7 replies to this topic

[Ogs]

Hello everyone,

 

Due to certain circumstances I have to do a acute body re composition and lose a

good amount of muscle mass (10kg at least) and little bit of fat (2-3 kg ).

 

The method I though for this is two week course of hiking (~300 miles) with not significant calorie intake -

sub 1000 calories a day. RMR is ~2200cal + hiking  ~ 10h/day @ 4km/h (4cal/min X600min) = ~4500 cal

 

My goal is to reduce overall body weight and mainly muscle.

Calorie sources - 1 kg of coconut oil + 1.5 kg honey = 15 k calories

 

With adequate hydration ~6L/day + Himalayan pink salt for minerals 

Everyday green tea/coffee/yerba mate 

 

I though about the following  supplements for best recovery and maintenance of health as much as possible :

 

6 caps of Omega 3 per day

1 cap of Iron per day

1 cap of vitamin c (with the Iron)

1 multivitamin cap -   i`m not sure about it.

 

Probably I`ll go IF with one main meal at evening/morning - maybe not due to the muscle preservation qualities of the IF

 

I know this is not healthy and so on, I ask to help me minimize the recovery time and damage from such endeavor.

 

Thanks a lot. 

[xEva]

The fastest way to lose muscle is to fast while being thoroughly inactive, like in bed, and avoiding all carbs. Complete inactivity, by itself, leads to muscle wasting. Fasting will expedite this process.

But to lose 10 kg of muscle will take you forever, even on a water-only fast. The brain needs less than 100g of glucose per day. According to this book it takes 1g of protein to make 1g of glucose (some sources dispute this, citing 1.2~1.5g of protein per 1g of glucose). Lean meat is ~25% protein, so to make 100g of glucose would take 400g of muscle. 10,000 / 400 = 25 days. But this number does not take into account that for the first 2 days of a fast you live off liver glycogen and, most importantly, the adaptation that takes place during the first week of fasting whose sole purpose is opposite from what you want, i.e. its aim is to spare muscle.

In addition, there is plenty of protein around, which the body uses first, before it turns to muscle. And then the muscles that are inactive are catabolized preferentially to those that are heavily used. Thus water birds, who mostly fast during their strenuous migrations, lose hardly any muscle in their wings and legs (wings are obvious, as for legs they are required for take off).

So, taking all this into account, if I wanted to lose the most muscle bulk in a hurry, I would do repeated week-long water-only fasts, while being very inactive. Here are the rough numbers: 7 days water fast = 5 days with already depleted liver glycogen. 5d x 400g = 2 kg of lost muscle per cycle. Again, in reality it will probably be just over 1 kilo, provided you spend that week in bed. There is no point in fasting longer than a week, because of the adaptation that spares muscle.  You would need to do at least 5 cycles of these week-long water fasts to lose 10 kg of muscle, but likely it will take more. 

Edited by xEva, 14 July 2014 - 08:51 PM.

[niner]

 

My goal is to reduce overall body weight and mainly muscle.

Calorie sources - 1 kg of coconut oil + 1.5 kg honey = 15 k calories

 

With adequate hydration ~6L/day + Himalayan pink salt for minerals 

Everyday green tea/coffee/yerba mate 

 

I though about the following  supplements for best recovery and maintenance of health as much as possible :

 

6 caps of Omega 3 per day

1 cap of Iron per day

1 cap of vitamin c (with the Iron)

1 multivitamin cap -   i`m not sure about it.

 

I'm not that crazy about honey- you'd probably be better off with starchy carbs.  Sea salt is not a good source of minerals.  It has too much of the things you don't need much of (mostly NaCl) and not enough of what you do need.  You would probably be better off with a good multivitamin, some extra magnesium, and a potassium source. Probably some calcium, too, if you're eating a weird diet.  6 caps of omega 3 is probably more than you need; I'd go with one or two.  The iron and vitamin C is a bad combination, and could hurt you.   Drop the iron for sure, unless you're deficient.  If you do take it, don't take it with C. 

 

You said that you realized this wasn't healthy, but I'm curious... Why do you need to do this?  Are you getting ready for an acting role? 

[Ogs]

Thanks guys for the reply,

 

XEva - I agree with you making this change on lying in bed and full fast will take a long time a 1kg of muscle contains 1.2k calories:

 

http://www.bodyrecom...e-equation.html - check the table there

 

So I chose to do hiking to speed up the process and it is a `natural` thing for the body to walk not as any other activity which is not natural 

In addition the psychological aspect to be at home and not to eat is quite mind blowing and as not being the only resident of the house 

I can`t avoid food totally.

 

niner - I`m doing it due to certain requirements of my field of occupation which requires different body composition than I have and combining

it with diet for prolonged process is taking too heavy tall of me due to being fat for many years - so I prefer to do some acute, right to the point

thing which would get me to a place which would allow me to do a balanced diet later without major concerns about losing weight.

 

I chose honey because it easily could be taken with me to the hike.

 

Something more I should consider taking in addition to calcium and magnesium ?

[niner]

I`m doing it due to certain requirements of my field of occupation which requires different body composition than I have and combining it with diet for prolonged process is taking too heavy tall of me due to being fat for many years - so I prefer to do some acute, right to the point thing which would get me to a place which would allow me to do a balanced diet later without major concerns about losing weight.

This is confusing. When people talk about losing weight, they invariably mean that they want to lose fat, not muscle. If you've been fat for many years, then it seems to me that you too would want to lose fat, but not muscle. I'm having a hard time imagining a job that would require muscle loss, but not fat loss. If what you really want to do is lose weight, then our recommendations would be a lot different.

[Ogs]

I`m around ~12% body fat or maybe less, muscle is my goal and a lot less fat (because is quite difficult to stay on single digit body fat %)

 

What should i consider taking/supplementing during such endeavor to recover as soon as possible .

 

Thanks.

[xEva]

Ogs, simply lying around, doing nothing, just reading or watching TV or a movie, while eating sparingly but not necessarily starving, should help you lose muscle. Studies were done on mammals back around the middle of XX c where a limb was immobilized and it caused a significant muscle loss in this immobilized limb in just one month.

You can try niacin. 100mg is reported to 'sequester' free fatty acids for 3-4 hours. This would mean that, if you're on CR already, that lipolysis will be impaired which would cause your body to look for other sources of food. It should increase autophagy and, if that's not enough, lead to muscle catabolism (note that niacin does not work this way when nutrients are abound in plasma; one needs to be fasting or at least on CR for this to work).

In any rate, good luck to you and I'd be curious to hear about your results and how you achieved them

[Ogs]

Hey XEva,

I decided to start at Thursday, 7 days hike - I`ll try to aim to 40Km per day

Daily rational - 1 tuna can in water AM & PM + ~15ml of coconut oil X2

 

Water ~6 L per day .

 

Supplements -

3 omega 3 caps

1 Iron cap

2 Magnesium caps

1 multivitamin cap

Electrolyte replacement caps ~ 10 daily

 

I decided to start from a week to see how it feels and then decide what to do next. 

 

I`ll measure circumference of body parts & weight before and after. 

 

Considering to supplement T3 from day 2 at 10 micrograms per day to negate the slowdown of metabolism but not shut down the thyroid - 

I would like to hear input on this one .

 

Thanks.