Advise as how not to burn muscle mass

[gzoom]

My body did chomp its muscles in 2012 and it was horrific, but it took a near fatal illness to make that happen.

Agree, no where as bad as your experience, but after falling off the bike a few years ago and breaking a rib I couldn't eat for about a week. My weight absolute plummeted, I was also doing strength work, took me about 4 month to get back to lifting the same weight dumbbells.

 

[gzoom]

Body builders are not strong.
At a subcutaneous level, body builders are actively tearing the muscle to which the body repairs (with protein) thereby increasing in size.
Horrible really.

But you don't need to aim to be a body builder to do upper body workouts to build muscle. I now do more strength workouts than cycling, infact the strength sessions are now approaching 1hr long which is longer than the longest ride I do these days.

There some real benefits to doing upper body strength as you get older. But it does take a long time to feel/see results versus doing a focused 6-8 week session of cardio work to peak your FTP.

It's taken me about 3 years to see a noticeable difference in my arms, but I haven't gone mad with routines and touch wood, have managed to stay injury free. Doing 50 pressups in one go is quite easy now, where as when I first started 10 would kill me.

 

[Jameshow]

Your body chomping its own muscles isn't something that you normally have to worry about when eating and exercising at any sensible level!

My body did chomp its muscles in 2012 and it was horrific, but it took a near fatal illness to make that happen. (I pretty much stopped eating and was bed-ridden for weeks before ending up in hospital. I lost over 20 kg of weight in a month. My legs ended up looking like scrawny arms, and my arms became scarily wasted. I struggled to open a bottle of milk!)

What did you do to rebuild muscle?

Eat lots of protein? Chicken? Beef?

 

[Pinno718]

But you don't need to aim to be a body builder to do upper body workouts to build muscle. I now do more strength workouts than cycling, infact the strength sessions are now approaching 1hr long which is longer than the longest ride I do these days.

There some real benefits to doing upper body strength as you get older. But it does take a long time to feel/see results versus doing a focused 6-8 week session of cardio work to peak your FTP.

It's taken me about 3 years to see a noticeable difference in my arms, but I haven't gone mad with routines and touch wood, have managed to stay injury free. Doing 50 pressups in one go is quite easy now, where as when I first started 10 would kill me.

View attachment 769122

You got the wrong end of the stick.

 

[CXRAndy]

What did you do to rebuild muscle?

Eat lots of protein? Chicken? Beef?

It's suggested to eat 1-1.5g per pound you weigh to sustain and sometimes build muscle mass. Increase to over 2g per pound of weight to build mass through weight training

Meat, chicken, fish, eggs ,protein whey supplements.

 

[Psamathe]

Through this thread people giving calorie numbers - are they talking about "Active Calories" or "Total Calories"?

Ian

 

[ColinJ]

What did you do to rebuild muscle?

Eat lots of protein? Chicken? Beef?

I wasn't very muscular to start with and I still don't have much upper body muscle!

I got my walking/cycling muscles back by first walking, then months later by cycling. It took me over 6 months to increase steadily from a walking range of 5 flat metres to a cycling range of 50+ hilly km. I can't remember how much longer it was for me to get back to 100-150+ hilly km on the bike; maybe another year?

I haven't eaten meat for 40+ years. I just started eating my normal vegetarian diet again. The trauma of the illness shocked me into giving up alcohol. I was able to increase my food intake slightly but still lose a lot of body fat. I had increased my nutritious daily calorie intake but cut out a large number of useless/harmful booze calories.

 

[Binky]

What did you do to rebuild muscle?

Eat lots of protein? Chicken? Beef?

Eat enough and eat enough quality food including sufficient protein. Also use resistance training and on overload principle.
Protein doesn't necessarily need to be from meat based sources, it's possible to obtain all requirements from a plant based diet it just takes a bit more thought to ensure get all requirements. (I'm not vegetarian or vegan but I've read plenty of articles on this).

 

[Dogtrousers]

When I lost all the muscle on one leg (I'd had it in a brace for a couple of months) I just did all of the exercises I was advised to do, some swimming and stuff and so on. Generally I took the rehab seriously and followed advice from medical professionals. I had to be very careful not to stress the knee joint, which was the epicentre of all the trouble.

Anyway, I don't recall that diet was a part of it. I just ate a normal healthy diet and did my exercises.

 

[Pinno718]

When I lost all the muscle on one leg (I'd had it in a brace for a couple of months) I just did all of the exercises I was advised to do, some swimming and stuff and so on. Generally I took the rehab seriously and followed advice from medical professionals. I had to be very careful not to stress the knee joint, which was the epicentre of all the trouble.

Anyway, I don't recall that diet was a part of it. I just ate a normal healthy diet and did my exercises.

The OP is vegetarian and perhaps needs a bit more protein. That's why I suggested whey protein which is easy to digest. I had bi-lateral hip replacements and bi-lateral hip revisions with, at one time, a 2 step revision and no hip for 11 weeks. The muscle loss and muscle wastage was apparent and my overall strength was much diminished.

I took to going to the gym - low weight, working up to high repetitions. The forgotten element is abs and core stability, essential for cycling so an overall regime in blocks or as a long term maintenance schedule is I think, highly beneficial as cycling alone will not provide complete remedial strength after trauma/absence.
I cannot understate the benefits of swimming.
The (metric) guide of protein intake (male*) is 0.8g to 1.8g per kg of body weight. The upper being the amount for a very active physical person.

*Female: 0.6g to 1.6g per kg of bodyweight.

 

[presta]

I think I’m becoming to realise a possible big mistake I’m making on my rides. According to my garmin, I should be drinking roughly what I’m loosing. Trouble is you can’t see what you’re loosing and rely on how thirsty you are. I take two bottles of 500 ml per bottle. Garmin says 60ml per mile🤷‍♂️ I ride 50 miles and only ever drink around 700ml total.
According to garmin I’d need 3,000ml for a 50 mile ride. Who would carry that much fluid? Especially up hill climbs!!

I took 4 litres for a full days ride, and occasionally stopped for more on hot days. I stopped for about 5-10 minutes in every hour, and ate ~250kcal and drank ~500cc.

Velocio's Rules:

Doing 50 pressups in one go is quite easy now, where as when I first started 10 would kill me.

I've never been strong enough to do a single press up. Ever. And yet I'd lift equipment at work that others would shy away from (eg 27kg to shoulder height).

Through this thread people giving calorie numbers - are they talking about "Active Calories" or "Total Calories"?

The ACSM data I keep referring people to is the total consumption for whatever activity. If you want the marginal consumption over and above that for rest or some other sedentary activity such as sitting, you just subtract the figure for one activity from the figure for the other. Your calorie consumption depends on bodyweight, so anyone quoting calories directly without specifying weight is just giving a handwaving generality. The ACSM list METs, consumption per kg of bodyweight: just multiply the METs by your weight.

 

[Dogtrousers]

I cannot understate the benefits of swimming.

Oh yes, I had to do loads of swimming during my rehab.

I really don't like swimming. Boring boring chlorine up your nose. But I did it. That's how committed I was

 

[Psamathe]

I really don't like swimming. Boring boring chlorine up your nose. But I did it. That's how committed I was

I started regular swimming as I have a local Council run pool that's quite cheap and useful during miserable winter days. But 1 hr up and down I found just really boring. Chlorine didn't bother me, just so dull. Ended up stopping 'cos so boring.

Ian

 

[Pinno718]

Boring but very good for early rehab; takes the weight off your body.
You can use a float to do legs only or you can say, do intervals which pushes the lungs. Once you've done enough that it's become boring, then time to move on - it's done it's job.