Gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time: A more customized approach based on strength training and calorie intake variation

In the two last posts I discussed the idea of gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time () (). This post outlines one approach to make that happen, based on my own experience and that of several HCE () users. This approach may well be the most natural from an evolutionary perspective.

But first let us address one important question: Why would anyone want to reach a certain body weight and keep it constant, resorting to the more difficult and slow strategy of “turning fat into muscle”, so to speak? One could simply keep on losing fat, without losing or gaining muscle, until he or she reaches a very low body fat percentage (e.g., a single-digit body fat percentage, for men). Then he or she could go up from there, slowly putting on muscle.

The reason why it is advisable to reach a certain body weight and keep it constant is that, below a certain weight, one is likely to run into nutrient deficiencies. Non-exercise energy expenditure is proportional to body weight. As you keep on losing body weight, calorie intake may become too low to allow you to have a nutrient intake that is the minimum for your body structure. Unfortunately eating highly nutritious vegetables or consuming copious amounts of vitamin and mineral supplements will not work very well, because the nutritional needs of your body include both micro- and macro-nutrients that need co-factors to be properly absorbed and/or metabolized. One example is dietary fat, which is necessary for the absorption of fat-soluble vitamins.

If you place yourself into a state of nutrient deficiency, your body will compensate by mounting a multipronged defense, resorting to psychological and physiological mechanisms. Your body will do that because it is hardwired for self-preservation; as noted below, being in a state of nutrient deficiency for too long is very dangerous for one's health. Most people cannot oppose this body reaction by willpower alone. That is where binge-eating often starts. This is one of the key reasons why looking for a common denominator of most diets leads to the conclusion that all succeed at first, and eventually fail ().

If you are one of the few who can oppose the body’s reaction, and maintain a very low calorie intake even in the face of nutrient deficiencies, chances are you will become much more vulnerable to diseases caused by pathogens. Individually you will be placing yourself in a state that is similar to that of populations that have faced famine in the past. Historically speaking, famines are associated with decreases in degenerative diseases, and increases in diseases caused by pathogens. Pandemics, like the Black Death (), have historically been preceded by periods of food scarcity.

The approach to gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time, outlined here, relies mainly on the following elements: (a) regularly conducting strength training; (b) varying calorie intake based on exercise; and (c) eating protein regularly. To that, I would add becoming more active, which does not necessarily mean exercising but does mean doing things that involve physical motion of some kind (e.g., walking, climbing stairs, moving things around), to the tune of 1 hour or more every day. These increase calorie expenditure, enabling a slightly higher calorie intake while maintaining the same weight, and thus more nutrients on a diet of unprocessed foods. In fact, even things like fidgeting count (). These activities should not cause muscle damage to the point of preventing recovery from strength training.

As far as strength training goes, the main idea, as discussed in the previous post, is to regularly hit the supercompensation window, with progressive overload, and maintain your current body weight. In fact, over time, as muscle gain progresses, you will probably want to increase your calorie intake to increase your body weight, but very slowly to keep any fat gain from happening. This way your body fat percentage will go down, even as your weight goes up slowly. The first element, regularly hitting the supercompensation window, was discussed in a previous post ().

Varying calorie intake based on exercise. Here one approach that seems to work well is to eat more in the hours after a strength training session, and less in the hours preceding the next strength training session, keeping the calorie intake at maintenance over a week. Individual customization here is very important. Many people will respond quite well to a calorie surplus window of 8 – 24 h after exercise, and a calorie deficit in the following 40 – 24 h. This assumes that strength training sessions take place every other day. The weekend break in routine is a good one, as well as other random variations (e.g., random fasts), as the body tends to adapt to anything over time ().

One example would be someone following a two-day cycle where on the first day he or she would do strength training, and eat the following to satisfaction: muscle meats, fatty seafood (e.g., salmon), cheese, eggs, fruits, and starchy tubers (e.g., sweet potato). On the second day, a rest day, the person would eat the following, to near satisfaction, limiting portions a bit to offset the calorie surplus of the previous day: organ meats (e.g., heart and liver), lean seafood (e.g., shrimp and mussels), and non-starchy nutritious vegetables (e.g., spinach and cabbage). This would lead to periodic glycogen depletion, and also to unsettling water-weight variations; these can softened a bit, if they are bothering, by adding a small amount of fruit and/or starchy foods on rest days.

Organ meats, lean seafood, and non-starchy nutritious vegetables are all low-calorie foods. So restricting calories with them is relatively easy, without the need to reduce the volume of food eaten that much. If maintenance is achieved at around 2,000 calories per day, a possible calorie intake pattern would be 3,000 calories on one day, mostly after strength training, and 1,000 calories the next. This of course would depend on a number of factors including body size and nonexercise thermogenesis. A few calories could be added or removed here and there to make up for a different calorie intake during the weekend.

Some people believe that, if you vary your calorie intake in this way, the calorie deficit period will lead to muscle loss. This is the rationale behind the multiple balanced meals a day approach; which also works, and is successfully used by many bodybuilders, such as Doug Miller () and Scooby (). However, it seems that the positive nitrogen balance stimulus caused by strength training leads to a variation in nitrogen balance that is nonlinear and also different from the stimulus to muscle gain. Being in positive or neutral nitrogen balance is not the same as gaining muscle mass, although the two should be very highly correlated. While the muscle gain window may close relatively quickly after the strength training session, the window in which nitrogen balance is positive or neutral may remain open for much longer, even in the face of a calorie deficit during part of it. This difference in nonlinear response is illustrated through the schematic graph below.

Eating protein regularly. Here what seems to be the most advisable approach is to eat protein throughout, in amounts that make you feel good. (Yes, you should rely on sense of well being as a measure as well.) There is no need for overconsumption of protein, as one does not need much to be in nitrogen balance when doing strength training. For someone weighing 200 lbs (91 kg) about 109 g/d of high-quality protein would be an overestimation () because strength training itself pushes one’s nitrogen balance into positive territory (). The amount of carbohydrate needed depends on the amount of glycogen depleted through exercise and the amount of protein consumed. The two chief sources for glycogen replenishment, in muscle and liver, are protein and carbohydrate – with the latter being much more efficient if you are not insulin resistant.

How much dietary protein can you store in muscle? About 15 g/d if you are a gifted bodybuilder (). Still, consumption of protein stimulates muscle growth through complex processes. And protein does not usually become fat if one is in calorie deficit, particularly if consumption of carbohydrates is limited ().

The above is probably much easier to understand than to implement in practice, because it requires a lot of customization. It seems natural because our Paleolithic ancestors probably consumed more calories after hunting-gathering activities (i.e., exercise), and fewer calories before those activities. Our body seems to respond quite well to alternate day calorie restriction (). Moreover, the break in routine every other day, and the delayed but certain satisfaction provided by the higher calorie intake on exercise days, can serve as powerful motivators.

The temptation to set rigid rules, or a generic formula, always exists. But each person is unique (). For some people, adopting various windows of fasting (usually in the 8 – 24 h range) seems to be a very good strategy to achieve calorie deficits while maintaining a positive or neutral nitrogen balance.

For others, fasting has the opposite effect, perhaps due to an abnormal increase in cortisol levels. This is particularly true for fasting windows of 12 – 24 h or more. If regularly fasting within this range stresses you out, as opposed to “liberating” you (), you may be in the category that does better with more frequently meals.

Gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time: Various issues and two key requirements

In my previous post (), I mentioned that the idea of gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time seems impossible to most people because of three widely held misconceptions: (a) to gain muscle you need a calorie surplus; (b) to lose fat you need a calorie deficit; and (c) you cannot achieve a calorie surplus and deficit at the same time.

The scenario used to illustrate what I see as a non-traumatic move from obese or seriously overweight to lean is one in which weight loss and fat loss go hand in hand until a relatively lean level is reached, beyond which weight is maintained constant (as illustrated in the schematic graph below). If you are departing from an obese or seriously overweight level, it may be advisable to lose weight until you reach a body fat level of around 21-24 percent for women or 14-17 percent for men. Once you reach that level, it may be best to stop losing weight, and instead slowly gain muscle and lose fat, in equal amounts. I will discuss the rationale for this in more detail in my next post; this post will focus on addressing the misconceptions above.

Before I address the misconceptions, let me first clarify that, when I say “gaining muscle” I do not mean only increasing the amount of protein stored in muscle tissue. Muscle tissue is mostly water, by far. An important component of muscle tissue is muscle glycogen, which increases dramatically with strength training, and also tends to increase the amount of water stored in muscle. So, when you gain muscle, you gain a significant amount of water.

Now let us take a look at the misconceptions. The first misconception, that to gain muscle you need a calorie surplus, was dispelled in a previous post featuring a study by Ballor and colleagues (). In that study, obese subjects combined strength training with a mild calorie deficit, and gained muscle. They also lost fat, but ended up a bit heavier than at the beginning of the intervention. Another study along the same lines was linked by Clint (thanks) in the comments section under the last post ().

The second misconception, that to lose fat you need a calorie deficit; is related to the third, that you cannot achieve a calorie surplus and deficit at the same time. In part these misconceptions are about semantics, as most people understand “calorie deficit” to mean “constant calorie deficit”. One can easily vary calorie intake every other day, generating various calorie deficits and surpluses over a week, but with no overall calorie deficit or surplus for the entire week. This is why I say that one can achieve a calorie surplus and deficit “at the same time”. But let us make a point very clear, most of the evidence that I have seen so far suggests that you do not need a calorie deficit to lose fat, but you do need a calorie deficit to lose structural weight (i.e., non-water weight). With a few exceptions, not many people will want to lose structural weight by shedding anything other than body fat. One exception would be professional athletes who are already very lean and yet are very big for the weight class in which they compete, being unable to "make weight" through dehydration.

Perhaps the most surprising to some people is that, based on my own experience and that of several HCE () users, you don’t even need to vary your calorie intake that much to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. You can achieve that by eating enough to maintain your body weight. In fact, you can even slowly increase your calorie intake over time, as muscle growth progresses beyond the body fat lost. And here I mean increasing your calorie intake very slowly, proportionally to the amount of muscle you gain; which also means that the incremental increase in calorie intake will vary from person to person. If you are already relatively lean, at around 21-24 percent of body fat for women and 14-17 percent for men, gaining muscle and losing fat in equal amounts will lead to a visible change in body composition over time () ().

Two key requirements seem to be common denominators for most people. You must eat protein regularly; not because muscle tissue is mostly protein, but because protein seems to act as a hormone, signaling to muscle tissue that it should repair itself. (Many hormones are proteins, actually peptides, and also bind to receptor proteins.) And you also must conduct strength training to the point that you are regularly hitting the supercompensation window (). This takes a lot of individual customization (). You can achieve that with body weight exercises, although free weights and machines seem to be generally more effective. Keep in mind that individual customization will allow you to reach your "sweet spots", but that still results will vary across individuals, in some cases dramatically.

If you regularly hit the supercompensation window, you will be progressively spending slightly more energy in each exercise session, chiefly in the form of muscle glycogen, as you progress with your strength training program. You will also be creating a hormonal mix that will increase the body’s reliance on fat as a source of energy during recovery. As a compensatory adaptation (), your body will gradually increase the size of its glycogen stores, raising insulin sensitivity and making it progressively more difficult for glucose to become body fat.

Since you will be progressively spending slightly more energy over time due to regularly hitting the supercompensation window, that is another reason why you will need to increase your calorie intake. Again, very slowly, proportionally to your muscle gain. If you do not do that, you will provide a strong stimulus for autophagy () to occur, which I think is healthy and would even recommend from time to time. In fact, one of the most powerful stimuli to autophagy is doing strength training and fasting afterwards. If you do that only occasionally (e.g., once every few months), you will probably not experience muscle loss or gain, but you may experience health improvements as a result of autophagy.

The human body is very adaptable, so there are many variations of the general strategy above. In my next post, I will talk a bit more about a variation that seems to work well for many people. It involves a combination of strength training and calorie intake variation that may well be the most natural from an evolutionary perspective.

The impressive nutrition value of whole dried small fish

When I visited Japan a few years ago I noticed a variety of dried small fish for sale in grocery stores and supermarkets. They came in what seemed to be vacuum-packed flat plastic bags, often dried. The packing was a bit like that of beef jerky in the USA. Since I could not read the labels, I could not tell if preservatives or things like sugar were added. Beef jerky often has sugar added to it; at least the popular brands.

I have since incorporated dried or almost dried small fish, eaten whole, into my diet. My family eats it, but they don’t seem to like it as much as I do. The easiest small fish to find for sale where I live are smelts. A previous post has a recipe (). I can easily eat 200 g of smelts, about twice as much as on the plate below; not quite dried, but almost so. The veggies are a mix of lettuce and cabbage.

As you can see from the macronutrient composition below (from Nutritiondata.com, for a 100 g portion), 200 g of smelts have about 112 g of protein, and 36 g of fat. No carbohydrates; or a very small amount of them.

Unless you misguidedly think that they will “give you cholesterol”, the macronutrient to calorie ratio of a plate with 200 g of dried (or almost dried) smelts is very good. Let us take a look at the fat content, below (from Nutritiondata.com as well), which is for 100 g of dried smelts.

The “net” omega-3 content of 200 g of dried smelts, after subtracting the omega-6 content, is approximately 4.4 g. The concept of “net” omega-3 content was discussed in a previous post ().

So, the net omega-3 content of 200 g of dried smelts is the equivalent to the net omega-3 content of about 20 fish oil softgels. (Yes, you read it right!) And you would get a lot more omega-6 from the softgels.

Not to mention the fact that isolated omega-3 and omega-6 fats tend to become oxidized much more easily than when they come in “nature’s package”.

Below is the mineral content (also from Nutritiondata.com) of a 100 g portion. Dried smelts are clearly a very good source of selenium. The significant amount of calcium comes mostly from the bones, as with many varieties of small fish that are eaten whole. Combined with the above, we could say that, overall, the nutrient content is high up there next to beef liver as a super food; a natural multivitamin, if you will.

Smelts, like many small non-predatory fish, are not a significant source of toxic metals. Many people avoid seafood because of concerns about toxic metal contamination, particularly mercury. The infamous incident that led to a major scare in that respect – in Minamata, Japan – did involve consumption of small marine animals. But it also involved years of direct and indirect exposure to very high levels of methylmercury from untreated industrial waste.

Other cases have been reported among populations consuming large amounts of whale, shark, dogfish and other relatively large marine animals with tissues compromised via biomagnification. Generally speaking, large predatory fish and predatory aquatic mammals are best avoided as food. If they are consumed, they should be consumed very sporadically.

Many people would say that a plate like the one above, with smelts and veggies, is not very appetizing. But I can really devour it quickly and go for seconds. How come? I use a special spice that enhances the natural flavor or almost any combination of “natural” foods – foods that are not engineered by humans – making them taste delicious.

This special spice is “hunger”. This spice can be your best friend, or your worst enemy.

The China Study II: Wheat’s total effect on mortality is significant, complex, and highlights the negative effects of low animal fat diets

The graph below shows the results of a multivariate nonlinear WarpPLS () analysis including the variables listed below. Each row in the dataset refers to a county in China, from the publicly available China Study II dataset (). As always, I thank Dr. Campbell and his collaborators for making the data publicly available. Other analyses based on the same dataset are also available ().
    - Wheat: wheat flour consumption in g/d.
    - Aprot: animal protein consumption in g/d.
    - PProt: plant protein consumption in g/d.
    - %FatCal: percentage of calories coming from fat.
    - Mor35_69: number of deaths per 1,000 people in the 35-69 age range.
    - Mor70_79: number of deaths per 1,000 people in the 70-79 age range.

Below are the total effects of wheat flour consumption, along with the number of paths used to calculate them, and the respective P values (i.e., probabilities that the effects are due to chance). Total effects are calculated by considering all of the paths connecting two variables. Identifying each path is a bit like solving a maze puzzle; you have to follow the arrows connecting the two variables. Version 3.0 of WarpPLS (soon to be released) does that automatically, and also calculates the corresponding P values.

To the best of my knowledge, this is the first time that total effects are calculated for this dataset. As you can see, the total effects of wheat flour consumption on mortality in the 35-69 and 70-79 age ranges are both significant, and fairly complex in this model, each relying on 7 paths. The P value for mortality in the 35-69 age range is 0.038; in other words, the probability that the effect is “real”, and thus not due to chance, is 96.2 percent (100-3.8=96.2). The P value for mortality in the 70-79 age range is 0.024; a 97.6 percent probability that the effect is “real”.

Note that in the model the effects of wheat flour consumption on mortality in both age ranges are hypothesized to be mediated by animal protein consumption, plant protein consumption, and fat consumption. These mediating effects have been suggested by previous analyses discussed on this blog (). The strongest individual paths are between wheat flour consumption and plant protein consumption, plant protein consumption and animal protein consumption, as well as animal protein consumption and fat consumption.

So wheat flour consumption contributes to plant protein consumption, probably by being a main source of plant protein (through gluten). Plant protein consumption in turn decreases animal protein consumption, which significantly decreases fat consumption. From this latter connection we can tell that most of the fat consumed likely came from animal sources.

How much fat and protein are we talking about? The graphs below tell us how much, and these graphs are quite interesting. They suggest that, in this dataset, daily protein consumption tended to be on average 60 g, whatever the source. If more protein came from plant foods, the proportion from animal foods went down, and vice-versa.

The more animal protein consumed, the more fat is also consumed in this dataset. And that is animal fat, which comes mostly in the form of saturated and monounsaturated fats, in roughly equal amounts. How do I know that it is animal fat? Because of the strong association with animal protein. By the way, with a few exceptions (e.g., some species of fatty fish) animal foods in general provide only small amounts of polyunsaturated fats – omega-3 and omega-6.

Individually, animal protein and wheat flour consumption have the strongest direct effects on mortality in both age ranges. Animal protein consumption is protective, and wheat flour consumption detrimental.

Does the connection between animal protein, animal fat, and longevity mean that a diet high in saturated and monounsaturated fats is healthy for most people? Not necessarily, at least without extrapolation, although the results do not suggest otherwise. Look at the amounts of fat consumed per day. They range from a little less than 20 g/d to a little over 90 g/d. By comparison, one steak of top sirloin (about 380 g of meat, cooked) trimmed to almost no visible fat gives you about 37 g of fat.

These results do suggest that consumption of animal fats, primarily saturated and monounsaturated fats, is likely to be particularly healthy in the context of a low fat diet. Or, said in a different way, these results suggest that longevity is decreased by diets that are low in animal fats.

How much fat should one eat? In this dataset, the more fat was consumed together with animal protein (i.e., the more animal fat was consumed), the better in terms of longevity. In other words, in this dataset the lowest levels of mortality were associated with the highest levels of animal fat consumption. The highest level of fat consumption in the dataset was a little over 90 g/d.

What about higher fat intake contexts? Well, we know that men on a high fat diet such as a variation of the Optimal Diet can consume on average a little over 170 g/d of animal fat (130 g/d for women), and their health markers remain generally good ().

One of the critical limiting factors, in terms of health, seems to be the amount of animal fat that one can eat and still remain relatively lean. Dietary saturated and monounsaturated fats are healthy. But when accumulated as excess body fat, beyond a certain level, they become pro-inflammatory.