Transform losing muscle

Transform

Ok guys and gals marathon training season so i have been doing my sessions for longer and harder then ever but am not dropping as much weight as i thought i would.

I have an ankle injury at the moment so am doing at least 60mins of aerobic exercise 6-7 days per week (average calorie burn 1000cals average HR 145-155 at age of 30 years).

I have also cut food intake which is hard after putting on a stone in muscle over the last 8-9months.

So has anyone any experience of dropping weight (currently at 13st 2 lbs and want to get to 12st 7lbs in 8 weeks) not easy when your body fat is as low as 5% year round.

Boru.

I've got some unfortunate recent experience. I'm actually trying to bulk at the moment and had gone up to 170lbs at 10% - 12% bodyfat. Over the last 4 weeks I've been suffering with stomach upsets and I've dropped about 10lbs, most of which was that new built muscle tissue. Now I'm at 155 - 159 lbs. It sucks. I've felt like crap the entire time.

You'll easily do it with your attitude and training philosophy, but it probably wont feel good.

Good luck with it and let us know your progress.

g'em

hey Transform,

well lets be honest, it's not like you're the average "I wanna lose my belly and look good in a swimsuit" poster, you have a better knowledge than most people would ever have about how your body reponds to diet and nutrition so... I'm guessing that you'll probably need to do some niggly little 'tweaks' rather than an overhaul to lose the weight. But because you're doing the marathon and because you lift too you'll need to do whatever you can to maintain a good amount of lean muscle mass without it affecting your aerobic performance either... (sorry I'm sort of just thinking out loud here!!).

How does your body usually react to carb and fat levels? I mean do you normally keep carbs moderate to high or on the lower end of the scale when you want to lose weight? I'm actually on a cut right now looking to drop quite a significant amount of bodyfat over an 8-10 week period (length depending on how my sanity holds up ) but I know I'm not very carb tolerant for shedding excess weight so my macronutrient profile is around the 35:15:50 (p:c:f) mark with starchy carbs at an absolute minimum and will disappear altogether after next week. I know this probably wouldn't suit endurance training as you need it, but I still find I'm able to do 30-45 minute decent pace runs whilst on it. I'm looking to drop anything in the region of 16-20lbs while on it, so it's pretty severe. t-ha did a cut recently too and dropped a significant amount of body fat in a four week ketogenic diet, but again endurance wasn't a goal and his cardio was all LIT (both of our training plans are in our journals on the Team Test website).

What about doing some HIIT like Tabata's twice or three times a week? I've used them in the past and they're pretty wicked for weight loss, plus you can throw one in at the end of a weights session to take full advantage of the increased metabolism without annihilating yourself as each Tabata is only around 15 minutes long (including warm up and cool down) or do sprint intervals? From what I can tell when you're at a bodyfat as low as yours is HIIT is one of the most preferred methods of losing weight in a short space of time without having to sacrifice strength or muscle mass.

Of course if you want to lose muscle then it comes back to high volume weight training with low rest periods, and possibly even hitting the same bodyparts on concurrent days to minimise hypertrophy, maximise cardio output. It's not like you're going to be able to see any major msucle mass gains while ona calorie deficit anyway.

It may just be a case of readdressing your macronutrient ratios and playing around a bit until you find something that works. I don't know if this is any help at all actually, sort of feels like teaching a teacher so apologies if I sound like I'm talking out of my be-hind :rolleyes:

Smellyirishman

Boru. wrote:

I've dropped about 10lbs, most of which was that new built muscle tissue. Now I'm at 155 - 159 lbs. It sucks. I've felt like crap the entire time.

I have found that a lot of sickness weight loss was water and "onboard" food, and once you're well again you will move up much quicker. It's a bitch when you're sick and shrinking and thinking "Ugh, 2 months work gone in a week" but it's never that bad.

Transform, do you want to seriously compete at the marathon or just run it, if your times are decent then what does it matter how much you weigh? Why not be grateful that you're holding onto your muscle and still able to put up a good time (or are your times really suffering?).

t-ha

Transform wrote:

Ok guys and gals marathon training season so i have been doing my sessions for longer and harder then ever but am not dropping as much weight as i thought i would.

I have an ankle injury at the moment so am doing at least 60mins of aerobic exercise 6-7 days per week (average calorie burn 1000cals average HR 145-155 at age of 30 years).

I have also cut food intake which is hard after putting on a stone in muscle over the last 8-9months.

So has anyone any experience of dropping weight (currently at 13st 2 lbs and want to get to 12st 7lbs in 8 weeks) not easy when your body fat is as low as 5% year round.

I'm sure you'll be fine & with your training will be well able to carry whatever weight you have on the day anyway. I have plenty of experience with dropping weight, however I was generally trying to maintain muscle mass so I don't think it's really relevant to this situation. I'll go through what I would do anyway, but only safe in the knowledge that if any of it is a bad idea you'll spot it & won't do it .

If I had the same task infront of me, I would say that at 5%BF the only option is to drop skeletal muscle. Given that 1 stone of it is recent addition stuff it shouldn't take too long to go. I guess I'd cut protein intake back to one meal a day, with a minimal serving to stay healthy (well, as much as you can while doing something like this). Obviously cease all weight training/resistance sessions until I see how I'm responding (if the muscle comes off fast I can revert to normal training sooner, if it doesn't, well at least I know). I gather that cardio heart-rate corrisponds to 70 - 80% range for you so I would do the same & probably try to have minimal dietary protein or carbs in my system while doing it. I'd monitor my calorie intake generally and reduce it as needed if the scales refuse to shift.
Basically do everything to lose muscle to try to drop the weight sooner, even though my marathon training would probably go to poop over the same period, and then revert to more normal training once I'd hit my target (rather than aiming to drop the weight in the exact alotted time).

I know guys like JayRoc over on teamtest cut weight for fights sometimes so maybe they might have more experience based answers.

Re: the muscle loss after so long bulking - I know exactly what you mean (though from a backing off to accomodate rehab etc. point of view) it's still good to build it up though, you'll fly back up to your bulked up weight the second time round.

daveirl

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Dragan

I would

a) agree with Daveirl....the catabolic effects of cardio are hugely overstated. Pro Marathon runners or even avid amateur marathon runners are small because it is all they do, and because it is an advantage to be lighter....not because they are made to add mass but all the darn running is holding them back!!!

b) agree with T-ha, seriously drop back on the protein if you are looking to drop muscle mass....for want of a better term, get catabolic with it dude, let those amino acid and nitrogen levels drop!!!

Reyman

At 13st you are heavy for serious marathon performance regardless of whether it's muscle or fat.

What height are you for interest?

daveirl

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trollybus

A friend of mine has run about 10 or so marathons at over 20 stone bodyweight, he always comes in around the 3 hour mark so I wouldn't worry about an extra 9lbs. How do you measure your bodyfat?

Sonderval

I might just chime in here and ask a question of my own

Doing the marathon as well this October. Been training properly for the last month doing 3-4 40-50 min runs per week. Anyways, In the last year I've managed to put on a good amount of muscle from my gym work, which I currently do at lunch time. Cover all the major body parts, some weeks its done as a split routine, others its done as a mixture of focusing on some groups and doing 1-2 full body sessions. I'll then run in the evening, usually around 9 P.M.

Anyways, does anyone have any experience doing both gym work and preparing for the marathon? I'd rather not go to 100% cardio training this time, as I quite like this muscle I've gained. If so, what does your diet work out as? I'm pretty good in figuring out my own macronutrient needs for gym work, but mixing both gym and marathon training kind of throws what I know off a bit.

Just under 13 stone myself and I found the marathon last year (my first) tough going (did it in 4:40 minutes, which is well beatable by my own standards - my footwear got soaked in the morning which really had repercussions on the last 8 miles).

Patto

Hey Transform,

I remember you saying your were going to loose your newly aquired extra bulk. I was very curious as to how you were going to go about doing it.

I have inadvertently achieved this a few times through poor diet and preparation. I remember one season going from my usual 96Kg down to 90Kg while maintaining almost the same body fat. I did this at high season when I would have been training (gaelic football) 2 nights a week, a game maybe once a week and an odd spinning class here and there. I did no weights, my protein intake was normal (man on the street normal i.e. I did not take any supplements) and I didn't regualarly take propper post workout meals. I did loose a lot of upper body strength but I was never fitter or faster.

Why do you train at 150bpm? I know you burn more BF at this intensity. Are there any other reasons?

When you run the marathon won't your heart rate be higher (around 170bpm at a guess)? Why not train at this intensity? Would this give the catabolic effect you are looking for?

Maybe do a few spinning classes, I reckon they are highly catabolic.

amazingemmet

Not sure how this would fit in but why not change to a low carb/ keto diet as you'd lose a huge amount of water weight and glycogen stores. Probably not the best idea but just throwing it out.