I met the head trainer at the gym (started as a movie question funnily enough), and he did a little bit of intervention. He said that I had achieved a good base of cardio fitness, but that I had gotten to the point that I was not just losing fat anymore, but atrophying my muscles. He said that women are more likely to make this mistake than men since their goal is mostly to look good, and while they achieve their goals, they atrophy their muscles if they don't target toning. So, he says, start lifting again and don't worry about the scale. We did a machine test for body mass percentage and BMI. He entered height and age into machine, I pressed on two pads, and out came 25 and 28 respectively. We will take the measurements again in one month. He said they were high. So my plan is, cardio five days a week, two of those days are half cardio half lifting, and the other three are pure cardio. As I gain strength, he says I should cut back on the cardio mostly to warm up - run a mile before lifting sort of thing. He said that he sees me in the gym everyday, and that while that is admirable, I must rest two days when I am lifting, preferably the two days after I lift to give my body a chance to repair and build. If I am working out well, those two metrics will come down, the weight scale coming down or not. We discussed the merits of food before and after workouts. His philosophy is that you should have concentrated protein shakes. He said that the energy bars are fine. His point is that if I start to feel weak during workouts, I am at high risk to stop working out. Better to be nutrition, than to get headaches and feel weak and want to stop working out because working out is not fun anymore. So I started lifting today again, and sore again. I am at 182 lbs as I write this. I may not get to 175 in the short term as planned because muscle grows on me like weeds on a wild field (particularly around my shoulders and upper back and legs), but maybe I am looking at the wrong metric. This is basically what most of you have said, but I have now taking it to heart. Let's see what happens over the next month.
What you eat, when you eat and how you eat is more than half the battle. It's also very different depending on if you want to lose weight or build muscle and nitro was doing one then the other and now I think back to building muscle. I linked before, but here it is again: Pre/Post nutrition to maximize the training effect For muscle hypertrophy: Pre-workout: Carbs are necessary to help fuel the workout. Also, protein intake pre-workout has been shown to be very effective compared to post-workout protein consumption alone. Post-workout: Your muscle glycogen levels will likely be depleted. They need to be re-filled otherwise it doesn't matter how much protein you've consumed, it isn't going to do any good (catabolic -> anabolic). Many people swear by dextrose (glucose), which is cheap and is likely to go straight to muscle glycogen replenishment. However, studies show that any kind of carbohydrate will be effective as long as enough are consumed in the 24 post-workout. Post-workout protein is also very important. The type of protein to consume depends on the time of day (in relation to your sleeping time) ---------------------- If you're lazy there are specially formulated pre and post workout concoctions that cover all of these bases plus more (added ingredients such as creatine etc.) Too many brands to choose from. It's just a matter of mixing these formulations with water or something else. If you aren't going to use supplements such as above, then you have to take into account digestion times etc. in relation to how soon you workout after a meal and when to eat after a workout etc.
i'm basically at a loss...why do you care what your absolute bodyweight is ..what's so magical about "175"? isn't the goal to shed fat and gain muscle..what do you care if your 175 or 190 or 165 for that matter if it's all muscle gain? let the chips fall where they may
As per my new direction, I am taking a break on days after heavy lifting, so no gym today. The biggest revelation and it is obvious after the fact, but not all 175 lbs are the same. If I went to 175 lbs today, it would not be like when I was 175 before. One has atrophied muscles, the other doesn't. Going down to 175 is not the same as gaining weight to 175 if the gaining comes from a solid foundation. BMI and Body Mass % are much better metrics than absolute weight.
holy shit you finally got it!! after what? a month of many people including myself telling you this over and over again?? HALLELUJAH NITRO FINALLY GETS IT!!!! now he's gonna focus on body fat instead of body weight!! good god....!!
If your loosing weight rapidly you will eat into your muscle too as well as fat stores. However, resistance training can help prevent this muscle loss, but not entirely. The goal should be to try to improve strength on each exercise as that is a fair indicator the muscle quantity is improving, or at least not getting too bad.
I took the w/e off. I didn't realize just how tired I was from working out until I stopped for two days. I think my lifting workout days are going to be Mondays and Wednesdays, and cardio all days. I will probably take the w/e off, but woudl prefer not having two days of inactivity in a row.