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Old 09-03-2007, 11:28 PM
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IronKitten IronKitten is offline
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Join Date: Jul 2007
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Sooo.. 16 pounds in about 3 months..just over a pound loss a week.

Under more normal circumstances, which would be focusing on the fat loss, one would be eating in a caloric deficit. However, being able to improve muscle mass whilst in a caloric deficit, while not being completely impossible, is still very hard to achieve.

Eating at a caloric surplus is of course the primary and most effective method when wanting to increase mass. You need fuel to grow. But along with a caloric surplus, usually comes some fat gain.

Now, the thing is, it IS possible to both eat at a caloric surplus, improve muscle mass, AND drop body fat simultaneously. But the sad fact of that approach is, you must be very accountable with your diet (and it also helps to have already tracked your maintenance levels prior to this in order to better be able to determine your caloric needs for attempting this approach). And even with strict accountability with diet, it's a very slow process. So the amount of muscle you *could* gain during that three month period wouldn't be all that much.

I'd say there's a choice you need to make. Either go into a slight caloric deficit, adding in some or more cardio, and eat and train in order to preserve the muscle you already have while dropping your BF. OR you can go ahead and continue to work on building mass (keeping your diet in check, not just eating everything in sight) and go with a higher weight class for wrestling this year.

If you're mainly just bound and determined to hit 197 for a specific weight class, you also need to keep in mind that if you were to actually hit the 'sweet spot' of simultaneous muscle growth and fat loss, the scale isn't going to move much. Sure, you'd be leaner, but you'd still weigh about the same.

Last edited by IronKitten; 09-04-2007 at 01:32 AM.
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