Philip Pape 0:00

When you're forced to take a break from training due to injury or illness. How long does it take before muscle loss begins to occur? And how do I get more muscle to increase my metabolism? Find out on today's weekend Q&A bonus episode. Welcome to the Wits and Weights podcast. I'm your host, philip Pape, and this twice a week podcast is dedicated to helping you achieve physical self-mastery by getting stronger, optimizing your nutrition and upgrading your body composition. We'll uncover science-backed strategies for movement, metabolism, muscle and mindset, with a skeptical eye on the fitness industry, so you can look and feel your absolute best. Let's dive right in.

Philip Pape 0:46

Hello and welcome to the special weekend Q&A edition of the Wits and Weights podcast, where we supercharge your Saturdays and Sundays with an answer to one burning question so you can put it into action this weekend. These questions are taken from the weekly Ask Philip thread in our free Wits and Weights Facebook community. If you're feeling overwhelmed by the endless amount of information and, let's be honest, misinformation online, and just want a straight up answer without the jargon, that's what this free service is for. With the weekly Ask Philip thread, you can post a specific question relevant to your unique individual situation that week and have it answered live by me on Friday. If you'd like to experience it yourself, I invite you to use the link in the show notes to join the Wits and Weights Facebook group. It's totally free and you'll quickly find out what a positive and supportive community it is. With that let's get to today's Q&A and supportive community it is. With that let's get to today's Q&A.

Philip Pape 1:50

When you have to take a break from training due to injury or illness and she had a recent injury, I won't divulge details out of privacy unless she wants to share, but it limits her with certain movements. In the short term, how long does it take before muscle loss begins to occur? So we don't want to freak out about breaks in our training because it takes probably two to three weeks before you even begin to experience any muscle loss at all. And that's if you're not doing anything. And also, you know, if protein isn't very high and you're probably you're keeping the protein high, right? If you listen to my show, if you're in this community, you know we want to go for 0.7 to one grams per pound of body weight in protein. So if you're keeping the protein high, that helps a lot. And then, if you're able to, you know, keep walking. That helps as well with recovery. If you're able to keep eating, at least at maintenance and Carol was in a very lean gaining phase and I suggested we bring her back to maintenance for now because you don't want to over consume when you're not able to use that nutrition to build muscle. She's just trying to hold onto that muscle. So if you're able to do some level of resistance training, even if it's like a quarter of the volume of normal, and that's after like a week or two break to just totally rest and let the injury heal, you're probably not going to lose anything.

Philip Pape 3:07

To be honest, if you have to ease back in because of the injury, the areas of your body and the muscle groups that you're not able to train at all will get a little bit detrained. But there is this cross-training effect. We've seen I noticed it personally when I went through my shoulder surgery last year where if you're just able to train other parts of your body, there's just a little bit of a crossover that maintains more of the muscle mass in even the parts you're not using, especially if it's like an opposite limb type of thing. Of course, if you could only work legs or only work upper body, there may be a little bit of detraining. But I would say, to answer your exact question, it would start occurring around two or three weeks for most people. But again, it's going to take a long time to actually lose a decent amount of muscle and if you're not in a deficit, it's going to really coast for a while. Right, you're definitely going to lose some strength, potentially because of the lack of the neuromuscular adaptation, because you're not doing those movements. But that's fine, that'll come back quickly. So, yeah, I would say two to three weeks it starts. Keep the protein high, don't be in a diet when you're recovering, and that process will take a lot longer than you think. So that's a good thing, all right.

Philip Pape 4:15

Second question, the second question today from Denise. I've been weight training three years. I've lost approximately 25 pounds. By the way, thank you for all the numbers. This is helpful. Based on four in-body scans, I've only gained one pound of muscle. I train four days a week. I eat approximately 14 to 1500 calories a day. Protein ranges from 90 to 140 grams daily. How do I get more muscle to increase my daily expenditure? Great question, denise, and I can give you some simple guidelines for this.

Philip Pape 4:50

Before I do, a couple of comments on your question itself. When you say you've lost 25 pounds, that implies to me that the 1,400 to 1,500 calories you're eating has had you in a deficit. So I want to make that assumption. I don't know that's true, but I'm going to assume that that's the case. You've also said you've had in-body scans that showed you gained a pound of muscle. Nobody's gonna be surprised who followed me a while.

Philip Pape 5:12

But I don't trust those scans at all. I do like those things for trend numbers, meaning if you have multiple in-body scans over time under the same conditions, same time of day, same amount of clothing, same amount of food and water, like usually in the morning, right when you haven't eaten, you haven't drunk anything, although with InBody they suggest having a little tiny bit of water, like a few hours before, so you're not fully dehydrated. Anyway, if you do one of the same conditions, the body fat percentage and how it changes is somewhat reliable, meaning that not the number but the trend over time, like if it's going up or down. That's a good indicator of what's happening. But I don't necessarily trust the number itself and therefore you can't trust the absolute pounds of muscle or fat that it's telling you.

Philip Pape 6:03

Having said that, if you've been dieting for a while, there's a good and you're past your newbie gains, like if you're actually training hard, and I don't know what your training looks like, denise. So that's another thing I would have to break down with you is are you lifting heavy with progressive overload? Are you following a program that increases, you know, stimulus over time, usually the weight right, but it could also be sets and reps? Are you doing that like just getting stronger and building muscle, stronger and building muscle? If you're doing that and you're past that new the first three to six month newbie gains, it makes sense that you're not going to gain a lot of muscle if you're dieting. So how do you get more muscle to increase your daily expenditure?

Philip Pape 6:44

Before I actually answer the question, I mentioned before I recorded these answers in case people are listening to this on the podcast that you can go to witsandweightscom, click podcast, scroll down to the podcast finder and you can search for a topic you're interested in and look at previous episodes. So in this case, if you'd search build muscle, you'll see episode 108, how to build muscle without getting fat. Episode 130, the hard gainers guide, episode 69, which is one of the most popular what to do first lose fat, build muscle or body recomposition and so I would say, like episode 69 is a really good one, because it gives you seven scenarios that you're starting from and what direction you should go, and then how to do it. It gives you some prescriptive numbers and protocols to consider. But so in your case, what that's going to look like to build muscle is rule number one you can't be dieting. You want to be in a surplus. You want to be gaining weight intentionally, and it's not a lot of weight we are talking about.

Philip Pape 7:45

For you, as a female, 66 years old, I would say 0.1% of your body weight per week, and if we're going to do some quick calculations on that, you weigh 152 pounds. So 0.1% is going to be 0.15 pounds per week. If you extrapolate that to six months, which is the minimum length I want you building muscle that's 26 weeks that's going to come out to a gain on the scale of four pounds. Yes, like that's nothing. You know four pounds is nothing, right? You're 152, you get to 156. You might even go a little more aggressive if you want to try to build a little extra muscle, if you still have a lot of potential to do that. So four pounds over six months less than a pound a month. You might even round that up to a pound a month and then you gain six pounds. Either way, you go into a surplus and then you can determine your calories and macros from that.

Philip Pape 8:39

And if you're not doing it already, denise, definitely go download Macrofactor. We talk about it all the time here. Download Macrofactor. It's the best food logging app on the market and the only one that dynamically adjusts to your expenditure. Use my code WITSANDWEIGHTS all one word to get a 14-day free trial. When you do that, I don't know what your calories are going to be, because I don't know your expenditure.

Philip Pape 9:03

But now I want to address your actual question how do I get more muscle to increase my daily expenditure? I don't think that should be the reason we want more muscle, and you and others may be surprised hearing me say that. But yes, having more muscle increases your basal metabolic rate, your BMR, a tiny bit. It increases it a tiny bit Now. It increases it a little bit more in the sense that it makes you bigger, stronger, you can push more around, you could be more active, and then it all cascades. So I love that as kind of a piece of why you're building muscle.

Philip Pape 9:33

But the main reason you want to build muscle is, in your case, probably for for function, for strength, for capability, maybe for physique, I don't know. You're 66. So I usually think of, like you know, you want to be strong and capable and injury free. You don't want to have to be, you know, fall and get fractured and all those things well into your. You know eighties and nineties. So if that, so that's the first thing I would say is like you're not doing it to increase your expenditure, even though that might be a side benefit.

Philip Pape 10:01

However, if you go into a slight gain, like I suggested, your expenditure should start to rise. Right, Even going to maintenance, your expenditure should rise because it's going to recover to what your body needs to balance everything out. At homeostasis gaining phase, your body will. You'll get a little bit heavier, a tiny bit heavier. You're not going to gain much weight, actual weight, but the fact that you're telling your body that you've got tons of nutrition coming in, it's going to relax. You're going to burn more calories. As a result, you're going to become less efficient, which is good for building muscle. You're less efficient, you're going to burn more and your calorie intake will actually start to go up even more. So the first jump in calories is going to come from just going into a surplus and then your expenditure will also increase.

Philip Pape 10:43

From that point and you can do it for a good six months gain four to six pounds on the scale, half of which is muscle, and that's amazing. And then you can do a quick little mini cut to cut off the fat after that. So that's it in a nutshell. There's a lot more details under that in terms of you know, if you were working with me as a client, we would have a whole plan for your movement and step count, we would look at your training, we would look at your meal timing, your supplementation, all that good stuff, and for that you could always reach out to me. We can set up a call or chat by email or messenger on those details, everything. I'm totally open and transparent about how it works and the process we go through and the price and all that good stuff. But that is the answer to your question to get more muscle.

Philip Pape 11:29

That's it for today's weekend Q&A bonus episode. Remember this is just a small part of the weekly Ask Philip live Q&A in the Wits and Weights Facebook group, which you can join totally free using&A in the Wits and Weights Facebook group, which you can join totally free using the link in the show notes. I invite you to join us as we improve our health and physique together. Thank you for tuning in to another episode of Wits and Weights. If you found value in today's episode and know someone else who's looking to level up their wits or weights, please take a moment to share this episode with them and make sure to hit the follow button in your podcast platform right now to catch the next episode. Until then, stay strong.