Strength By Fitness
Fat loss with or without exercise.
Welcome to another fact-based article from Strength by Fitness.
Never be afraid of lifting weights as a woman or man who is currently out of shape, less fit, obese, or if you are a person with some excess fat to lose.
When you change your food habits in order to achieve a healthy amount of fat loss you will also lose some lean mass, including skeletal muscle mass, bone mass and organ mass.
Unless those healthier habits incorporate a lot of daily protein and strength training on a regular, weekly basis.
Fat loss + aerobic exercise preserve health outcomes and physical capacity far better than fat loss alone ( be it through dietary changes or GLP-1 ), but fat loss + resistance training do it even better, mostly via a much better lean muscle mass preservation.
Best of all is however fat loss together with both aerobic exercise & resistance training since these two exercise forms both provide unique fitness and health benefits, view them as complementary healthy fit habits and not opposing ones.
“Instead, what happens is that the combination of a slight increase in anabolic resistance together with many other factors, such as not training often and challenging enough, or at all, and not eating according to a fact-based high-protein plan pushes people off the cliff”.
Coach Mike, Strength By Fitness
The study setup.
So in this study, we have a group of elderly people at the tail end of their 60´s. The majority, but not all of the participants, were women this time around.
One big plus with this study is that it lasted for 18 months, not a huge time frame as far as real-life healthy fit habits go, but it is a good enough chunk of time as far as food and exercise studies go. What I do not like, and what was a lost opportunity is that these groups did not eat enough protein ( A high protein intake should be the de facto standard ).
A genuine high-protein intake together with strength training preserves even more lean muscle mass, organ mass, bone mass, and strength, so if this had been the case the outcomes would have been even better for the fat loss + resistance training group. Something to keep in mind when you adopt your own healthy fit habits.
In total, there are three different fat loss groups in this study.
The pure fat loss group only adjusted their food intake, while the fat loss aerobic exercise group complemented their change in food habits with aerobic exercise. But we also have a third fat loss group that combined their new food approach with strength training.
The end result for both fat loss + exercise groups was just as much fat loss but with far better preserved lean muscle mass for the food + strength training group.
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The numbers look like this.
Muscle mass loss measured in size at the trunk was −7.82 cm2 on average for the fat loss-only group.
−7.72 cm2 for the fat loss + aerobic exercise group, so better but only marginally so.
Finally, the fat loss + strength training group “only” lost 5.14 cm2 of lean muscle mass in the trunk, on average.
My coach perspective on the trunk number.
Keep in mind that this is what we always see in drug-free naturals like myself, despite the fact that I exercise all year round, consume nothing but healthy high-protein foods on a daily basis, and keep in shape all year round.
The reason for this is simple, once you lose enough fat, you lose a little bit of max strength, due to that slight, but very real, loss of lean muscle mass that accompanies staying in an energy deficit long enough.
The loss of lean muscle mass and strength is not earth-shattering at all, if you strength train and consume enough protein, and it is well worth it to keep yourself in a healthy fat percentage all year round.
But, when you eat in a long enough surplus, you do not just gain surplus body fat, you also gain a bit of extra muscle mass, especially if you strength train seriously, all year round.
Health-wise there are no advantages to hitting the 30+ percent body fat realm as a man. keep it perpetually between 10 to 20 % body fat and you will be your healthiest and strongest, fittest and healthiest, as a man.
Women can instead aim for the 18 to 27% zone.
But, it is an undeniable fact that you will be slightly stronger, with slightly more muscle mass as you get closer to 20% body fat than going down to 10% or lower.
Further, this is just how being in an energy deficit works and how a low enough body fat percentage will affect all humans, their health, and fitness capacity.
Nothing strange, just fact-based causes and consequences.
No matter if you are dieting or doing GLP-1, you need to strength train to preserve as much lean muscle mass, organ mass, and bone mass as possible. You should also eat healthy, nutritionally complete high-protein foods every day of life.
Let us take a quick little poll. Because, if a healthier & fitter old age is of interest, you need to lift weights & maintain some form of aerobic eXERCISE on a weekly basis.
Back to the study.
They also measured the lean muscle mass loss in the mid-thigh.
The loss here was on average 6.20 cm2 for the fat loss group only.
−7.84 cm2 for fat loss + aerobic exercise, neatly demonstrating that food restriction and high enough aerobic exercise volume will not just drop more body fat but potentially even make you lose hard-earned muscle in your legs.
This is not me shooting down aerobic exercise and running by the way. I am a strong advocate for doing it all every week of life. I am just pointing out that you need to lift weights to preserve strength and muscle mass in your lower body, even if you are doing lots of aerobic exercise.
Why, because running and extended aerobic exercise favor the much smaller, but durable type 1 muscle fibers. While strength training with a big enough load and effort forces your body to hold on to the incredibly important and explosive, strong type 2 muscle fibers.
“running and extended aerobic exercise favors the much smaller, but durable type 1 muscle fibers. While strength training with a big enough load and effort forces your body to hold on to the important and explosive, strong type 2 muscle fibers”.
Coach Mike, Strength By Fitness.
So, how about the fat loss + strength training group?
Well, they only lost −0.60 cm2 lean muscle mass on average in the mid-thigh.
Keep in mind that fat loss + aerobic exercise and fat loss + strength training lost the same amount of body fat, so this gigantic difference in muscle mass loss in the thigh area is only down to what I just spoke about.
The difference in what type of muscle fibers aerobic exercise and strength training recruit and progress.
Finally.
The changes in the trunk muscle mass were positively associated with changes in lumbar bone strength. Meaning, strength training, as we already know, has a very positive impact on lifelong bone mass and bone mass health.
My conclusion.
What we see here is the same fat loss between the two exercise groups, but mulch better outcomes in health and physical capacity for the fat loss + strength training group.
This is due to your body holding on to much more strength and muscle mass ( especially so the highly beneficial type 2 fibers ) with all the benefits in health and physical, and cognitive health and capacity that entails across your entire health span.
For the best possible outcomes in health, fitness, and body composition, no matter if you need to lose fat or not, go with a healthy high-protein food approach + strength training, and some weekly aerobic exercise.
This unified health and fitness combo provides the by far best health outcomes, body composition outcomes, and fitness outcomes.
Yes, a minority of “pro-level” athletes type of people can find some minor level of conflict between pro-level cardio and elite-level strength training.
But we are in this case not talking about general health and fitness outcomes, or even most pro athletes, but specific, world-class, competitive athletes with a single focus on sports performance in outlier sports.
Examples of these narrowly focused outlier sports are Iron Man (triathlon), World Strongest Man competitors, Olympic powerlifting, 5000k runners, marathon runners, tour de France pro cyclists, and similar extremely narrow-focused sports.
For everyone else, do aerobic exercise, lift weights, and eat nothing but healthy, nutritionally complete, high-protein, high-satiety foods and enjoy the best possible journey through life, health, and fitness, with the best possible body composition outcome you could ever hope for.
Because this will deliver the best possible health span ever for you.
But why does this matter?
Well for starters, it matters for you. Your personal health across your health span. It matters for your physical capacity, the quality of your life, it matters your brain, its health, and capacity, it matters for your mood and longevity.
And it matters at scale because populations around the world are increasingly becoming older and more obese and out of shape.
This combination results in increasing demands on the healthcare system, and an increasing number of people that can not fully enjoy life.
If we take one single country as an example, the USA, very soon 82+ million Americans will be aged 65 and older and the majority of them will be sedentary and obese. This correlates with increasing numbers of diabetes patients and many other illnesses, such as dementia and CVD.
As such this large group of unhealthy elderly people are suffering from much poorer health than they should have, and much lower physical capacity than it should be, all while they are in much greater need of medication and assistance, and will sadly suffer through worse cognitive health too.
The great tragedy with all this is that this is entirely preventable by forming and maintaining better lifestyle habits, and is this not what we should all wish for each other, a healthy later half of our life, rich, enjoyable and rewarding?
Cited study.
1. Anabolic sensitivity in older fit people vs young and fit people.
Anabolic Sensitivity in Healthy, Lean, Older Men Is Associated With Higher Expression of Amino Acid Sensors and mTORC1 Activators Compared to Young — Horwath — Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle — Wiley Online Library
2. Age-related decline in type II skeletal muscle fiber unless you strength train good enough.
Aging leads to selective type II myofibre deterioration and denervation independent of reinnervative capacity in human skeletal muscle — Horwath — Experimental Physiology — Wiley Online Library
3. Fat loss with or without exercise and outcomes in muscle mass.
Effect of exercise modality and weight loss on changes in muscle and bone quality in older adults with obesity – ScienceDirect
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