Q&A for: 19-Jun-07
2385. Q:
When trying to lose body fat through slight under eating – does it matter which meals you reduce in size? For example, if you cut the size of breakfast will it have more effect in fat loss than cutting your last meal?
A:
Ideally, I recommend keeping all meals roughly equal in calories, so that would mean reducing different meals differently until they're all about the same calories. In fact you may have to increase some meals (for example if your breakfast is very small now and you need to bring it to par with lunch and dinner.
In fact, for most people the meals needing most reduction are dinner and late night snacks. Most people have small or no breakfast, small lunch, and large dinner and often large night snacks. It should be turned around to have a solid breakfast, good lunch, and only relatively light dinner and snacks (if any).
2386. Q:
hey mike , how fast will i be able to increase muscle and size with protein shakes and exercises ?
A:
If you are a young guy just starting with weight training and are relatively slim then a good pace for weight and muscle gain is about 2 pounds per month. You will gain muscle by far the fastest and easiest in your first 4-8 months of training, provided you have a good training and diet programs of course. The further you go the harder it will be to keep gaining muscle and not fat.
But to begin with, 2 pounds of weight gained per month is a good pace that will ensure almost all of the new weight is muscle and not fat. You can certainly gain weight faster than that, but then you will likely find that a lot of the new weight is simply fat -- probably not what you want.
Also, keep in mind that just adding protein shakes to your existing meals is far from ideal muscle-gain diet. I recommend you read my Nutrition article.
2387. Q:
Does chicken contain carbs?
A:
No. Chicken or any other poultry, meat, or fish does not contain any carbs -- only fat and protein. Skinless chicken breast, for example, is almost entirely protein with only a small amount of fat. 80% lean beef, on the other hand, is mostly fat with only some protein. But in the end all animal meats contain just protein and fats in various amounts.
Of course, following a specific recipe may add carbs to any animal meat. For example most fried chicken contains quite a bit of carbs (needless to say, fried chicked or fried anything is almost always a very poor food choice).
You can always look up very detailed nutritional content of virtually any food, including its carbs content, here.
2388. Q:
I'm a 19 year old female and unfortunatly I made the stupid mistake of losing weight to fast...aka losing muscle. The result is that I now have lose skin and although I may look skinny my body is not nearly what I would like it to be. I want to reverse this by building new muscle and reducing the loose skin so that I can have the legs and arms that I want but I'm not sure what to do becuase the weight that I'm currently at (115 pounds) is the weight that I want to maintain. How do I build new muscle and tone my body while maintaining my weight and not gaining any extra or losing any?
A:
Congrats on your weight loss! Even if it wasn't perfect it's still a great accomplishment! Changing your body composition while keeping weight exactly constant is a very very lengthy process, so I would encourage you to allow at least a little bit of variation in weight -- perhaps in 110-120 pound range. This would allow you to very slowly gain a few pounds of weight, most of which would be muscle, then slowly lose a few pounds, most of which will be fat. In the end you'd be at the same weight as you started but with more muscle and less fat and hopefully better appearence. Then you can repeat the cycle again.
The time when you are trying to slowly gain muscle -- 1 pound every 2-3 weeks or so (I can't emphasize enough how important it is to gain weight and muscle very slowly to avoid new fat) -- is called 'bulking' and the period when you are losing weight to lose unwanted fat (also slowly, but this is can proceed faster -- as fast as 1 pound per week) is called 'cutting'.
At all times you would of course follow a weight training program (you can select from virtually any of the ones in the article -- 'Split' ones are good) and maintain a clean diet. You would eat slightly more than normal during your bulking phase and slightly less than normal during your cutting phase. The amount of cardio you do is up to you -- though I certainly recommend a certain minimum just to maintain good cardiovascular shape -- but if you do a lot of cardio make sure that your calories are still enough to keep gaining weight during your 'bulking' phases.
For example here is how your bulking and cutting may proceed... The numbers I am putting here are very realistic, provided you have a good diet and training program... You may spend 3-4 months gaining about 5 pounds to get to 120 pounds. Of those 5 new pounds 3 or 4 will be muscle. Then you may spend 2-3 months losing about 10 pounds to get to 110 pounds. Of those 10 pounds lost, 7 or 8 will be fat. Then you would spend another 3-4 months gaining 5 pounds to get back to 115 and again of the 5 new pounds 3 or 4 will be muscle. So doing the math, during those 8-12 months altogether you will have gained about 5 new pounds of muscle and lost about 5 pounds of fat -- all the while basically remaining at your present weight! In that time your skin will also have time to 'get used' to your new shape and it won't be so loose. You could try applying vitamin E lotion as well, to help with loose skin.
It's not a very fast process but in 1-2 years it would allow you to achieve your ideal physique without having to significantly alter your weight at any point in time.
If you will not be able to control your diet to such precise degree, you can certainly still achieve some muscle gain and fat loss simply maintaining your weight and taking up weight training, but the results will not be as good or as fast as with bulking-cutting cycles. Hope that gives you some ideas how to proceed!
2389. Q:
I would like to know how and when to take these supplements i have purchased they are celltech hardcore, n.o. explode ,100%whey protein. wanting to put on muscle mass but keep the cut and tone look.
A:
You should refer to the instructions on the supplements themselves as to how to use them. However CellTech is loaded with sugars and calories and is specifically meant to put on new muscle while gaining weight and almost unavoidably fat as well. NO-xplode would probably work best while gaining weight as well. Whey protein will simply provide extra protein in your diet if you don't get enough from regular foods.
If you read my Nutrition article you will know that I am not a big fan of supplements (whey protein powder is probably the best one) and that they are absolutely not necessary (and in many cases not even helpful) for effective muscle gain. I would certainly recommend you return at least NO-xplode (which is completely unproven and potentially dangerous) and maybe CellTech (it works but not nearly as well as its ads lead you to believe and it certainly won't help with cut and toned look while you are using it) for a refund if you haven't opened them yet. As I mentioned, whey protein powder is a useful supp for most people and worth keeping. If you can't or don't want to return these supps, then simply follow their instructions.
In any case, please make sure to read my nutrtion article and structure your diet according to its suggestions. Your overall diet and weight training program are BY FAR the most important things in ensuring your success -- supps will barely make any difference.
2390. Q:
Mike, I recently saw a dietician on TV saying that salmon is a more efficient source of Omega-3 than flax seed. Unfortunately, I have a difficult time tolerating the taste of most fish (unless square-shaped and batter fried, but that's another issue) so I get my Omega-3 from flax and walnuts. Are these 2 sources okay? Are those fish oil capsules also a good source for Omega-3? Finally, how much Omega-3 should a person have in his 2000 calorie a day diet? Thanks.
A:
If you already eat flax and walnuts I really would not worry at all about salmon or fish oil for omega-3. Your body can convert omega-3 found in flax and wlanuts (called ALA) into the direvative acids (called EPA and DHA) which are also found directly in cold-water fish like salmon. So in the end you still get full benefits of omega-3 even if you don't eat salmon.
Getting about 2% of your calories from omega-3 is a good target which for a 2000-calorie diet would be 4-5 grams of omega-3 daily. If you want to be conservative and allow for more EPA and DHA conversion, you can increase that goal to maybe 8-10 grams of omega-3 daily. You can get that much from 3 tablespoons of ground flax seed and 1/4 cup of walnuts, for example.
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