Tex_Ag_2017 said:
I've been tracking my levels through an in body machine at my local fitness place. I've been steadily building muscle and losing body fat. The past 2 weeks, my body fat stayed level but my muscle mass went down. Is this anything to be concerned with? What type of workout should I do to switch it up and shock my body into building muscle again?
I'm 29 yo male
If you are in a calorie deficit, than eventually you should see your muscle mass go down a bit, as really there is only so long one can try to lose BF and still maintain all of their muscle mass. Not the end of the world, as it depends on your goal. But to alleviate any more muscle loss, I'd level off your deficit and either go on a maintenance phase of your diet or even a short and small mass phase and than do a maintenance. Of course, if being as lean as f*** is your goal by a certain date, stay with the deficit.
The key to any of this is to realize that one usually cannot maintain muscle growth and BF loss for long at all, unless they are a novice trainee who is overweight and lifting and dieting or just completed a mass phase and are just starting their deficit. There is usually a window there where you'll see some gains before the drop off/maintenance of muscle mass. There are certain training strategies one can do to try to maintain gained muscle, but the best way to maintain is stop a calorie deficit once you see muscle loss or right before ideally. At that point, what is more important, being lean for the sake of it (whatever your goal is) or keeping or even gaining muscle? This depends on your goal, so only you can answer that. What you want essentially is to gain as much muscle as possible during a mass (calorie surplus) phase, do a caloric maintenance phase for a period of time when you've reached the ideal BF level you want (say 15-20%for muscle growth), then slowly start a calorie deficit, giving yourself enough time to lose the BF slowly by the hardline date you want to be your leanest (for many, its a trip or the summer when your shirtless, being on stage for bodybuilding etc). Realizing this, for me, was eye opening in the since that the process truly takes a long time and isn't a deal where you can trick nature by eating less carbs, for example, increasing your protein and lose BF and gain muscle. Sure, for a short time you might. but in the end, that's likely a deficit (you cut a calorie dense food in carbs) and it will keep you lean, but you will eventually stop adding muscle. Even the adding protein part may not even be necessary given what we've learned. Staying .8:target weight is fine and maybe doing 1.5-2:BW only if you see too much weight drop off.
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