Atkins and muscle growth

Hi,
I'm on Atkins right now .. might go into Phase 2 pretty soon. One
thing I'm wondering about is weight training. Should I be doing that
now..? I certainly don't want to lose muscle mass when losing the
fat but I'm not even sure if weight training will preserve it. I
guess I have to make sure I get alot of proteins. I know that weight
lifting requires glycogen so not sure if I will have the carbs to do
it ?
Thanks.

"john" wrote in message
...
Hi,
I'm on Atkins right now .. might go into Phase 2 pretty soon. One
thing I'm wondering about is weight training. Should I be doing that
now..? I certainly don't want to lose muscle mass when losing the
fat but I'm not even sure if weight training will preserve it. I
guess I have to make sure I get alot of proteins. I know that weight
lifting requires glycogen so not sure if I will have the carbs to do
it ?
Thanks.

If muscles are your goal, you might check with the muscle builders. There
may be a choice between a healthy way of eating and dying young with a
sculpted muscular body.

Generally, as extraordinary excess body fat is lost a lot of muscle goes
too. IMHO weight training alone might not be enough to preserve the muscle.
I tried some weight training while losing weight, but I didn't stick with
it, and the muscle left.

"Susan" wrote in message
...

john wrote:
Hi,
I'm on Atkins right now .. might go into Phase 2 pretty soon. One
thing I'm wondering about is weight training. Should I be doing that
now..? I certainly don't want to lose muscle mass when losing the
fat but I'm not even sure if weight training will preserve it. I
guess I have to make sure I get alot of proteins. I know that weight
lifting requires glycogen so not sure if I will have the carbs to do
it ?
Thanks.

Eating adequate protein is the best way to maintain muscle mass during
weight loss.

If you bonk while lifting, you can sip a dextrose drink during your
workout, just enough to fuel it, without carbing up.

Susan

There's the blind leading the blind.

"john" wrote in message
...
Hi,
I'm on Atkins right now .. might go into Phase 2 pretty soon. One
thing I'm wondering about is weight training. Should I be doing that
now..? I certainly don't want to lose muscle mass when losing the
fat but I'm not even sure if weight training will preserve it. I
guess I have to make sure I get alot of proteins. I know that weight
lifting requires glycogen so not sure if I will have the carbs to do
it ?
Thanks.

You're not going to lose much muscle mass while dieting unless you go
anorexic.

Weight lifting does not require glycogen. Glycogen becomes somewhat
important depending on increased reps and sets, but it also depends on how
much rest between sets. Do a powerlifting routine if you want to stay
strictly low carb, or switch to a CKD if you want to do the high rep thing.

On Apr 12, 10:56 pm, "jcderkoeing" wrote:
"john" wrote in message

...

Hi,
I'm on Atkins right now .. might go into Phase 2 pretty soon. One
thing I'm wondering about is weight training. Should I be doing that
now..? I certainly don't want to lose muscle mass when losing the
fat but I'm not even sure if weight training will preserve it. I
guess I have to make sure I get alot of proteins. I know that weight
lifting requires glycogen so not sure if I will have the carbs to do
it ?
Thanks.

You're not going to lose much muscle mass while dieting unless you go
anorexic.

Weight lifting does not require glycogen. Glycogen becomes somewhat
important depending on increased reps and sets, but it also depends on how
much rest between sets. Do a powerlifting routine if you want to stay
strictly low carb, or switch to a CKD if you want to do the high rep thing.

I might just not lift until getting down to goal weight and then
start lifting again.. I'm not really into alot of sets .. I follow
mike
mentzer's training methods of few sets, high intensity, a lot of
rest between workouts. It might just work as well with low carb
thing.

"john" wrote in message
...
On Apr 12, 10:56 pm, "jcderkoeing" wrote:
"john" wrote in message

...

Hi,
I'm on Atkins right now .. might go into Phase 2 pretty soon. One
thing I'm wondering about is weight training. Should I be doing that
now..? I certainly don't want to lose muscle mass when losing the
fat but I'm not even sure if weight training will preserve it. I
guess I have to make sure I get alot of proteins. I know that weight
lifting requires glycogen so not sure if I will have the carbs to do
it ?
Thanks.

You're not going to lose much muscle mass while dieting unless you go
anorexic.

Weight lifting does not require glycogen. Glycogen becomes somewhat
important depending on increased reps and sets, but it also depends on
how
much rest between sets. Do a powerlifting routine if you want to stay
strictly low carb, or switch to a CKD if you want to do the high rep
thing.

I might just not lift until getting down to goal weight and then
start lifting again.. I'm not really into alot of sets .. I follow
mike
mentzer's training methods of few sets, high intensity, a lot of
rest between workouts. It might just work as well with low carb
thing.

You might not be able to increase the amount of weight you can lift while
dieting, but you might be able to maintain what you can already do. I would
definitely not quit lifting while dieting, or you might end up looking like
Jared.

On Apr 12, 11:26 pm, "jcderkoeing" wrote:

You might not be able to increase the amount of weight you can lift while
dieting, but you might be able to maintain what you can already do. I would
definitely not quit lifting while dieting, or you might end up looking like
Jared.
I for sure agree on the above point .. Consider the astronauts who
spend long times in space. The have a good diet - might taste like
crap but I'm sure it has all the vitamins and nutrients needed. They
also try to exercise. But in a couple of months their leg muscles
have
so atrophied that they can't even stand up. So for sure at least
some
resistance is needed.

On Apr 12, 11:13 pm, john wrote:

I might just not lift until getting down to goal weight and then
start lifting again.. I'm not really into alot of sets .. I follow
mike
mentzer's training methods of few sets, high intensity, a lot of
rest between workouts. It might just work as well with low carb
thing.

That should work just fine on Atkins, phase 1 or 2.

On Apr 12, 8:45 pm, "Cubit" wrote:
"john" wrote in message

...

Hi,
I'm on Atkins right now .. might go into Phase 2 pretty soon. One
thing I'm wondering about is weight training. Should I be doing that
now..? I certainly don't want to lose muscle mass when losing the
fat but I'm not even sure if weight training will preserve it. I
guess I have to make sure I get alot of proteins. I know that weight
lifting requires glycogen so not sure if I will have the carbs to do
it ?
Thanks.

If muscles are your goal, you might check with the muscle builders. There
may be a choice between a healthy way of eating and dying young with a
sculpted muscular body.

Wow. Let the misinformation and bitterness flow.

Generally, as extraordinary excess body fat is lost a lot of muscle goes
too. IMHO weight training alone might not be enough to preserve the muscle.
I tried some weight training while losing weight, but I didn't stick with
it, and the muscle left.

Hrm. Lemme get this straight:
Cubit flirted with some resistance work.
Cubit didn't stick with it.
Cubit's muscle deserted him.
Ergo: Weight training won't preserve muscle.

Wow. Aristotle is spinning in his grave.

Here's a different experience.
Hollywood flirted with some resistance work.
Hollywood did stick with it, even got into it.
Hollywood has gained about 5 lbs of lean muscle mass
while dumping 50+ lbs of adipose tissue.
Ergo: Weight training + LC diet CAN preserve, and
even enhance, muscle tissue.

FWIW: I didn't really do any lifting before, so I was
not particularly muscular under my 50+ lbs of fat.

john wrote:

... *One
thing I'm wondering about is weight training. *Should I be doing that
now..?

Dr Atkins considered exercise in some form mandatory
to call yourself on his plan, but he suggested it's worth
considering it on or off his plan. What he didn't discuss
is type aerobic/resistance or mixture of the types.

Weights good. Aerobic good. Mixture of the two better.

I certainly don't want to lose muscle mass when losing the
fat but I'm not even sure if weight training will preserve it.

Consider the original fat fast study that put Dr A onto the
low carb path. A study was done where the control group
got 0 calories just water. There were experimental groups
who geto 1000 calories of 90% carb, protein and fat. A
total of 4 groups. The result was surprising enough that
Dr Atkins started low carbing himself and started working
low carb with the patients in his cardiology practice. The
90% fat group lost more fat and less lean than any other
group including the 0 calorie control group. Eating 900
calories of fat literally triggered more lose that a true fast.
There are biochemical reasons for the fat loss part that
have since been discovered (leptin, T3, glucagon) but for
Dr A it always seemed a matter of experimental data first,
theory second.

Low carbing, especially high fat medium protein low
carbing, converse muscle mass better than the other
popular tpyes of weight loss systems. Not obvious but
true. I have yet to see a theory explaining why but in
science data rules the roost and the data is quite clear
on this point.

I guess I have to make sure I get alot of proteins.

Nope. If you are anywhere near the protein intake
common among Americans you already get more than
optimal.

I know that weight
lifting requires glycogen so not sure if I will have the carbs to do
it ?

The directions for Induction do mention to take it easy
during the first two weeks until ketosis (really ketonuria)
settles in. Following the plan on schedule or not, folks
who do weights need to start out easy and begin tapering
back to more intensity starting day 15. Works great.

As long as you don't bonk, who cares about glycogen.
Even if you do bonk because you ran out of glycogen,
what you'll discover is your endurance grows constantly.
Muscles make and hoard glycogen for their peak load.
And as conditioning improves more slow twitch fibers are
grown that use more fat and less carb.

You'll find folks who claim that low carbing is inconsistant
with high load few rep work of the type that bulks. So what.
You'll find folks who report that it doesn't as well. Do it
and see the endurance gradually return then the bulking
growth resume. Or switch for a bit to the lower load high
rep tonig style for a bit then work your way back.

Muscles grow using protein to build their fibers and fat to
build there cell membranes. Citing a need for carbs to
trigger growth generally misses how much carbs. A
typical Atkins OWL 50ish grams per day is going to be
plenty.

But using the muyscles during the workout, that does burn
both carb and fat. It's yet another reason to move on the
OWL. But ignore the folks who eat pasta as a carb loading
method. They are very far over the actual carbs that are
needed. Go with that CCLL value and you'll be lifting like
a maniac.

Also notice that jc knows weights extremely well. It's his
non-troll topic.