We all saw John Stone's results, and he obvuisly kept alot of muscle while losing fat. Though, in his begining parts of his diet, he didnt eat near enough cals, according to the x10 or x12 formula. I have heard so many times if you eat too few cal's you will lose muscle. Whats up with that if John didnt lose much muscle? Im just curious cuz I started my diet yesterday, and ate about 1450 cals...I weigh 215. That may seem low, but still, seeing Johns diet log, its even higher than his. Im just wondering what is true and not true, becasue I am a little confused.
Thanks,
D

There is no right or wrong answer to your question. Every person is different. John may have not lost a lot of muscle but you may. Or may be you will not, but somebody else will. The key is to presserve as much muscle as you can. In order to do so you have to do weight lifting and eat adequately: both carbwise and proteinwise. The result may be: you may even gain muscle while on cutting phase.
The key to fat loss is to burn more calories then you need, while not depriving your body severily of the food.

You may want to look into the effects of L-Glutamine, in addition.

Accurately assessing your lean body mass every couple weeks as you get rolling will guard against losing too much. Figuring out how many calories your body burns daily is not an exact science, and the trend around here is to mix it with anaerobic exercise (HIIT), so guarding against lean body mass loss is important.

You don't want to reach your weight goal and end up having a gut.

This is actually more of a reply to the thread starter. :)

There is no right or wrong answer to your question. Every person is different. John may have not lost a lot of muscle but you may. Or may be you will not, but somebody else will. The key is to presserve as much muscle as you can. In order to do so you have to do weight lifting and eat adequately: both carbwise and proteinwise. The result may be: you may even gain muscle while on cutting phase.
The key to fat loss is to burn more calories then you need, while not depriving your body severily of the food.

Ok thanks for the help. I will keep the caloric intake to what it is now. Thanks.

D

I have some thoughts on the subject. This should not in any way be taken as facts (well, some fact, but hey...), but I still think it could be pretty close to the truth.

As I understand it, when John decided to change his ways of living, he wasn't working out at all. As anybody who hasn't been working out before knows, the first few months of going to the gym is heaven! You grow with every day (when I started working out I gained 16 lbs the first 20 days) and your strength shoots through the roof. You hear stories like "I doubled my strength in two months" and similar experiences. Strange? No.

When muscles are inactive any exercise is a shock to them. Responding to that shock, muscles both grow, and increase in strength. No muscles are used to their full potential, but with exercise you "learn" how to activate more muscle fibers. This is why you can gain strength without growing, and why people half as big as you can lift twice as much.

If you're quite overweight when you start exercising, I believe that your body goes into a kind of overload mode. Not eating more than you did, the muscles will have to find other ways to "feed". What you say? The body fat. This is actually what the body fat is for. In times of hunger, the body still needs to keep it's strength to be able to find food. When having a lot of excess fat, and being quite unfit, your body will start building muscles FAST, in order for you to be able to find more food. Maybe you can even increase the amount of muscle growth for a period of time if you undereat, since the body will believe the search for food to be critical.

Being logical, this wouldn't be possible over a long period of time, but considering my theory, John probably gained muscles in the beginning of his fat burning phase and lost a little in the end. This way it would seem as you keep muscle, when the muscles actually fluctuate quite a bit.

Looking at John's initial fat loss chart, you can see that his "no fat body weight" at the beginning was 150 pounds, and at the end 147. Nothing prooves that these two weights are composed of the same things. In eating healthier, he probably added other good things to his body. In exercising his bones probably got thicker (thus heavier) for one.

This may sound gross to some people, but consider the following;
You cut out ALL the fat from your diet, and instead you rip your belly open, and suck out the fat you need in order to replace the fat you cut out from your diet. This fat, taken directly from your stomach, is what you put in your meals (stay with me, don't puke, I DO have a point). Now, eating this way, you can stay above your daily intake of energy, and you WILL lose weight. You will also be able to gain muscles since you eat as much as you're supposed to. Now this is not really possible, or a smart thing to do, but I can't see any reason for why some people should be able to use the fat in their bodies in this way; the energy you lose from eating less, you take from the body fat without any loss. If you get all the proteins and vitamins and stuff that you need, this will burn fat, build muscles and add a smile to your face (and possibly your wife's, no matter how happy women are with your body they won't complain if it looks a little better, right?).

There is also the illusion part of losing fat. A person with a low body fat percentage will look muscular, no matter how much or little muscle the person has. If you compare to me, John is (even though he looks great) really skinny. Given that the army's chart where you measure your stomach and your neck is accurate, I'm now (124kgs/273lbs) at 18% BF. If I would have an 8% BF-percentage, I would still weigh 110 kgs (242 lbs). I assume that this calculation is a bit off, but that is still A LOT of heavier than John is (did I mention how great you look John?). He DOES look like a fit guy with a lot of muscle though.

I'm pretty sure I left some part of my theory out, but not wanting to bore you to death (hey, wouldn't it be great if boredom caused fat burning?) I will end it here. Hopefully, I made sense anyway...

We all saw John Stone's results, and he obvuisly kept alot of muscle while losing fat. Though, in his begining parts of his diet, he didnt eat near enough cals, according to the x10 or x12 formula. I have heard so many times if you eat too few cal's you will lose muscle. Whats up with that if John didnt lose much muscle? Im just curious cuz I started my diet yesterday, and ate about 1450 cals...I weigh 215. That may seem low, but still, seeing Johns diet log, its even higher than his. Im just wondering what is true and not true, becasue I am a little confused.
Thanks,
D

DSO,

John may or may not have hurt his progress in the beginning, it really does depend on the individual, but why take the chance? You really should determine your maintenance level and subtract 500-1000 calories from that number, if you restrict your calorie intake too low, you'll find quite a few negative side effects such as a decrease in performance, lower testosterone levels, lack of energy, less efficient workouts, and the dreaded "starvation mode", this is to be avoided at all costs.

Although you'll see dramatic weight loss in the beginning by cutting your calories so low, sooner or later, your body will adapt to the lowered calorie intake and put itself into starvation mode, which lowers your metabolism, and once that happens, your body begins storing fat, which would normally be used for energy.

If you're really set in keeping close to a 2000 cal deficit, then I would definately suggest eating 500 above maintenance atleast one day a week, this won't work forever, but it will help keep your body guessing and your current metabolism fairly the same.

DSO,
You really should determine your maintenance level and subtract 500-1000 calories from that number, if you restrict your calorie intake too low, you'll find quite a few negative side effects such as a decrease in performance, lower testosterone levels, lack of energy, less efficient workouts, and the dreaded "starvation mode", this is to be avoided at all costs.


I believe that substracting 1000 cals from your maintenace level is too low. 500 cals seems the most appropriate. You'll eat 500 cals less and you'll burn 500 cals by excercise, and there goes 7000 cals a week wich equals 2 lbs a week loss, which, in turns equals safe and steady weight loss. (That is what I do and that is my own opinion). :eat: :db: :bb:

Knubb, the beginner status of when John began is definetly a factor to take into consideration IMO.

My opinion has always been to start with 12x bw, make sure cals are honest and as accurate as you can get them, monitor for a full 2 weeks, if not losing at the rate you want, tweak accordingly, say 11x bw, or 10x bw, monitor another 2 weeks, tweak accordingly.

If people would only take the time to do this, this will be more valuable than jumping on anyones theories, recommendations, advice, etc., because they will get to know their bodies and what works for them.

I would much rather start sort of high at 12x than to start low and screw up my metabolism. Then again, I'm a big advocate of holding on to as much muscle as possible while cutting down.

If John didn't go too low on calories in the beginning at well under 10x, why would he then recommend now after all is said and done to go with 10x bw formula?

No doubt he had incredible results in a short period of time, but if he had it to do over, would he stick with his own advice and go with 10x bw? Would the results have been better, worse, taken longer, built more muscle? Any thoughts?