Group: General Fitness & Exercise

Created: 2011/12/31, Members: 382, Messages: 54581

Various general exercise related discussions. Find out what it takes to reach your fitness goals through daily effective exercise. With so many options we try to find out what works best.

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Gaining muscle and losing weight

elpea120
elpea120
Posts: 69
Joined: 2006/12/17
United States
2007/08/06, 12:39 PM
Soon i am going to start cross country running. After lots of research and stuff i have concluded that it is very hard to lose fat, and gain muscle while running 5 to 6 days a week. Obviously to gain weight you need as many calories as possible, and to lose weight it is quite the opposite. And on top of that ive heard that running long distance actually depletes muscle. So is gaining muscle and losing weight at the same time even possible? Is there like a compromise? Ive been wrapping my head around this concept for some time now.
elpea120
elpea120
Posts: 69
Joined: 2006/12/17
United States
2007/08/06, 12:42 PM
i mean " obviously to gain MUSCLE weight you need as many calories as possible"
elpea120
elpea120
Posts: 69
Joined: 2006/12/17
United States
2007/08/06, 01:02 PM
ok....i meant "obviously to gain muscle weight you need as many calories as possible. and to lose FAT weight it is quite the opposite." They should really have an edit button on this forum....
healthyhome
healthyhome
Posts: 3
Joined: 2007/08/20
United States
2007/08/21, 11:59 AM
I would say that is wrong you need Protein to gain muscle.
And Muscle will burn fat faster.
I use a couple products for this like protein shakes and exercise bars.
ecle5c
ecle5c
Posts: 1,312
Joined: 2003/07/10
United States
2007/08/21, 03:11 PM
No, I don't think you can gain much muscle with endurance based running 5-6 days per week. I'd focus more on cutting down and losing body fat. When the season is over hit the weights hard.

That doesn't mean that you shouldn't lift though. Lifting will help you keep the muscle you already have.