Am I burning muscle? (Read 2016 times)

Is this jayskydee posting with another screen name?

Hi everyone! Thanks for reading.

 

I have been running for some time being overweight; now I lost some 45 pounds and running is so much easier I HAVE to recommend losing weight to everyone out there

 

I'm still on my final weeks of weight loss (consuming some 1200 calories a day). In addition to running, I am doing weight training at the gym and playing football (soccer). I run 10K on Sundays.

 

What I wanted to know is if running these 10K can make me burn muscle in addition to fat. I have been told this and want to know if it is an urban myth or if it is true. How can I counter it?

 

Cheers,

 

Luciano

 Dude the people on here know fuck all about nutrion, good luck getting anyone one here who knows which of the various scales used is the closet to the correct one for recomended calorie intake. But I do know that 1.2 K is very low for any one let alone someone doing those distances.

I can now also post in this thread.

ANYWAY.  No, I think Luciano is a different person from junior just based on command of the English language (Queen's or otherwise).

LOL. I am not a native English speaker, so I might make mistakes here and there.

Luciano, it is ok.  Your English (as not a native speaker) is much more understandable than jay's.  Really.  My comment was about his wording, not yours :-).

I wish I could provide you with meaningful input to your question.  There IS the idea of ketosis (google "why do my clothes smell like ammonia") and your intake is very low.

Really sorry I made the mistake of thinking you could be jayskydee.  Your English is fine.

I also apologize.  I didnt even bother responding because I had also questioned it. 

It really depends in part on what kind of food you are eating and when you are eating it in relation to your exercise and the intensity of your workouts.  The body does not typically burn muscle for fuel given other alternatives. So short answer no, not significantly.  The body will burn carbohydrate and fat for energy primarily.

There is a lot of hype, especially on weightlifting sites about running causing muscle wasting that is VASTLY overblown. Some muscle catabolism occurs as part of the teardown rebuild process, but it typically is not a significant process in terms of muscle mass.

You are doing weight training, you are on a diet under a doctors care.  Presumably your doctor is aware of your activity level and is taking that into account while setting your calorie level.

MTA: if it makes you feel any better a few years ago I lost ~ 60 lbs while running probably an average of 30-40 miles a week and doing no significant resistance training.  I was eating more than you are, but I also had this little calorie sucking machine called a nursing baby.  I did not lose any muscle through the process. 

Hi everyone! Thanks for reading.

 

I have been running for some time being overweight; now I lost some 45 pounds and running is so much easier I HAVE to recommend losing weight to everyone out there

 

I'm still on my final weeks of weight loss (consuming some 1200 calories a day). In addition to running, I am doing weight training at the gym and playing football (soccer). I run 10K on Sundays.

 

What I wanted to know is if running these 10K can make me burn muscle in addition to fat. I have been told this and want to know if it is an urban myth or if it is true. How can I counter it?

 

Cheers,

 

Luciano

Actually this may not be as bogus as it may appear.  My question to you is; have you experienced anything that may have led you to believe that you are "burning", or perhaps more accurately, deteriorating muscles? 

Most probably, "burning muscles" is not the right way to put it.  As an energy source, muscle, or protein, is the last one to be used.  When exercising, your body picks the easiest and most efficient energy source to burn first.  In the first few minutes, it would be fat; as you can easily imagine, fat starts to burn easiest.  However, fat requires quite a bit of oxygen--almost twice as much as with carb--in order to "burn".  Carbohydrate is the most efficient energy source so, once fat gets your body to start working out, carbohydrate takes over and provide energy to exercise.  Some on here might argue that, for a long distance runing, fat would be the primary energy source.  Well, it is, unless the intensity is demanding enough.  Far too many people misunderstand this process; in general, the term "hitting the wall" in the marathon is when your body depletes carbohydrate and has to switch to fat.  As I said earlier, fat requires a lot more oxygen to produce energy so, if your body is not used to this "swtich", it "hits the wall--or struggles.  This may not happen if you're running so slow that it may take 5 or 6 or 7 hours.  If you're running the marathon slow, "hitting the wall" may not be due to depletion of carbohydrate.  If so, ultra guys will hit the wall several times over.

When all this is done--in other words, when your body uses up all the stored carbohydrate and fat, then the body will start burning muscles.  It could happen to people who are lost in the mountain or the ocean; POW in a concentration camp; or possibly people who would undergo some very stranuous ultra marathon race.  Certainly, not by running a 10k on Sunday.

However, this said, you MAY experience atrophy of muscles if you don't maintain whatever the muscle strength exercise you have been doing.  Some of you may remember this famous research; that when a person stops training for distance running, his/her vertical jump increased without specifically trains for it.  In other words, distance running training MAY weaken muscle power.  But if any of those body-building website claims that distance runing "burns muscles", then they have no idea of physiology (and this is why I never read their sites--some of them (a lot of them) are quite rediculous). 

Performing well in middle distance and distance events is always a fine balance.  Anybody who asks a question of; "Which training is better; long slow running or intervals?" will most likely NEVER excell in middle distance and distance running events.  I'm talking about performing; not just crawling or surviving a marathon.

Hope this had clafiried some of your confusion.