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View Full Version : Use it so you don't Lose it.



drtbear1967
01-15-2018, 09:27 AM
When you're on a diet, you must give your body a reason to hold on to muscle. High-intensity strength exercises (70-100% range) are better than low-intensity (40-70% range) while dieting. Heavier training helps you preserve strength and muscle while on a low calorie diet much better than super-high volume/low-intensity workouts.

The body is more interested in survival than being jacked. So energy reserves (body fat) are more precious than muscle since the latter consumes energy. When calories are dropped, we enter survival mode and the energy-costly muscle goes away – broken down into amino acids, then transformed into glucose for energy. To keep muscle, give the body a reason to do so. Will lifting light weights do it? No. You need to continue to lift heavy, otherwise some muscle will go to waste!

We've been brainwashed by the magazines to believe that you should do high-rep training for definition. Sure, you use a little more energy training, but the higher the training volume the more energy you need to recover. The more glycogen you burn while strength training, the more carbs you'll need to recover and progress. If you're on a diet, chances are that you've lowered your carbs. So you need more carbs, but you're giving less to your body. Also, while on a hypocaloric diet your body has a lowered anabolic drive: it can't synthesize as much protein into muscle as it does when you're eating a ton. A high volume of work leads to a lot of microtrauma which requires a great protein synthesis increase, which your body can't do at this point. So if you use high-volume/low-intensity training while dieting, you'll break down more muscle and build up less.

Repeat after me: I will use my diet and cardio/metcon work to stimulate fat loss. I will use strength training to maintain or gain muscle. That's the bottom line.