads?

Edit: Nevermind. I don't know how I missed reading it.

My own interpretation is that this idea fits under the classic umbrella of calories in vs. calories out.

Overweight individuals have two advantages imho:
1) bodyfat is an energy source
2) overnutrition (if they keep eating in the way that made them overweight when they start their muscle building program)

#2 is just a fancy way to say they're eating a caloric surplus. There are huge hormonal effects, as well.

#1 is just saying that even if they taper off their surplus, if they still eat correctly and work out correctly for muscle gain, the fatty acids stored in the body can be oxidized as an energy source to power muscle repair. In other words, obese people already have a caloric surplus built into their body, and can get away with eating a bit less than a skinny person...and still build muscle for a while in theory. I'd like to see studies that bear these ideas out.

Edited to add: Athletic overweight individuals arguably have even more advantages:
-their system is primed for muscle gain due to their sports history
-the accidental bulking due to eating a surplus during their time as an athlete means they have more muscle to begin with
-maintaining a high calorie diet even in the months after ceasing or doing less athletic activity likely helps them retain this muscle (but causes even more fat gain)

The ideas we've explored in this thread also shatter the myth of skinny people having faster metabolisms, and the idea of somatotypes when it comes to muscle gain.

Bottom line: Assuming both work out properly, a fat woman eating a surplus will always build more muscle faster than a skinny man eating a deficit (who will actually lose muscle over time)...regardless of how many times more testosterone the man has than the woman. This is why, imho, it's best to always start strength training when you're bigger, rather than losing the fat first (even if you could in theory do so without losing any muscle). We all know that bulking diets have to be tightly controlled in order to make a skinny person gain lean mass but minimal fat...

I'd like to see studies of obese individuals eating a perfect diet right at maintenance level (including eating back exercise calories) and working out hard with weights. I bet the concurrent muscle gains and fat loss are rapid and maybe even sustainable longer than we might have guessed.

There's also what's referred to as regional muscle mass gain in a deficit, I'll try and find the paper, it's been a few years. Basically muscle is built in areas that are stressed and taken from areas that aren't. Has a person actually increased total muscle mass, no, but the ones that get worked do increase.......

There's also what's referred to as regional muscle mass gain in a deficit, I'll try and find the paper, it's been a few years. Basically muscle is built in areas that are stressed and taken from areas that aren't. Has a person actually increased total muscle mass, no, but the ones that get worked do increase.......

Interesting, I'd like to see it if you can find it. Please pm me or post it here if you'd prefer.

I looked but can find the right phraseology to make it happen. It's there, and if I find it I will post it. Keep in mind this was 1 study. The interesting part was they were trained athletes.