How to preserve muscle while trying to lose body fat | Peter Attia and Luc van Loon

I quit intermittent fasting. I'm almost 58 ( 6"1', 205lbs on average) and have been doing it for a few years. These gentlemen are correct. I wasn't losing weight, but I didn't gain any either. For a month now I have been eating breakfast around 10:30 am ( protein powder, oats, blueberries and almond milk). I have been consuming 190 grams of protein ( my goal weight) per day and limiting fat and sugar ( not eliminating those two things). I workout with Kettlebells and resistance bands. 40 to 45 minutes of HIIT. I'm slowly gaining muscle mass and as of today, I'm at 195 lbs.

The comment at the end about being sick/hospitalized struck home with me. Im a respiratory therapist in an ICU. I tend to advocate for nutrition being started early on our intubated patients. They wean much better if they dont go multiple days without nutrition.

Gunna start calling fat people overnourished

I'm glad he posted this as an excerpt. I tried to listen to the interview from start to finish, and as bright as human as I am, I felt like I was drowning in all of the medical references that I don't understand. So I simply quit it and went on to a different podcast - health-related, but someone more user-friendly for me as a non-medical background

Fat to muscle proportion is important to know for people that don’t intermittent fast to lose weight. All my data is in the good ranges but I’m trying to lose subcutaneous fat plus maintain and build muscle. The shakes in the morning are a good idea. Thanks docs!

What always made sense to me is keeping a very small calorie deficit from food reduction 200-300 under maintenance. This gets you more macro/micro nutrients. Then to widen the deficit, you use a combo of formal LISS cardio like max 15% incline walking not holding onto the treadmill at least 3x per week, and daily regular walking and NEAT (10-15K steps per day). Consuming more calories and low intensity movement allows you to train harder in the gym and hold on to as much muscle as possible with better recovery. Optimally this is the best strategy for fat loss. The problem is that people tend to be lazy AF and would rather skip any and all cardio with reducing their cals more from food instead.

Over nourished is weird way to say that "you are fat".

🤯 mind blowing, great discussion 🙏

Good info thanks

Your discussions are informative and motivating, thanks for sharing. Why aren't you considering the metabolic state that the body is in when planning the day's routine. My revelation with calorie restriction through intermittent fasting was the surprise of finding out that my body didn't need the calories to perform well during an activity. In the past if my body was in a burning glucose state (non ketogenic) I would get sluggish and drained during an activity when the glucose burned off. I felt the need to snack to keep going. However, when I'm well into a fast I found my activity (cycling) performance didn't diminish, I felt good, and the hunger went down. It's as if my body needs to be in the fasted state for some time to allow for an adaption of ketosis prior to starting an activity. Perhaps switching into ketosis is easily done at night while sleeping because the energy requirements are low and I'm not conscious of it.

If you eat your “required” number of calories per day in a restricted way or non restricted you won’t lose weight. Time restricted feeding really means that you in fact skip a meal and don’t make it up somewhere else.

thank you for addressing this

This does a good job capturing the spirit of the city

Digestable small meal of information, thank you.

Ive been training and experimenting with different training and diets for many years. Ive always been on the lean side naturally so fat hasn't been a big issue for me. I dont over analyze myself or get too into the science, unless my Dr tells me to. Ive found that total caloric intake and the quality of protein and food I take in has produced my best results. For me 3 "main meals" breakfast lunch and dinner, (5am, 12pm, 8pm) small to medium portions of high quality food, lower carb, lean proteins, vegetables. Ive also tried the intermittent fasting, I felt fine but I dont notice a big difference? When I was fasting I felt I was spending too much time planning my meals and thinking about them.. And it was difficult to share meals with friends and family. No fun. I take Protein shakes from time to time mixed in. I resistance train 3 days per week, do some manual labor, and have a pretty active lifestyle. Im strong, muscular, very healthy. If I could change things I would add better quality sleep.

Calorie deficit and macros tracking works just fine. It’s helped me and countless others. For someone who can get very low blood sugars just because I have metabolic efficiency and am active, so I eat. Three meals a day and a snack if I’m still hungry and under the calories for the day. Protein is the priority. What I have observed in practice is that the IF folks tend to eat a more processed diet in the name of “I can eat what I want in this window” and they have metabolic syndrome despite their restriction and we also see a bump in gut dysbiosis in the gen pop when they drop calories too low or restrict types of foods *carbs*.

Well, I can’t dispute the expert’s comment that if you force the same calories into a small window you don’t lose fat, but that’s what worked to crush my A1C number and insulin resistance, so happy about that. I have lost 50 lbs in two years doing Keto/IF. Don’t know about the first 25 lbs, but a body scan at my last physical revealed 23 lbs less fat and 2 lbs less lean mass. Of course,I was a bit disappointed that I lost muscle, but my Dr remarked that independent of type of diet, most people lose more lean mass while losing 25 lbs. I’m actually a bit under my ideal wgt, but while staying in a slightly less strict Keto regime and eating about 350 cals in the am that’s very low carb, I have now lost an additional 1.7% of my body fat while adding 1.9% lean mass since mid-Jan. I also added 4 sessions of resistance training to what previously was just heavy Zone 2 cardio. My aim now is to gain muscle while staying under 15% body fat.

i have a 12-13 hours window of not eating and that is magic for me, intermitent fasting is not only about losing fat or weigh, for me is giving your internal orgams a rest of eating and eating. I fell way better with a 12-13 hours window of no eating and i've been losing fat and gaining muscle.

I was worrying about losing my muscle on calorie restriction diet. Calories restriction is the most potent diet for health and longevity followed by plant-based diet. The downside of that was not getting enough protein that is needed as daily consumption. I’m glad they discussed about this 😊

Personally, when I'm trying to lose a little weight I like to do a single day (36 hour) fast each week and otherwise eat at a slight surplus. As an exanple, if someone is on a 2000 calorie maintenance diet then shoot for 2100 a day and don't eat one day. This drops your weekly calories by 10%, but allows you continue to buld muscle through the week. I find it far easier to stuck to one day and otherwise eat mostly normally. It has been working surprisingly well for me.