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Muscle mass lost after 7 weeks of weight training


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Hi!

 

I'm a noob here and when it comes to strength training. I've been working out at xgym. 20 minutes of high intensity training twice a week, with tabata protocol cardio 2-3 times a week. Today I had my 7 week body composition test done, and they told me that I actually lost some muscle mass. And they blamed it on my being vegan. I've been drinking pea protein isolate shakes every day and eating lots of protein rich foods. You can see my food log here:

 

http://xgym.mymealcoach.com/user-view.php?userid=15290&verify=e4087e74e46a

 

(there are no entries from March 6-16 because I was out of town, but you can see the other days and get an idea of what I'm eating)

 

My trainer said that vegetable protein just isn't the same as animal protein, and that's why I lost muscle. This doesn't make sense to me and is pretty frustrating. Any advice?

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The food log link works for me without being logged in.

 

Anyway, I've been eating around 1200-1300 calories per day. Some times less. Also, I have a bad habit of skipping breakfast (and lunch sometimes) and eating all my calories at the end of the day.

 

I have lost some fat too. I'm about 4 lbs lighter overall from where I started.

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what everyone else has said!

 

how tall are you? 1200-1300 calories may be too low if you are on the tall side. Is you're focus right now to put on muscle? if so you might want to cut some of the cardio- especially the intense cardio. might be helpful to post what your weight training consists of- what do you mean by high intensity training?

 

also, NEVER skip a meal!

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I'm 5'8" and about 145 lbs currently.

 

The training at Xgym is unlike anything else I've experienced. We do very slow repetitions: 7 seconds out, 7 seconds back. There is no rest in between reps. The weight is never released. About the point where I feel like my muscles are completely giving out - that's half way. At that point they make me hold the weights, do short pulses or just half of the movement. Basically it's hard ass weight training to full muscle fatigue. It hurts like a mofo. screaming is not unusual. I do leg presses, leg curls, compound row, chest presses, and some kind of ab workout with no rest to speak of for 20 minutes twice a week.

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Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. EAT EAT EAT BREAKFAST! If you're not hungry at all at least eat one piece of fruit. It gets your metabolism going, otherwise your body will think it's still asleep.

 

And jeebus 1300 calories a day is starvation! Find out what your base metabolic rate is and each much more than that!

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Okay, so today I talked to the owner of the gym who said that my body is just adjusting, and also I did miss 2 of the 7 weeks while I was out of town, and that could account for muscle lost right there. He said that I should shoot for 1500-1600 calories, and he advised me to cut down on soy products. - He said that soy is messing with my hormones and causing things to be out of whack.

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I don't agree that resting for two weeks would cause you to lose muscle. Nor that you have a hormone imbalance because of soy (there are many threads on that topic here which you might find interesting). More likely it is, as others have said, that you need to be eating more calories, or that you are overworking your muscles. I know that if I work til exhaustion every session I start to lose strength after a while.

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rebeccab - have you been weightlifting before? I've heard of this method with the extremely slow repetitions and this is definitely for very experienced builders. It stresses the body at very high level for very short time, which is high intensity training. In my view, one inexperienced person should never try this training, because it is putting a great stress on the tendons and ligaments and if yours are not strong enough yet - there is pretty big chance for an injury.

 

I didn't saw what your fitness goal is, but if you want to bulk up some mass, just eat as much as your body wants (and a little more) and definitely - make a new workout routine.

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If you are 5'8" and 145 at the moment, and you're doing strength and cardio training, 1200-1300 calories a day was definitely nowhere near as much as you'd need. 1500-1600 is better, but I'm betting that's still well under what you'd be burning. Are you trying to lose weight? If you're losing weight, you probably can expect to lose a little muscle as well as fat. If you're not trying to lose weight, you should probably be eating even more calories.

 

And as everyone else has said, this has nothing to do with being vegan. It's about balancing your exercise and calorie intake.

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Thanks for all your responses. It's really helpful to get other perspectives.

 

My personal goal is to loose body fat. I wouldn't mind toning up and gaining muscle as a bonus, but really, I just want to slim down overall.

 

Deiman: I've not done very much in they way of weight training before. But I don't think I'm at much risk of injury at xgym because they are very strict about proper form, the weights are relatively low, and I never feel joint stress. The exercises very much isolate the target muscle groups. But still it is very stressful mentally, and a very hard workout in general.

 

As for the soy comment, I have actually read the study that everyone cites talking about the phytoestrogens, isoflavones and cancer and it was only conducted on mice, not humans, using mega doses of soy protein isolate. Which is no where near equivalent to what an average human might consume. Mice physiology is not the same as human physiology anyway. Also there is some evidence that it may have been funded by the dairy industry - which makes the findings highly suspect right there. But whatever, I'm switching to unsweetened hemp milk. why not? Fermented soy products like tofu and tempeh don't contain the scary isoflavones, by the way.

 

So, I'm going to keep up the xgym workout, eat more food, and cut out soy milk (not because I believe the crap, but because hemp milk is good too!)

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I have a bad habit of skipping breakfast (and lunch sometimes) and eating all my calories at the end of the day.

 

This is also not very good, if you want to lose weight faster. I know that you are aware of that, but if want faster results, it's better if you concentrate your calories intake during the day, and slow down as the bedtime approaches. Everything is a matter of habbit.

If you are using protein powders, you may consider taking one dose with very little olive oil 1-2 hours before bed (it should slow down the protein absorbtion and your body will be supplied for longer, during your sleep

 

About your workouts - probably I'm not right. I don't know the whole routine and the way you split the muscle groups ( you may share if you like/have the time). You also said

But still it is very stressful mentally, and a very hard workout in general.
, so be careful not to burn out
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Yeah it's true that a lot of vegetable protein isn't as balanced as animal protein, but as long as you're taking in enough it's really not an issue.

 

It doesn't matter if you eat or skip breakfast, there's no metabolic fire that needs to be evenly stoked throughout the day. Most of your daily calories are spent just keeping you alive (breathing, pumping blood, etc) and that doesn't exactly stop when you skip breakfast. The only exception is if you workout in the early morning, then you should probably eat afterward.

 

So you lost 4 lbs and they said you've lost muscle? How are they measuring this? With only 4 lbs there's a pretty big margin on error in there, especially with externals like hydration affecting that. There's really not a way to measure muscle mass, only "lean mass" which includes muscle tissue, water, skeleton, etc.

 

Also 2 Tbsp pea protein == 109 calories? It's about half that unless you're using really heaping tbsps. I just measured 2 level tbsps of rice protein at 13g, and rice protein is denser than pea.

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Yeah it's true that a lot of vegetable protein isn't as balanced as animal protein, but as long as you're taking in enough it's really not an issue.

 

It doesn't matter if you eat or skip breakfast, there's no metabolic fire that needs to be evenly stoked throughout the day. Most of your daily calories are spent just keeping you alive (breathing, pumping blood, etc) and that doesn't exactly stop when you skip breakfast. The only exception is if you workout in the early morning, then you should probably eat afterward.

 

So you lost 4 lbs and they said you've lost muscle? How are they measuring this? With only 4 lbs there's a pretty big margin on error in there, especially with externals like hydration affecting that. There's really not a way to measure muscle mass, only "lean mass" which includes muscle tissue, water, skeleton, etc.

 

Also 2 Tbsp pea protein == 109 calories? It's about half that unless you're using really heaping tbsps. I just measured 2 level tbsps of rice protein at 13g, and rice protein is denser than pea.

 

I agree with everything here except that I found eating breakfast to be helpful when losing weight, so to each their own I guess...

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I agree with everything here except that I found eating breakfast to be helpful when losing weight, so to each their own I guess...
All else equal? Eating breakfast isn't a particularly bad idea for most people because eating regularly throughout the day tends to prevent binging, which is often the real problem.

 

Personally I find it better to fast throughout the night until lunchtime. I'm more satisfied eating fewer, larger meals. There's a pretty big intermittent fasting movement going on now that I've been following off and on, I think it helps but it's not as amazing as the proponents make it out to be (kinda like everything else).

 

There's a lot of advertisements for things like breakfast cereal that claim "people who eat breakfast are less likely to be overweight" which may be true statistically but it by no mean shows any causality.

 

But in terms of finding an all-encompassing rule, I don't think it matters either way. Some people find it better to eat breakfast, others to skip it, but I doubt that one detail is the missing link in any weight loss plan.

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Sorry about the offtopic.

 

@chrisjs - are you meaning the "Warrior's diet"? "

"Our ancestors consumed food much less frequently and often had to subsist on one large meal per day, and thus from an evolutionary perspective, human beings were adapted to intermittent feeding rather than to grazing."

(Mattson, M.P., PhD, Lancet 2005; 365:1978-80)"

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I've been following leangains for awhile now and I LOVE it. I used to be one of those people that swore by eating breakfast, but honestly I find it much easier to stick to my calories by eating two large meals a day. It allows me to feel full and satisfied, and now that I'm used to it I'm rarely hungry in the AM.

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So you lost 4 lbs and they said you've lost muscle? How are they measuring this? With only 4 lbs there's a pretty big margin on error in there, especially with externals like hydration affecting that. There's really not a way to measure muscle mass, only "lean mass" which includes muscle tissue, water, skeleton, etc.

 

Also 2 Tbsp pea protein == 109 calories? It's about half that unless you're using really heaping tbsps. I just measured 2 level tbsps of rice protein at 13g, and rice protein is denser than pea.

 

 

They tape some kind of electrodes on to your feet and this machine uses electrical pulses or some such thing to spit out a little print out that shows your water content, fat, and muscle mass. It's probably an approximation.

 

You're right about the protein powder. I just double checked my scooper and it's more like 4 tablespoons that I'm using. I use this pea protein:

http://www.trueprotein.com/Product_Details.aspx?cid=22&pid=6816

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