That hard stuff could be fat: Mistress Krista wrote me back!

[Gladiola]

In my ongoing quest to learn how to lose body fat & also lose some muscle at the same time - I came across an article by Mistress Krista - author of www.stumptuous.com women's weightlifting site.

I couldn't find any reader feedback or e-mails on her site where another woman had felt like she gained TOO MUCH muscle (we all acknowledge that, although rare, this IS *possible*). So I decided to e-mail her my Q's - as I really really don't want to cut back much on lifting or do high-rep (which I cant' see the point of & no one could answer WHY I should do it!)
Her Response:

Don't panic. All you have to do is just diet to lose weight, and the muscle will go along with the fat. Most women really do overestimate how much of the weight gain is muscle. No matter what freaky genetics you have been blessed with, it really is quite difficult to gain substantial bulk from muscle alone (unless you're on drugs). Since your weight gain appears to be more a result of inactivity after your injury than training, I suspect we're looking at mostly plain old bodyfat here. With more muscular people, bodyfat will resemble muscle more, as it sits on top of existing musculature, but I think you'd be surprised at just how much bodyfat there is. I was convinced I had huge quads until I lost 35 lbs.(now I just have big quads, and the fat is looser so I can pinch it and feel what exactly is muscle and what's fat---and there's a whole lot more squish on there even though it looks like muscle) Train as normal, but eat less. Go to www.fitday.com and set up an account. Aim for around 10 x bodyweight in calories daily. As fat goes, lean muscle tissue will too.

I never thought I would be so happy to hear that I'm probably MORE FAT than I think! It truely never occured to me that it might be more fat than it appears, since there is a lot of hard muscle there.

So I can still lift & "cut" like any other normal person. YEEAAH! I was also impressed & thrilled that Mistress Krista got back to me quickly.

 

[Daisy_Girl]

Congrats on getting an answer to your problem! Finally, you can start working on the solution! Good luck - I hope it all works out for you....

 

[c3bodybuilding]

I love Krista. Her advice has been proven for years. If anyone wants to talk with her more, she posts at Misc.fitness.weights. Her websites is also good. Simple, but to the point.

 

[JJFigure]

I'm surprised you hadn't considered this before - I know when I did my first cutting cycle, I was *surprised* by how much fat I lost, when I'd thought my body composition was comprised of much more muscle than it really was. My fat tends to sit right under the skin though, and is easy to pinch. You probably are more like my Mom - she's very firm, especially her lower body, even though she's quite definitely over-fat. Her fat just happens to be hard - she doesn't even have cellulite, even though she's about 100 lbs. overweight. I'm adopted, so I didn't get those "firm fat" genes.

I guess I just assumed you'd already had a body composition test done, and knew you were dealing with muscle, not fat.

 

[Gladiola]

I'm surprised you hadn't considered this before

Nope! I hadn't thought of that. I thought hard=muscles & no one had ever mentioned it the possibility to me.

Nope, no body comp done I know - I should have, but I really just don't want to know.

It just was so important to me to have a program that I had CONFIDENCE in - that I really believed would work. If I have doubts that a program will help me get to my goals, I can't stay motivated to stay on that program -> which was the problem I had with all these doubts. I know to a certain extent, you have to try things & just see the results, since each body is unique - but I needed more questions answered.

 

[Cheetarah]

That's really cool to know!! I've always had the "hard" fat even before I started lifting, I've always been very solid, as my dad has always put it. You can't even pinch my calves yet I KNOW there HAS to be fat there since I have NO calf definition! It's really weird the way that works, most women I've been around have the loose, squishy fat. Mine's just always been solid fat. Weird.

Thanks for sharing Gladiola!! I learned something today! Kewl!

 

[wilson6]

Sounds like the issue with pigs. Hard fat = good bacon. Push your thumb into their back end. If it sinks in, that means higher amounts of polyunsaturated in the mix from feed and that means bad bacon. If their back end is hard, that means endogenous sat fat production and good bacon.

Depends on what you feed them. I would imagine it is the same in humans with some genetic influence.

W6

 

[Gladiola]

If it sinks in, that means higher amounts of polyunsaturated in the mix from feed and that means bad bacon.

Interesting. I don't eat much animal fat - when I eat poorly, it's sweets that I eat. Hmm. I don't even like bacon! & I'm not big on other fatty meat products either.

Come to think of it - my brother is definitely over-fat, but pretty HARD as well - so I guess it is true. I can't believe this never occured to me!

 

[wilson6]

Glad,

It's not the fat you eat, it's the fat you make and store.

The pig example was from a lipids class many years ago so I'm really stretching memory, but the issue was if the pigs were given feed that contained a lot of polyunsaturated fat, then the pigs stored a greater polyunsat to sat ratio resulting in softer fat. If they were given feed that resulted in the production of endogenous fat, then the stored fat was hard.

I'd have to go back and look up the specifics, but it makes sense. The more saturated fat stored, the harder it will be.

Perhaps MS can shed some light on this and I don't know how it relates to humans.

W6

 

[valerie]

Soooo does this mean that for some of us the term "Lardass" would be correct? LOL-valerie