Becoming my own personal science experiment - Action Hero Fitness

One of the joys of being a personal trainer and fitness professional is the ability to experiment on yourself. It comes down to ?The latest study says X, is it true for this demographic??

In this particular case, I?m discussing the theories put forth by Anoop Balachandran in his blog Exercise Biology. In his blog, Anoop posts the following hypothosis:

It is always said that you need to burn 3500 calories to burn one found of fat. Hence the usual logic is to cut 500 calories per day and you will be losing 1 lb a week. This is called the?3500 calorie per pound?rule. ?

But this never happens in reality.

?He goes on to explain that weight loss is not solely comprised of adipose tissue shrinkage (you never ?lose? adipose tissue (aka fat) the cells just shrink, but that?s another blog post). Anoop puts forth the?hypothesis?that you will also lose lean muscle mass. He provides a calculator so you can enter various values and determine how many calories a day you need to eat to meet your weight loss goal in the time proscribed.

My initial concern was that the calculator only allows for cardiovascular exercise in the?equation. That led me to wonder ?If you engage in strength training to combat lean muscle loss, can you meet the goals without losing lean muscle mass? That question was asked in the comments and the following answer was given:

That is a good point.It?s true that weight training can minimize the muscle loss. I don?t think you can eliminate completely. That?s largely why strength loss is almost inevitable on a diet. How much you would lose would depend on your body fat levels,genetics,diet composition and such. Cardiovascular activities can minimize muscle loss too.

Let me say this, Anoop is very respected (and deservedly so) in the field of Health and Fitness. But I wonder if I would actually lose lean muscle mass? Also, there are some variables that are allowed in the calculation that give me pause. Specifically, I was able to say I wanted to go from 190 ? 145 in 90 days by working out six times a week. The calculator happily told me I could achieve my goals by eating 935 calories a day. I know this is unsafe so I took a different tactic ? 120 days. 4 months. I want to be at my goal weight in 4 months.

This is how I filled out the calculator:

Initial Weight: 190 lbs
Gender: Female
Age: 39 (I?ll be 39 in July)
Height: 65 inches

Estimated Physical Activity Level: 1.70 (4 cardio classes/week)
Baseline Diet: 2618 cal/day

My Goal is to weigh 145lbs in 120 days
I will do this by adding:

• Intense Running for 45 min 3x/week (upping the intensity of my cardio classes from medium intensity to high intensity. I removed the ?medium running? that figured into my current fitness level)
• Medium Running for 45 min 3x/week (this is my strength training. I keep my HR between 135-150 when I weight train, so it?s ?Medium intensity? for me and gives a slight cardiovascular benefit)
• Light Walking for 60 mintues 1x/week (this is my PiYo class. It?s intense in it?s own way but it is a mind body class so I treat it as light walking for the sake of this experiment)

The simulation gave me the following numbers (Actual Measurements in parenthesis) :

Current Body Fat %: 41.5% (39.6%)
Current BMI: 31.6 (31.7)
Current Fat Mass: 78.8 lbs (75.4lbs)
Current Lean Mass: 111.2lbs (114.9lbs)

These numbers are well within the 5% margin of error stated on the site. ?I?m wondering how accurate the scale will be. It says I can reach 145 a lot faster than 120 days (95 days to be precise) by eating 1491 cal/day. It also says my BMI will be 25.4 and my body fat will me 35.2% and I will drop to 98.9 lean muscle mass. I consider this to be ?Skinny fat?.

I am going to see what happens when I adhere to a strict plan of healthy eating to optimize lean muscle mass retention and ensure strength training 3x/week to aid that goal. To what end you may wonder. The goal is simple. By maintaining my lean muscle mass and?bringing?through more adipose storage, I can change my body composition to be under 30% body fat. Ideally I?d like to be 18-20% body fat. I don?t know if I can do it in 120 days, but I?m going to put this calculation to the test and find out how accurate it is.

If you?d like to follow what I?m eating or doing for workout activities, you can follow me on MyFitnessPal?and Fitocracy. I?ll be recording my workouts there.

I?ll also post my measurements and starting numbers on Sunday.

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Tagged as: Adipose tissue, Aerobic exercise, Fitocracy, Muscle, MyFitnessPal, Physical exercise, Strength training, Weight loss

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