Bodybuilding Forums

It seems as if my body prefers to burn skeletal muscle over fat when I'm on a deficit. Since I started the MANS diet, sure I've lost some fat, but not a big difference - looking at my abs, I maybe went from 15% to 12 or 13% and back up to 15% now. I weigh 7-9 lbs less now though, so there was quite a bit of muscle loss in there as well.

There's another thread I put up about how I'm having a hard time getting enough calories; I've certainly been undereating. Isn't the idea of the MANS and TSPA diet that you're body will tend to burn fat, not muscle? It almost seems as if my body would rather burn muscle, or at least a 50-50 ratio of both. I looked around on Google about this, but it's not a very specific query.

How much sleep are you getting, and how much time do you spend working out? You're not doing any cardio, are you? What about stressors in your life? How can you minimize them? Finally, when was your last S.T.O.P. week?

From the start to about two weeks ago, my sleep was a bit erratic... I'd shoot for 9 hours, but in the reality of college life, it was probably more like 6-7 on average. No cardio - ugh! Stressors?... well, school then, job now, that leave me pretty mentally fatigued. I'm not sure if that really counts. If by S.T.O.P. you mean a week off, I took a week off about 1/1/2 weeks ago. I'm also taking creatine, which seems to have stopped making me gain water weight after the first few rounds. This summer I should be able to get more like 9 hours of sleep a night, but I don't think that's the problem.

About a month ago I decided to just start eating normally again - which turned into eating ridiculous amounts of food (that tub of ice cream, for example), which put some fat on me. My hope was to get a fat 'buffer', so my body will gnaw on that instead of the muscle. We'll see... I've already cut a lot of that off since I went back to MANS a week ago. It just seems that if my metabolism is so high, I should be at about 7% bodyfat right now, instead of stalling around 13% or so and just losing muscle beyond that.

I hear ya. I work full time and go to school too, so it's 6-7 hours for me too. And my husband is in law school and works too, so... stress. Yeah. Lots. I think you need to focus on improving your lifestyle in that arena because your body won't make building muscle a priority when it's not well rested and is trying to run on adrenaline all the time. I can't believe I forgot to ask you this before, but what's your lean body mass and how many grams of protein have you been eating daily?

You will lose muscle when on a calorie deficit for sure, you cannot stop that from happening. It's not just your stored fat that gets consumed when your body isn't getting enough calories, your body's stored amino acids will be consumed to provide energy as well. MANS/TSPA does not remove protein from the energy equation, it removes the carbs.

If you are a skinny-fat, you don't have a whole lot of body fat to lose to get ripped (less than 10%), and you probably don't want to lose any muscle while you're at it since you are enough of a lightweight as it is. At that point, you really need to count your calories and try to even out your calorie intake with your expenditure. It's way easier and you have much more leeway on things if you focused on one thing at a time of course, but if you want to do both at the same time, you need to approach it with more precision. You are not making radical adjustments to your body, you are trying to fine tune it, and fine tuning requires precision.

but on the anabolic diet, muscle loss is suppose to be reduced. Dr D said that only 10% muscle is lost compared to the 40% loss on higher carb diets.

mykim0 wrote:but on the anabolic diet, muscle loss is suppose to be reduced. Dr D said that only 10% muscle is lost compared to the 40% loss on higher carb diets.

I think that depends on the individual. Some people hold onto that fat for dear life, depending on things like hormones, stress, etc., even if it means tearing down those lovely glutes and quads. I would take a very jaundiced view of any work that says "this is how it works for everyone given circumstances x, y, and z."

marochka_raduga wrote:Some people hold onto that fat for dear life, depending on things like hormones, stress, etc., even if it means tearing down those lovely glutes and quads.

A local champion bodybuilder refers to love handles and abdominal fat as "your body's food storage". According to him, it's not going to give it up unless persuaded that you're never going to be hungry again.

When I've followed that advice strictly, eating my five or six meals a day, trying to make sure I'm never hungry and I'm eating my meals on time, being consistent with my workouts and consistent in my diet is when I've made the best improvements to my physique so far.

--Matt B.

redgiki wrote:A local champion bodybuilder refers to love handles and abdominal fat as "your body's food storage". According to him, it's not going to give it up unless persuaded that you're never going to be hungry again.

Mark mentions that too I think; but it can be hard to make sure your body is never hungry on a high fat diet, simply because if you (ok, I) only eat when hungry, it's very easy to undereat calories when trying to bulk. Still, sound advice.