Weight Loss Thread

Itlan_sl said:

I saw something on Instagram about "pronuts." They were like 95 calories and had 12g of protein and 4g of fat. So... like 3-4g of carbs?

They probably taste like dog shit, though.

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Sounds terrible. I have the non crowded voodoo donuts five blocks from my house so there are many late night donuts.

Bench is most closely correlated with weight. Like it's not even fucking close, your squat and deadlift might not budge or even gain in terms of strength, but your bench will plummet lol.

Eidal_sl said:

Well, it is true that if a guy like Lyrical (36 BMI) cut down to 25 BMI he'd absolutely lose some weight on his lifts (primarily bench). I think the health/aesthetics matter more in that scenario than the strength, but to each their own.

Wife and I are going to start a 30d-60d cut tomorrow; going to follow the Ossoi diet. 600g protein and 1/2 cup of coconut oil. All day every day.

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Not even close to true. Sorry. He has a gut meaning he has stored energy meaning his body isn't going to just magically cannibalize muscle and react completely counter-intuitively to everything we know about how our bodies find and use energy just because he decided to lose some of that excess (yes, excess).

Your body doesn't consume muscle mass for energy unless it can't find it elsewhere (stored fat, carbs/fat/protein from your diet). That kind of thing doesn't happen unless you're already very, very fit, as Rezz said. And if your body isn't consuming that mass for energy and you're still lifting you won't lose strength. You can even still gain strength. And lyrical has even claimed he's been losing weight but gaining on lifts recently.

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The overwhelming consensus I've seen is that body weight has a very strong correlation to bench #; maybe it wasn't true in your case but I thought it was considered common knowledge that if you lose 20 percent of your body weight in a relatively rapid time span then you're going to see less performance on the bench.

Eh, that really comes down to what percentage of your body is fat. If you are a super ripped guy and drop 20 lbs, that weight you dropped is muscle mass. If you are 300lbs and you bench 300, losing 20% of that isn't going to kill your bench unless you are a massively ripped 300, in which case your bench wasn't anywhere near your max anyway.

Bodyfat% is a lot more important number to all physical activities than BMI. If you are low on bodyfat, cutting weight cuts muscle (after a point) while if you are high on bodyfat, dropping weight shouldn't impact your ability to lift in the slightest. Lyrical could easily stand to lose 15lbs of fat and it wouldn't bother his maxes in the slightest. If anything, the improved bloodflow in his body would help him oxygenate better and his lifts and stamina should improve. When he gets down below 20% bodyfat and closer to 14%, that's when he might start losing strength if he continues to lose 1-2 lbs every week, as that is going to start seriously cutting into his energy stores.

I think you guys are applying what I said about bench to overall strength.

It doesn't compare. Even Dan Green has stated he worries about his bench most heading into a competition because he walks around at 245 and competes at 220.

I can guarantee Lyrical will lose strength in his bench.

I've seen tons and tons of people on reddit say the same thing; body weight and bench are correlated somehow. I admit I don't understand what mechanism is at play here.

Itlan_sl said:

I think you guys are applying what I said about bench to overall strength.

It doesn't compare. Even Dan Green has stated he worries about his bench most heading into a competition because he walks around at 245 and competes at 220.

I can guarantee Lyrical will lose strength in his bench.

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And Dan Green isn't 20% bodyfat, maybe 15% and I would say that is a very high ball number. Dude is pretty ripped. If he's under 15% bodyfat and drops 25lbs? Yeah, some of that is probably going to be muscle mass if he isn't on some insanely scientific diet. I'm not really applying anything you're saying to anything; it's just a fact that if you drop fat you aren't going to lose strength. When your body fat% is low enough that a 10% drop in weight means you are cutting into your muscles for energy is when you start to lose strength and endurance.

That picture lyrical posted of himself with the gut wouldn't cause his bench to drop if he lost 15lbs. It doesn't have any bearing in science or even anecdotes; the only people who lose strength in their bench when they drop weight are those who have no fat to drop in the first place. Mathematically, they are then eating their muscle to drop that weight. The fat isn't helping them lift heavy things.

Edit: I think I understand where folks' confusion is coming from. When you cut weight, you aren't dropping x amount of lbs of body fat. Dan Green walks around at 245, which means he cuts for the competition. Cutting involves dehydrating the shit out of your body combined with removing weight by any means necessary to get to a specific number. Enemas, not eating for 2 days prior to the competition, etc. In those instances, you are most definitely going to lose lbs off your bench and every other lift you do, because your body is not at 100%. You are going to have oxygenation issues, nutrition issues, dehydration like I mentioned previous, carb issues... lots of problems when you cut weight. If he was walking around at 245 and then spent 3.5-4 months going down to 220, I can basically guarantee that he wouldn't lose strength in the process. Most likely it is a month or two at most and it is drastic measures to drop 25lbs of body mass, which isn't all going to be fat. That's where the disconnect for you guys comes from, I think.

What Foggy and I were talking about is that if you clearly have fat to lose, and you lose it in a measured fashion, you aren't going to lose strength in your lifts. The fat isn't helping you lift things, it is an energy source after you lift. If you don't have fat to lose (10% or less bodyfat %) and you are still reducing your weight? You again enter the previous issue of removing more than just fat, which -is- when you are going to notice losses in lift volume. The guys in the 20%+ bodyfat range are most certainly not consuming their muscles when dieting/losing weight, and if their lifts drop it is for other reasons, not the loss of bodyfat.

Rezz_sl said:

It doesn't have any bearing in science or even anecdotes; the only people who lose strength in their bench when they drop weight are those who have no fat to drop in the first place.

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You keep saying this, but I've seen many many reports of people reporting weakness as they decline from all ranges of BF%. Not just the 10% cutting to 7 or some shit. Honestly, I have no personal experience here.

The only honest explanation for people at higher bodyfat% for losing strength in one area is because they changed the way they work out and don't hit that area to the same degree they did before. Usually this means that guys who were chunky and lifting regularly started doing cardio in place of lifting (because diet is way difficult to manage for some people) and when they lose weight they're like "but my strength went to crap!"

If you could link some of these reports so I can see the language, I'm totally open to being proven wrong. But every experience I've had in gyms and around lifting for 20 years tells me that you guys are partially right under certain circumstances, which aren't the circumstances that Foggy/I were talking about.

Anecdotal evidence time! My bench and OHP have been gradually increasing even though I've been dropping lbs and % bodyfat. Yes, I started off really high bodyfat %, but our bodies aren't machines, it's not a binary on/off switch.

Can You Build Muscle in a Calorie Deficit?link within article to actual science.

You definitely lose muscle mass when losing weight via extended cardio. No idea if that is at all similar/applicable if you're just lifting and restricting your diet to lose weight.

DT, that is only true when you aren't hitting the muscle groups consistently. If all you are doing is cardio, or extended cardio (what.) then you might be neglecting the muscle groups, which is what causes them to atrophy and shrink. If you have a balanced workout with cardio mixed in with weights, the only way you lose muscle mass is if you are sub 10% bodyfat and eating at a deficit. That's when you start dropping power.

Or cutting.

Edit: So I decided to do some research this morning. And the top links for most of the slightly misinformed post theories are always bodybuilding.com.

You gotta look at the underlying points in those articles if that is what you are basing your opinions off of. Each time they specify that cardio before a workout is bad if you do shitloads of cardio. The reason? You burn through your fast access energy stores (sugars) which is what leads to early fatigue and lack of lifting strength. Simply put, if you burn all your fast access energy, you won't have the background power to lift heavy things at a consistent rate. Cardio is -not- bad, but if you are doing marathons and then expecting to lift like normal? Yeah, stop being dumb.

None of this contributes to muscle loss unless you are doing so much cardio that you are burning through all of your sugar reserves and then trying to lift. You won't be able to lift consistently, and your muscles will atrophy and shrink because of that. In fact, I think I mentioned this in an earlier post. Do Cardio post workout if you have to do cardio for some reason. But if your goal is weightloss, you will get much better results splitting cardio off your weightlifting days. That way, you have the excess sugar stores to lift decently and will gain muscle mass as opposed to being too light on energy to get decent lifts in.

Yeah, I just meant "lots of cardio" by extended cardio. No weird fad.

Antarius_sl said:

Anecdotal evidence time! My bench and OHP have been gradually increasing even though I've been dropping lbs and % bodyfat. Yes, I started off really high bodyfat %, but our bodies aren't machines, it's not a binary on/off switch.

Can You Build Muscle in a Calorie Deficit?link within article to actual science.

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All boils down to the experience level of the individual. You were untrained so could've gained strength at near starvation. All these build muscle gain strength melt bodyffat claims depend on either untrained people or people following utter shit programs. In other words most of us here.

Yeah, early gains in a lifting regimen coming from little/no experience or a long period of time off always skew the results a little. After about 3-6 months of consistently working out at moderate intensity (not trying to hit maxes each time, but not using sub 50% max weight either) you pretty much burn through all your "easy" gains/losses. That's when you can better gauge how your progress compares to normal lifting/workout numbers. Not disparaging Antarius at all and good on him for making the gains, just that it isn't the best way to compare results with observed norms when you are still in your "easy" phase.

This translates directly to weight loss as well, actually. Those first pounds fly off if you keep a handle on your diet and start exercising when you are over a certain bodyfat% (20 is a solid number as that is considered "normal/overweight" which is what most people here would probably fall into) but after you figure out how you can push your body and what constitutes exertion, you will definitely notice the amount of weight you drop per week start to drop. This is because early weight loss usually involves lots of water weight, and simply putting the metabolism into anything other than "store fat" mode is going to cause some pretty big changes early on. Once you get to sub 20% bodyfat though, your body isn't going to react the same way, and your "gains" (muslce mass and losing bodyfat) are going to start to minimize a bit. Sub 10% and it is a whole different ball game. For most of the posters here, getting to sub 20% is good stuff, and sub 15% is amazing. Any lower than that and there is a good chance you spend a substantial amount of time doing physical activities and more than a little time on diet/nutrition.

Also, I kept referencing Foggy when it was Khane I was referring to in earlier posts. Woops.

I'm sitting at 12% right now. It's fucking annoying.

I've lost strength in my bench but gained in my press. Idk. Fuck math.

You're in the magic stage of sacrificing strength for looks. Congrats!

Honestly that's a rough number to maintain, let alone improve on. Good work!

I want to reach 10% and then reverse diet into a small surplus. But I've been really shitty about my diet lately. Got fucking hammered Saturday, pretty sure I had 12 jack & cokes and 2 slices of buffalo chicken pizza to finish off my night.