Nerds in Fitness: The evolutionary process of fat loss and muscle gain

***This is from a blog of a good friend of mine MariAnne***

As a mathematician she approaches weight loss, diet and nutrition with a scientifically based, yet holistic approach addressing body, mind and spirit.

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SUBJECT: Keeping it going - the evolutionary process of fat loss

I got into a discussion that resulted in the following broad-stroke summary of how the process of fat loss evolves over time - or at least, my current understanding of this process.

In the early stages, while you have a lot of fat to spare, it’s really not all that difficult to get weight off: eat a little less, move a little more, you’ll see a drop. But as the body leans out, there’s an increasing need for strategy - and a decreasing need for calorie-burning workouts as your attention shifts toward maintaining muscle size by lifting heavy and short.

I’ll take a stab at translating my thoughts into something that makes sense in print: you need a big muscle to lift a heavy load once – you just don’t need much endurance. You need more endurance to lift a less-heavy (but still heavy, given the rep-range) load multiple times – but you don’t need quite as much raw strength. Both are important, it’s just a question of where you’re going to invest precious calories when resources are limited, keeping in mind that outside of newbie gains or assisted athletes, there’s generally going to be little or no hypertrophy on a cut.

The former will act, in a way, to persuade the body to keep that pesky, calorie-draining muscle around. The latter will burn more calories. Again, both have their place. It’s just a question of priority, and focus.

Before I proceed, I’m going to tell a “lie we tell to children” and create a toy where low (1-5) rep “heavy” lifting, metabolic (higher-rep) lifting, cardio, and diet all do different things. They DON’T - there’s a strength aspect to all forms of exercise, every activity we do has a cardiovascular component, and diet is not the only way to control weight, but I find it easier to sort things out when I treat them as independent elements before combining them.

In my simple little toy universe, there are three distinct elements:

Diet is your weight, up or down.
Heavy, low-rep lifting directs “calorie traffic”: in a surplus, it acts to direct more of those excess calories toward muscle (hypertrophy); in a deficit, it acts to protect that same muscle from atrophy.
Higher-rep work, “metabolic” lifting, complexes, and cardio create a calorie deficit (muscle and fat), promote mitochondrial and capillary density, increase VO2 max, are good for your heart yada yada yada…
In the language of my formal education, I tend to think of the cutting process as risk-managing an expensive resource during a prolonged recession. And of course, the rules change the leaner you become and the recession moves into a depression.

As I read more on the subject - and as I monitor my own progress and the experiences of others - my observation is that while still “juicy” - when bodyfat is still plentiful - the so-called metabolic (calorie-burning) work is an effective tool for several reasons – it increases calorie-drain, improves conditioning, and sets the body up to perform well in higher-intensity work deeper into the cut – with little risk to LBM, provided the heavier work remains throughout. As the cut progresses, my focus moves toward muscle-retention and away from calorie-burning; away from developing an endurance base and toward shorter bursts of intense activity, and away from higher-volume training toward progressively shorter, low-rep workouts.

I first read about the efficacy of lower-rep work for cutting here.
http://www.t-nation.com/findArticle.do?article=214rip2

When I applied the reasoning, this happened.
http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1386/989061007_43ff3a4397.jpg

I was delighted.