lose weight, maintain muscle?

I

imdawrlus

New member
so it all started in january of this year when i went on a diet. i stopped eating all the junk i used to eat and went to the gym every other day religiously. i did cardio and lifted weights when i went to the gym. i would estimate that i ate between 1800 and 2400 calories a day. i do carpentry work full time in the winter so i was active 7-8 hours a day 5 days a week. i lost about 30 pounds in 3 months. i ended up weighing around 205.

for the past 4 or 5 months i've concentrated less on dieting and more on gaining muscle. i would drink a mess of protein shakes every day and would eat more or less like a pig. i gained a good amount of muscle and ended up weighing about 212, where i am now.

so, i'm 21, 6'1'' 212 pounds. i'd like to lose another 30 pounds, maby not as quick as before because i want to maintain muscle mass, but i'd like to end up around 180. i'm active every day for atleast a few hours doing phiscal labor, and i've been going to the gym 2-3 times a week as of lately.

my question is, if i keep up my activity level and keep lifting weights a few times a week, whats the total number of calories i should shoot for a day to lose enough weight and still maintain a good amount of muscle?
 
There's no hard fast rule to doing so.

2 things must be in place for optimum muscle maintenance.

1) Adequate protein
2) Resistance training (heavy, relative to your strength)

After that, there's as many applicable ways of going about things as your can shake a stick at.

Personally, I keep cals around 12 per pound to start. As my weight comes off, my metabolism certainly falls. Once it 'catches up' to that cal intake, I keep slashing cals until I'm down around 9-10 per pound of body weight.

This has always worked well for me.

Another option would be some form/modification of a cyclical diet where you have something like high/med/low days. Or even very low days 3+, followed by refeeds of carbs and cals.

Again, there's a lot of ways to approach it.

The leaner you become, the more tactics you'll have to utilize to maintain the muscle in most cases. Here's a good read on cyclical dieting written by a good friend of mine.




But at the end of the day, make sure you are lifting weights and eating adequate protein.
 
so in the past 3 weeks of my diet i've eaten about 2000-2500 calories a day and i've been going to the gym 2 or 3 times a week and lifting, i've lost 6 pounds. i dont seem to have as much energy as i had, nor do i have as much stgrenth to lift the weights as i did, but the loss of stgrenth came immediately after i started the diet, so it probably has something to do with that, and not as much muscle loss.

sometimes i'll have pretty strong muscle pains in my chest even after i havent lifted for 3 or 4 days, whats that from?
 
just an update.

no more muscle pains, much less 'faint' feeling and pretty good energy level, all with about 2500 cals a day.

in the past 5 weeks i've lost 11 pounds, i'm down to 201, and i've lost only a little bit of lifting capacity...good stuff.
 
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