Can I lose weight fast and maintain muscle if......

[Stang281]

Im 6' 220 and have been working out for 6 months now. I want to lose about 10lbs of fat before I go on a trip in about 2 weeks.

So can I do that if I eat only tuna and drink whey protein. To lose fat and help maintain most muscle mass?

[Lady C]

It is pretty much impossible to lose 10 lbs of fat in 2 weeks. You can lose water weight but that will go right back on once you start eating carbs.

[.V.]

2200 calories/day. 60% fat. As close to 40% protein as you can get. Realisically the best you can get is going to be probably close to 35% with the rest carbs. Eat tons of green veggies to make up for missing carbs - they don't count against you.

10lbs is nothing if you do this. You will drop about 2-3% body fat during that 2 weeks. Probably a lot of water too. That's the trade off to make for rapid weight loss with as much muscle sparing as possible. However, you will lose fat too. People try to tell me that doing a strict high fat/carb controlled diet will only result in water loss all the time. I lived on one for over a year and a half and they still play a part in my nutrition plan. Don't even try to tell me that dropping from 300lbs at over 60% body fat to where I am now was all water loss. The local nutritionist tried to tell me the same thing in a meeting once...I stood up, pulled my shirt up and said, "who remembers me from before? Is this all water loss?" She was laughed out of the room.

Eat Tuna, other fish like salmon, chicken, beef, pork, eggs, cheese...keep the whey for the pre/post workout feedings.

Just a terribly boring example Five 3 egg/1 slice of cheese/2 slices of ham omlettes each day would put you about there.

Edit: I would usually reccomend this kind of eating only for emergency cases (severe obesity with accompanying health issues), for that "final cut" on a successful weight loss program, or for a kick start to a long term plan which includes healthy fats, protein, and carbohydrates. All of these nutrients included in the right place, at the right time.

[Maxgain]

10lbs possible alright you will prob see it a s glycogen and water loss. As fat still possible whoiugh about 1/3 at least will be typically muscle even 50%.

[Stang281]

Originally Posted by Maxgain

10lbs possible alright you will prob see it a s glycogen and water loss. As fat still possible whoiugh about 1/3 at least will be typically muscle even 50%.

So youre saying that if I lose 10lbs in 2 weeks 50% of it will probably be muscle?

[.V.]

That's why you eat the higher fat content for this without the carbs. No glycogen swings, blood sugar stable, muscle sparing.

Even doing a balanced diet with low fat you will lose muscle. I believe that you will spare more muscle by eating a higher fat diet. Your body is converting fat to glycogen instead of carbohydrate and protein. If you eat more protein than fat, your body will instead convert protein to glycogen. Then it ends up using your own muscles for fuel.

[Stang281]

Originally Posted by a_welch503

That's why you eat the higher fat content for this without the carbs. No glycogen swings, blood sugar stable, muscle sparing.

Even doing a balanced diet with low fat you will lose muscle. I believe that you will spare more muscle by eating a higher fat diet. Your body is converting fat to glycogen instead of carbohydrate and protein. If you eat more protein than fat, your body will instead convert protein to glycogen. Then it ends up using your own muscles for fuel.

So how about tuna, whey protein, alil skinless chicken and 2 tablespoons of peanut butter for 10 days straight?

[.V.]

For this kind of rapid weight loss, you want to spare as much muscle as possible, increase strength if you can, and definitely at the very least keep your strength. That means eating fat. Yeah, I know, fat is the devil right?

That's what I thought for all those years as an instructor for the American Heart Association. However, when I ate the way I taught for all those years and in the final month before I decided to do something different gained 31lbs of fat on a caloric deficit, low fat, high carb, moderate protein diet I knew it was time to re-evaluate the value of fat in my diet.

Eat the tuna and add some mayo. Eat salmon which is loaded with healthy fat instead of tuna. Get the tuna packed in oil if you want to eat it plain.

Eat the chicken with the skin. If you try to do rapid fat loss on a low fat diet you will instead do a rapid muscle loss/rapid water loss diet...it simply doesn't work without the fat.

My absolute favorite cutting food is hot wings. Chicken wings, skin on, baked in the oven, covered with buffalo sauce. Sugar free/low carb barbecue sauce is good too.

If I manage to gain enough weight to afford it between now and November, I'm going to cut to about 3-5% bodyfat just to see what it looks like at that time. I haven't worked out the numbers yet, but it will look like

Breakfast 3 whole egg, 2slice ham, 1 slice of cheese omlette
Lunch 2-3 chicken thighs and a salad with full fat sugar free ranch dressing.
Dinner same as lunch
Before bed 8 chicken wing pieces

I may or may not have pre/post workout shakes...haven't decided yet. Right now, I'm 20lbs heavier than my avatar pic and slightly less body fat. If I can reach 30-40lbs heavier than the pic by november - then I'll do this. If not, I'll just stay on plan of bulking until spring.

Let me crunch some numbers and I'll come back with something that may work for you.

[Todd]

If you're looking to lose pure fat and not muscle, you'd have to diet for about 10 week's time in order to make that happen. Proper fat loss would be to lose 1 -1.5 pounds of weight per week, no more.

To lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks, you'll lose mostly muscle along with some fat. There is no way around this...so better accept it and diet correctly to lose about 4 pounds of fat and minimal muscle in your 2 week time period.

[.V.]

Todd is one of the best natural bodybuilders I've ever seen. His knowledge of muscle growth and nutrition is unbelievable. When it comes to making lean gains, I will never come close to knowing what he does. In fact, he was vital in the design of my bulking diet. Without his input I would have never gotten it right. He taught me how to use carbs to fire up muscle growth, how to time them right to minimize fat gains, how to use my own natural insulin response to carbs to maximize lean gains. Remember, insulin is the real "growth hormone". Make the right amount at the right time - grow muscle, make the wrong amount at the wrong time - grow fat. What I will describe works so well for exactly this reason. Limit carbs, eat only the protein you need to grow or maintain muscle, eat fat for fuel, minimize insulin response therefore minimize fat storage. If your body is having to convert body fat into glycogen - it burns extra calories to do this.

I will never disrespect his bodybuilding or nutrition knowledge. Look at his avatar - that's his "bulk belly". Don't we all wish for one like that? Wishing won't get it - perfect dedication to diet and perfect workouts are what do that.

Quick weight loss isn't the way to do it.

However, what I'm going to describe to you is what I did to lose 180lbs of fat and gain 40lbs of LBM at the same time. I never actually did the math until just now I didn't realize it was that much or how little muscle I actually had. It took between 1.5 and 2 years. I made mistakes along the way. What I will describe is an improved version with more calories than I used. I will also give you a warning, although I often lost 4lbs a week and in the end had more muscle than I started with - it is not a permanent lifestyle. If you don't have the body fat to support this kind of diet - you will lose muscle at an amazing rate. I was morbidly obese so I had the body fat to live on and support my workouts. When my body fat got low - I damaged myself doing this too long and not eating enough carbs. This is a good short term diet to "get ripped up" with when done for the final part of a 3 month cut. I would not do it for more than 2 months at any time ever again because I will never allow myself to be fat enough to need something like this for a long term plan again.

Let me repeat: Starting out 300lbs, 120lb LBM. Ending 180lbs 162lb LBM. Anyone that says I lost 180lbs of water is simply wrong. After a certain point it was counterproductive and I could no longer do it. Don't expect to gain slabs of muscle on it. But for short term, you can burn fat and at least maintain muscle with it.

Here ya go. This may work for you, it may not. All I can do is share what I did and run the numbers based on the stats you gave and offer it to you. It flies in the face of conventional bodybuilding wisdom...but I guarantee that it worked for me.

Meal 1: 3 egg omlette (3 whole eggs, 2 slices ham, 1 slice cheese)
Meal 2: 2 boneles skinless chicken thigh cutletts, 1c lettuce, 2tbsp ranch dressing
Meal 3: Repeat meal 2
Meal 4: 6oz ground chuck, same salad as other meals.
Meal 5: 6 chicken wing pieces either with buffalo sauce or low carb bbq sauce.
Meal 6: Repeat meal 5

This gives you 6 less calories/lb of body weight than most standard bulking diets. It is about 10 calories/lb. It is also high fat to spare muscle, prevent hunger, and kick the fat burning into overdrive. It is enough protein to help burn fat and feed the muscles. It is only about 300 calories/day below maintenance for a man your height/weight. The fat intake is why it causes faster fat loss than a higher carb diet done with the same calories.

If you love the results and want to do it for a couple of months to get very lean you MUST eat one cheat meal each week that is loaded with protein/fat/carbs all at the same time. Pizza, mexican, steak and baked potato... whatever you like. After you do it, if you go back to your old way of eating, you will blow up like a big bullfrog lying dead on the highway in the sun. You ease back into the old way by TCD - switching to protein/carbs/no fat early in the day, pre/post workout...then protein/fat later in the day. After that you switch one protien/fat meal over to a protein/carb/low fat meal. A week later, switch another, then another...until you are back on a standard muscle building/lean gain diet with a good balance of protein/carbohydrate/low fat throughout the day - like the kind Todd reccomends and we all build muscle without becoming obese on.

I did this and improved my health immensely. I did it for too long without enough body fat to support it out of fear of getting fat and hurt my health. If you are an insulin dependant diabetic and do it, you will die after it makes you very fat. If you are an oral med dependant diabetic and do this without medical guidance and frequent blood sugar checks, you will die. If you do this for short term just to burn some fat, you will get healthier.

[Stang281]

Originally Posted by Todd

If you're looking to lose pure fat and not muscle, you'd have to diet for about 10 week's time in order to make that happen. Proper fat loss would be to lose 1 -1.5 pounds of weight per week, no more.

To lose 10 pounds in 2 weeks, you'll lose mostly muscle along with some fat. There is no way around this...so better accept it and diet correctly to lose about 4 pounds of fat and minimal muscle in your 2 week time period.

Well welch says you know your stuff.....So what would you recommend I should eat too to get my 4lb fat loss in 2 weeks?

[TommyD]

Originally Posted by Stang281

Well welch says you know your stuff.....So what would you recommend I should eat too to get my 4lb fat loss in 2 weeks?

Unfortunately, the 4lbs aren't a guaranteed loss. Exercise coupled with a healthy diet is your best bet for any sort of weight loss.

Since you're looking to drop fat, I'd recommend H.I.I.T. (High Intensity Interval Training) for exercise. To summarize this training, basically you're using the idea that high-intensity training burns more fat than low-intensity exercise (which uses carbs as its substrate).

Put simply, you start out jogging for 20-30 seconds, then sprint 20-30 seconds, then jog 20-30 seconds, sprint 20-30 and so on. The workouts usually don't go beyond 5-10 minutes, but as the name implies, they are high-intensity which can be physically and mentally uncomfortable.

I found a good website for it:
http://www.musclemedia.com/training/hiit.asp

In research, HIIT has been shown to burn adipose tissue more effectively than low-intensity exercise—up to 50% more efficiently!

Those statistics sound like they're on the high end of what research has been done on the subject, but the point is that this is a very effective fat burner.

Here's a workout table from that same site:

Jogging for 30 seconds followed immediately by
Sprinting for 30 seconds followed immediately by
Jogging for 30 seconds followed immediately by
Sprinting for 30 seconds followed immediately by
Jogging for 30 seconds followed immediately by
Sprinting for 30 seconds followed immediately by
Jogging for 30 seconds followed immediately by
Sprinting for 30 seconds

Regarding your diet, follow a_welch's advice. He has successfully lost quite a bit of weight, and regardless of the disclaimer in his signature, I would take his advice here. :

Meal 1: 3 egg omlette (3 whole eggs, 2 slices ham, 1 slice cheese)
Meal 2: 2 boneles skinless chicken thigh cutletts, 1c lettuce, 2tbsp ranch dressing
Meal 3: Repeat meal 2
Meal 4: 6oz ground chuck, same salad as other meals.
Meal 5: 6 chicken wing pieces either with buffalo sauce or low carb bbq sauce.
Meal 6: Repeat meal 5

[Stang281]

Thanks for the post Tommy, so I guess Im just going to keep eating right and lower my weights and add more reps to my sets plus maybe an additional set or 2 right??

Is a roast beef sandwhich on white bread with only mayo and pickles ok to eat from a deli shop like 1 every 2 days or should I cut that back?

[Stang281]

Originally Posted by Stang281

Thanks for the post Tommy, so I guess Im just going to keep eating right and lower my weights and add more reps to my sets plus maybe an additional set or 2 right??

Is a roast beef sandwhich on white bread with only mayo and pickles ok to eat from a deli shop like 1 every 2 days or should I cut that back?

Anyone on the roast beef question?

[F_Mac]

Originally Posted by Stang281

Anyone on the roast beef question?

It's better than a double cheeseburger..........

That being said, white bread has the nutritional value of cardboard, and is so processed that your body will treat it similar to sugar. Deli meats are loaded with salt and phosphates, so again it's not something to make a habit of eating.

Real roast beef on rye or whole grain bread would be a better choice. But if it's between that and not eating............the choice is easy.