Muscle "Loss"

C

crackpot

New member
Hi,

I have a question about muscle loss when dieting. If someone goes on a long term very low calorie diet eg. less than 800 a day, they will lose a lot of muscle. Right? So, is the muscle really "lost" or does it just get smaller, just like how fat cells will get smaller, or empty, without actually decreasing in number? When people say that the body breaks down the muscle to supply the body with the energy it needs to survive, is it really destroying that muscle? And if so, when the same person decides to start eating and exercising properly after years of starving, can they grow/develop "new" muscle, or only work with what they have left?

By the way, I'm not saying this is anything I have done. I've never had any eating disorders (love food too much lol). Just curious.
 
Muscle is actually lost. You can build it back up and you can even build it back up after years of "starvation" ... but at some point muscle does become too damaged to restore fully.
 
possible. the number of muscle fibers in your body is determined by genetics. so you have x many of fast twitch, and x many of slow twitch, etc. this number will not increase. you're stuck with it. this is why not everyone can become an Olympic athelete, someone can be more genetically blessed to go beyond what others can through better muscle types for suited activities and more numbers of fibers. what you can do however is take your existing fibers and grow them. And alternately you can take your existing fibers and shrink them through starvation.

I do not however know that if a fiber is starved to far that it becomes dead.
 
Hi,

Thankyou both for the replies.

So, if the number of muscle fibers are all ready set, then no matter how hard you work they will only get bigger in size but not in number. Kinda sucks really, especially when you have a set number of fat cells, so even when you diet they don't go anywhere, but if you become really obese the body creates new fat cells. Evolution and genetics seem to want to keep us fat. :piggy:
 
Evolution and genetics seem to want to keep us fat.
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To some degree yes. :) Keep in mind that the way we live now, where most people (or at least most people in the western world) have easy access to food (and to fattening food at that) is a relatively new stage in human existence.

Prior to this, for hundreds of generations and going back thousands of years, humans lived in environments where there was never any guarantee of having food. So for thousands of years the ability to store fat was a GOOD thing - because you never knew when your next meal was coming from. :)

It's only in the last 50-100 years that those circumstances have changed for most people. But it takes us longer than 50-100 years to adapt to the new circumstances.
 
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