Losing fat while gaining muscle via body recomposition│Dr. Brad Schoenfeld
Summary
TLDRThe video discusses the effects of resistance training on body composition, highlighting how it improves lean mass, which includes muscle and water, and can help with fat loss when combined with caloric restriction. It emphasizes the importance of resistance training to avoid muscle loss during fat loss, and how recomposition (gaining muscle while losing fat) is more achievable for those with excess body fat or beginners. Sufficient protein intake is necessary, especially in a caloric deficit, to preserve muscle mass, but resistance training remains key to preventing muscle loss.
Takeaways
- 🏋️♂️ Resistance training increases lean mass, which is often referred to as fat-free mass, including muscle and water.
- 📉 Exercise alone is not the most effective method for fat loss; reducing calorie intake through nutrition is generally more efficient.
- ⚖️ Combining resistance training with a calorie deficit through proper nutrition is essential to minimize muscle loss during fat loss.
- 💪 Cardiovascular exercise burns more calories than resistance training but doesn't preserve muscle as effectively during fat loss.
- ⚖️ Without resistance training, 25-30% of weight loss can come from muscle, which can be avoided by lifting weights.
- 🔄 Recomposition, or gaining muscle while losing fat, is possible, especially in people with a lot of fat to lose or beginners to training.
- 🚫 Maximizing muscle gain while losing fat is difficult; to fully optimize muscle growth, a caloric surplus is generally required.
- 🍗 Adequate protein intake is crucial in a calorie deficit to help preserve muscle, especially for those who don't engage in resistance training.
- 📊 Protein requirements increase during a caloric deficit, more than for individuals at maintenance or in a surplus, to support muscle preservation.
- ⚖️ Even aerobic exercise paired with sufficient protein won't prevent muscle loss entirely if resistance training is not incorporated.
Q & A
What are the main benefits of resistance training on body composition?
-Resistance training improves lean mass, largely muscle mass, and can positively affect fat-free mass, which includes muscle and water. It helps in building muscle while potentially reducing fat.
Can you gain muscle without gaining fat mass?
-Yes, it is possible to gain muscle without gaining fat mass, especially for those with a lot of fat to lose or beginners in resistance training. However, maximizing muscle gain generally requires being in at least a maintenance or small caloric surplus.
How does resistance training affect fat-free mass?
-Resistance training can increase fat-free mass by building muscle. Fat-free mass includes muscle and water, so gains in water retention can also show as increased fat-free mass in body composition measurements.
Is exercise alone an effective way to lose body fat?
-Exercise, including both cardiovascular and resistance training, can help with fat loss, but it is not the most efficient way. Reducing caloric intake through diet is typically more effective for losing body fat, with exercise serving as an important adjunct.
Why is resistance training important during fat loss?
-Resistance training is crucial during fat loss because it helps prevent muscle loss. Without resistance training, approximately 25-30% of the weight lost can come from muscle mass, especially if protein intake is insufficient.
Can you gain muscle while losing fat (recomping)?
-Yes, body recomposition—gaining muscle while losing fat—is possible, especially for those who are overweight or new to training. However, this becomes more challenging for individuals with more training experience or those closer to their genetic ceiling for muscle gain.
Is it possible to lose fat without losing muscle if you're only doing cardio and eating sufficient protein?
-Even with sufficient protein intake, if you are not doing resistance training, you are likely to lose muscle mass, though the protein will help to reduce the amount of muscle lost. This is especially true for individuals who aren't significantly overweight.
How does protein intake affect muscle retention during a caloric deficit?
-Sufficient protein intake during a caloric deficit helps preserve muscle mass, but it is not enough on its own. Resistance training is still necessary to fully maintain muscle mass, and protein requirements may actually increase during a deficit.
Why is it harder to recomp for those who are closer to their genetic potential for muscle gain?
-As individuals get closer to their genetic ceiling for muscle mass, it becomes more difficult to gain additional muscle, especially while losing fat. This is because their bodies are already operating near their natural limits for muscle growth.
What role does anabolic steroid use play in body recomposition?
-Anabolic steroids can dramatically enhance body recomposition, allowing users to gain muscle and lose fat simultaneously at a much greater rate than natural methods. However, this is not relevant for most people seeking to improve their body composition naturally.
Outlines
🏋️♂️ The Impact of Resistance Training on Body Composition
This paragraph discusses the benefits of resistance training, focusing on its effects on body composition, particularly improving lean mass (muscle) and fat-free mass. The speaker emphasizes that while resistance training helps increase muscle mass, it's important to note that certain body composition measures, such as underwater weighing and DEXA, can sometimes include water weight in the fat-free mass category. The discussion also touches on how resistance training, when combined with proper nutrition, can be an effective way to manage fat loss. However, the speaker notes that exercise alone isn't the most efficient way to lose body fat, as it's much easier to reduce calories through diet than to burn calories through exercise. Still, resistance training helps preserve muscle mass during fat loss, which is crucial to preventing muscle deterioration during a caloric deficit.
🥩 Protein, Caloric Deficit, and Muscle Preservation
This paragraph delves into the relationship between caloric deficits, protein intake, and muscle preservation. It explains that while maintaining sufficient protein intake during a caloric deficit can help reduce muscle loss, resistance training is crucial to fully preserving muscle mass. The speaker clarifies that without resistance training, muscle loss is inevitable, especially for individuals who aren't significantly overweight. Additionally, even when resistance training, if protein intake is inadequate, muscle mass may still be lost. The speaker emphasizes that protein needs increase during caloric deficits, compared to periods of maintenance, to support muscle maintenance and growth.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Resistance Training
💡Body Recomposition
💡Lean Mass
💡Fat-Free Mass
💡Caloric Deficit
💡Protein Intake
💡Energy Expenditure
💡Anabolic Steroids
💡Muscle Loss
💡Cardiovascular Exercise
Highlights
Resistance training improves lean mass, primarily muscle mass, and can positively affect body recomposition.
Measures like DEXA or underwater weighing often reflect fat-free mass, which includes muscle and water, not just muscle mass.
Fat-free mass includes everything except fat mass, making it important to distinguish between water gain and muscle gain.
Exercise alone is not the most efficient way to lose body fat; reducing calorie intake through diet is more effective.
Cardio is more effective at burning calories than resistance training, but both are necessary to support fat loss.
Resistance training is essential to preserve muscle mass during fat loss, preventing up to 30% of muscle loss without it.
Recomposition, or gaining muscle while losing fat, is possible, especially for those with higher body fat or beginners.
Maximizing muscle gain usually requires at least maintenance-level calories or a slight surplus, not a caloric deficit.
Anabolic steroids can significantly enhance recomposition, but this is not relevant for the general population.
Beginners or people with higher body fat can experience dramatic recomposition, as observed in both anecdotal and controlled studies.
Protein intake is crucial during a caloric deficit to prevent muscle loss, especially in those not doing resistance training.
Sufficient protein intake can help preserve muscle mass, but without resistance training, muscle loss is still likely.
Those who are very obese may not lose much muscle during fat loss due to having significant fat reserves.
Even with resistance training, inadequate protein intake can lead to muscle loss during a caloric deficit.
Protein requirements increase during a caloric deficit to maintain muscle mass or even gain some muscle, compared to when at maintenance.
Transcripts
with respect to body composition so you
know we were talking about the benefits
of resistance training on bone density
obviously muscle mass and people are now
thinking about those things but you know
back in the day you know body
composition and it still is important as
well but but that was kind of one of the
major
um things people would think about like
why they should do resistance training
how can you talk like a little bit about
body like how does resistance training
you know affect body recomposition can
you gain muscle without gaining fat Mass
sort of sort of things like that oh
great question so
um well let's start from the basics that
resistance training can improve
certainly it improves lean mass which is
largely muscle mass when I do think it's
important to understand like certain
measures underwater weighing like a lot
of the measures that you'll see dexa
um underwater weighing Bia bioelectrical
imputence analysis they are looking at
not necessarily muscle mass whether
there are ways to try to derive that but
when you're when they talk about
fat-free mass and lean mass generally
depending on the measure they're
combinations of in the very least muscle
and water so it's not necessarily just
if you're gaining water that'll show up
as fat-free Mass that's not anything
outside of fat Mass would be fat free
Mass
um and that I think is somewhat
important to understand there but with
that said uh resistance training
certainly can impact fat-free Mass
aspect and it can help with fat mess now
I I want to say in general and this goes
for cardiovascular exercise too
um exercise is not the best way to lose
body fat it can help it's certainly I
think a good adjunct to a fat loss
program which I'll get to in a second
but you have to do a lot of exercise to
meaningfully lose fat whereas it's just
much easier to do it through reducing
the calories and nutrition the energy
intake so for instance if you do an hour
of cardiovascular exercise and hard you
know where you're running for the most
part I mean you can burn five 600
calories in that hour
uh you know that's do you have a bag of
potato chips that could pretty much
offset everything you've done
um whereas if you focus on reducing the
energy intake through your food and
using exercises and adjunct it can
certainly help with the weight loss not
only in terms of increasing energy
expenditure to some extent uh Because by
the way doing an hour of exercise every
day
for most people it's just not a it
becomes very laborious
um and that's just cardio like I said
you want to do uh resistance training as
well and resistance training cardio
actually is somewhat more effective just
purely from creating more energy
expenditure than resistance training is
but here's the catch it is in my humble
opinion fundamental to uh combine
resistance training at the very least
with an energy deficit through uh
nutritional restriction to promote
weight loss and here's why if you do not
lift weights
even if you just do cardio you will lose
muscle as you're losing body fat and
there are
um
depending upon how you're going about it
um evidence shows 25 percent to 30
percent of the weight loss will come
from muscle so you might lose let's say
70 fat and it can even be more if you're
a somewhat leaner and 30 percent coming
from lean mass if you don't do
resistance training now you talked about
recumb
uh resistance training not only will
Stave off the loss of fat-free Mass
often
but you can actually Recon reconc means
you can gain muscle while losing fat
there are two primary factors and I'll
leave that so there's three the elephant
in the room is anabolic steroid use so
if you're doing and about taking
anabolic steroids yeah you can have
serious recount but putting that aside
that's probably not your audience or
most of the people listening here the
two primary factors are number one how
how much weight do you have to lose so
are you obese the more weight you have
to lose the easier it is to recomp
also how long have you been training so
someone who has a lot of years of
experience of training that's higher to
their closer to their genetic ceiling uh
we'll have a more difficult time
recomping
um now I will so by the way so if you
have a lot of body fat to lose and
you're just starting out you can do
serious Recon I see this all the time
not only anecdotally have I seen this in
clients but we have controlled
experiments run through our lab where I
see this all the time an individual
subjects that we have
um you cannot however maximize muscle
mass while you are losing fat so this is
important if your goal is to go into
let's say a mass gaining cycle where you
want to let's say bodybuilders do this
or strength athletes and your goal is to
maximize muscle development you're at
the very minimum going to need to be at
maintenance and generally you're going
to need to be in a small Surplus where
you're going to gain a little bit at
least some amount of fat
okay
um boy this was this fantastic
information I'm just it's sinking all in
um so
can if you are in a caloric deficit
and this kind of brings us into the
protein dietary protein requirements
World a little bit
if you are in a caloric deficit and but
you are and we should probably talk
about what the protein requirements are
but let's say you are getting sufficient
protein intake daily protein intake to
counter to prevent your your body from
pulling protein out of your muscle
basically
um
can you not lose the lean mass or muscle
mass let's say you're not doing
resistance training but you are just
getting the protein in
say you're doing aerobic but you're
still in the caloric deficit deficit but
you're getting the protein
and not lifting weights you're not
lifting weights
so the answer is it will help to
preserve some lean mess but you're still
no matter what you if you are not
lifting weights I mean this has been
shown again over and over in research
you will lose well I want to at least I
always hate to talk in absolutes because
if you're very obese uh where you just
have let's say you're 100 pounds
overweight you can lose fat without
losing muscle much more red because you
just have so much fat to lose that the
body is going to pull from the fast
storage but I'm talking when you're
starting to get down into you know
people who just court or quote unquote
overweight uh you're going to lose
muscle if you do not resist the strain
now even if I want to point out though
even if you're lifting weights if you
are getting insufficient protein it's
gonna you're gonna Leach some muscle so
you you need to still take in sufficient
protein and there's actually evidence
that you need more protein than what has
been shown for people at maintenance or
above to maintain muscle or even to gain
it slightly when you're in a caloric
deficit so that actually increases
protein needs to some extent
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