You don't need to hit the bullseye every day to lose weight or gain muscle

I’ve been getting a lot of questions about specific dietary protein content for muscle building as well as specific daily calories for weight loss.

I usually answer with a general range of what is most likely going to be adequate. This however never seems to be a good enough answer. It seems that many people think there is an exact number of calories they must eat per day to lose a specific amount of weight (ex: 1 pound of fat loss per week)

Same with muscle building. Some guys think that they must eat a precise amount of protein each day in order to build a specific amount of muscle.

In both cases this is a flawed way of thinking. We can never know with certainty exactly how many calories we’re consuming or burning on any given day.

Likewise we have no idea how many grams of protein it actually takes to support muscle building.

Instead we have general ranges that we can approximate to be effective. The key here is that they’re ranges and not exact numbers.

If your goal is weight loss, then a calorie deficit (no matter how big or small) is your daily goal. There is a whole range of calories you can eat to achieve this (ex: if your BMR is 1900, any amount of calories less than 1900 with contribute to weight loss)

The specifics don’t matter, just the general trend.

John

Weight loss and fat loss are almost always assumed to be the same thing. Bodybuilders assume muscle gaining will translate in to weight gaining. And we all assume that weight gain in general means fat gain.

YOU are MOSTLY made of WATER!

To be clear your body is mostly water (see picture above), and most of your day to day fluctuations in body weight are due to changes in water and have little or nothing to do with changes in fat mass or muscle mass.

It’s not unrealistic to have a 4-5 pound swing in bodyweight throughout the day due to changes in water content.

If you’re trying to lose 1 pound of fat in a week, you’ll never be able to measure your progess on the scale considering your goal of 1lbs lost is approximately 5 times less than your daily fluctuation (5lbs).

If you’re trying to measure fat loss then you must take a long view and use monthly measurements and pictures/mirror check vs  daily or weekly scale measurements.

Daily and weekly scale measurements are more consistent with your current body water and food content.

The dramatic weight loss many people experience at the beginning of any diet is usually due to a large drop in body water content. Interestingly bodybuilders will ‘drop water’ with diuretics at the end of their diet before a contest and routinely lose an additional 7-10 lbs of bodyweight the day before a show.

note:

* Muscles are full of water so there is some decrease in muscle volume/hydration but the protein content does not change. *

In both cases the dramatic changes in bodyweight are solely due to changes in water and have little or nothing to do with changes in fat mass or muscle mass per se

John

Got back from vegas and stepped on the scale this morning…and I weigh exactly the same as the day I left.

4 days of eating buffets and nothing changed

I had at least 1 buffet per day (one day I actually went to a brunch buffet and then a dinner buffet)

It was AWESOME! I can’t resist the food selection, it’s just so damn good to go up and have 100′s of foods to choose from.

All my measurements are the same as well (waist, shoulders etc)

I probably walked about 10km’s each day just going from casino to casino on the strip.

So with absolutely no attention to the amount of food I was eating it seems as though I ended up eating almost exactly at maintenance for 4 days in vegas using buffet’s as my main source of food (I had various other meals, but they were small in comparison to the buffets)

There is no reason for me to have expected anything different, as it would be very unrealistic to have overeaten enough in 4 days to make any significant change in my bodyweight or measurements.

John

I haven’t told any of you yet, but as of the moment I am writing this I’m in the middle of a 120 hour (5 day) weight loss experiment.

Arnold and the boys were constantly experimenting

I’m documenting it on video and you’ll all get to see it when I’m finished.

I’m just testing a few theories out to see what kind of results I’ll get. The actual methods I’m using aren’t exactly ground breaking…they’re pretty simple…but weight loss itself is pretty simple anyway.

Having a theory is one thing, putting it into practice is another. You and I could read every weight loss book ever written and debate the merits of each for the rest of our lives…but until we try them we’ll never really understand what they’re like.

There is a difference between the knowledge you get from reading about something, and doing something. It’s this second kind of knowledge that I’m interested in. –> Experiential knowledge.

I’ve tried just about every ridiculous diet there is. I’ve tried all kinds of muscle building diets, supplements and drugs.

Sure I read about each things before I tried it…but the key point is that I tried it, I tried them all.

The sum total of my experiences have led me to my conclusions thus far..and that is as follows:

1. To lose weight you must find a way to eat less calories than you burn (and enjoy the process)

2. To gain muscle you must continuously lift more weight (and enjoy the process)

Everything else beyond these rules is minutia.

Your body is your experiment. No matter what diet or workout philosophy you read about you still have to give it an honest try before you know if it will work for you (and work over the long term).

For me, weight loss and weight maintenance is easiest with Eat Stop Eat.

And of course the muscle building program I wrote is what I follow (I would never follow another persons workouts)

So that’s what I do.

What do you do? (and I don’t care about what you READ about, I want to know what you DO)

John