Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below Alright im about 200lbs and 5'6. I have a good amount of extra fat, I started lifting about 4 months ago. So im trying to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. So far its working somewhat. Im eating around 1500-2000 calories a day. Is this efficent for muscle gain and fat loss? I don't want to eat to much because i would like to lose some weight(fat).
Beginner Question
- Thread starter bitz025
- Start date
I was toting around 10 pounds of body fat at about 5 5, and I dropped my caloric intake to well below 1000. Kept a high protein, moderate fat diet low in calories and I lost those 10 pounds in about a month. Every week or so, I'd have a cheat day and eat something decent in carbos... (LIKE PASTA yummm). Anyways, its a whole lot easier to try to lose the fat while maintaining muscle, not building. So eat to lean, then eat to bulk, rinse and repeat.
Hey Bro! It is very hard to loose weight and gain muscle at the same time. I would focus on one or the other. 1500-2000 cals a day is not enough if your goal is to gain muscle, I personallly think that is to low even if you are trying to cut up, when ever I cut and eat less then 3000 cals a day I find my self loosing to much mass. Try to loose the weight first, an E/C/A stack will help a good deal in allowing you to loose the un-wanted body fat, hit the cardio 4-5 times a week for 30-50min a day and eat a high protein, low-mod carb diet with moderate fat, try to get the majority of the fats from nuts, Efa'sect...Flax oil is great. If you need any help you can Pm or e-mail me anytime. Best of luck!
M18
M18
The biggest favor you can do yoursef is to quit chasing conflicting goals. Don't try to gain muscle and loose weight at the same time. It's a waste of time as you won't get very far at all in either direction. With such severly restriced calorie intake you arn't going to grow muscle...There just isn't enough nutritional support to carry on the process of anabolism. Your body is fighting for energy in such a restricted state. The last thing it can and will do is waste energy needed for more vital biological activities on building muscle. All requirements for operation must be met before muscle can be built. It's not a top priority when the body thinks it's starving...Which at your calorie level it does. It will use every drop of food you consume to meet life function need...There will be nothing left over to build muscle. To gain muscle mass you must fully meet the energy and nutrient needs of the body and then surpass that need so there are extra nutrients(amino acids) to build muscle mass. This means an abundance of calories. To loose weight, on the other hand, you must require the body ro rely on stored energy(fat). This means you have to consume less calories than the body uses...This will require the body to make use of fat for it's energy needs. As you can see you can't eat 4000 calories and 2000 calories at the same time. Pick one goal and work for that. If you want to diet, which it sounds like you do, focus solely on loosing body fat(not weight). Don't concern yourself with the growth of muscle...concern yourself with the maintnance of what you have. Muscle will be used for energy while dieting. This will become esspecially exagerated when your calorie level dips too low and you body as to use everything it can to meet metabolic needs. This means shrinking muscles which means less definition and slower metabolism. It will break down muscle and use the muscles amino acids to carry out vital functions. Again, muslce is on the bottom of the body's priorities list when it thinks it's starving(dieting). So Cutting calories too low, which I think you have severly done, will not help with fat loss and muscle maintnance let alone muscle hypertrophy. If you cut calories too low your body will adapt to protect itself from starvation and severe malnourishment. It will do so by slowing the metabolism to a halt. This will bring fat loss to a halt even though you are resrticting calories...It will do this because you're restricting calories too much. I advise you eat more. In the range of 2500 calories at least to stave off this metabolic slow down and to provide enough nourishment to protect from muscle catabolism. If you want to gain muscle mass then you need to forget about loosing weight or fat. You have to surpass energy requirements so the body has building blocks to build muscle. Concentrate on one goal. This will lead you down the road to acomplishing that goal instead of chasing two golas and driving in circles.
That is indeed the exact purpose of cheat days...That and mental sanity. Yes a high calorie day is a must at least once a week the crank the ole calorie burning furnace back into high gear, however, it doesn't take long at such drastically reduced calories to send the signal to the body that there are issues...issues that compromise health. A reaction to this is the slowing down of the metabolism before the next cheat day...That is is in the case of excessive caloric restriction. Mild caloric restriction coupled with weight training will keep the metabolism running at a fairly efficient level conducinve for fat loss.
Montecristo
New member
I had troubles with that untill I stopped watching my calories and just ate smart used dexatrim and ate protein all the time. And not wimpy 20-30g at a time a whole lot like 40-60g or more per serving making you FULL!!!
