Muscle Mass Loss with ADF

This topic contains 15 replies, has 4 voices, and was last updated by idonotdonot 8 years, 7 months ago.

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idonotdonot

7:25 pm
16 May 16
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I’m satisfied with the weight loss and other benefits I’ve gotten with Alternate Day Fasting so far. (Just completed my 5th week), but one thing I have notices is that it seems like I’m loosing muscle mass. It was in the back of my mind and then my wife mentioned that she didn’t like that I was losing my “sexy” legs. Meaning the muscle definition wasn’t as apparent as it used to be. I’m averaging about 1.7 pounds lost each week. I’m exercising about 3 times a week doing resistance training. I’m thinking I should try to increase my calories by a 2-3 hundred on my fast days. I say fast days instead of non-fast days because I don’t think I can eat more during my non-fast days and not feel like I’m stuffing myself and being uncomfortable. Has anyone had an issue with muscle loss? If so, how did you deal with it.

bigbooty

2:04 am
17 May 16
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You do lose a little muscle mass but not a lot. Im guessing maybe 10-15% is muscle the rest is FAT!! Im really not sure why this freaks people out? Im assuming that most people on this forum are not elite athletes, so why is a little muscle loss so fearful? Even some moderate exercise will bring back muscle bulk.

I ride a bike and having lost 44 pounds (20kgs) of which some was probably muscle, I can now fly up a hill that is near my house whereas before I would really struggle to get up it. Its all about power to weight ratio as far as Im concerned. Often when I go for a ride I will come across other riders that have legs the size of tree trunks whereas my legs are quite skinny. I power past them.

On occasions after my rides when Ive pushed harder than normal I’ll be craving protein. Quite amazing how the body tells you what it needs. Sure enough the next day my legs will be a little stiff and that’s telling me that Ive pushed my limit the previous day and my body craving protein meant that I needed it to repair the stress Id put my legs through on the ride. I don’t think you need to up your calories, after a heavy workout just go for more protein. Your body will use whatever it needs to repair muscle tissue etc. and the rest will be converted into fat and stored. Carbs wont help repair anything.

IndyNadaJones

2:30 am
17 May 16
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We need to remember that the 500 – 600 calories allowable on FDs are only a guideline. If I remember correctly, the rule really is 20% of TDEE (or was it BMR?)

The point is: muscle mass does have a direct effect on both TDEE and BMR; and if you have more muscle mass, and wish to retain it, then your figure for 20% would necessarily be higher than someone else’s who has relatively less muscle mass.

The other thing to think about, it is not just the added calories that help to retain muscle mass – we also need to consider the source of these added calories. Presumably, if one gets all their calories purely from sugar, then these calories will contribute very little in terms of building or retaining muscle mass. So it is important that you have as varied a diet as possible.

I agree with bigbooty – as long as you are eating right, even moderate exercise will help you regain your muscle mass. From my own experience, it is easier to regain muscle mass than to build it. I find that my body, the muscle in particular, has somehow been conditioned and ‘remembers’ its previous state. Though I don’t know whether there any scientific evidence or principle to back this up – any thoughts, anyone?

IndyNadaJones

4:57 am
17 May 16
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Hi idonotdonot – just came across this permalink in another thread on this forum: https://thefastdiet.co.uk/forums/topic/related-science-articles-people-might-be-interested-to-read/page/3/#post-145943

They provide this link to a very interesting article in relation to your question: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1373635/pdf/1743-7075-3-9.pdf

idonotdonot

7:22 am
17 May 16
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Thanks. I’ll read through that thread and associated links.

Apricot

8:41 am
17 May 16
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Hi Idonotdonot. I posted that article on the Science thread. It’s very interesting, so do read it. It makes clear that if you go on a VLCarb diet, where you have less than 30g carb per day, you must increase fat substantially as well as protein. Phinney and Volek have done subsequent work on this. There are also some discussions by Dr Michael Eades in his ProteinPower blog and also by Hyperlipid in his. You can google these, but if I go back to them when I’ve more time, I’ll put the links here. Dr Tim Noakes has been doing work with athletes in South Africa and Australia, studying their fitness and muscle on a ketogenic diet. Weight lifters are now also using this research to help them build muscle.

I suspect you are not on a VLCarb diet, though, so you might want to think about that as well as what BigBooty said about maybe using 800cals on diet days. (V) LCarb and 5:2 work well together I think. You would need to adjust to running on ketones, it makes you feel a bit weird at first.

idonotdonot

8:53 am
17 May 16
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@apricot I’m not VLC, but I try to stay below 50 carbs a day. I’m doing ADF (Alternate Day Fasting) not 5:2. Since I’ve started eating this way I do crave the protein after a workout. I started using vega recovery and it’s gotten rid of weird feeling after workouts. I did find that I really don’t function well doing resistance training on fast days. I just don’t have the energy and get light headed. I can do cardio on fast days, but resistance training makes me much hungrier and light headed where cardio doesn’t I dot HIIT for my cardio and resistance.

Apricot

11:31 am
17 May 16
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Here’s part of an interview with Tim Noakes, link to full discussion below it. Lots of protein also raises insulin.

Interviewer: What’s the key here?

Noakes. To eat a diet that keeps blood insulin and glucose concentrations low, because elevated insulin concentrations especially are linked to long-term health problems. We say: eat what your appetite directs you to. Once you cut the carbs we think your brain will tell you if you need more fat or protein. It’s about finding the balance that works for you.

Interviewer: On to LCHF fundamentals: what to cut out?

Noakes. Bread, potatoes, rice, pasta, pizza, sugar, all grains, cereals, processed, packaged, boxed, adulterated foods, cakes, sweets, biscuits, fizzy drinks, all the addictive things. Anything sweet, starchy has to go, and low-fat foods.

Interviewer: What stays in?

Noakes. Fat and protein. You can eat fat in relatively unlimited amounts, but only moderate protein. A healthy high-protein diet for humans doesn’t exist. If your diet was 100% protein, you’d get sick and die. You can’t really overdose on fat; it reduces appetite; it’s the best way to get over sugar addiction.

http://foodmed.net/2016/04/18/noakes-the-idiots-guide-to-lchf-and-banting/

Apricot

11:38 am
17 May 16
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There’s also this book for athletes, written by two of the foremost researchers into low carb diets. I’ve just bought this as a present for a friend who’s a long distance swimmer, as for endurance fat is a readier source of energy than carbs once you have gone through an adaptation period so your body is accustomed to using the system on demand. “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance” Paperback – 1 Apr 2012
by Jeff S. Volek PhD RD (Author), Stephen D. Phinney MD PhD (Author)

For HIIT, look at Dr Mercola’s website, as he uses that with low carb.

From reading these authors and others as mentioned in my earlier post (Eades and Hyperlipid), it seems it’s really important to have fat with the protein but not carb. So butter or cream with your steak, fatty fish such as salmon or herring, mackerel etc., eggs ( good balances of fat and protein naturally in the last ones). By the way, whey powder spikes insulin, which I read just after buying two large drums! So use it in moderation.

IndyNadaJones

3:35 am
18 May 16
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Many thanks for these Apricot!

That is one of my challenges, after years of bingeing on chocolate (I am an avowed chocoholic…) I have certainly developed a sugar addiction.

I only eat dark chocolate now, but I suppose I need to bite the bullet for a while and stay off of it to beat this addiction once and for all!

bigbooty

8:24 am
18 May 16
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Hi Indy,

Id be surprised if the sugar content was less than 40%, even in dark chocolate. The benefits of dark chocolate have been grossly exaggerated and were invented by PR companies to justify people eating too much of it. If people were really wanting health benefits then they would be eating cacao seeds to get their flavonoids. But cacao is very bitter so no one would eat the stuff. Mix it with 50% sugar and hey presto. A steady diet of chocolate will see your insulin levels staying high all day long. So EVERYTHING you eat is being stored away as fat.

I did a little experiment (occupational hazard). My blood glucose was 4.5mmol/L and I had my usual bowl of salad with cheese, tuna and tofu. BG went up to 6.5 and then came down to 4.5 within 2 hours. Ate one slice of pizza and it shot up to 8.5 and was still high 3 hours later. So if youre snacking on “sugar” throughout the day your insulin will be through the roof constantly which means you are storing all carbs as fat. You only need two teaspoons of sugar circulating in your blood. Any more than that and the liver is working overtime to store it as fat.

IndyNadaJones

9:22 am
18 May 16
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Cheers, Big!

I knew I had to listen to that ‘other’ voice in my head telling me to stay off of the chocolate. It’s just that whenever even just hear the word ‘chocolate’, there’s this gland or something that goes ‘boing, Boing BOIIINGGG!!!’ in my head, and, oh well…

Found a related article on Muscle Mass Loss from Jason Fung, which I will also be posting in the science thread as well: https://intensivedietarymanagement.com/fasting-and-muscle-mass-fasting-part-14/

Basically, he emphatically says that fasting does not burn muscle – NO.

What is interesting though, further down in the article, he refers to another paper (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/11147801) which states that “The metabolic response to fasting involves a series of hormonal and metabolic adaptations leading to protein conservation. An increase in the serum level of growth hormone (GH) during fasting has been well substantiated”

They then tested the hypothesis through the reverse i.e. by artificially inducing a reduction in GH serum levels, and found that there appeared to be a correlation between muscle loss, following a (induced) reduction in Growth Hormone serum levels.

The conclusion therefore, is that during fasting, the body takes steps to protect whatever muscle mass it already has at the time.

I find this comforting, since with 5:2 fasting, we would not be depriving our bodies anywhere near the amount of nutrition required to cause a reduction in GH serum levels. I suspect that this might also be true for 4:3 fasting, and possibly even for ADF fasting.

Of course, I am not an expert in the field, and clearly more research is required.

IndyNadaJones

9:34 am
18 May 16
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Hi idonotdonot – if we accept what the Jason Fung and the study above assert, then it’s possible that what has reduced your muscle definition, as observed by your wife, is actually due to fat loss, and probably not due to muscle loss.

It may be that some of your fat was distributed to your legs, and ‘accentuated’ the appearance of muscle there.

I guess the only way a layman could be confident about this is to not only be monitoring your weight, and fat % with a digital scale, but also to be recording any changes to muscle and bone % as well. The theory would be, if you notice reductions weight along with reductions in fat %, but with corresponding increases with muscle and bone %, then you could be reasonably confident that you have not experienced substantial muscle loss, if any.

bigbooty

11:01 am
18 May 16
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Even if you accept that there will be a small loss of muscle I cant see what the problem is? Why does this freak people out. From a simple physics point of view if Im 20kg lighter and Ive lost say 5% muscle mass Id be pretty confident in thinking that Id be way ahead in power to weight ratio. Ive gone from 92kg to 72kg. Im sure Ive lost a little bit of muscle mass along the way but my bike riding ability has soared, hills are no longer a problem. A group of us went to the football the other weekend. Our seats were in the last row of the upper grandstand. I got to the top and wasn’t out of breath. I was surprised to see most of my friends huffing and puffing.

Look at the other positive idonodonot. As you lose weight and become slimmer your errrrr how do I say this and not get censored? Your attribute that makes you a male looks larger than it used to look. Got to be happy with that. 🙂

Apricot

2:04 pm
18 May 16
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IndyNadaJ, I was thinking about that possibility too, as with the exercise and the low carb you’d need to burn some muscle fat stores, although on the whole belly fat seems to go first. It may be that as you continue some of the muscle will build again, too.

idonotdonot

2:03 pm
19 May 16
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Thanks to everyone for all the information. It has tempered my worry about the muscle mass issue. The reason it was/is a big deal to me is that my doctor told me that as I get older (currently 50) it was very important that I try to mitigate the natural loss in muscle mass to help postpone issue with movement and stiffness as I get older. I’ve seen my Dad and other relatives lose the ability to move freely as they got older and I don’t want that to happen to me or at least happen much further down the road.

I want to also make sure that after 5 1/2 weeks of ADF I’m very satisfied with the results. I’m planning on switching to 5:2 after about 9 weeks of ADF.

On the issue of Dark Chocolate, I only use it for my coffee and I use the now stevia brand with 3 drops http://www.nowfoods.com/BetterStevia-Dark-Chocolate-2-fl-oz.htm

I also ear Five Guys Fries twice a month. Other than that my carbs come from some low sodium popcorn occasionally and how ever much is in the vegetables I eat and Unsweetened Almond Milk I use with my coffee.

I hadn’t thought about the “other attribute” of being slimmer, for me that may be a reason to not do as well with the eating style so as not to scare my wife.