SS 197 – How Fast Can You Lose Fat and Keep Your Muscle?

Episode 197 Show Notes

Grant and Heavey tackle the best – and safest – rate for fat loss. They dish out information from studies to determine at what rate can fat loss and gaining strength under safe conditions be achieved. Is this something only athletes can do? Listen in to find out!

 

[03:50] Missouri’s New Meat Law

 

Apparently, Missouri is passing a law that doesn’t allow a product  to be called meat if it doesn’t have any animals in it.

 

There’s a new line of products doing an excellent job of mimicking real meat. They look, smell, and taste like meat. They’ve come up with products like burger patties, but are actually soy-based, all GMO, magical stuff.

 

The law, which recently took into effect, states that they cannot call or market anything that’s “not derived from harvested production, livestock, or poultry as meat.”

 

Heavey’s take on this is that having clear labeling laws is a positive thing. There are issues with labeling things organic or free-range, which really don’t have any clear definitions. By clearly delineating the foods you’re getting, you can choose what you want and make an informed choice. You know what you’re getting and that makes sense.

 

Grant initially thought it was a crazy idea. But when it comes to lab-grown food, indeed there’s a need for making the consumers understand what they’re purchasing and consuming. Heavey also points out how there’s a slippery slope here, considering that states have tried to pass laws for labeling GMOs and this can be a messy issue.

 

[09:05] What’s the Safest Rate for Fat Loss?

 

The most common recommendation people will hear is the one pound per week target. However, this is not universally applicable because we all have different starting points. Say, your weight is 300 pounds or 150 pounds, losing one pound per week is a much different proposition for you.

 

The next common, one step deeper recommendation is losing 0.5% – 1% of total body weight per week.

 

But is this a good recommendation? Let’s find out as Heavey discusses different studies around this.

 

[10:09] A Study on Military Men

 

A meta-analysis looks at military personnel who, although they need to stay strong, don’t have the best food options when they’re deployed in the field. They can be under conditions where they’re in a severe caloric deficit on a daily basis. They would then understand how this affects their performance as individuals as this can be a life or death situation for them.

 

The study looked at measures of lower body strength and power as they thought this closely correlated with what’s important for soldiers.

 

The result? They found no strong connection between average daily caloric deficit and loss of strength and power in deployed personnel, which is counter-intuitive. The connection was found though in the total energy deficit, which is the “daily deficit x duration.”

 

If you’re down 100 calories per day and you’re deployed for 30 days then that total deficit would be 3,000. This is where they found the tight correlation between the loss in performance and lower body strength and power.

 

Keep in mind that this isn’t necessarily applicable for everyday gym goers. These people aren’t training actively while they’re in the deficit. So the conditions would be different.

 

[14:00] Another Cool Study (But Applicability in Question)

 

Another meta-analysis found that to maintain a zero to small performance dip, the total deficit should be between 5,000 and 19,000 calories, corresponding to a change in body mass of less than 3.3%. This is probably between 80 and 300 calories per day.

 

The studies were done over different periods of time. So, say, if they’re looking at a two-month period and if they’re in a deficit of only 80 to 300 calories per day, they would have almost no hit to their performance. But they found that a deficit of between 40,000 and 60,000 calories leads to a pretty significant hit in the performance of around 7-10%. This also corresponded to a change in body mass of over 7.7%. If you mapped this over two months, that would be around 650-1000 calories deficit per day.

 

Grant points out that there are a lot of caveats to the study as they’re not looking at a general population. They’re not looking at a population that might be overweight to start with and are probably taking people who already have a high level of fitness. Heavey agrees on this and this is why we start to pick apart science and learn how we can apply it to our lives or not.

 

[16:37] A Study on Lead Athletes

 

Another study looked at lead athletes where they aimed to cut 5.5% of body mass off of two different groups. One group was going to be at a rate of 0.7% per week and the second group was twice at 1.4% per week.

 

The group at a slower rate were on a 19% caloric deficit while the faster group was at a 30% cut. They participated in 4 days per week of resistance training. This is important since resistance training is very helpful for preserving muscle mass when you’re on a caloric deficit.

 

They also looked at body composition changes as well as strength and power. In both groups, they lost 5.5% off their baseline body weight. The faster group ended up not quite hitting the 1.4% per week target, not twice as much, but it was close. The slow group was training over a period of 8 weeks while the fast group over 4 weeks.

 

Heavey says the above results were really not as dramatic. The slow group lost about 50% more fat and gained muscle. The fast group retained their muscle but didn’t gain any. The slow group was able to continue to improve their power but the fast group was only able to maintain their levels of power.

 

Both groups increased their strength, but the gains were higher in the slow group. Their squat went up 11.9% compared to 8.9% of the fast group. The difference was really statistically not that significant. But the difference in bench press increased by 13.6% in the slow group while 6.4% in the fast group. That’s more than double! Based on the numbers, the changes were statistically significant.

 

[21:22] Different Factors to Consider

 

Heavey stresses that differences would be based on the facts that the conditions of these people are different.

 

These people were training actively during the intervention; whereas we don’t really know what the military people were doing. They were active for sure, but as to whether they were doing the equivalent of strength training 4 times per week, we don’t know.

 

In terms of nutrition, they did control the diet. They found very similar levels of protein between the two groups.

 

On top of that, the slow group was training longer and gained muscle and got stronger. It could be possible that this is because they were training for twice as long.

 

[23:10] How Much Can Fat People Lose Safely?

 

Heavey believes that if the study is applicable to athletes, then your interest is to lose fat primarily and not necessarily gain any muscle, maybe just sustain your muscle, then 1.4% per week should be a conservative number for you. You should be able to hit 1.4% per week and safely maintain your muscle. This is assuming you’re strength training a few days per week and you’re keeping your protein intake high.

 

[24:33] Scotch Time!

 

This week, we’ve got another listener question, specifically from Neil. He’s asking for a good recommendation for a bottle of scotch as a gift to his brother.

 

Grant lays the basics down. First, figure out what the guy’s into. Neil said his brother is into single malts and he likes Jura. Jura is a tiny distillery right outside Islay. The thing that’s common which Grant finds between both is this varied expression. You get a lot of difference in it than you would if you look at one smaller area geographically. But there’s always this salty/briny sense that underlines even without the peat.

 

Ultimately, Grant recommends taking a look at the other islands. Some of the big names are going to be Talisker, Highland Park,  and Arran.

 

A fun thing to do is to try unpeated Islay whiskeys, a couple of which include unpeated Caol Ila. This is pretty easy to find. Bruichladdich is on the Port Charlotte side of Islay. It has three different ranges –  the Bruichladdich (unpeated), the Port Charlotte line (heavily peated), and the Octomore line (super heavily peated). Octomore is considered the most peated whiskey in the world.

 

Grant’s suggestion boils down to these three bottles:

 

A Talisker 10 would be the cheapest and safest. Bruichladdich may be something new. But if you have the money, shoot for the Highland Park 18.

Links:

Missouri Meat Law