Those aiming to lose weight may cut down on their calories too much. However, food is fuel for your muscles and not consuming enough calories will force your body to run on an empty tank. If you are cutting excessive calories and also engaging in intensive cardio, you will tend to lose muscle over time.
You'll end up exhausting yourself, feeling lousy and possibly becoming even hungrier due to over-exercising and eating poorly. You might also end up becoming dependent on exercise to burn off the extra kilojoules you eat from junk food.
An unhealthy diet will hinder muscle growth despite training. Poor nutrition can lead to fat gain, inflammation, and recovery issues, making it harder to build muscle. Proper macronutrient balance is essential for muscle repair, energy, and growth. For more, check out my Quora Profile.
Although exercise helps build lean muscle, a poor diet can cause muscle loss. Poor nutrition, especially a lack of sufficient protein in the diet, causes the muscles to break down for energy, preventing the growth of lean muscle and depleting the body's already existing lean muscle stores.
Gaining muscle by eating junk food alone is very difficult to do, if not impossible. While junk food may be high in calories, it typically lacks the nutrients necessary to build muscle protein. The macronutrients required for muscle gain are protein and amino acids.
Lifting and doing strength training without adequate nutrition, especially without enough protein, can actually lead to loss of muscle tissue. Furthermore, if you aren't eating right you won't have the energy to do the workouts that lead to muscle gain.
“People who don't have a nutritious diet are usually still hungry, moody, and won't have the same motivation or drive to exercise,” Derocha said. If you do make it to the gym, those empty calories will make it harder to have a productive workout session.
To shed a single pound, you need to achieve a 3,500 calorie deficit. So if you're following the 80/20 ratio, you'd want to burn approximately 750 calories through exercise and cut an additional 3,000 calories through dieting, says Matheny. That's a total deficit of 3,750 calories for the week.
Gaining weight after working out is likely due to muscle fiber inflammation, muscle glycogen and water weight gain, and over time, muscle mass gain. If weight loss is your goal, seeing an increase on the scale when you've been making an effort to exercise can be frustrating.
If you regularly hit the gym but don't consume adequate protein, your body will struggle to repair and grow muscle tissue effectively. Protein plays a crucial role in muscle growth, recovery, and overall performance.
In one of the largest studies to look at the effects of physical activity and diet quality, researchers found those who regularly exercised but ate anything they wanted were at greater risk of mortality compared with people who both exercised and made healthy dietary choices.
When we continuously eat less and exercise more, our metabolism actually slows down. One good way to think about this is, your body recognizes it is getting limited calories and has to keep up with a high demand via intense exercise and learns to use fewer calories to perform the same functions.
There are other terms for this, such as build mode, but bulking is a common term for this caloric surplus. Dirty bulking is when an individual is in a caloric surplus to build muscle (build mode). However, the individual is eating foods that are carb dense, unhealthy, and ultra-processed out of convenience.
Symptoms and warning signs of overtraining
“It's natural and expected to feel fatigued after challenging training sessions,” Dr. Goolsby says. “But feeling like you aren't recovering between sessions or experiencing overall fatigue and difficulty pushing yourself during workouts can be indicators of overtraining.”
“Per unit volume, muscle weighs more than fat, so shedding fat and gaining muscle may not immediately change the scale but will result in changes in shape, tone, and measurements,” says McGowan. In other words, you may look leaner as you build muscle and lose fat, but you may actually start to weigh more.
Diet vs exercise for weight loss
According to Colleen Alrutz, health and fitness manager at Piedmont Newnan, diet wins 70% of the time when it comes to shedding pounds. To fast-track your weight-loss results, couple a healthy diet with regular physical activity. Exercise wins when it comes to keeping the weight off.
80% healthy, whole foods, and 20% for fun, less-nutritious treats. The key is consistency over time, not perfection at every meal. So, if one day you have a pizza, no big deal—just aim to get back on track with your next meal.
Scientists have proven it over and over. But running off the caramel slice that you ate for breakfast won't work. According to a study led by the University of Sydney, high levels of exercise won't cancel the harmful effects a poor diet has on your health and risk of death.
Follow your workouts with a cool-down, such as walking or jogging at a slow pace, for at least two minutes after each cardio workout. Cool-downs: Prevent your heart rate and blood pressure from dropping suddenly. Get your blood flowing normally again; otherwise, you may experience dizziness or fainting.