Wouldn't it be easier to eat less and workout less?

[protoculture]

I'm thinking here on this...


- If I workout more, then I will eat more, which means I will have to burn off more calories.

- If I workout less, then I will eat less, which means I will have less calories to burn off.

- If I workout less AND restrict calories ( carbs ) I should be able to maintain my muscle without having to do boring f'n cardio. ( I hate it ). Calories ( spare ) will go to maintaining lean muscle mass and shouldn't be ( starved off ). In this way, I accomplish the same as above, with much less effort and much less eating.

I'm happy with my current muscle @ 200 lbs. I recently cut out much carbs and dropped 10 pounds in a month and half.
Seems that with a minimal working out... 10-20 minutes a few days per week is keeping the muscle on me and actually getting
stronger in all movements. Seems I am having better success with this less is more approach.

Your thoughts ladies?

 

[Jiigzz]

The general law of muscle is use it or lose it. Same as bone density etc, you reduce the amount of stress you place on either the muscles or bone then they will demineralize (bone) or atrophy (muscle, and im hoping this is the right word for which I am referring haha).

You say you want to restrict the calories obtained from carbs, are you referring to carb cycling and only intending this as a way to cut? or are you intending to do this for a very long time?

 

[mattrag]

Workout hard for 3 hrs a week go for walks and eat less than you need to maintain your weight.
.45g fat x bw, 1.2g x lbm, carbs fill the rest. Worked for me.

 

[tubbednova]

Im under the impression that when you w/o actually during your recovery days that your building muscle which inturn raising your matab which burns more cals anyway.?more cals burnt=more loss.and a bonus of feeling of a good w/o is priceless!

 

[protoculture]

Yes, I think as more a permanent way to eat. ( carb cycling ), my bodytype tends to store fat easily when eating ( bread, pasta etc ). So at the very least card cycling to cutting out carbs completely on days

 

[Geoforce]

You risk losing LBM when you consume a lower amount of calories (and this is from someone who goes pretty low calories when cutting). If someone has a lot of fat to drop I'd suggest going with a bigger calorie deficit than trying to go with a bigger exercise deficit.

Ideally you should be eating slightly under maintenance and exercising hard to get a bigger deficit. I prefer to attack fat loss from both angles.

 

[MidwestBeast]

I don't think there's anything wrong with scaling exercise back a bit, on occasion. However, as has been mentioned, you lose a plethora of benefits if you simply try to maintain weight by caloric expenditure/intake and no exercise. Sprints and weight-training will elevate your metabolism past the time that you're performing the exercise, you'll release mood-enhancing endorphins, etc.

 

[AutoKal47]

Imho, wrong plan..

First thing that comes to mind is: you want to be in your best shape with the HIGHEST amount of calories
possible. Sounds odd but it's actually pretty logic.
Two are the main reasons, the most important - for me - is that the lower the calories the slowest your metabolism
will get, and when you start to get very lean and you run on very low calories you're stuck. You have no "headroom" to adjust things,
if you start to get weak you won't be able to boost calories without losing some condition, if your metabolism slows down too much
you will need to cut MORE calories in order to stay that lean (note, I said stay not keep losing fat which at that point is gonna be very very hard..)

So is always better, in my experience, to try to be at the BF you wanna be with the highest amount of calories possible,
which means, workout *hard*. Create the deficit thru the workout.

And btw, I've never done a day of cardio in my life. Cardio is not necessary if your workout intensity and length are hardcore.