loosing muscle in all the wrong places

[LoneRanger121]

HI, i am currently 163 lbs and 5.8 ft. I have come a long way from being 220 lbs in about a year and half. Mostly with cardio and diet control. I have lost a lot of muscle in the process. Coming to my question , i have a lot of fat still around my belly and lower back, giving a pear shaped physique. my shoulders have also lost a lot of muscle. Right now i am hitting the gym 5 days a week , with strength training and little cardio about 5-10 mins.

My concern is should i increase my cardio to get rid of my back and belly fat. also should i maintain a calorie deficit , as i am also trying to gain back my muscle. I am pretty confused as to how to loose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot

[JaredPunch]

HI, i am currently 163 lbs and 5.8 ft. I have come a long way from being 220 lbs in about a year and half. Mostly with cardio and diet control. I have lost a lot of muscle in the process. Coming to my question , i have a lot of fat still around my belly and lower back, giving a pear shaped physique. my shoulders have also lost a lot of muscle. Right now i am hitting the gym 5 days a week , with strength training and little cardio about 5-10 mins.

My concern is should i increase my cardio to get rid of my back and belly fat. also should i maintain a calorie deficit , as i am also trying to gain back my muscle. I am pretty confused as to how to loose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Any help would be appreciated.

Thanks a lot

I really doubt you're losing muscles, probably a combination of good fat distribution and glycogen made you think you had more muscles than you really have. But expecially when starting with an overage amount of muscle and so much fat to burn, muscle loss is practically a fantasy.

[Luclin999]

I really doubt you're losing muscles, probably a combination of good fat distribution and glycogen made you think you had more muscles than you really have. But expecially when starting with an overage amount of muscle and so much fat to burn, muscle loss is practically a fantasy.

Nope.

Read what the OP said.

"I have come a long way from being 220 lbs in about a year and half. Mostly with cardio and diet control. "

That is actually the perfect recipe for losing muscle over a long diet/cut.

The lack of weight training (needed to stress the muscle tissue) will cause muscle to diminish along with the fat over a prolonged dieting state leaving the person lighter but still "fat" looking because of the relatively small change in overall body fat percentage due to a commensurate loss of lean mass along with the fat. Essentially keeping the person "skinnyfat".

To the OP, ditch some of the cardio, get into a beginner lifting program and eat closer to maintenance for a couple of months. You won't so much "lose fat and gain muscle" at the same time but simply gaining or regaining a few pounds of lean mass onto your frame even if the amount of fat remains static will improve your appearance considerably.

Once you have a reasonable muscle base again, start cutting 500 or so calories a day while continuing the lifting work and you should firm up.

[JaredPunch]

Nope.

Read what the OP said.

"I have come a long way from being 220 lbs in about a year and half. Mostly with cardio and diet control. "

That is actually the perfect recipe for losing muscle over a long diet/cut.

Sorry but I disagree, not everyone lift weights or is interested in weight lifting and strength training.
And there are lot of people going on a diet anyway because they need to lose weight, weight loss centers and nutritionists that don't have their clients perform any strength training and still lose most fat and no muscles.

Again, losing muscles is pretty hard, the amount of muscle we're told we can lose if we don't strenght train and diet for a long time is exaggerated and not based on reality.

A person that has been lifting for years and built way more muscles than his natural frame had is going to lose more muscles than someone with an average amount of muscles. A person with an average/natural amount of muscles, isn't going to lose much if anything, even without strenght training because while it's true the body can get ready of extra muscle in an emergency situation, it won't get rid of baseline muscle structure which is supported by daily activities that stress the muscle enough to warrant the existence and maintenance of those muscles. But yes, any extra muscle built with heavy squat and bench will be lost if we stop doing those lifts.

Also only extreme cardio, we're talking people 2 hours on a treadmill every single day would be a problem for muscle loss and only if paired with inadequate protein intake and very very low calorie intake.

This is a person that lost weight with just running: http://i.imgur.com/M3PkIPM.jpg
Yeah, you can't be "big" without lifting weights but muscle loss? skinny-fat? I don't think so

This is more interesting: guy is from reality show survivor. This is what he looked like when the landed on the island
http://i.imgur.com/cAHjWlf.jpg
This is what he looked like after 6 months of undereating on a diet on coconut, rice and some fish and no weight training at all.
http://i.imgur.com/AIOTCgX.jpg (no skinny-fatness, he was lifting weights before so some of the extra muscles from lifts has been lost by not lifting for 6 months, but I see a big loss of fat and a small loss of muscles, not the reverse and no fat maintenance and muscle loss as some would predict, also low body volume is also from lack of glycogen, pump... I bet he will look fuller in 24 hours after a big meal, drinking a gallon of water and pumping some pinky dumbbells)

The skinny-fat problem is a combination of things in my opinion: like clearly a genetic predisposition to a smaller baseline muscle structure (you can see this even in children) then a very bad lifestyle including not sleeping enough, sedentarity, bad diet with not enough protein and not enough calories or yo-yo dieting. But I seen people losing weight through diet and swimming or tennis or walking or dancing and they I couldn't see they had lost muscles and actually looked good, not flabby at the end.

[Luclin999]

Sorry but I disagree,

You are welcome to your opinion, no matter how completely wrong it may happen to be.

Hopefully the OP and others like him don't listen to you though as your advice will lead them down the road to "skinnyfat" Hell.. ( Especially with your relative lack of any personal knowledge of the subject. )

I have experienced weight loss both ways over the years..

With lifting and without, and losing without lifting has always led to the "skinnyfat" syndrome of never looking good no matter how far down you cut. This despite a diet high in protein, with cardio, cycling and martial arts practice as the primary forms of exercise. After all of that, months later and dozens of pounds less... skinnyfat.

This time with lifting, it has been a completely different story. Fat is lost, muscle mass and strength preserved for a much, much better overall appearance.


Note: Also, the fact that you really believe that the people on "Survivor" actually live on " a diet on coconut, rice and some fish" and aren't supplemented by the show's producers is adorable.

[JaredPunch]

You are welcome to your opinion, no matter how completely wrong it may happen to be.

Hopefully the OP and others like him don't listen to you though as your advice will lead them down the road to "skinnyfat" Hell.. ( Especially with your relative lack of any personal knowledge of the subject. )

I have experienced weight loss both ways over the years..

With lifting and without, and losing without lifting has always led to the "skinnyfat" syndrome of never looking good no matter how far down you cut. This despite a diet high in protein, with cardio, cycling and martial arts practice as the primary forms of exercise. After all of that, months later and dozens of pounds less... skinnyfat.

Weight lifting is a kind of new activity as far as average population and not athletes/bodybuilders are concerned. As much as I love everything about it and thinks it's the best way to build an healthy body I would be a liar claiming a big percentage of the population is involved with weight lifting, just 40 years ago it was basically unknown to the maxes.
And yet it's not like people were all skinny-fat or like there was no weight loss going on.
And still there are thousands of people losing weight without ever joining a gym, followed by a nutritionist and doctor who end up looking "less fat" but with not kind of skinnyfatness or lack of weight loss.

It's not even an opinion, it's universal truth, go on a more traditional weight loss forum, at least 90% of the people there won't be involved with weight lifting and still ask their before and after photos and you see healthier and better looking thinner people.

My uncle just recently lost a lot of weight and he doesn't even know what "bench" means and when I saw him shirtless he doesn't certainly look like a weight lifter but looks leaner and healthy anyway, all I see is dozen of pounds of fat loss and maybe 1 pound of muscle loss.

This time with lifting, it has been a completely different story. Fat is lost, muscle mass and strength preserved for a much, much better overall appearance.

Did you take a DEXA scan and you were both overfat and undermuscled?
Still, when this happens the solution is to lose more bodyfat in order to create some balance between muscle and fat
Or... you could build muscles and I agree that looks better, what I disagree is that people have to look skinnyfat or flab, if they don't lift weights or just choose maintain their natural muscle mass without adding any extra.

Don't get me wrong I love lifting weight, I lose adding extra muscles to my natural frame and I think that everyone should lift weights when on a diet, because the end result is more easthethic. But this doesn't mean I have to lie about weight lifting being the only way to be lean or to lose muscle and not look like a flabby undermuscles drop of lard.

Note: Also, the fact that you really believe that the people on "Survivor" actually live on " a diet on coconut, rice and some fish" and aren't supplemented by the show's producers is adorable.

Yes reality shows are fake as hell but the weight loss of the partecipants is not and the math of their estimated daily calorie intake from what they gather/fish and the real verifiable weight loss shows they indeed ate only what they gathered/fished/won during contests.

Still even if the producers supplemented them that's irrelevant: the weight loss is real, the no bench/dead/squat is real and my point is still valid, there's way more fat loss than muscle loss (and what looks like loss of muscle volume could be due to water and glycogen alone)

Muscle loss is still not so easy with studies like the famous Minnesota Starvation one showing muscle loss was minimal compared to fat loss and muscles were being lost only when most of the body fat was gone and the partecipantes were already lean.

[Luclin999]

Muscle loss is actually very easy to experience over a prolonged dieting period ( Which is EXACTLY what the OP has been doing).

The last time that I had significant weight to lose, I did so with nearly a year of "keto" (Obviously plenty of protein) and no lifting. By the time I had reached my goal weight of 185# I looked deflated, sunken and flabby, not "buff or "cut". My strength also dropped as I noticed that things which were once fairly easy to lift (such as the 50# boxes I work with every day) became far more difficult to lift and carry the longer the "cut" continued.

However I can honestly say that it was the lack of a sense of accomplishment caused by the underwhelming visual results which was a direct contributor in my slowly having gained much of that weight back. After all, if I am not going to look "good" anyway, then why bother with all of the hassle of tracking what I eat?.

This time however has been different. My strength has not suffered as my lifts are higher today than they were 8 months ago and while I acknowledge that I still have fat to lose, my overall appearance is considerably improved with sustained muscle size and increased definition. For example, my chest measurement has only dropped two inches, from 49" to 47" over the course of this entire period even though my BF has gone from 33%+ down to nearly 20% and my waistline has dropped from 46" down to 35.75".

Conversely on my previous "Year of Keto and no lifting", my waistline dropped similarly in size (from 48" down to 37") however my chest size plummeted as well having gone from 52" down to 41.5" which again was due to the loss of lean mass over the extended cut.

As for my data on this cut regarding my LBM to BF percentages, I have been monitored throughout the past eight months with a series of multiple Bod Pod visits, which while not as accurate as Dexa Scanning, still provide significant data, esp. as I have been doing everything possible to minimize the margin for error (such as always using the same pod in the same facility, having the same technician perform the tests, always taking the tests at the same time of the day while in a fasted state, etc.).

All of which show that if anything, I have actually gained a small amount of lean mass over this cut while lifting as opposed to losing muscle. And while the "gains" reported have been minimal enough to be within the acceptable range for error, the fact that measurements of my arms, thighs and calves have all actually maintained or even increased slightly in size currently over what they were when I was at 33%+ BF would seem to support the testing results.

All of which goes to my comments to the OP..

Ditch some of the cardio, Lift heavy at or near maintenance for a couple of months to recover some of the lean mass that you have lost and then proceed with a moderate 500 calorie deficit to drop off more of the fat.

You will be happy that you did it this way.

[cerigitts]

I find it hilarious that someone who hasn't successfully cut or bulked, is giving advice.

OP, listen to Luclin.