You will Lose Muscle.

You will gain all the fat back when you stop dieting.

I find it interesting that so many people use these two ‘arguments’ as the basis of their anti-diet crusade. Granted they are scary statements, but If we look closely at these statements something odd becomes apparent…

Firstly, the fact that you will gain back the fat when you go back to how you use to eat is kind of a no-brainer…if you give it enough time, and don’t adjust your activity level then going back to how you used to eat will result in going back to how you used to look.

Secondly, the ‘given’ that you will lose muscle is very misleading.

I cover both of these arguments in Eat Stop Eat so  let’s leave these discussions alone for later.  Instead let’s look at what I consider to be the ‘implied’ claim in these arguments:

To me, these statements suggest that the ‘fat loss’ from dieting is only temporary, but the ‘muscle loss’ from dieting is somehow permanent…As in you will never be able gain that muscle back….ever.

In reality, I’ve never come across any evidence to support this accusation.

So, if for some reason you do lose muscle while you are dieting I see no reason why you couldn’t gain that muscle back.

Just some ‘thinking out loud’ for you today….
BP

Realistically, if we include the metabolic cost of keeping the muscle alive, AND the cost of moving that extra weight around, we see that a pound of muscle really helps you burn an optimistic 5 extra calories per day.

Now the point of this post isn’t to downplay the importance of resistance training or even building muscle. As there is an entirely different way to look at this phenomena.

While adding 10 pounds of muscle only increases your daily calorie burning by about 50 Calories (again, just an estimate) it will do wonders for the way your body looks. So there is still a benefit to adding muscle.

And while I like the idea of adding muscle, I think the difference becomes really significant when we start talking about LOSING muscle.

As we age we become less active. This isn’t unavoidable, but seems to be a relatively excepted fact.

If we are less active and using our muscles less, they will shrink (use it or lose it applies to just about everything within your body, from intelligence to muscle mass)

If you had 155 pounds of LBM while you were in your thirties, but have 130 pounds of LBM in your sixties, that missing 25 pounds can create quite the difference.

Just by HAVING less muscle you would be using 125 less calories per day, not to mention the fact that you are less active (the reason you lost the muscle in the first place).

So bottom line – Weight training and building/maintaining muscle are NOT the metabolism boosting miracle they have been made out to be, but they are still a VITAL part of your weight loss plan.

Eat less and maybe eat less often. Lift more and move more often. This is a pretty effective recipe for weight loss success.

BP