Spats....food for thought!

[MS]

Just a quick cut and paste from Dave Greenwalt (the Powerstore) regarding gaining LBM. It's not the gospel, but it's good info to take on board:

"Weight gain experiments

In subjects overfed, initial body fat level is
important. In fact, in a few studies, subjects with low
initial levels of body fat (10kg) gained about 70% of their
weight gain as lean body mass (and only 30% was fat mass).
These data also show that in subjects starting with 20kg and
40kg of body fat, only 30% and 20% of the weight gained was
lean body mass (while 70% and 80% of the weight gained comes
from increased fat mass).

From overfeeding studies, it is clear that lean
individuals gain less fat and more lbm when overfeeding when
compared to their fatter counterparts. In fact, this study
generated a predictive equation indicating that the ratio of
lean mass gained to total weight gained is related to
initial fat mass by the following equation:

Lean Mass Gain / Weight Gain = 10.4 / {10.4 + initial fat
weight (kg)}

Therefore for someone who is 92kg (200lbs) and 5% body
(4.6kg fat), about 70% of the weight gained during an
overfeeding phase can be expected to be lean body mass. In
someone who is 92kg and 10% body fat (9.2kg of fat), 53% of
weight gained will be lean body mass. So perhaps a good
idea is to only overfeed when relatively lean. If you are
200lbs and around 10-15% body fat (14-18% for females), about half the weight you
gain will be fat and half will be muscle. If you try to
gain when fatter than 15% (18% for females), much of the weight you gain will
be fat mass.

Since the equation seems to work for dieting also, just
switch it around as follows:

Lean Mass Loss / Weight Loss = 10.4 / {10.4 + initial fat
weight (kg)}

While not flawless, these equations are handy tools for
estimating how much lbm and fat you may gain or lose when
underfeeding or overfeeding. Remember though if supplements
that preserve lean body mass (like the ECA stack) are used
during dieting or if supplements like creatine or drugs like
androgens are used during overfeeding, these ratios may
change."

(Body fat content influences the body composition response
to nutrition and exercise. Forbes GB. Ann N Y Acad Sci 2000
May;904:359-65)


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Why I say it's not "the gospel" is because the subjects were not BBs, and were not following a clean "bulking" diet. However the general principal is sound. By decreasing you carbs and increasing your protein compared to those test subjects you can minimise fat gain but you're still gonna add a some more fat before you reach your goal.

 

[SteelWeaver]

So MS, ... does this mean, for example, that if I have a contest coming up in May next year, that I should do almost the opposite of what I was planning, which is try to gain as much muscle mass as possible in the next two months, then diet for 5 months? So, instead, cut for a couple of months from now, then try adding LBM, then cut again before the contest?

At 18-22%, I'm definitely in the gain-a-ton-of-fat-with-your-muscle-gains category, according to your post.

What do you think?

 

[MS]

I would start reinging your diet in now, much like Wilson6 suggested for Spats. Carb cycling and calorie counting should allow you to contunue to gain some more mass with either a little more fat gain, or even some fat loss. 5 months out from comps I start zig-zagging my diet with 4-5 days per week with low/moderate carbs and cals, and the weekends as regular eat all I want of mostly clean foods (1 all out high carb cheat meal each week). At 12-16 weeks out you should start a more 'serious' diet. Prolly closer to 16 weeks out with your stats, and even more so if it's your first comp. Remember that within reason, the slower you lose the fat and the less you restrict your cals, the more LBM you can retain.

Here is the rest of that editorial/review:

Results (weight loss experiments):

This paper reviewed several studies in which subjects were
underfed to varying degrees in order to produce weight loss.

1) In one group of studies, subjects were given three
different low calorie diets: (0-450kcal/day;
500-1000kcal/day; or 1000+kcal/day). The results of these
studies show that the higher the initial body fat content,
the lower the lean body mass loss across all subjects.
However, the lower the calorie intake at the same original
body fat level, the more lean body mass (lbm) is lost. For
example, when starting with an initial body fat of 20kg, in
subjects on the lowest calorie diet, 60% of the weight lost
was lbm while in subjects on the highest calorie diets, only
about 20% of the weight lost was lbm. However when starting
with an initial body fat level of 60kg, in subjects on the
lowest calorie diet, 35% of the weight lost was lbm while in
subjects with the highest calorie diet, only about 10% of
the weight lost was lbm.

2) Other literature shows that in other mammals as well as
humans, the initial % body fat is an important determinant
in lbm to total weight loss as well during fasting. These
data show that subjects starting at 10% body fat will lose
80% of their weight as lbm after 3 weeks of fasting while
those starting at 30% and 50% body fat will lose about 40%
and 18% of their weight as lbm.

3) If exercise is used in place of or in addition to
calorie restriction or fasting, more lean body mass is
preserved than if there was no exercise. In fact, in one
study, a weight loss of 8kg was accompanied by only 16% loss
of lbm relative to that weight loss (1.28kg).

From these data and others presented in this paper,
several things are clear. The first is that during weight
loss, severe calorie restriction causes a significant amount
of lean body mass loss. So when dieting, a mild hypocaloric
diet is superior to a severe hypocaloric diet. Secondly,
the higher the initial levels of body fat, the more an
individual is protected from lbm loss. As the individual
gets leaner, more and more lbm is lost relative to weight
lost. So someone starting off with high body fat levels can
diet harder with less muscle loss than someone much leaner.
Finally, the data show that exercise helps minimize the loss
of lbm during a hypocaloric state whether this state is
induced by the exercise alone or by the exercise and a
subsequent diet.

 

[OTCbooty]

That first posting is crappy news, I must say. Just doesn't make sense to me either. If you're a women with competiton-level body composition, it seems like your body would preferentially gain fat rather than lean mass, and vice versa---if you're a woman with more than enough BF at 20%, seems your bod would be "happy" to maintain that BF and put on some LBM. Am I trying to be too logical here?

 

[SteelWeaver]

Waaahh ....!

No kidding, OTC! It makes complete sense to me. What's with fat that it sees some of it's own and gathers some friends to join the party!

MS, ever since I read about zig-zag dieting a few months ago, I've been trying to implement it for gaining. I've only managed to gain about a kilo per month for the last few months, but my bf has remained rock-steady that whole time, or might be slightly less, so I figured I must be doing something OK. I only count calories about once a month, but check bf every 6 weeks, and usually use the mirror or scale to monitor my intake. Almost never take cheat days.

I've spent the last 6 weeks lifting very heavy with low reps (3 weeks 6-8, then 3 weeks 3-5), lots of forced reps, negatives, etc., trying to get stronger, so that when I go into a growth phase, starting this week, I'd grow more, faster, being stronger. That's supposed to go on til the end of the year, with a cutting zig-zag diet kicking in in January, with 20 weeks to lose about 10-12 kilos, and 3 weeks just-in-case slush time (comp's at end of May).

This is a bit longer than what you have in your post, MS, but I'm really nervous that I'll have to tinker with it a lot, expecially like, where's my protein going to come from?

Current diet composition on training days is (approximately):
Protein: about 200 - 220g
Carb: about 360g
Fat: maybe almost 100g

Total calories around 3200, I think.

I drop a couple of potatoes and maybe a yoghurt on non-training days, and on weekends can almost never get in enough calories. When you say "reigning in" do you mean cutting out the junk, or drop more carbs? I don't eat any junk, except for a spoonful of sugar in my coffee in the morning. (Is coffee junk?) I'm not exactly sure what bf% I'm aiming for - is 10% good for female competition?

One silly question - when one talks about percentages of protein, CHO and fat, one does mean relative percentages of CALORIES as opposed to percentages of GRAMS, right??? Because that gives me 27.5% to 45% to 27.5%, calorie-wise.

Another question ... did I just barge all over your thread spatterson? It's all me, me, me ...

Sorry...

 

[SteelWeaver]

Duh! I figured out after I made that post (maybe the verbalisation of what I'm doing helped) that zig-zagging doesn't mean up one day, done one day, up one, down 2, up 2, down one, etc, etc. It's down 3 -5 consecutive days, right?

 

[MS]

Ugh where to begin. Do you have a trainer SteelWeaver? Or someone that's looking after your training and diet at least. By reigning it in I was thinking more in terms of eating *slightly* below maintenance during the week(lower carbs), and higher cals/carbs for the weekend.


How big/tall are you, is this your first comp, what class are you aiming for? Are you taking any AAS? That's a lot of carbs and total calories for most women to maintain on without AAS.

If this is your first comp then 20 weeks out is a good time to start playing with the diet, especially at 18-22%bf. Ratio of nutrients is based on calories, not grams. Try increasing your protein, and dropping the carbs. Read Wilson6s reply to Spats on her "holy cow" thread (his later post, not his first).

 

[SteelWeaver]

MS, I would reallly appreciate any advice you could give me. I have been reading anything I can get my hands on, on this web site and books and magazines that I've bought. I just finished "Sliced: State of the Art Nutrition for Building Lean Body Mass" by Bill Reynolds and Negrita Jayde. I bought "Power Eating" by Susan M. Kleiner, but haven't started it yet. At the same time, I'm doing a personal training certification through ISSA, so I know Fred Hatfield's nutritional theories. I've also read the only book I could find on vegetarian sports nutrition, but it mostly covered endurance athletes.

I just have 2 problems: 1) I'm vegetarian, and
2) I live in Japan

For the first few months of this year I had a trainer in my home country with whom I worked through e-mail, but I just had so many questions for her that we realised it just wasn't going to work - she couldn't keep up. And anyway, she didn't seem to know much about vegetarianism...

Despite what people might say, I believe I can build the kind of body I dream of as a vegetarian. I eat eggs and dairy products, which should be sufficient, along with legumes and nuts, etc. It just means that I have to be about 100 times more careful about my diet that your average meat-eater.

As for Japan, they have non-fat milk, but only 2 brands of cottage cheese, neither of them low or non fat, no low or non-fat cheese and very expensive imported soy cheese at specialty stores. It's difficult to get low fat yoghurt, and there is no non-fat. Vegetarianism is a curiosity here more than anything else.

They have lots of tofu and soy milk, but no soy-"meat" products. Lots of legumes, esp. soy beans. I buy whey protein, supplements etc. off the internet from America.

I'm 5'11 (and a bit), 78-79 kilos (172-174 lbs) and am not on any AS/AAS. I want to be quite a lot bigger and leaner than this. I weight train 4x per week for about 1.5 hours at a time, sometimes a bit more maybe, on leg day. I ride my bike 45 minutes to work and back about 2 or 3 times per week, so about 3 - 4.5 hours cardio per week. I cut down on it a lot when I figured it could be interfering with my muscle gains, but I do love riding my bike.

I actually read wilson6's reply last week or so, and that was when I checked the proportions of my food, to see what I was taking in exactly. I was pretty surprised, although I'm not actually maintaining or trying to cut right now - I've been trying to gain, so my weight's crept up very slowly over the past few months - without any change in bf, as far as I can tell. I thought I could go on this way until January, but reading some of the pre-contest threads has got me nervous, especially when it says cut out all dairy products including whey protein in the final week. If I do that, and cut out all carbs too in the last week, what do I eat, since legumes are mostly carb ...? Lookin' at some seriously bad egg-white recipes, I think.

I figure my maintenance level is around 2800 cal, and I don't eat as much as I posted before every day - that's a heavy day, so maybe that explains why I haven't put on fat??? But haven't really lost either

I haven't gained muscle as fast as I'd like, but who does???

It's my first competition, and as far as I can make out it's "open" and it's the one all the novices can (or do??) enter (my gym manager couldn't explain it any better than that). There's another one about a month later, which has weight classes, and then there's another open one about 2 months after that which gives the winner the full, overall city-winning title. My main aim is to practice for the Gay Games next November.

I think I'm going to be MUUUuuCH taller than the other women -LOL LOL - average Japanese woman is about 5'2" or so. Heh heh.

Sorry, this is an awful lot - as I said, any advice would be appreciated.

 

[MS]

Geesh ya don't ask for much Steel!

First, the competition you described *sounds* like a physique rather than a figure comp, is that right?? If so, 10% is a little on the heavy side for western comps, but who knows if the judging criteria is diff in Japan???? If it's a figure comp, then 10-12% is perfect. At 78kg you've got around 8kg of fat, plus at least 2-3kg of muscle, plus several kg of water to lose before your comp. This is if all goes perfectly.

As for the lack of processed vegetarian foods available to you….this is actually to your advantage. Most of those foods taste yummy, but are high salt processed junk food IMHO and you are better off without them in your diet. Stick to the whole grains/legumes/nuts/fruits and veggies, and supplement with whey protein and eggs. As long as you're importing whey protein, you might also want to buy in some soy protein to balance out your protein shakes. A 50:50 blend is good. Some of the soy proteins come pre mixed with active digestive enzymes which are a good idea, otherwise you might add these as a supplement.

At this stage the most important thing you can do is to get enough protein on a regular basis. Full fat cottage cheese once a day won't hurt you as long as the rest of your fat comes from sources high in EFAs. Try eating it at bedtime.

It sounds to me like you're on track, but you would really benefit from having a trainer. Ideally you should gain more muscle without any more fat (dreams are free!). Since this is what you've been doing over the past few months then it sounds like things are OK right now. Just make sure we're clear on the difference between fat mass and %bf-Has your fat mass stayed the same, or has your %bf stayed the same? And how was this measured??

Hmmmm local Japanese BB competition……I wonder if being tall will count for or against ya?

 

[OTCbooty]

I hadn't really thought about the height differential there....I saw someone's photos here on elite who had competed in Japan and he looked to have a good 6 inches on the other guys. Think of it this way...you'll appear that much more statuesque