Has this study on body recomposition been discussed here?

[Al Doggity]

Basically, a group of 117 overweight women were placed in a 6 month study where they were separated into three separate groups: diet and sedentary lifestyle, diet and moderate physical activity and diet and high intensity activity.

The relevant portion to a bodybuilding board would be that women in all groups lost weight, but the women in the high intensity group  averaged a small amount of muscle gain.

It wasn't a significant amount, but it's noteworthy because it goes against conventional bodybuilding wisdom that you can't gain muscle on a calorie deficit.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6935245/

[IroNat]

Good to know.

Quite a detailed study.

[Thin Lizzy]

Looking at the study, the average weight is about 180 and the women said they never did any physical activity. So they were basically fat lazy slobs who dropped their calories by 500 a day. Likely they weren’t even in a deficit.

Probably wouldn’t be applicable to people who have been training for a while and are already pretty low body fat.

[joswift]

[nerdoldnerdith]

You can gain muscle if you have no muscle and standing up for more than 5 minutes is considered exercise.

[GymnJuice]

Hard to analyze these studies their diets are all self reported.

[Notomorrow]

The high intensity group was the only group that practiced resistance training. We all know the first time an untrained person lifts weights, they'll have an initial gain of muscle regardless of diet. This is just the body's response of mTOR activation for muscle repair. Completely irrelevant to a trained bodybuilder or even a recreational lifter. They had the high intensity group doing full body lifting workouts of 50-100 reps per body part and the other two groups didn't even lift.

[CalvinH]

Stopped reading after 117 overweight women.

[IroNat]

Stopped reading after 117 overweight women.

How could they even find that many?

[Al Doggity]

Looking at the study, the average weight is about 180 and the women said they never did any physical activity. So they were basically fat lazy slobs who dropped their calories by 500 a day. Likely they weren’t even in a deficit.

Maybe I'm not following you correctly, but how could they not be in a deficit if they were consistently losing weight. Isn't that basically the colloquial definition of calorie deficit- an amount that would lead to a reduction in weight?

Hard to analyze these studies their diets are all self reported.

Why would self-reporting accuracy of their diet be relevant?  How does that affect the conclusion that they gained a small amount of muscle while losing fat?

[Al Doggity]

The high intensity group was the only group that practiced resistance training. We all know the first time an untrained person lifts weights, they'll have an initial gain of muscle regardless of diet. This is just the body's response of mTOR activation for muscle repair. Completely irrelevant to a trained bodybuilder or even a recreational lifter. They had the high intensity group doing full body lifting workouts of 50-100 reps per body part and the other two groups didn't even lift.

The thing I found interesting about the study is that it was a six month study and the gain in muscle mass was not observed until the second half of the study. During the first three months, the high-intensity group was losing muscle mass but at a slower pace than the rest. During the next three months is when the muscle mass gain was observed.

I've posted a few threads about this, but I have gotten to the point where I don't really believe in muscle tearing/repair, at least in the way it's commonly described in the fitness world. I'm not saying this is a conclusive study, but it does support some things I've been considering about muscle growth.

[GymnJuice]

Why would self-reporting accuracy of their diet be relevant?  How does that affect the conclusion that they gained a small amount of muscle while losing fat?

It is one of the parameters of the study.  If it is inaccurate then the study is inaccurate.  It's been years since I've looked into these diet studies, but the self-reported diets are all inaccurate from what I can remember.  I'll try to find that data and put it here.

[Primemuscle]

Looking at the study, the average weight is about 180 and the women said they never did any physical activity. So they were basically fat lazy slobs who dropped their calories by 500 a day. Likely they weren’t even in a deficit.

Probably wouldn’t be applicable to people who have been training for a while and are already pretty low body fat.

Why is there always someone who feels the need to ruin what should be seen as a positive idea?

[Thin Lizzy]

Maybe I'm not following you correctly, but how could they not be in a deficit if they were consistently losing weight. Isn't that basically the colloquial definition of calorie deficit- an amount that would lead to a reduction in weight?

Maybe we have a different definition of caloric deficit. The way I see it it’s the number of calories you’re taking in versus the number that you burn. So if these fatties were taking in 1000 cal above break even  and dropped it by 500 they would lose weight but still not be in a caloric deficit.

Then again, I guess you could argue that they just wouldn’t gain anymore weight but it seems like when people cut back on their food intake they lose weight no matter what.

[bhank]

Is anyone here an overweight woman who has never trained? But yes absolutely the body loses fat and gains muscle at the same time when you train and eat right.

[Al Doggity]

It is one of the parameters of the study.  If it is inaccurate then the study is inaccurate.  It's been years since I've looked into these diet studies, but the self-reported diets are all inaccurate from what I can remember.  I'll try to find that data and put it here.

It was a study on body composition, not diet. The exact caloric intake is completely irrelevant. It was just a means to induce weight loss. It would have no bearing on what was being observed or how the results should be interpreted.

Maybe we have a different definition of caloric deficit. The way I see it it’s the number of calories you’re taking in versus the number that you burn. So if these fatties were taking in 1000 cal above break even  and dropped it by 500 they would lose weight but still not be in a caloric deficit.

Then again, I guess you could argue that they just wouldn’t gain anymore weight but it seems like when people cut back on their food intake they lose weight no matter what.

I would say that if you are losing weight it is because you burned in excess of what you consumed. The majority of the calories you burn is from just being alive, even if you workout intensely and regularly.

[Al Doggity]

Is anyone here an overweight woman who has never trained? But yes absolutely the body loses fat and gains muscle at the same time when you train and eat right.

I haven't followed the bhank saga very closely, but don't you claim that you can't get into a caloric surplus despite eating copious amounts of junk food?

[Notomorrow]

The thing I found interesting about the study is that it was a six month study and the gain in muscle mass was not observed until the second half of the study. During the first three months, the high-intensity group was losing muscle mass but at a slower pace than the rest. During the next three months is when the muscle mass gain was observed.

I've posted a few threads about this, but I have gotten to the point where I don't really believe in muscle tearing/repair, at least in the way it's commonly described in the fitness world. I'm not saying this is a conclusive study, but it does support some things I've been considering about muscle growth.

I look forward to seeing your theories/research. Here's a study you'll like on how short term caloric restriction causes muscle loss but longer term caloric restriction causes muscle gain.
  Studies that evaluated the effect of short-term (14–21 d) calorie restriction (∼30–40% energy deficit/d) on the rate of muscle protein synthesis in young and middle-aged men and women who were overweight and obese found that calorie restriction decreases the postprandial rate of muscle protein synthesis and decreases or does not change the basal rate of muscle protein synthesis (75–77). Prolonged moderate calorie restriction and 5–10% weight loss, on the other hand, increased the rate of muscle protein synthesis (78, 79). The loss of muscle mass during prolonged moderate calorie restriction is therefore mediated by increased muscle proteolysis rather than suppressed muscle protein synthesis.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5421125/

[GymnJuice]

It was a study on body composition, not diet. The exact caloric intake is completely irrelevant. It was just a means to induce weight loss. It would have no bearing on what was being observed or how the results should be interpreted.

The diet and caloric decrease was parameter of the study.  It is listed in the methods section in your link.  I think it is unrealistic to take a bunch of fat chicks, ask them to cut out 500 calories, and then assume they adhered to the diet because they received nutritional counseling.  I think diet studies (or studies including dietary changes) as a whole are prone to inaccuracies because they're usually based on surveys of what people say they ate.

[Rambone]

The consensus for the past few years is that you can gain muscle in a caloric deficit naturally, but it happens mostly in previously untrained individuals or ones that are very new to lifting. Newbie gains of piss…

[Al Doggity]

The consensus for the past few years is that you can gain muscle in a caloric deficit naturally, but it happens mostly in previously untrained individuals or ones that are very new to lifting. Newbie gains of piss…

As I stated earlier, one of the things I found interesting about the study is that the gain in muscle mass was observed in the second three months of the study. And notomorrow  just posted a study that kind of aligned with that, I'll have to check it out more in depth when I get time.

Just spitballing here, but most bodybuilders are in a caloric deficit for about 12 weeks before a show. It can vary- sometimes it's 16 weeks- but in general it's not much longer than 3 months. What if that is just the necessary time the body needs to adjust itself to making gains in a deficit? From a physiological standpoint, if you were eating regularly or even bulking and you suddenly cut calories, your body is worried about lack of resources to maintain itself, so it will drop resource-intensive muscle at a relatively high ratio. But maybe after a few months of  high intensity activity coupled with enough nutrients to maintain itself, your body begins to understand that it makes more sense to begin adding muscle again?

I think one thing to consider with the untrained vs trained is that even with a big calorie surplus,  natural trained athletes are going to hit a gains ceiling, so I  don't think it's that realistic to say because certain things are more easily observable in untrained people it has no value for people with more experience.

[bhank]

I haven't followed the bhank saga very closely, but don't you claim that you can't get into a caloric surplus despite eating copious amounts of junk food?

Food keeps you alive there is no such thing as junk food by definition all food is healthy. I simple stated that I have a very high metabolism and I can not get fat no matter how hard I try. I absolutely get bigger and leaner when I train and eat more that is how its is supposed to work.

[joswift]

Food keeps you alive there is no such thing as junk food by definition all food is healthy. I simple stated that I have a very high metabolism and I can not get fat no matter how hard I try. I absolutely get bigger and leaner when I train and eat more that is how its is supposed to work.

you havent changed at all since your first photo back in April

[Al Doggity]

Food keeps you alive there is no such thing as junk food by definition all food is healthy. I simple stated that I have a very high metabolism and I can not get fat no matter how hard I try. I absolutely get bigger and leaner when I train and eat more that is how its is supposed to work.

When I said junk food it was a direct reference to you saying eating right. So if junk food doesn't exist and we're talking specifically about a diet in calorie deficit, what does "eating right" mean?

This took 2 seconds to find with getbig's shitty ass search function:

You guys started talking shit so I kept eating and now I appear to be making gains despite using light weights with higher volume. I think my body was ready to grow and just needed the food. I am not trying to injure anything but I am always lean if I add weight its muscle the food is the key. I will ramp up the weights slowly but if volume is working and joints feel good no need to kill it.