JJ Virgin explains how standard diets cause 25-50% of weight loss to come from muscle. She recommends 0.7-1g of protein per pound of target body weight, eating protein first at meals, and doing resistance training instead of excessive cardio. A moderate deficit of 0.5-1% body weight per week preserves muscle while losing fat.
Any diet that's poorly designed, you can lose, gosh, anywhere from 25 to 50% of your weight from muscle. The average is probably around 30%, but it does not have to be that way. And the way that you have it not happen, one of the ways is to make sure that you're eating the right amount of protein. Now it's interesting, I have a friend, Dr. Bill Campbell, who runs a physique lab here in Tampa at University of South Florida. And he talks about the physique athletes, the females, that they eat— they tend to eat more like 1 to 1.5 grams per pound of target body weight to get to their lean muscular place. So don't fear protein. What I have people do is 0.7 to 1 gram per pound of target body weight. And I just mentioned the physique athletes because you could go up higher. Easiest here to remember is that 1 gram per pound of target body weight. And you divide that between your meals. Here's why this is so important. Protein is the most satiating of the 3 macronutrients. One of the things that's gonna derail you on a diet if you're trying to cut calories is getting hungry. I don't know about you, but if I'm hungry, all bets are off. So protein helps suppress, um, ghrelin. So helps you feel fuller longer, helps you activate the, uh, hunger hormones so that you are not hungry. It's going to help you feel both satisfied and satiated. So it's just an easy thing for you to incorporate in because you're not going to be hungry. And it also, of course, has a really good thermic effect on your metabolism too. In fact, we know that if all you did was take some of your calories away from carbs and fat and moved them over to protein initially, that in itself is going to help you lose a little weight. Now, if you're listening to this going, I don't know if I can eat that much protein, here's what you do. You eat protein first. Where you get my protein calculator, I also have an Eat Protein First free 7-day challenge. You eat it first, that way you make sure that you get it in. That's the hack. The second hack is essential amino acids. If you are really not getting in enough protein, what I would have you do is supplement with my Amino Acid Power powder because it will make sure that you get those amino acids you need. Because when we are in caloric restriction, when we're in a deficit, when we're trying to lose fat, we actually are need more essential amino acids, not less. You need more protein, not less. So that is a simple way to make sure that you're getting what you need. Now, speaking of caloric restriction, that is another place where people can mess up, is they try to do too much caloric restriction, and it is not sustainable. And remember, we talked about losing muscle mass. That is the key driver. One of the big things that will make you lose muscle mass is just cutting those calories way too low. Plus You know, who can do that for long? So here's what I like to do. You should be thinking of losing somewhere between 0.5% to 1% of your body weight per week because that's going to help you hold on to that muscle mass. And really what you want to do when you're losing— when you're losing weight, you really want to change your body composition. Really, losing weight's code for improving body composition, holding on to or building muscle while you're putting on fat. If you lose muscle you are going to slow down your metabolism, right? This naturally happens with weight loss anyway, but it will be more dramatic if you lose more muscle. If you keep more muscle on, you're going to have a better metabolism. So when you look at caloric restriction, if you're using that app— which I shouldn't say if— you're using the app, you're weighing your food, you've figured out how much you typically eat, and then you make sure you're optimizing your protein, you're tracking in the app, you're eating it first to make sure that you get it in. If you are still not where you want to be, because quite often just tracking makes you start to shift behaviors, and then doing the protein makes you full, so you're eating less and you've got a better thermic effect from the protein. But if you still are at a place where you're not losing that 0.5 to 1% of your body weight each week, the next thing you can do is start to look at caloric restriction. But basically, you want to do a very moderate caloric restriction. What I have people do is take 5 days a week caloric restriction, 2 days a week of, of maintenance calories. So if you knew that you ate 2,000 calories a day and that maintained your weight, what you would do is on 5 days a week take 25% of the calories away, so you'd eat 1,500 calories a day for 5 days, and then 2 days a week go back to the 2,000 and rotate that. And that is what you can do. And what you'll find, again, if you're losing weight, you may find that you have to downshift your total calories. And that's why tracking works really well. But again, the more you focus on putting on muscle, the less of that you're going to have to worry about because muscle requires more energy to be on your body. Muscle protein turnover is a very costly, costly process, which is why I don't want you doing over-cardio. Now, what I was told in grad school was you don't lift weights till you lose the weight. That is the most ridiculous idea, you know, advice ever. In fact, in grad school, I didn't listen to that. I did my graduate project on resistance training. I was taking people to the gym because I was getting paid for results, and I saw that what they were teaching wasn't working. Because sure, cardiovascular training is going to burn more calories in the moment than resistance training will, but it's really not that significant compared to the amount of calories we burn all day long just by doing more activities of daily living, more non-exercise activity. And of course, we know that when you're doing resistance training, you're also adding on that muscle that improves insulin sensitivity and boosts your metabolic rate. What else do we know about cardio? If you do a lot of cardio, it can actually cause you to lose some muscle mass. In fact, there was a study that took some cardio— they, they took the people's cardio away and put the resistance training in place of it, and people had better loss of their waist circumference than just by doing the cardio. So the cardio group versus the group that their cardio got put into resistance training, the resistance training group had a way better effect on weight loss and waist loss, which is what we want, right? And speaking of that, you want to make sure that we are focus— focusing not on the weight loss, but really that idea of waist loss, what that weight is made up of. Because remember, the goal here is to improve your body composition. So depending on what's going on with your body composition, your goal may be, hey, I want to make sure that I'm putting on muscle. Hey, you know, I actually don't need to lose any fat, I just need to build muscle. Or maybe I need to lose fat and just hold on to my muscle. Or maybe I need to build muscle and lose fat, right? Could be any of those things.
