Lifting/Nutrition Question
jagodfrey08
Posts: 425 Member
No Idea which forum to post this in, so I'm putting it here.
I have lost 40 lbs since June. My dietician put me on 1100-1300 calories a day (I'm a chick), with 100g of lean protein making up my diet each day. It's been great for me. I eat 5 times a day.
So, now that I have dropped 40 lbs, I have picked up the lifting bug. Sure, I only just started around Thanksgiving, but I enjoy it. I'm new to it and still in beginner mode.
I haven't reached my weight loss goals yet. I have about 20 lbs left to go. So, my question is this -
When do I start upping my calories intake, and how do I do that without halting my weight loss? I am not trying to get all beefy. I just want flattering, lean, feminine muscles...and I want to reach my goal weight. Problem is, I also want to eat appropriately and continue losing. So, what do I do and when do I start doing it?
I have lost 40 lbs since June. My dietician put me on 1100-1300 calories a day (I'm a chick), with 100g of lean protein making up my diet each day. It's been great for me. I eat 5 times a day.
So, now that I have dropped 40 lbs, I have picked up the lifting bug. Sure, I only just started around Thanksgiving, but I enjoy it. I'm new to it and still in beginner mode.
I haven't reached my weight loss goals yet. I have about 20 lbs left to go. So, my question is this -
When do I start upping my calories intake, and how do I do that without halting my weight loss? I am not trying to get all beefy. I just want flattering, lean, feminine muscles...and I want to reach my goal weight. Problem is, I also want to eat appropriately and continue losing. So, what do I do and when do I start doing it?
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Replies
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Personally I think you need to pick a specific goal. Lose weight/maintain (recomp)/build appreciable mass
But, as long as you remain in a deficit you will decrease bodyfat.
Accurate logging of intake, monitoring of weight and changing calories dependant of results would be my way to go.
Be aware that initial water weight gains will mask fat loss on the scale.1 -
If you think you have 20lbs left to go, you'll probably find you could lose more when you get to your current goal weight. I would stay in a calorie deficit until you are happy with your level of bodyfat. At this point you should move to maintenance and look to "recomp" slightly.
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jagodfrey08 wrote: »No Idea which forum to post this in, so I'm putting it here.
I have lost 40 lbs since June. My dietician put me on 1100-1300 calories a day (I'm a chick), with 100g of lean protein making up my diet each day. It's been great for me. I eat 5 times a day.
So, now that I have dropped 40 lbs, I have picked up the lifting bug. Sure, I only just started around Thanksgiving, but I enjoy it. I'm new to it and still in beginner mode.
I haven't reached my weight loss goals yet. I have about 20 lbs left to go. So, my question is this -
When do I start upping my calories intake, and how do I do that without halting my weight loss? I am not trying to get all beefy. I just want flattering, lean, feminine muscles...and I want to reach my goal weight. Problem is, I also want to eat appropriately and continue losing. So, what do I do and when do I start doing it?
If you don't want to look beefy, don't take steroids. Women cannot get beefy. And you don't accidentally become beefy or muscular.
As for a lifting program, there are a lot to chose from. Below is a good list as a start. Depending on your goals, will determine which program is ideal. If you just want to get started and get strong, I would look into NROL4W or StrongCurves. Both are books that discuss nutrition and training.
http://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10332083/which-lifting-program-is-the-best-for-you/p1
Nutrition, I would probably increase now. Just increase by 100-200 calories every other week until you average around .8-1 lb per week. It may take some time to figure out your calorie sweet spot, since there are a lot of variations that can influence weight (glycogen levels, food waste, sodium/electrolyte balance, etc...). The bigger thing is looking at trends over a 4 week period.3 -
Thanks for the input. No steroids here. Haha!
I still do weigh-ins with my dietician/FNP every two weeks, and she measures fat mass, water weight, fat percentage, etc. So, I take my scale numbers with a grain of salt.
So, am I understanding correctly that I should just keep doing what I are doing for now until I hit my target weight? Also, eat back about 100-200 calories every couple of weeks.
@psuLemon - You are so right about the sweet spot. Hormone issues are a beast!
Thank you all for the input!0 -
Generally speaking, you're not going to grow muscle while losing weight, but you can make strength gains for a while as a new lifter. As you lose more weight, existing muscles will appear more defined. I would probably recommend that you go ahead and lose the rest of the weight and then decide if you're happy with yourself then. More muscle at that point might be possible while eating at maintenance (recomp), but would most likely involve bulking.1
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Truth be told, I had no muscle definition before losing weight. Then, I lost weight and was "skinny fat." Now, I want to build my muscles and tone up. Is it all for naught while losing weight?0
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jagodfrey08 wrote: »Thanks for the input. No steroids here. Haha!
I still do weigh-ins with my dietician/FNP every two weeks, and she measures fat mass, water weight, fat percentage, etc. So, I take my scale numbers with a grain of salt.
So, am I understanding correctly that I should just keep doing what I are doing for now until I hit my target weight? Also, eat back about 100-200 calories every couple of weeks.
@psuLemon - You are so right about the sweet spot. Hormone issues are a beast!
Thank you all for the input!
How much weight are you losing per week on average? I would typically increase calories now since you are getting close to your goal.1 -
@psuLemon - My loss has slowed to about 1lb per week, average.0
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jagodfrey08 wrote: »Truth be told, I had no muscle definition before losing weight. Then, I lost weight and was "skinny fat." Now, I want to build my muscles and tone up. Is it all for naught while losing weight?
I'd probably discuss it with your dietician/FNP, but if your goals have changed that drastically, you might want to try switching to maintenance calories and doing a recomp running your strength training program.0 -
So you probably maintain around 1700 calories. I would probably bump calories to 1400 now and not eat back exercise calories.
Also, if you just started weight training, there is potential that you lost some muscle during your journey, especially you were losing several lbs per week. Having said that, there is a good opportunity now to at least make yourself strong and potentially see some improvements in your body composition. Even if you dont' gain actual muscle, it's possible that the reduction in body fat might produce good results. If you get to your goal weight, you will have to evaluate your goals again based on the actual results. If you dont like it, you might either have to cut further, try to recomp or bulk to gain muscle.2 -
It's not that my goals have drastically changed. I'm still wanting to lose weight, but I also need to build muscle, which will also help burn fat.
I will bring it up when I go for my appt next week. I just don't want to sabotage everything.0 -
So you probably maintain around 1700 calories. I would probably bump calories to 1400 now and not eat back exercise calories.
Also, if you just started weight training, there is potential that you lost some muscle during your journey, especially you were losing several lbs per week. Having said that, there is a good opportunity now to at least make yourself strong and potentially see some improvements in your body composition. Even if you dont' gain actual muscle, it's possible that the reduction in body fat might produce good results. If you get to your goal weight, you will have to evaluate your goals again based on the actual results. If you dont like it, you might either have to cut further, try to recomp or bulk to gain muscle.
Yes to all of this!! When I started, I was losing like 3 lbs a week. Not intentionally, but it was just falling off.
My goal is to look good and feel good about myself. While I feel better, I still feel I can look better, which is where weight training comes in. I don't like have the droopy, saggy, floppy, rolly, pudgy areas. So, I feel like I can work on my entire body, get fit, get toned, and finally appreciate the work I have put in.0 -
jagodfrey08 wrote: »It's not that my goals have drastically changed. I'm still wanting to lose weight, but I also need to build muscle, which will also help burn fat.
I will bring it up when I go for my appt next week. I just don't want to sabotage everything.
As a point of semantics, while it's true that the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, it's not as much as people suggest. For every lb of muscle you gain, it's only an additional 4 to 6 calories total.2 -
jagodfrey08 wrote: »It's not that my goals have drastically changed. I'm still wanting to lose weight, but I also need to build muscle, which will also help burn fat.
I will bring it up when I go for my appt next week. I just don't want to sabotage everything.
As a point of semantics, while it's true that the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, it's not as much as people suggest. For every lb of muscle you gain, it's only an additional 4 to 6 calories total.
Great point, so at the slow rate you can build muscle, it doesn't mean much. Too much is made of this! Plus, if losing a significant amount of weight, you lose both muscle and fat, so you're not gaining muscle until well into maintenance.0 -
jagodfrey08 wrote: »It's not that my goals have drastically changed. I'm still wanting to lose weight, but I also need to build muscle, which will also help burn fat.
I will bring it up when I go for my appt next week. I just don't want to sabotage everything.
As a point of semantics, while it's true that the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn, it's not as much as people suggest. For every lb of muscle you gain, it's only an additional 4 to 6 calories total.
Great point, so at the slow rate you can build muscle, it doesn't mean much. Too much is made of this! Plus, if losing a significant amount of weight, you lose both muscle and fat, so you're not gaining muscle until well into maintenance.
Females will struggle even more to gain muscle hence why you generally don't see very muscled women day to day.0 -
While it may still be a little ways off, you will have to start switching away from using "weight lost" as a measure of your success since strength/muscular definition will increase the "density" of your body making you weigh more even though you are much, much healthier and fitter.1
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While it may still be a little ways off, you will have to start switching away from using "weight lost" as a measure of your success since strength/muscular definition will increase the "density" of your body making you weigh more even though you are much, much healthier and fitter.
1lb of muscle weighs the same as a 1lb of fat.0 -
Hi, I think an important point you should remember is that you have just started resistance training. Initially you will gain strength just from you muscles "learning" how to do the exercise, With 20lbs still to go I would stay in a calorie deficit, when you nearer your goal then you can increases you calories slowly to reach a maintenance level without piling pounds of fat back on, I went from am 1800Kcal cut to 3200Kcal maintain over six weeks and haven't put fat back on.
You may find that your muscles, and particularly your joints take longer to recover whilst you are in a calorie deficit. I would recommend listening to your body and letting them recover properly, particularly until you have food for recovery. And keep the protein up for repair.1 -
trigden1991 wrote: »While it may still be a little ways off, you will have to start switching away from using "weight lost" as a measure of your success since strength/muscular definition will increase the "density" of your body making you weigh more even though you are much, much healthier and fitter.
1lb of muscle weighs the same as a 1lb of fat.
Yes, but 1lb of muscle is denser than 1lb of fat which is why I specificly used density as a measure.
Regardless, I'm not sure I understand what your concern is. When you get to a certain level of body fat %, weight is no longer a good indicator of health (less weight is not an indication of progress). Do you disagree?
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trigden1991 wrote: »While it may still be a little ways off, you will have to start switching away from using "weight lost" as a measure of your success since strength/muscular definition will increase the "density" of your body making you weigh more even though you are much, much healthier and fitter.
1lb of muscle weighs the same as a 1lb of fat.
Yes, but 1lb of muscle is denser than 1lb of fat which is why I specificly used density as a measure.
Regardless, I'm not sure I understand what your concern is. When you get to a certain level of body fat %, weight is no longer a good indicator of health (less weight is not an indication of progress). Do you disagree?
Weight is never a good indicator of health.0 -
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Please explain how it is a good indicator of health. Genuinely interested to hear your bro-science.0 -
trigden1991 wrote: »
Please explain how it is a good indicator of health. Genuinely interested to hear your bro-science.
Saying wieght is never a good indicator is being a bit ignorant. If I take the equivalent self at two different weights (220 vs 175), I will be healthier at 175. Because I will be over-fat at 220. If you added 50 lbs of fat, do you think your health would be affected? Fact is, you are going to statistically be healthier if you fall into normal weight, than your equivalent self if you fall outside. Where it becomes less of an issues is if you are only a few lbs over weight and then it may not impact you that much.0 -
trigden1991 wrote: »While it may still be a little ways off, you will have to start switching away from using "weight lost" as a measure of your success since strength/muscular definition will increase the "density" of your body making you weigh more even though you are much, much healthier and fitter.
1lb of muscle weighs the same as a 1lb of fat.
Yes, but 1lb of muscle is denser than 1lb of fat which is why I specificly used density as a measure.
Regardless, I'm not sure I understand what your concern is. When you get to a certain level of body fat %, weight is no longer a good indicator of health (less weight is not an indication of progress). Do you disagree?
This is kind of a ridiculous argument, too. The OP is a female who is not going to gain any type of appreciable muscle while she is in a cut. Even if people have the ability to gain muscle in a deficit, it's largely not going to occur anywhere close to the same rate of fat loss. I would be surprised if the OP even had the ability to gain 1lb of muscle while losing her last 20 lbs, especially consider that women in a surplus are limited to roughly 1/4lb per week.
At this point, the OP's bigger concern is to get stronger and hope to preserve lbm.2 -
If i were in your situation OP this is what i'd do.
I'd start lifting the weight NOW (preferably hitting lower/upper atleast 2 times a week) while focusing on increasing strength and keeping volume relatively low. Keep on the calorie deficit until you have about 5 more pounds to lose.
Then i would slowly start adding in more calories (say, 100 a week) until you reach maintenance calories. This will allow you to start slowly upping the volume, switching to a more hypertrophy range, and allow you some more calories while still being in a deficit.
This is what i do personally at the end of a cut and it's what i instruct my clients to do as well. It's actually really fun to see how high we can push calories before we start maintaining our weight.
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trigden1991 wrote: »While it may still be a little ways off, you will have to start switching away from using "weight lost" as a measure of your success since strength/muscular definition will increase the "density" of your body making you weigh more even though you are much, much healthier and fitter.
1lb of muscle weighs the same as a 1lb of fat.
Yes, but 1lb of muscle is denser than 1lb of fat which is why I specificly used density as a measure.
Regardless, I'm not sure I understand what your concern is. When you get to a certain level of body fat %, weight is no longer a good indicator of health (less weight is not an indication of progress). Do you disagree?
This is kind of a ridiculous argument, too. The OP is a female who is not going to gain any type of appreciable muscle while she is in a cut. Even if people have the ability to gain muscle in a deficit, it's largely not going to occur anywhere close to the same rate of fat loss. I would be surprised if the OP even had the ability to gain 1lb of muscle while losing her last 20 lbs, especially consider that women in a surplus are limited to roughly 1/4lb per week.
At this point, the OP's bigger concern is to get stronger and hope to preserve lbm.
This wasn't an "argument" for anything besides the fact that how much you weigh is an inaccurate measure of health for people with high amounts of lean mass. Not sure how this is a "ridiculous" POV.
Secondly, my initial post explicitly starts with "at some point" not "right now."0 -
trigden1991 wrote: »
Please explain how it is a good indicator of health. Genuinely interested to hear your bro-science.
You're trying to pick an argument with someone who isn't even disagreeing with you on a specific point. Relax.
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trigden1991 wrote: »
Please explain how it is a good indicator of health. Genuinely interested to hear your bro-science.
Saying wieght is never a good indicator is being a bit ignorant. If I take the equivalent self at two different weights (220 vs 175), I will be healthier at 175. Because I will be over-fat at 220. If you added 50 lbs of fat, do you think your health would be affected? Fact is, you are going to statistically be healthier if you fall into normal weight, than your equivalent self if you fall outside. Where it becomes less of an issues is if you are only a few lbs over weight and then it may not impact you that much.
But if I add 50lbs of muscle, am I less healthier? Statistics account for bodyweight not body composition which have a very different affect on health.0 -
trigden1991 wrote: »trigden1991 wrote: »
Please explain how it is a good indicator of health. Genuinely interested to hear your bro-science.
Saying wieght is never a good indicator is being a bit ignorant. If I take the equivalent self at two different weights (220 vs 175), I will be healthier at 175. Because I will be over-fat at 220. If you added 50 lbs of fat, do you think your health would be affected? Fact is, you are going to statistically be healthier if you fall into normal weight, than your equivalent self if you fall outside. Where it becomes less of an issues is if you are only a few lbs over weight and then it may not impact you that much.
But if I add 50lbs of muscle, am I less healthier? Statistics account for bodyweight not body composition which have a very different affect on health.
And yet, i'd say for the majority of people overall weight is an excellent indicator of total body composition.
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trigden1991 wrote: »trigden1991 wrote: »
Please explain how it is a good indicator of health. Genuinely interested to hear your bro-science.
Saying wieght is never a good indicator is being a bit ignorant. If I take the equivalent self at two different weights (220 vs 175), I will be healthier at 175. Because I will be over-fat at 220. If you added 50 lbs of fat, do you think your health would be affected? Fact is, you are going to statistically be healthier if you fall into normal weight, than your equivalent self if you fall outside. Where it becomes less of an issues is if you are only a few lbs over weight and then it may not impact you that much.
But if I add 50lbs of muscle, am I less healthier? Statistics account for bodyweight not body composition which have a very different affect on health.
This argument is just as ridiculous as those that suggest a diet in donuts is worst then broccoli. The genetic limitations of muscle growth would kick in before this happens. Stop trying to use outliars to justify your argument.
ETA: I actually addressed this in my first post, but decided to delete it. I should have known better and left it in there.1
This discussion has been closed.
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