Lose weight but gain muscle

_atrose
_atrose Posts: 2 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
Hi all.

First-time poster so please be gentle. I'm 40 years old, 5ft 8 and 171.8lbs. I've been getting larger for some time and whilst not huge I want to stop from getting any bigger now.

For the last two weeks I'm running a deficit and taking around 1500 calories a day, walking between 2 and 3 miles per day as well as doing three weight sessions a week.

My weight itself hasn't dropped, in fact it has slightly increased but my body fat % has gone down slightly from 23.7% to 22.9% and muscle has gone up by the same amount.

I know muscle weighs more than fat but would I expect to still see a drop in actual weight or is that likely to stay the same?

Can you lose weight and gain muscle at the same time?



Replies

  • ciaoder
    ciaoder Posts: 119 Member
    edited January 2022
    You might want to look at some YouTube stuff about body recomposition or “main-gaining ”. There’s tons of misinformation out there so be careful… Jeff Nippard and Renaissance Periodization are the two I trust most for science based content. Jeff Nippard might be more approachable if you’re new to this world.

    I’ll also echo the idea that really accessible (affordable) body composition measurements are mostly not very useful. Your tape measure and mirror and scale are going to be a more reliable means of judging your progress.
  • AnnPT77
    AnnPT77 Posts: 34,900 Member
    _atrose wrote: »
    Hi all.

    First-time poster so please be gentle. I'm 40 years old, 5ft 8 and 171.8lbs. I've been getting larger for some time and whilst not huge I want to stop from getting any bigger now.

    For the last two weeks I'm running a deficit and taking around 1500 calories a day, walking between 2 and 3 miles per day as well as doing three weight sessions a week.

    My weight itself hasn't dropped, in fact it has slightly increased but my body fat % has gone down slightly from 23.7% to 22.9% and muscle has gone up by the same amount.

    I know muscle weighs more than fat but would I expect to still see a drop in actual weight or is that likely to stay the same?

    Can you lose weight and gain muscle at the same time?

    Can I lose weight and gain muscle at the same time? Unlikely, but I'm a 66-year-old woman who barely lifts, so I'm not maximizing my odds, y'know?

    The closer a person is to young, male, genetically gifted, faithfully following a good progressive lifting program, relatively new to strength training, getting good overall nutrition (especially but not exclusively adequate protein), and eating a calorie surplus, the more likely that person is to get a "fast" rate of muscle mass gain. A pretty good result, in those circumstances, would be a couple of pounds of muscle gain per month. That would be "fast".

    The further a person is from those circumstances, speaking very generically, the slower the rate of gain is likely to be. It still be non-zero, even meaningful. You're well up on those factors from me - 2/3 my age, 100% more male, etc. - and I can gain muscle, just not alongside fast fat loss, if I do the right other stuff.

    So, you want to be faithfully following a well-designed progressive lifting program, getting good overall nutrition, and eating at a small calorie deficit (if you want to be losing fat faster than the muscle gain rate in pounds).

    For any of us, when new to lifting, strength gain tends to kick in before mass gain, from neuromuscular adaptation (better recruiting and using muscle fibers we already have). The mass gain comes along more slowly, with continuing to challenge strength beyond that initial faster strength boost. (Strength is a good thing to have for its own sake, right?) We may even see some appearance improvements early, before mass gain, from the water retention in muscles for repair that can create some definition. That's also good.

    BIA scales: For fun the other day, I got on mine & weighed in, then got on it again after dampening the bottom of my feet. I lost . . . I think it was 0.3%? or thereabouts . . . of body fat in around 6 seconds that way. Be skeptical. It's very approximate, useful to see multi-week/month trends, maybe, if you ignore outlier readings.

    I share sijomial's concern that 1500 calories sounds pretty aggressive (i.e., low) for your stats. I lost most of 50+ pounds quite quickly eating 1400-1600 plus all carefully estimated exercise calories (so more like 1600-2000 calories a lot of days) . . . as a 60+, 5'5" woman, going from 183 pounds to mid-120s.

    If your lifting routine is new (or significantly increased) in the last 2 weeks, and especially if the walks are also new, some of what you're seeing on the scale may be water retention for muscle repair, playing peek-a-boo on the scale with fat loss. If so, that'll sort itself out in the next month or so, and the fat loss will start showing up more clearly. (If you do go with a sensibly slower loss rate, i.e., eat more, slow fat loss can still hide for weeks at a time, if water fluctuation is happening for other reasons . . . which it will, because that's one way that healthy bodies stay healthy.)

    Patience is useful. Hang in there! (Maybe eat a bit more? Let MFP tell you a reasonable goal, for around half a pound a week loss, tops, in your circumstances, for your goals.)

    Wishing you much success!
  • jtechmart
    jtechmart Posts: 67 Member
    I'll give you some info for my fitness journey as some of it may be relevant.

    I'm 5ft10 and my first goal was to drop body fat. I was around 180 when I started and in that spring/summer I dropped down to about 153 lbs. The next summer, which was last year, I started lifting and put on 4-5 lbs of muscle. Most of this was likely noob gains. And I was 52 at the time. Here is my 2 cents.

    When I did my cut I restricted calories to 1800 per day and did lots of walking. I sit all day at a desk job, so those walks were 90% of all my activity. I would also do cardio, which was cycling when I could. Some weeks it was 3-4 times of cycling, others it was 2, others it was zero. But, I was always going for walks. Whenever I saw an opportunity to walk I took it. Its still my favorite form of activity. Listening to music and walking is one of the most sustainable and enjoyable forms of exercise you can do.

    So, that summer it was lots of walking, then doing bike rides when I could. Keeping calories to 1800 was pretty easy. You have listed 1500 which sounds very low to me. But, not sure. Be careful you are not restricting too low as you will get very tired and run out of gas. If the body thinks its starving it could hold on to fat too. Its the sweet spot we want during a cut, where you are restricted in calories, but not starving. Then, just sustain that.

    Last summer, I put on about 4-5 lbs of muscle from lifting. I got the famous "noob gains" and it was pretty amazing. In literally 6 weeks I put on most of that muscle. I was doing pull ups, push ups, and standing overhead press at first. Later I added banded squats. After that, I started doing more exercises at the gym. But, most of my gains were from the 3 compound exercises I started with.

    I stopped everything for a surgery and have gotten a little off track, but I got results from what I described above at age 51-52.

    I can't say I've done both cutting and gaining muscle at the same time, but it sounds hard. I think if you got noob gains from lifting combined with cuts from calorie restriction you can get there. But, it always sounded sub-optimal to me. You are either cutting or bulking inefficiently for it to work, hoping for noob gains. I prefer to focus on one at a time. And then just maintain muscle during a cut by keeping the muscles active.

    Also, I've never trusted body fat pct as a metric that much. I look at myself and make a guess. Maybe I didn't do it right, but I never saw the process of figuring it out to be accurate. What I use is myo tape for measuring around my stomach/waist. That tells you how many inches your waist is. This is the best metric for fat loss imo, highly recommend. Then, I used my actual weight on a scale. After that, its the eye test. All 3 of those is what I used to gauge progress.

    I also tracked meals in MFP, and regularly update my waist and weight. I like having a record of everything for future reference. I also used fitbit for tracking all activities. I wear my fitness tracker for all activities when I can.

    A few things I've learned:

    1. Don't overtrain. I did, and its not the end of the world. But, you don't have to wipe yourself out to get good results. My current cut is 20 mins of cardio in the morning, and 45 mins on the elliptical in the evening, mon-wed-fri. I'll do 1 cardio session on the weekend. The other days are rest where I let my body recover. And I stay on a calorie deficit 7 days a week if possible. Current deficit is around 1900 cals per day.

    2. You will probably get noob gains when you lift. If you have ever gained muscle in the past, chances are you will get it all back quickly.

    3. If I do everything right for a cut, I won't see results until the 3rd week of cutting. So, 2.5 weeks is generally when I start seeing results. It has always worked like that. I don't really buy into the 1-2lbs per week. My body never works like that. Its nothing for 2 weeks, then swoosh, I'm down 1/2 an inch in that 3rd to 4th week.

    4. Because muscle memory is a thing, you will probably gain it back rapidly. I'm still testing this one as I stopped everything for a few months due to a surgery. But, I do think gaining muscle you lost recently shouldn't be too hard.

    5. You don't loose strength and muscle that fast if you aren't lifting. I did loose some muscle at first, but I still have some of the muscle I gained and its been months.
  • _atrose
    _atrose Posts: 2 Member
    Thank you everyone for your detailed responses. Looks like some really good advice which I will digest and take on board. MFP calculated my calories but then I was being pretty aggressive with the amount I wanted to lose but I calculated that before I wanted to do weights. I didn't take into account the extra needed for recovery from doing that.

    I think I'm trying to do too much too quickly. My main aim is to look healthier and more toned.

  • kshama2001
    kshama2001 Posts: 28,053 Member
    Read this, substituting "1500" for "1200" and "man" for "woman:"

    https://www.aworkoutroutine.com/1200-calorie-diet/

    See also:

    9kjwnia17qv9.jpg

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