Learn why you might be losing muscle without realizing it even when you’re trying to improve your health and simple steps to protect your strength

Are You Losing Muscle Without Realizing It? Here’s How to Protect It

You might be losing muscle without realizing it even when you’re trying to improve your health because if resources are low, Mother Nature borrows from “Peter” to pay “Paul”

So you’re lifting weights…………..

Maybe it is something you’ve always done, maybe you’re a complete newbie or maybe you’re getting a little professional support working a broken muscle or two.

I want to celebrate you.

But before we get out the pom poms and do a happy dance, I have a question…..

Are you eating ENOUGH protein to support this muscle work ?

It takes resources

Building muscle is HARD work.  Not just on the outside, but on the inside too. It requires a lot of resources to get the little satellite cells dividing and integrating into those muscle fibers and when supplies are low, something has to give.

And it turns out, the something is muscle.

Not the muscle that is doing all the work, the body “knows’ in this moment, this muscle is needed for you to survive and thrive, so it borrows from Peter to pay Paul. Since in the big picture of things, the working muscle’s energy requirement, must be priority.

Use it or lose it

The muscle that is lost is the muscle that it doing NOTHING.

Yes, the old adage of USE it or LOSE it really is true.

This all came to light when a team of researchers based in Denmark, exploited new technology and AI and took  a more whole body view of muscle building, instead of just studying the working muscles, they looked at ALL the muscles.

New Research Sheds Light on Muscle Building

They signed up 28 leg muscles and 2 arm muscles for a 10 week muscle building program.   The owners of the muscles were all young and healthy (11 boys, 10 girls) but they had never hit the gym to LIFT HEAVY.

So it was a little nerve wracking….

NOTE :  The lady muscles were taking a fixed dose oral contraceptive throughout the program to keep the hormone levels more BALANCED, so the changes in muscle volume weren’t impacted by the HORMONE ROLLERCOASTER.   

The not so balanced training programme

Now the team deliberately designed their program to be UNBALANCED.

Something that would never be recommended by a gym trainer, although it does happen when injured muscles are involved in training.

The training program targeted

• the elbow flexors and extensors (using dumbbells)
• the knee extensors and flexors (using a gym machine)

The UNBALANCED left whole muscle groups twiddling their thumbs at the gym, whilst others worked in earnest.

PS.  In addition, in this study, the muscles on the left side of the body had a different exercise load to those on the right hand side.

Participants scoffed down a protein shake on training days, but outside of this, they could eat ANYTHING (ad libitum), the only requirement TELL the research team ABOUT IT.

So what happened…….

Well over all everyone got more muscle, although the extent of the gains showed inter-individual variability.

The overall gain is reflected by the grey bar.  Some people really bulked up, while others, the overall gain was marginal. Condolences to participant number 20 and 21.   In both these individuals  the gains (reflected by the green bars)  were virtually wiped out by the lost muscle (reflected by the blue bars).

Total hypertrophy (green bars), total atrophy (blue bars), and net muscle growth (gray bars) per individual (1–21). Net muscle growth is calculated as the sum of total hypertrophy and total atrophy © 2024 by the American College of Sports Medicine

NOTE :  This data is only showing what happened to the muscles on the left hand side of the body.

Can you lose muscle whilst training ?

This research proves it’s POSSIBLE and probably pretty common.  A detailed analysis of the muscle volumes, showed the muscle slipping into oblivion,  was the muscle not being targeted by the training.

Resistance training–induced changes in muscle volume per individual muscle after 10wk of single-joint resistance training. Black bars indicate the primary recruited muscles; gray bars, the secondary recruited muscles; and white bars, the nonrecruited muscles.  © 2024 by the American College of Sports Medicine

So lesson number one from this study………………

Don’t play favorites.

Try to give all muscles a workout.

But why did some people lose so much ?

Our team suspected it had to do with resources, remember building muscle is HARD work.  It requires biochemical energy and building blocks.  So they plotted muscle growth against energy and protein intake.

The energy intake result was all over the place – suggesting calorie intake was not a BIG factor.

Relationship between mean daily energy and  net muscle growth. © 2024 by the American College of Sports Medicine

But when they honed in on protein intake a definite pattern.

Relationship between mean protein intake and net muscle growth. © 2024 by the American College of Sports Medicine

People consuming more protein per day, ended up with more muscle growth over all. And, the protein intake was the differentiator in terms of muscle disappearing.  People eating less, particularly less protein per day were far more likely to lose muscle volume.

So lesson number two…………

Muscle loss is more likely to happen when you’re not eating ENOUGH.

Calories and protein, but especially protein.

How much is “enough” ?

Official guidelines recommend that you should aim for  0.8 g of protein for every kilogram of you (shown by the dotted blue line).  This data suggests that  number if often not enough if you are lifting weights.

Relationship between mean protein intake and the changes in total muscle volume of the nonrecruited muscles. © 2024 by the American College of Sports Medicine

From this study, the threshold needs to be higher, for most people a number around 1.2 is sufficient.  Interestingly, this is the number typically recommended for oldies. (The reason, as you age, you suffer from a problem called anabolic resistance i.e. you’re just not as good at building muscle.

Protein maths

So what does it look like in plain English ?  If you weigh 65 kg, you should be pushing for  at least 65 g of protein a day, preferably across the day not all in one go with dinner.

NOTE : If you are worried about eating TOO MUCH protein, a diet is considered high protein and potentially problematic at the 1.5 g/kg/day level.  

Dieters BEWARE !

If you are cutting your calories  and lifting weights in the interests of losing weight,  this research shows your muscles are vulnerable.

Prioritize getting enough protein to protect them.

This is what I recommend in the CANDY FLOSS SYSTEM, which gives you tools and strategies to tame your sugar gremlin by improving your insulin sensitivity : so you create BETTER BODY CHEMISTRY and BETTER HEALTH.

Further reading

The Shocking Truth About Post-Meal Amino Acid Levels for the Metabolically Challenged 

Want to discover more ways to create BETTER BODY CHEMISTRY ?