How do I know I've gained some weight now? I let my favorite personal trainer at the gym weigh me yesterday. And here's the story behind that: you may remember that SuperAthlete J and I embarked on a 16-week weight training program in the early part of the year, with the goal of adding lean body mass. It went well, but I came away thinking that the program (which SAJ had found online) was geared pretty directly toward men and missed some key muscle groups. After completing the 16 weeks, we took a weeklong break from weight training, then put together a new 16-week program of our own. We had to make some guesses about which exercises to do and which muscle groups they targeted, but overall we felt pretty good about what we'd come up.
However, I still wanted to check in with a trainer at the gym to make sure we weren't working the same muscle groups two days in a row -- or missing something important. But before I had a chance to schedule an appointment, we had to put our weight program on hold while SAJ focused on her badass half iron man training. Wanting to be prepared when SAJ was ready to pick back up again, I scheduled an appointment for earlier this week. (By the by, SAJ completed her event last weekend and was, no surprise, a total stud.)
Here's where things begin to go awry: after I showed our program to A, my fave trainer, I mentioned that I felt like I'd gained some weight and wanted to take it off. He looked at me knowingly and said, "Well, it's notoriously hard to add muscle without adding fat." He went on, "If you're not really strict with your nutrition, it's pretty impossible to avoid increasing fat while you're building muscle. You need a lot of calories to add muscle, but they have to be the right kind." So that's why all those body builders are always eating giant plates of plain chicken breast and steamed broccoli, I realized. I thought back to my diet over the past few months: lots of indulgences there -- which I felt like I was earning with my weight training! It was then that I started to understand how sorely wrong I have been.
To see where things stood, trainer A suggested that I get weighed and have him do a less-reliable-but-better-than-nothing bioelectric body fat measurement. I agreed, with trepidation. And that's when I discovered that I've gained roughly five pounds. The good news is that I did add a bit over a pound of muscle ... the bad news is that I also added about four pounds of fat.
According to the hydrostatic body fat percentage test, my stats were as follows in January:
Pounds of body fat: 37.1
Percentage of body fat: 23.1
Pounds of lean muscle: 123.1
(Yes, I realize you can add up a couple of these numbers and know my weight, and I'm working on becoming comfortable with that.)
According to the bioelectrical impedance test that A gave me this week, here's where I am now:
Pounds of body fat: 41.6
Percentage of body fat: 25.1
Pounds of lean muscle: 124.3
Not the direction I wanted to be going when I started lifting weights with SAJ in January, needless to say. Of course, some of this gain may be chalked up to indulging with food and drink. And I also haven't been able to run thanks to plantar fasciitis -- although I have tried to make up for it with equal amounts of cardio time on the elliptical trainer, stairclimber or bike. But after talking it over with trainer A, I believe that the weight training program was a pretty significant contributor to the gain. Which is frustrating, because although I'm happy about increasing my muscle mass, I wasn't driven to do it like SAJ was. I was more along for the ride while she crusaded to increase her lean muscle ... and now I've got tight pants to show for it. Boo.
So, now I've got to get started taking off the fat. How to approach that? Trainer A says, no surprise, the first and most important element is nutrition. Exercise can help maintain a loss, but to lose weight, you've got to pay attention to calories. Reducing my intake to 500 below what I burn in an average day will help me drop about a pound a week. (3500 calories = one pound, say the experts.) I had a resting metabolic test a while back -- probably too long ago to be totally trustworthy, but it's better than nothing -- and it told me that my body burns about 1500 calories a day at complete rest. In other words, if I laid around on the couch all day, I would still burn 1500 calories. If I add light activity -- such as the kind of stuff I do on a rest day from exercise, when I'm just going about my daily life -- I can add about 350 calories to that base number. On an exercise day, I can add approximately another 700. So, that means that on workout days, I'm burning about 2550 calories. Knocking 500 off that doesn't seem so bad ... I know a lot of diet plans that keep people at numbers like 1,500 or even 1,000 calories a day. I'm not positive I'm understanding all of this correctly so I'm going to confirm with trainer A and update as needed after that.
Cardio is the second leg of the weight-loss stool (that sounds gross, but you know what I mean). Trainer A says cardio should take priority over weights -- so I am moving to a plan where I'll do weights three times a week and cardio six. On my weight days, I'll aim for my usual 60 minutes of cardio. On non-weight days, I'll try to increase the cardio duration to more like 90 minutes -- or longer, if I can squeeze it in.
The third leg is weights. Not a progressive program like the one SAJ and I did -- the last segments of that, where we were piling on heavy weights and doing very few sets/reps, were probably the contributing culprits to my tight pants problem. Instead, trainer A is recommending a series of workouts that use lighter weights and go at a fast pace so they increase my heart rate as well. I learned the first one from him yesterday and let me tell you, it was a killer. I'm looking forward to the next two, and I will post all three of them here when I've got them under my belt.
So, lesson learned: working to increase muscle will probably also lead to increased fat -- unless you're willing to really manage your nutrition (i.e., calories and fat intake). Although I'm dismayed that I need to lose some weight, I'm excited to embark in this new direction and feel happy that I've got something to work for. Now I just need to find a workout partner because I'm guessing this will not be up SAJ's alley ... but you never know! I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Posts
