How to lose weight? Calories to lose weight? How much protein? What kind of workout program?
These are the questions you have, once you have decided to make a change.
You want to lose body fat? Maybe gain a couple of pounds of muscles? Bigger chest, huge arms or cobra like lats? Well my friend, you came to the right place.
CALORIES TO LOSE WEIGHT OR GAIN MUSCLE
MUSCLE BUILDING DIET
If you want to gain muscle you NEED enough calories. I personally don’t care, if you get them from fat or from carbs.
You can go high carb, or do a ketogenic diet, like TKD or CKD, but you need enough calories, since muscle building is a metabolically very expensive process.
There may be times, where you will need to force feed yourself to get enough calories. You will be sick at the sight of food, but you will need to eat, for others this won’t be a problem.
You will get a bigger appetite the bigger you get.
BEST DIET TO LOSE BODY FAT
If you want to lose body fat, there is no other way than to eat less than you burn. You need to lower calories to lose weight.
With that you force your body to scavenge your body fat for energy. Be it on your thighs if you are a woman or on your abs if you are a guy.
Personally the best diets for fat loss for me were usually ketogenic or a variation of a ketogenic diet like CKD or TKD, so I could keep up the intensity during my trainings.
The simplest diet with how to lose weight it Steaks and Eggs. I will write about it in a future blog.
PROTEIN REQUIREMENTS
Protein is king. And the Queen. And the whole empire, protein is everything. Be it from whole foods or from protein shakes.
Just dont buy BCAA.
You need protein to recover and grow, without it you’re just a regular person.
So now that we have that out of the way, how much protein do you need?
FOR BUILDING MUSCLE
Although protein is important, you can get away with a lower amount during a bulk. The main objective here, is getting enough calories so you can grow. Muscle building is like I said a calorie very “expensive” process.
In addition, due to its satiating effect it may make it harder to eat enough calories, needed for muscle growth.
Be it from fat or carbs, studies have shown, once protein needs are met, more muscle is gained by adding calories. And those calories can be from fat or carbs.
Is getting enough protein needed for muscle gains? YES.
Is it the only thing you should be eating? NO!
HOW TO LOSE WEIGHT
How to lose weight? Well you need to lower calories to lose weight, but if you don’t compensate with higher protein intake, you can potentially lose a good amount of muscle mass.
And losing muscle mass is not what we want. Not from the aesthetic view, or health one, as LBM is heavily correlated with life expectancy. (Toss, Wiklund, Nordström, Nordström, 2012).
So to prevent potential muscle loss and further slowing down our metabolism we need to up our protein intake.
»Normal protein intake is required for body weight loss and weight maintenance, and elevated protein intake for additional preservation of resting energy expenditure and fat free.« (Soenen, Martens, Hochstenbach-Waelen, Lemmens, Westerterp-Plantenga, 2013)
Higher protein intake does two very important things for us. Those two things are.
- Protein increases satiety
- Protein prevents LBM loss
So how much protein do you need? Contrary to the belief of held years ago, the requirement is way higher. A study done on active athletes came to the following conclusion.
» Suffice to say, however, that the sum of available evidence indicates that protein intakes higher than the RDA (1.3–1.8 g/kg/day), possibly substantially greater (2.3–3.1 g/kg/day) as some have recommended, can offset lean mass losses.« (Phillips, 2014)
WORKOUT PROGRAM
It doesnt matter if you want a program for how to lose weight or gaining muscle mass, you need to know the following.
As similar as we are, we don’t respond the same, to the same workout program. You need a good workout program for you. The key words being “for you”. What does that mean?
Its means, what is a good program for your friend, might not be good for you. What might work for an advanced lifter, might not work for the beginner, and what works for a chemically enhanced athlete definitely won’t work for the natural.
I can guarantee the last statement. If you want to achieve good results, you need to ignore the pros and the competitors, since chances are, they have more chemicals pumping through their veins, than the beef and chicken we eat.
Because, look at it like this. A legion of people have failed in training with the one muscle per day body split training. It’s clearly not the right way to train, when you ignore the majority for whom it didn’t work, and only promote a minority that did.
And why does that matter you ask? Because they will grow REGARDLESS of how bad their training is. Hell, they will grow even if they don’t train! Don’t believe me?
Participants in a study, where they were given a dose of testosterone gained 20 pounds of LBM without exercising.
READ IT AGAIN
They gained 20 pounds of LBM without exercising. And that’s even not mentioning the fact that the dose is miniscule compared to what the average competitor uses. (Bhasin et al., 2001)
A natural could be overjoyed with gaining that much in a year or just even close, provided their diet and training is optimized for them.
Now this is not meant to discourage you, this is to prevent you from wasting time on things that will bring minimum results at best.
From my personal experience, and believe me, I TRIED IT ALL, the Menzer hit method, the typical bodybuilding one body part per week split, the pump training, etc…
The thing that will bring you the most results is going for strength. Hitting each muscle group twice a week with lower rep range!
Each time you train a muscle, your MPS (muscle protein synthesis) increases for 48 hours before it falls to baseline.
So if you train it only once per week, you are wasting at least another big MPS increase window for potential growth. The competitors can hit the muscle once per week and grow.
As you have probably figured out, its because they have their MPS constantly elevated due to anabolic hormones (Tipton, Ferrando, 2008).
I recommend either a push/pull split or a upper/lower body split, and you do A/B twice a week. With these programs, your muscles are constantly stimulated for growth, due to increased MPS.
CONSISTENCY AND PERSEVERANCE
This is actually the most important part. Regardless of how good your training and diet is, regardless of your genetics, if you give up or aren’t consistent, the results either won’t come, or won’t come as fast.
Nothing in this world can take the place of persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.
Calvin Coolidge
It doesnt matter if you want to know how to lose weight or gain muscle mass, knowledge does not equal results.
But if you muster the effort and dedication, you will reach your goals. Some of you sooner, some of you later, but unless you QUIT, you will achieve them!
REFERENCES:
- Toss, F., Wiklund, P., Nordström, P., & Nordström, A. (2012). Body composition and mortality risk in later life. Age and ageing, 41(5), 677-681. https://academic.oup.com/ageing/article/41/5/677/47347/Body-composition-and-mortality-risk-in-later-life
- Soenen, S., Martens, E. A., Hochstenbach-Waelen, A., Lemmens, S. G., & Westerterp-Plantenga, M. S. (2013). Normal protein intake is required for body weight loss and weight maintenance, and elevated protein intake for additional preservation of resting energy expenditure and fat free mass. The Journal of nutrition, 143(5), 591-596. http://jn.nutrition.org/content/143/5/591.short
- Phillips, S. M. (2014). A brief review of higher dietary protein diets in weight loss: a focus on athletes.Sports Medicine, 44(2), 149-153. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4213385/
- Bhasin, S., Woodhouse, L., Casaburi, R., Singh, A. B., Bhasin, D., Berman, N., … & Dzekov, J. (2001). Testosterone dose-response relationships in healthy young men.American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology And Metabolism, 281(6), E1172-E1181. how to lose weight http://ajpendo.physiology.org/content/281/6/E1172.short
- Tipton, K. D., & Ferrando, A. A. (2008). Improving muscle mass: response of muscle metabolism to exercise, nutrition and anabolic agents. Essays in biochemistry, 44, 85-98. http://essays.biochemistry.org/content/44/85.full