I've only read the abstract, but the title as I interpreted it seems misleading:
> One study showed that individuals on calorie restriction lost muscle mass and an average of 20 pounds of weight over the first year and maintained their weight for the second year. However, despite losing muscle mass, calorie restriction participants did not lose muscle strength, indicating calorie restriction improved the amount of force generated by each unit of muscle mass, called muscle specific force.
So even if force per unit increased, overall mass decreased and total strength was unchanged. I guess the title is technically correct but the implication is off. This might be better phrased as "calorie restriction in humans doesn't incur as much muscle/strength loss as previously thought", which is still an interesting result.
This belief is already changing in bodybuilding and strength circles. Surprisingly, the fitness influencers on tiktok are leading the charge in changing minds about this.
This is a mistake and one that can be extrapolated to the much larger world.
Real world growth implies building in excess of the target and then trimming the leftover.
I don't care if you're planning a battle charge or setting your family finances or going for massive gains in your delts: exact allocation of resources is doomed to fail.
In fact: the "bro science" of bulking up in a training phase and then "cutting" to a competition weight, etc., is revealing a deeper truth about the world.
Increasing muscle mass while losing body mass is a very different question though.
I had a Dexa scan before and after. As well as various other ultrasounds, physical tests and blood tests.
I lost weight and gained muscle according to the Dexa scan!
No other changes to my general exercise. I wasn’t weight training or doing cardio. Just walking and day to day stuff.
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/nejm199212313272701
Of course, this was a study of obese people. If you're doing a study on healty-weight people who are trying to build muscle, you may get far fewer people who will lie.
Have any similar "favorite studies" on hand about alcoholics who underreport alcohol use and overreport abstaining? Punching down is a favorite pastime of mine too btw :)
This feels like something the royal we should be talking about as well.
It’s clearly really difficult to restrict calories/eat less in the US. It’s unclear if this is a US only phenomenon or not but I wouldn’t be surprised if it were.
Just came back from a 3 weeks trip to the US. I found it easy to control my calorie intake by just skipping a meal or two and avoiding sodas and sweets. It was much harder to eat something reasonably healthy while being on the move though. I'd be curious to check my cholesterol level before and after the trip.
If people lost 20 lbs in the first year of a 12% calorie restricted diet then that means that this study took place among people who were already obese (which seems extremely relevant). Anyone who is in good shape and not 6'8 is in no position to lose 20 lbs without serious risks to their health, aside from vastly decreased muscle strength. It is interesting, but not very surprising, that obese people with atrophied muscles don't lose "strength" by cutting calories and losing some muscle mass, which is very low to begin with.
and
"... CALERIE TM participant requirements included:
Absence of significant health problems, including diabetes, cancer, heart and liver disease, and AIDS
Absence of medication use except oral contraceptives
Age from 20 to 50 (inclusive) for men and ages 20-47 (inclusive) for women
Body mass index (BMI) of 22-27.9 (lean to slightly overweight)
No recent substantial weight loss
No history of eating disorders, behavioral, or psychiatric problems
Use by women of an acceptable form of contraception throughout the study"
I want to live longer. I would also like to build some more muscle, ideally to a BMI of 22. What if I gain 10lbs of muscle then restrict?
When you put on 10 lbs of muscle, presumably your baseline will be slightly higher than it was prior to that (extra muscle requires extra calories to maintain), but still less than what it took to put that muscle on quickly and efficiently. I have no clue how much you should expect that difference to be, I'm sure many a bro scientist has opinions on it, some of which may be reasonable. Bulking and cutting is a classic technique in bodybuilding, however, typical cuts go on for a few months at most as opposed to 2 years.
One major takeaway from this study is that on average, you will be just as strong as when you started calorie restricting even though you will have lost muscle mass. It is theorized that your muscles will have become more efficient, so if you put on more muscle after a long period of calorie restriction you will be considerably stronger than if you had skipped the calorie restriction and just added the muscle. Food for thought.
Oh, and learning to cook meat/protein so it is tender, browned, flavorful, and seasoned properly. It also seems like acid is way under-utilized in a lot of lazy / American style cooking. Helps a lot with palatability and digestion to use lime juice, rice vinegar, and other acidic ingredients during the cooking process.
Eat more veggies, too. They are full of digestive enzymes, but most veggies don't add too many calories.
Thats a pretty big meal but if you split it in two and have 8 hours between them it's really not that much. Doesnt seem like it should be a problem.
I'm 60kg, 1m83, with I guess strong and endurant muscle with all the bike and manual tasks I'm doing
Thank you for your genuine concern! Unfortunately, I don't. I track weight loss studies because I had struggled with weight gain and obesity. I am fortunate to have never had a problem with alcohol. I hope you can find the help you need.
It comes with frustration that these garbage studies mislead people who have been struggling with their weight by discouraging them from internalizing the simple facts that lead to effective and sustainable weight loss/maintenance/manipulation.
You see them cited all the time by people who've grabbed onto the next diet fad in hopes of achieving what bodybuilders and athletes who compete in weight classes have known for decades.
Exactly. This aligns to strategic weight cutting. Once you go up and then go back down, you feel stronger than you were for about as long as you continue regular training.
In other words, if they didn't cut they wouldn't be meeting that opponent at all because they would be in a different weight class.
But yeah, even the minimum is a lot, and it’s hard to achieve without building all your meals around protein.