What's more important to you right now, losing weight or building muscle?

[WilsonFitbit]

Hello everyone! 😊

I hope you have a great week! 

Losing weight is hard. From the diet changes to the ramped-up workouts, it can take a serious overhaul of your lifestyle. And usually, the goal is to decrease body fat and increase muscle. But sometimes in that quest, you can start to lose muscle instead of fat and that's not a great scenario.

It is bad to lose muscle instead of fat, because muscles are the key players in body movement and function. With loss of muscle mass, strength and endurance are affected negatively, leading to decreased functional performance. 

In general, muscle is not lost before fat, it is very dependent on nutrition and activity volume. How does that happen? Well, the body likes to go for carbs (glucose) for energy first. If that's not available, it goes for glycogen, which is glucose that's been stored in the liver and muscles. 

Fat is also used for energy depending on duration of the physical activity, and an individual can train their body to use fat as the primary source of energy.

But how can you tell if you're losing muscles and not fat? Here are some signs.

1. Your body fat percentage isn't budging:

If you're losing weight but your body fat percentage is staying the same, it's probably a sign you're losing muscle.

2. Your workout never progresses: 

It goes without saying that it's hard to push yourself when you're tired. If you can never go up in weight when lifting that might be another sign you've lost muscle. A lot of factors affect performance, but not seeing progress in training is a good sign you’re not hitting your body’s needs. 

3. Your workout feels more strained: 

It may seem kind of obvious, but your workouts might feel harder and you may feel like skipping it altogether.

4. You're losing weight at a rapid pace:

While you may be pumped at seeing those numbers, it's probably not good news for your muscle mas unless you have a lot of fat to lose to start. The more fat you have, the more likely you'll lose more fat than muscle when losing weight. 

I'd love reading your thoughts about this information and please answer to the following question: should you lose weight before building muscle? 

See you around. 

[Heybales]

Should you lose weight before building muscle?

Absolutely should NOT do that.

While having excess fat, and starting to resistance train - someone can have the rare opportunity not available later to actually build some small amount of muscle while losing the fat.

That opportunity will not be available later with less fat, or will be painfully slow as to be unseen.

Bigger deal is retaining what you got at least - resistance training, enough protein, and reasonable deficit have been shown to possibly allow keeping all of it.

Fat is your predominant energy source if you go by % of time daily, and usually for % of daily calories unless you just exercise a massive amount at high intensities.

Muscle is at risk when the body has to decide where it's using limited resources (like too few calories or not enough protein), and it's between growing hair or nails or skin, or rebuilding the muscle that like all cells is being broken down daily. Muscle not used will lose that decision, and if truly limited resources, it'll still lose even if used somewhat.

Another tell tale sign since you can lose fat and muscle at the same time.

"I've gained muscle doing this workout while I lost 50 lbs. I can tell because I can squat or deadlift 50 lbs more."

I've seen that exact claim made, even with matching numbers - and the person just didn't realize if 50 came off the body and went on the bar - they maintained the weight lifted, not increased it.

If that claim is made and includes starting weight lifting - there should be increases to weight on the bar while existing muscle is engaged better and form is improved causing increases - in that case muscle was likely lost as the bar weight should have gone up even more.

Very good encouragement that you really don't want to lose what you've got.

While the claim that muscle burns so much more to increase your daily burn (2 cal per lb extra over fat lost means a pringle extra daily) is a myth - all your points are so true to feeling better, moving better, other workouts are better.

[Kiwistar]

Personally, I'm not actively trying to build muscle whilst losing weight, I'm just doing moderate cardio about 5x a week +/- for my overall health and wellbeing.

To lose fat you have to be in a cal deficit, but to gain (especially seriously gain) muscle you have to be a surplus, or at least maintenance. I know its possible to gain muscle at the same time as losing fat, but that can require painstakingly careful macro micro-management, which can be daunting and (to me) boring! And unless you're seriously starving yourself, the risk of any harmful muscle loss is really not a huge risk factor or danger to metabolism. However, the risk of depising the constant battle of ensuring my calories in/out, macros, and correct strength training is in place each and every day is quite high!

Of course, I'm not an expert, but if I ever do decide to put on a bit of serious muscle mass, I'll be waiting until I'm at or near my goal weight

[SKMDC]

I do not want to lose muscle, I'm trying to eat enough protein to help feed the muscle I do have.  I'm not cleared to do any strength training or anything outside of no impact exercises due to health issues I have.  I do pilates a few times a week, but I'm hoping in the future I'm able to use resistance bands once my doctor says it is ok (I've asked, he says for now it is not ok).

[WilsonFitbit]

@Heybales, @Kiwistar, @SKMDC It's great to see you around! 

Thank you very much for your insights based on your experiences! I wonder which tips or suggestions would you provide to someone that starts on a diet or a loss weight plan? 

I heard that a calorie deficit occurs when you consume fewer calories than your body expends. A calorie deficit of 500 calories per day is effective for healthy and sustainable weight loss. Do you agree with this? 

See you around. 

[Heybales]

Make the diet or plan reasonable, sustainable, and take breaks.

Reasonable means the attempted rate of loss matches the amount of fat to be lost. Otherwise the body feels threatened and adapts to protect itself.

Adaptive thermogenesis - body slows its self down in many ways, spontaneous daily movements, regular daily movement, ect.

Make the diet too extreme and energy (calories) is not spent on hair, nail, or skin growth, keeping you warm, normal cell replacement.

Stress hormone cortisol increases, adds water weight.

Effect on scale could appear as no loss or gain.

Workouts suck and are about worthless for intended purpose.

500 cal deficit may or may not be reasonable and sustainable -  with only 10-15 lbs to lose likely be unreasonable, 250 likely be better.

But over 50 lbs to lose could start with 1000 deficit, but an unhealthy body under stress can handle even less deficit than heathy body.

750 deficit could be fine for 30-50 lbs to lose.

Wasn't gained fast, don't attempt to lose fast.

And beyond what the body may be able to bear, is what the mind and person can - what is potentially reasonable may still be too much to handle - and binges and giving up for days on end won't help the effort.

So slower may be better no matter what.

Sustainable also means the foods eaten. Don't start something you can't finish - so don't think eating certain things to lose weight will help you to maintain the loss if you dislike eating that way.

Perhaps you do want to improve nutritional impact of foods too - great, do it realistically though so you can adhere.

Test and discover what fills you, while getting enough calories.

Taking a break can be so powerful for allowing hormones to reset, those that are trying to get the body to adapt.

Every 10 lbs perhaps - take a week off and eat at maintenance.

Doing that purposely beats hitting a 3 month plateau of no loss and stress on top of it, possibly doing foolish things. 3 months, 12 weeks, how many breaks would that have allowed...

Knowledge of water weight effects and not freaking out over them.

Get a weight trending app and log daily so you can see general direction, if you don't understand the power of water weight changes, weigh multiple times daily until you realize putting too much weight (ha!) into a single reading and thinking it means you should change behavior is very foolish.

As foolish as blood letting because it contains water weight.

Avoid the scam extreme diet promises and people. They have a vested interest in you being thrilled at first, failing to maintain, and you coming back again. And again.

Exercise not required to lose fat, but it can make it easier.

Eat 2000 and burn 2500 with exercise, or eat 1500 because burning 2000 being sedentary.

Resistance exercise of some sort also helps hold on to muscle that is very at risk during a diet. If body feels threatened it's not getting enough to meet it's energy needs, why build muscle back up during normal replacement process when it takes energy and isn't being used.

Very hard to build muscle back, much easier not to lose it in the first place.

Just some common thoughts from studies and Dr's of human physiology that keep up with current info, and aren't out to make a buck on you.

Info that's been around for 20-40 years that people find success with.

[WilsonFitbit]

@Heybales Thank you very much for taking the time to share these suggestions! 

I'll certainly take this information into consideration and I'm pretty sure that it will also help other ones. 😇

See you around. 

[jkjacks]

It is difficult to gauge your caloric intake accurately enough that a 500 caloric deficit on paper would lead to losing 2 pounds per week.  In addition you have errors in so many different aspects of your weight loss goals.  I have found that sticking with a specific caloric intake and ensuring your caloric output is at least 1k greater than that input leads to the 2 pounds per week of healthy weight loss.  That is enough to override all of the errors but not enough to cause major issues.  A 200 pound person trying to lose 20 pounds is going to have a vastly different experience than a 400 pound person trying to lose 40 pounds even though both are just trying to drop 10% of their body weight.  

One of the major things I never see even commented on in the fitbit community is how your body will shoot you in the your foot without a lot of work to stop it.  For example, if you run 5 miles every single day on the exact same route, your body will burn varying amounts of calories to accomplish that run but with the total amount decreasing over time.  This  holds true even if your weight/body fat % does not change while doing it.  This is because your body works very hard to keep the calories it has and will find ways to be more efficient at any repetitive task.  This is why any good coach would tell you to vary your workout so that your body cannot adjust to your run and decrease the benefit from it.

[WilsonFitbit]

Hello @jkjacks. Nice to see you around! 

Thank you very much for the detailed information and for your recommendations, these are huge appreciated! 😊

See you around.