Am I burning muscle? (Read 2016 times)

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. 

 Wrong at 1200 calories you will be burning muscle.

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.

 So I do both interval training and long slow running is that bad then?

ltsiros:  This is the annoying Jayskydee we`ve been talking about.  Please ignore him.  He is either a troll or a very inexperienced runner trying to come off as someone with knowledge.  The first page of responses have been from serious posters who know much more about running than Jayskydee or myself do (the difference is, I don` try and pretend to know a whole lot)

From what little I know, when a runner who also lifts, loses weight, its mostly fat loss.  His muscles may appear smaller because there is not much fat between the skin and the muscle, and even intramuscular fat.   I know that I have not lost much lifting strength (what little I have) after I started running, even though I am much skinnier now, indicating I have not burned/lost much muscle but just fat.

From what little I know, when a runner who also lifts, loses weight, its mostly fat loss.  His muscles may appear smaller because there is not much fat between the skin and the muscle, and even intramuscular fat.   I know that I have not lost much lifting strength (what little I have) after I started running, even though I am much skinnier now, indicating I have not burned/lost much muscle but just fat.

I would take personally experience over any theory.  And I'm not the one to get sticky with "terminology".  However, you need to differenciate the term "burning muscle (protein)" and "reducing muscle size".  If you don't stimulate, muscle atrophy occurs without any "burning of muscles".  In other words, if you do nothing but sitting around, watching a football game and eating potatochips on couch all day long--or spending all day in front of your computer, trolling around--, you may get big and fat but your muscle size will shrink.  You may take pritein for fuel by 0.2%; you may certainly not be starving; but your muscle size will be sure to get smaller.

I'm actually quite curious about the mechanism of muscle break-down and rebuilding.  You work out--> you break down muscle fibers--> muscle fibers rebuilding--> muscle fibure hypertrophy occurs.  It is believed that the muscle fiber size, and hence muscle power, will increase.  It used to be believed that low reps/high load will increase power and size of the muscle; high reps/low load will increase muscle endurance.  Even back in 1950s, Australia's Percy Cerutty claimed that VERY high load will increase muscle power without increasing the size.  Many thought it was just simply Cerutty's usual coo-coo talk but, interestingly, recently what's his name, Alison Felix's strength training coach, came up with a new theory that, actually, very high load with a few reps will increase strength without increasing the size of muscles (just as Cerutty claimed).  Can anybody confirm this or has anybody actually seen such research done?  Or those body-building and weight lifting society don't want to talk about it because their number one priority is simply bulking up???

 Well he said if you ask which is better that you will never set a fast time, this is surely because he thinks BOTH long slow runs and interval training are useless, why else would he say that people who ask which type of run to do out of those 2 are never going to make it?

Because, you need to do both to be a fast runner. But, long slow runs give you the endurance to maintain high speeds for greater distances.

 Alison Felix's strength training coach, came up with a new theory that, actually, very high load with a few reps will increase strength without increasing the size of muscles (just as Cerutty claimed).  Can anybody confirm this or has anybody actually seen such research done?  Or those body-building and weight lifting society don't want to talk about it because their number one priority is simply bulking up???

I don't know for sure... but presumably  if you want to gain weight of any kind, muscle included, you have to be in calorie surplus. So if you don't eat more that you're burning you won't bulk up.

Of course body builders go out of their way to take protein shakes and the like immediately after training sessions, specifically so that they have the nutrition to build muscles.

Gaining weight and calory intake have nothing to do with building muscle strength.

Right, but part of the question you asked was about increasing the size, as well as strength.