Lifting but losing muscles - need tips

mrpthrowa · 2019-08-16T09:41:32+00:00

Your are cutting so progress will be slow. You're looking for body recomposition which is quite hard. That is, losing fat, and maintaining or improving muscle at the same time.

You also say you are walking a lot, so perhaps you are crashing yourself with a huge deficit. Track your calories and weight daily for a couple of weeks using the TDEE calculator spreadsheet and work out exactly what your TDEE is. Don't cut by more than 20%.

It takes more time. It's ok, cut until you are happy with how you look, then slow bulk (again, no more than 10-20% over TDEE). Don't overthink it.

You say nutrition is tight "since august", so practically a couple of weeks? that's nothing in terms of the time frames you should be watching for.

You say lifting since end of June, so about 6 weeks of work? only 2 of them with proper nutrition? have some patience dude.

A few things:

I do not like doing as this is processed food

Whey powder from a reputable source is not your typical "processed food". IT's effectively just left over milk protein. It's not bad. Although your protein intake is fine.

You are constipated because you are likely not eating enough fibre. Eat more fibre (veg, fruit) or just straight up get some lactulose.

Your meal times do not matter. Your routine time is ok where you are.

make sure you sleep 8 hours. THIS IS EXTREMELY IMPORTANT. Next to diet this is your top priority.

I would try and get some carbs before the workout though. It's no an absolute necessity just my personal preference.

What is your routine... is the real question though? what are you doing?

RedPill-BlackLotus · 2019-08-16T10:27:24+00:00

Your 5'11 170 and your already down to 1800 calories a day. Your metabolism has adjusted to compensate and now your fucked.

Stop dieting.

Get your hormone levels checked, make sure it's not that.

Your body will compensate for any stimulus you throw at it.

There are only 4 ways to lose fat.

Eat less, move more, take drugs, and surgery.

I'm going to assume your not a drug user or else the word tren would have been in your post. Also, surgery is dumb and only for the most desperate cases. That only leaves eat less and move more.

You cant eat less, and your so depleted you cant move more.

I think you should put your calorie number to 3000 and continue to train hard AND put in 30 min of cardio every workout, and 30 min on your off days. That's 7 days a week you are pushing this agenda. You already know how to diet, should be easy.

Weigh yourself every day and adjust until you are at a maintenance number for your current calorie count and training program. Once everything is at maintenance (with that 7 days of cardio) you can slowly make adjustments, one at a time, and wait for the change to take effect.

So on a cut, if your base calories lands on 3200, you chop out 300 calories and change nothing else. Watch the weight, once it stalls out you add another change, say sprints 2 times a week. Ley that take effect and wait for your body to adjust. Repeat, chop out 200 calories, again, wait, then once you stall out make another change.

It works for bulking aswell. You can add calories or rest pause reps, change the temop, add in exercise.

It's always the same. Small changes then your body adjusts.

You push your body to hard in one direction it bucks and pushes back. You just give it a nudge, over time, the distance you move it is much further.

And tren is magic

red-sfpplus · 2019-08-16T13:18:36+00:00

Cardio burns muscle dum dum.

FoxShitNasty83 · 2019-08-16T09:20:52+00:00

You are lifting in a deficit, you will lose fat and maintain muscle.. at best

You need to be careful of getting too skinny... I got to 15% and 143lbs before the anorexia police caught up with me... thanks u/hack3ge

40mullet · 2019-08-16T11:18:36+00:00

You are glycogen depleted. You need more carbs to fuel so intensive workouts. Do one carb loading day (600+ grams of carbs) look in the mirror and if difference is big, do it more often.

suprathepeg · 2019-08-16T13:36:52+00:00

5’-11 and 170 with 18% BF means you have 30lbs of fat. If you are losing 2lbs a week in 4 or 5 weeks you’ll be easily at your goal then you’ll be reversing for about 6 weeks.

Body recomp takes a long time, there are no shortcuts. I would highly caution against any steroid use although the temptation will be real.

Frankly I think you may be going a bit too hard, too fast, the best program is the one you do for the rest of your life, not for the next few months.

Some things to consider when cutting. Your cortisol levels will elevate ultimately depressing your testosterone and halting any muscle gains as well as depressing your overall mood so be careful. Going through the anger phase on a deficit is no joke.

What naturally boosts testosterone? Heavy lifting in the hypertrophy range especially large muscle groups so heavy squats, deadlifts and my personal favourite heavy hip thrusts (I’m a huge fan of the Glute Drive machines) also heavy on the incline leg press is great for overall leg engagement.

Fasted lifting is, in my mind advanced level training. You need to fuel the muscles if you want them to work hard, they need to work hard in order to grow. You are not advanced.

To me personally your caloric intake to your activity level is low and your not lifting. So yep you’re going to go catabolic (burn muscle).

You really should have taken the time to figure out where your maintenance caloric level was before you started dieting. This makes setting your cut and bulk levels easier, right now you’re taking shots in the dark.

One key to burning fat is having muscle which you do not.

In my experience the body weight stuff is what you do when you’re on vacation and can’t get to a real gym. Also “toning” is a stupid concept that makes no sense. In body recomp you are either maintaining, growing muscle or cutting fat.

There is a ton you need to learn to make this a long term lifestyle so don’t get discouraged so early on. That said I would do the following.

Start actually lifting heavy in the hypertrophy range. This will balance out your hormones as best you can on a cut. This means you lift weights, the body weight stuff can be accessory work.
Lift later in the day when your body isn’t in its fasted (starved state). See how this works for you. I always lift like shit if it’s early am before eating.
I’d probably stop cutting in a couple weeks and start a slow reverse in 2-3 weeks. The reverse at your body weight should be adding about 125cals a day per week till you hit your maintenance. If you do this right you’ll still be burning fat on your reverse however you’ll also be gaining back some water weight so the real goal is to be approximately the same weight when you start the reverse as when you are at maintenance give or take 1-2lbs.
Eat just above your maintenance and eat extremely clean. Then lift heavy. The goal being to gain no more than 1.5-2lbs per month. In 9-12 months do a mini cut to shed off the excess fat. Repeat annually. In two years you’ll be a ripped motherfucker, if you keep it up you’ll be that way all your life.

Bonus step. Learn to meal prep. I meal prep 95% of the meals I will eat once every two weeks. This frees up a bunch of time, makes life simple and tracking my intake easy. I know my macros so once to twice a week I’ll eat out but keep within my daily macros range and not exceed my caloric limit. If I eat out it’s generally steak.

Also eggs, they bung me up if I’m eating too many every day. Especially boiled eggs. I don’t eat a lot of eggs, I do eat fish for breakfast every day.

Hope this is useful.

FereallyRed · 2019-08-16T19:26:58+00:00

Not eating enough.

Not lifting enough.

Really is that simple.

[deleted] · 2019-08-16T12:06:30+00:00

Have you gotten blood work done? Do you take vitamin D3?

If you want to build muscle and lose fat you need to lift heavy shit. Doing the stuff you are doing would work great if you already had muscle and wanted to lean up, but I don't think it's going to work as is.

Heavy compound lifts are your friend.

I also am a fan of juicing. Not the red-sfpplus kind, like green juice. It does wonders for your digestive system and gut health. From what I have studied and experienced personally, gut health is critical for health and fitness. If your body doesn't absorb the nutrients you give it then you are aren't going to see the results you desire.

Lastly, I do intermittent fasting and have done so for 7 years now. Giving your digestive system a break so your body can do other things is very helpful. Digesting food puts a massive amount of strain on your body and uses resources.

I won't eat until 2 on lifting days and I work out on an empty stomach. I use preworkout, black coffee, weed and modafinil to cheat a bit with the energy.

I stop eating after 8pm typically.

justpickanyusername · 2019-08-16T15:25:20+00:00

2ndal · 2019-08-16T15:46:03+00:00

I read over everything you said, including replies to comments left for you, and one things is clear: you are super good at making excuses to make your life easy.

What you want is hard and there are no short cuts, plain and simple. You are doing about 50% of what you should be doing, expecting perfection, and making excuses for the rest. No wonder you do not see the results you want. That is not how you get perfection. Yes, doing something is better than nothing. But doing "something" will not get what you want. Lower your expectations or work harder and stop making excuses.

You have the answers here in thread. Stop making excuses about why you cannot do them. Just fucking do them, or shut the fuck up and be content with where you are today.

gameoflibidos · 2019-08-16T21:06:01+00:00

2 things;

You cannot build muscle and cut fat at the same time. It is impossible unless you are on gear (Anabolics or TRT). To get gains naturally you have to eat a surplus of calories and you will gain weight. That is why the bulk/cut cycle exists.
your routine is a cutting routine for girls / crossfitters. You will not gain muscle with that routine. You will as noted from your stated goals... tone what you have and drop some weight with that routine. You need compound lifts (Bench, Squat, Row, Deadlift, Military Press) and heavy lifts. 5x5 power lifts if you want to gain muscle and eat more. Again you will gain weight when gaining muscle.

Rotate between weeks of high volume sets at lower weight for hypertrophy (muscle growth) and low volume higher weight sets for strength. The dirty ugly truth is that without Anabolics or Test supplementation, theres a very hard limit on muscle growth for natural lifters and it takes a VERY long time. Someone on Anabolics will get the muscle growth in 6 months it will take a natural lifter as long as 4 years to build. The only positive besides overall health to natural lifting is your gains will be retained a lot longer if you stopped.

Lifting natural, you'll NEVER look like The Rock. Ever. After 10-15 years you can work to the King of the Spartans in 300. But naturally, that's about the best youll ever do if you aren't a natural genetic endomorph. Endomorphs can do better naturally.

It's important to be aware of the facts and realistic with goals or you'll give up.

RStonePT · 2019-08-17T00:56:50+00:00

Eat more or understand your cut costs you strength.

Also, you shouldn't cut for another 20 poinds

thatboyjeff · 2019-08-17T09:54:20+00:00

You aren’t fucking eating enough.

Are you surprised by this?

And stop fucking skipping breakfast.

iamdexter12 · 2019-08-17T19:58:22+00:00

You should know your body type well because i.e. if you're an Ectomorph, you will burn your calories faster.

Cardio(running & cycling) is making you lose some muscles mass.

Hence reducing the duration of Cardio and increase calories intake according to your Set objective is advised.

RoccoPinkman · 2019-08-18T08:15:18+00:00

I was about to give you some advice but I realised this is all still new to you and the workout your doing is pointless.

Some good advice for you to learn all the basics would be read ‘Bigger leaner stronger’ it covers all the basic shit and has some good examples of programs to get you started.

Fire your trainer, I see dudes like you every single day at the gym doing some crazy shit that looks good on instagram but will almost certainly yield no results.

RoccoPinkman · 2019-08-18T08:35:25+00:00

Not eating before your workout will not cause you to lose muscle, muscle building/fat loss takes place over weeks and months not meal by meal

ReddJive · 2019-08-19T03:34:47+00:00

You have a good grasp of your macros. every one is giving you diet advice. That’s nice, but you’re not telling something. Where’s your workout? What exactly are you doing?

This isn’t rocket science. Fuck any diet will work really as long as you stick to a few things and are committed to it. fasting is the latest rage, but its all a male hamster.

So I am going to tell you that your workout fucking sucks and you are not committed to it. There are 4 reasons why you aren’t gaining muscle.

Your gains will stagnate if you only weight train within the same rep ranges and loading patterns. Meaning you aren’t loading more weight every time you work. 5 pounds increase is a good growth. If you increase 60 pounds in a year that’s pretty damn good.
Volume is key. Don't think a set or two per exercise will give you noticeable hypertrophy. If you are doing SL 5x5 you need to do all 5 sets and reps. Even if you have to deload. Do the work. Stress your CNS.
If you want to build muscle, focus solely on doing so. Don't flip flop between fat loss strategies and muscle building strategies or you'll end up achieving neither. I suspect you keep flipping between them.
You have to eat enough calories to build muscle. Prepare to have between 18 to 20 calories per pound of body weight to gain without blowing up. You aren’t. The lowest you should be Eating is 1850. Then again I don’t know your workout. You need to eat your body weight in protein. Stop making stupid excuses why you aren’t.

Betrootjuice · 2019-08-19T07:12:27+00:00

Thank you everyone for the useful comments.

I am very early on in the process so this is good to correct now the mistakes I have been making rather than complain in 6 months.

So far I will adjust with the following:

- For the diet part, I have increased calories to 2,200 and will do refeed days.

- I will keep training in the morning most of the time but will wake up a bit earlier, eat something and go training. I did that this morning and surprise I had more energy towards the second part of the workout.

- For the lifting part, I am documenting myself thanks to all the inputs. Calisthenics is indeed not effective for the lower body. Upper body there are workarounds, such as weighted vests or dips (there are some in my gym) and many moves are compound lifts (pull-ups, dips, handstand push-ups). Lower body is the issue with no real proper workarounds. I'll see if the owner can bring a set of barbells with weights so I can do deadlift. If not, I'll start looking at other options.

- As for half-assing. I can see how you have the experience and want me to not waste time thanks.

mrp_awakening · 2019-08-19T12:19:17+00:00

How do you know you're losing muscles? Are your lifts going down, or are you losing lean body mass (calculated from your weight and bf%)? If it's just LBM, it could be water weight. Also, where are you lifts at? BF% and body weight don't mean shit without knowing your main lifts. I'm talking BP, OHP, Squat, Deadlift.

Otherwise... only other recommendation would be to switch your diet up and go keto. I'd keep your protein the same, but limit carbs to 20-40g/day (whatever you need to maintain ketosis) and round out your caloric goal with fat. Studies have shown that keto is more muscle preserving than a standard cutting diet. Strength might go down for 6-8 weeks though as your body sorts itself out, but once you've gotten past the adaption phase it's possible to add muscle while losing weight. Last year I dropped 35 lbs off the scale, got down to 10-11% BF and increased my lifts. This year, the scales been pretty steady but I'm slowly adding muscle as my lifts are still improving. PR'ed 270 this morning on bench press at a body weight of 179.

Faust1an · 2019-08-16T13:15:14+00:00

I would recommend splitting your breakfast in half and eating one portion before the gym and the other half after. Your lifts could be stalling because your muscles don’t have enough energy/glycogen in the morning to sustain such heavy loads for the amount of time that you’re lifting.

This is just anecdotal, but I always feel much stronger and less fatigued afterwards if I load up on carbs before a workout.

i-am-the-prize · 2019-08-16T14:40:20+00:00

are you lifting too often? not sure if the same exercises/movements are being done 'every 2 days' or even every 4 (every other 2 day visit). to mix things up:

ensure you give yourself more rest between doing the same lifts
try lower reps/higher weights
try Time Under Load to failure, ignoring rep count, go for 90 seconds of slow reps
try caloric surplus the day after your heavy lift/big 5 days (compound muscle lifts)
how's your thyroid?

Title	Lifting but losing muscles - need tips
Author	Betrootjuice
Upvotes	10
Comments	58
Date	August 16, 2019 9:03 AM UTC (4 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/askMRP
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/askMRP/comments/cr3rqs/lifting_but_losing_muscles_need_tips/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/askMRP/lifting-but-losing-muscles-need-tips.249225 https://theredarchive.com/post/249225