Weight loss vs muscle growth

[BigPhil]

I've been on a mission to lose weight for a year now and have gone from 18st 5lbs / 257lbs / 117kg down to 15st 10lbs / 220lbs / 100kg in that time.

I'm 6ft tall, 41 year old bloke and I've managed to drop the weight without any specific method or plan.

I use MyFitnessPal app to track my food and now I'm eating 1600-1800kCal per day. My job is sitting at a desk all day but I still manage to hit my daily steps target of 10,000 nearly every day as I walk the dog every evening.

Go to Zumba once a week (yes, a bloke who goes to Zumba) I go to the gym once a week and do weights although it is machines only as I don't know what I'm doing well enough to develop a plan. I go to the local ParkRun on a Saturday morning and have upped my game to allow me to complete a couple of 10km races, even managed to complete the last one under an hour.

Here's the problem, my weight loss has slowed away down.

I realize that I'm probably still losing fat but gaining muscle which is why it is leveling off so I'm looking to freshen things up a bit. I'm considering supplements to kick start things again and was hoping someone could lend me some of their expertise on the matter.

At the minute I'm leaning towards a fat burner supplement and a creatine supplement. I've done a fair bit of online research on the whole thing but I was wondering if anyone else has tried this or is currently doing this so I can get some real world feedback.

My current goal is to shift the fat and once I get that sorted then I might look towards bulking up the muscles by ramping up the weights but that is probably another year down the line.

I think I need to employ the services of a personal trainer to give me a more focused approach in the gym but while there are plenty of trainers out there I've been told by a gym owner that most are useless!

Any thoughts / feedback is appreciated.

[Esya]

Seeing you are a bit into your weight loss journey (congratz with the progress so far!), you might have hit a so called dreaded plateau. You are likely burning less calories than when you started, despite doing the same activities. This has two reasons; you lost weight and your body got used to the exercise you are doing so became more efficient at it. Just by losing 37 lbs you are already burning 150 calories a day less while resting. So before looking at supplements you might want to try and increase the intensity of your work outs so your heart rate goes as high again as when you started.

[Esya]

I also checked your BMR with the information from your post using this calculator, and it looks like you are eating too little. When you eat below your BMR (calories burned while resting), your body tends to hold on to weight as a survival instinct.

[Esya]

For reference, I am a woman, 59 kg and 5 feet 7 inches and I lose weight at my current activity level if I eat 1600-1800 calories.

[BigPhil]

Thanks for your reply.

I don't strictly record every mouthful I eat, I'm too lazy to try and work every meal out precisely and if someone else prepares food for me e.g. when I visit my parents, I would consider it rude to quiz them over exactly what ingredients they used.

I have gradually increased my workload when training but don't want to step up to levels where I hurt myself! - No pain...no gain pain is a belief I stick to.

I'm hoping the supplements will give the muscle growth a kick start and encourage the muscle to burn the fat off the wobbly bits. I've also been unintentionally hindering muscle development as I've been making my post-workout protein shake with milk which takes longer for the body to breakdown and reducing the effectiveness of getting the protein into the muscles.

[Mukluk4]

I use a couple things.

Creatine - This will increase water intake into your muscles, so will impact your end game if all you are using is the scale to determine success

Caffeine - Helps get a kick into my workouts since I primarily do mine in the morning. Timing is critical else you won't sleep at night.

CLA - Studies have shown this to be a fat burner.  Relatively new to this, so I can't speak to results.

Hoodia - is on my radar, but not something I'm actively taking at this time.

As a side note, I'm not using the scale to determine success (what would a 20 pound weight loss even look like on my body?), but rather before/after visuals and athletic performance (Am I stronger, faster, jump higher, etc.).  I'm 6'1 and roughly 270 pounds and can run full court basketball with 18-25 year olds (and hold my own)

[Esya]

@BigPhil

I agree that quizing about ingredients is rude and I don't do that either when visiting my parents 🙂 . Same about the no pain, it is nice to see someone who actually respects the boundaries of their body. It will be hard though to gain muscle while losing weight, as it is easier during a bulking phase. But I hope you can get some good advice on supplements.

[A_Lurker]

@BigPhil- I agree with @Esya in that you are likely eating too low.  I'll use myself as an example.  I'm just over 250lbs at the moment, down from 360lbs in Feb 2016.  I'm doing about 15,000 steps a day and lift weights 3 days a week.  I'm female, 51, 5'4" and I'm probably eating 2500 calories a day.  I'm losing less than a pound a week at this point, but that's what I'm aiming for.  I'm pretty much not tracking anymore, but I did it long enough that I can say that I eat:

~400 cals (morning snack)

~700 cals (lunch)

~300 cals (afternoon snack)

~700 cals (dinner)

~400 cals (evening snack)

Mentally I play around with the numbers (ie today I haven't taken an afternoon snack but we had pizza today at work).  I skipped the snack when I came home and I'll likely just eat later and combine dinner and evening snack.

Now, the catch is, if you've been undereating for a while, simply increasing your calories isn't necessarily going to help.  Your body has become way too efficient at running on fewer calories.  There's a very good article about how to increase your calories (slowly) that should allow you to do it without gaining weight.  Then you can go back to a reasonable deficit and continue to lose weight.

http://eatmore2weighless.com/the-metabolism-reset-guide/

[emili]

hmm, I don't know. If you aren't tracking everything, its impossible to know if you are eating to lose or maintain. If you haven't knowingly decreased your calories to your new weight than you are eating to maintain- which is what your body is doing. Maintaining your current weight. You may very well be toning yourself and appearing thinner - but if you aren't counting- you don't actually know how much you are eating. I know the argument rages on about plateaus and starvation and all that stuff. If you really look at the science of weight loss, its math. Yes- for sure it is different math for everyone based on hormones, genetics, burn rate, etc.. but at the root of it its math- which is a precise thing.

[AndyDandyPandy]

I think you're too obsessed with your journey. You think too much about weight loss. Just do it and think of it less. Just act like it is just another day. The more you think about it the longer your journey is. When you do it long enough it will just be another day and will just feel normal without feeling about what you need to do to lose weight. But I can't blame you because that's how all people feel when starting their journey. I've been too obsessed about my journey just until recently that I'm so close to my goal weight. Possibly 15 lb away and I've lost around 120lb. The best deal would be don't weigh yourself too much so you won't be too obsessed about your weight. Some day it will drop a lot someday you will gain. It is the gain day that will hurt you and make you quit. But not weighing at all will make you neutral. Anything you do, think long term. Will you be able to stick to your routines in the next 6 month? year? To see the big change you will have to be consistent for atleast 6 month then keep it going until you're satisfy then you can tone your routines down to adjust to your normal life unless you want to look like an athlete then push yourself harder. Many people fail because they stopped losing weight or because they couldn't hold on to their lifestyle change and reverts back to their old unhealthy lifestyle. Good luck. 

[BigPhil]

Cheers for the replies folks.

@Esya - I like your way of describing it as knowing the "boundaries of their body" sounds much better that 'I don't like it hurting when I move'! 

@emili @A_Lurker - I feel I should quantify the extent of my untracked food. On a normal day, when I'm not getting meals prepared by someone else, I haven't been counting things like milk in my coffee and the butter on my toast - probably doesn't add up to much but the milk would make a difference as I use full cream milk and in the office I would easily drink 8-10 cups a day!!! That said, I started taking the fat burners yesterday and because they are loaded with caffeine, I cut out all coffee except for one first thing in the morning. I added a diet whey shake to my breakfast and accurately tracked everything I ate and came in at ~2400kCal but I had extra carbs before I went to the gym. Going to try and keep a more accurate record for a week or two and aim for 2000kCal.

@Mukluk4 - how do you take the creatine? Do you load for a week, lower dose for 3-4 weeks then a break or do you only take it before training for a burst of energy when training?

@AndyDandyPandy - I've been tracking my battling my weight for years, I've always been a fat bloke. Last year I turned 40 and I ate cake for two weeks and that's when I started making small changes to my routines, nothing so dramatic that I wasn't able to stick to it but every so often when I felt things were going stale I'd switch it up. It has got to the stage where it is all 'normal' now and just looking to add a little something to my routine.

At present my goals are; 1) to get my Parkrun PB time lower than a guy I played college football with 20 years ago - he was LB I was Centre. 2) to get my 10km PB down to 55mins. 

I have targets for my weight loss but they are flexible - when I get close to target, I push it out a little bit more.

I've found that the effect of increased training and exercise coupled with a controlled diet leads to increased fitness levels and this in turn leads to better times and as an added bonus there is less of 'me'!

[Mukluk4]

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@BigPhil wrote:

@Mukluk4 - how do you take the creatine? Do you load for a week, lower dose for 3-4 weeks then a break or do you only take it before training for a burst of energy when training?

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Personally, I take a regular dose/scoop after weight training for the recovery aspect (3 weeks on, 1 week off). I tried the every day thing, but usually forgot on the days I wasn't working out.  

The science says it doesn't matter if it's before or after, so it would be up to your personal preference.

[Mukluk4]

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@BigPhil wrote:

@AndyDandyPandy - I've been tracking my battling my weight for years, I've always been a fat bloke.

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I also wanted to point out that there are 4 kinds of people:

1. Fit Skinny - Those with the ideal body weight that are in shape that they can run/do a pull up

2. Fat Skinny - Ideal body weight, but can't/won't do more than a stereotypical mall-walker.

3. Fat Fat - Not within the ideal weight that can't walk without sounding like a foghorn

4. Fit Fat - Not within the ideal weight that can run, are athletic, and pretty strong.

While #1 is ideal, I could make a strong argument that #4 is by far a better option than #2 and #3.

[elderwanda]

I'm wondering how a man your size can possibly be gaining muscle while eating only 1800 calories per day.  Maybe I'm missing something though, since I am pretty tired right now.  

[A_Lurker]

@BigPhil- I think you already figured this out, but it's the higher calorie items to pay more attention to.    Butter, cream, peanut butter, any nuts really can all throw a wrench into weight loss.  None of them are bad, but they can really throw you off.  I did a post a while back about a morning protein shake (I think I'm too lazy to look for it tonight).  Peanut butter is a favourite of people to add to shakes - look at the size of your Tb if you eat it.  Is it flat to the spoon, or a big heaping amount.   I'm not counting calories at the moment, but I tend to buy the stick butter.  Hey, there's a scale printed on the label - no pretending you're taking a tsp.

Tonight I tossed some frozen veggies in a foil pan with some seasonings and put some pork sausages on top.  It will make a huge meal, but the calories for half the veggies are pretty much insubstantial.

[Dominique]

@BigPhil: if a guy your age and your size were eating 1600-1800 calories, he would/should still be losing weight. If you aren’t, chances are you’re actually eating more than that. Also, it’s not very likely muscle gains would have offset weight/fat loss, especially if most of your exercising has been cardio training.

Supplements for gaining muscle are overrated IMO. The main stimulus for muscle growth comes from proper resistance training based on progressive overload. It is supported by eating enough protein. Even supplements that have research showing they work (e.g. creatine) will only have a marginal effect. So your priority if you want to put on some muscle should be on resistance training and eating enough protein (+ getting enough sleep and managing stress). You can start worrying about supplements once the above are on check.

[Dominique]

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@BigPhil wrote:

I'm hoping the supplements will give the muscle growth a kick start and encourage the muscle to burn the fat off the wobbly bits.

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Building muscle and burning fat are two separate processes that actually have opposite requirements: to burn fat, you need to be in a caloric deficit, while for optimal muscle gains, you need to be in a caloric surplus. When losing fat, you’re likely to lose some lean tissue (muscle) as well, so your focus should be on minimizing muscle loss. When gaining muscle, you’re also likely to gain some fat as well, so your focus should be on minimizing fat gains. There’s a rare situation where it’s possible to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time (known as "body recomposition"): the conditions are met if you are carrying a lot of extra fat and are entirely new to resistance training. You may be a candidate for that. If so, you may argue that "muscle burns fat", or rather, your own body fat is able to fuel muscle growth (whereas in normal conditions your dietary intake would be the fuel).

As to burning the fat off selected spots (the "wobbly bits"): unfortunately, fat cannot be "spot-reduced". You need to be in a caloric deficit and hope for the best. For men, the midsection tends to be where fat stays the longest. 

The best way to "kick start" muscle growth is to start resistance training, in order to give your muscles an incentive to grow. Supplements don’t provide the stimulus for muscle growth, they can only support it (if/once it has started).

Bottom line: don’t waste your time/money on supplements, there are more important things to do if you are interested in putting on some muscle and losing fat.