Q&A - How Fast Do You Really Lose Muscle? (Plus Bigger Glutes, Creatine, & More) | Ep 483
How long can you stop training before your muscle starts to disappear?
Most people take a week off, see that their muscles look a little deflated in the mirror, and assume the worst. The real answer is far more reassuring, and it is not what most lifters over 40 have learned.
These questions all came from members inside my Eat More Lift Heavy community, people serious about strength training over 40.
Here are the 6 questions I'm answering (shoutouts to EMLH members!):
Tim E. - How long can you rest between reps before it counts as a separate set? (resting 2-3 seconds between squat reps, and 10 seconds between deadlifts)
Ajana B. - When she eventually hits perimenopause, what effect will it have given she's already built a foundation of strength training and whole-food eating?
Denise M. - Is creatine a benefit while doing Eat More Lift Heavy, and is there a better time to take it?
Desiree F. and JC - Best exercises to grow glutes, how often, and how many sets/reps (Desiree), plus how to grow glutes without the quads taking over or getting too muscular (JC)
JC - On a 0-10 scale, how important is eating protein right after lifting, and what stalls if you don't? (she now trains after dinner around 7:30-8pm)
JC - How many days of not working out before you start losing your gains?
Join Eat More Lift Heavy, the 26-week coached program where adults over 40 build the nutrition and training skills to preserve muscle, lose fat, and manage their physique for life:
https://eatmoreliftheavy.com
Wits & Weights is the evidence-based podcast for strength training over 40, body recomposition, muscle and longevity, fat loss over 40, and healthy aging. Hosted by Philip Pape, creator of Eat More Lift Heavy and Fitness Lab.
Timestamps
0:00 - 6 questions being answered today
2:22 - Resting between reps (when does a set count as 2 sets?)
7:04 - What perimenopause does to muscle and bone, and what protects it
12:17 - Why the scale jumps when you start creatine
16:19 - Building a strong physique without bulking up
19:17 - Bigger glutes without bigger quads (muscle specialization)
27:47 - Does protein after a workout (the anabolic window) matter as much as you think?
31:21 - How fast you really lose muscle, and the minimum to keep it
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6 questions being answered today
Philip Pape 0:00
It's been a while, but today we have another QA. Today's questions all come from our members inside Eat More Lift Heavy. And there's some really good ones, such as how long can you rest between reps before it counts as a separate set? Why does the scale jump when you start creatine? How do you grow your glutes without your quads becoming the dominant muscle group? And how fast you actually lose gains when life gets in the way. I'm answering all of these as always with evidence. And I think a few of the answers are going to surprise you, so stick around and enjoy today's QA. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, Philip Pape, founder of Fitness Lab and the Eat More Lift Heavy program. And today is a special one because a few weeks back I asked members in that program to send me their questions, the bigger ones, the science questions, the trends, the stuff they're always wondering about, but never had an answer to. They often get these questions just day to day in the program as well as on our monthly coaching calls. But I specifically asked for some additional questions from them. By the way, if you want to send a question for the podcast anytime, go to wits and waste.com/slash question. Many of your questions actually turn out it turn into full episodes as opposed to a Q ⁇ A. But today I wanted to take multiple questions and answer them. So that's what I'm doing today. I'm giving them shout-outs, that kind of thing. And if even if you're not in that program, I definitely want you to stick around because these are very relevant questions about resting between reps, creatine, glute training, perimenopause, the anabolic window, losing your gains. And if you lift, if you eat food, which we all do, uh if you're over 40, several of these are probably gonna be highly relevant for you. And then I save the best one for last. I want you to stick around to the end because the last question, someone, the last question is something that a lot of people get wrong and causes, I'll say, the most unnecessary panic. And that is how fast you lose your gains when life gets in the way and you can't train. It's one of the most common questions I get. Hey, I'm going on a trip. Hey, I'm gonna have surgery, hey, I'm taking a break. Hey, it's been a while since X, Y, Z. How big of an issue is that? And I think it's a very reassuring answer. And I'm gonna give you the minimum that you need to hold on to muscle, and we're gonna look at the evidence. I think that's a good one. So we'll close out the episode, but let's get into the questions.
Resting between reps (when does a set count as 2 sets?)
Philip Pape 2:22
All right, the first question comes from Tim E. And Tim asks, and I I love this one because it's the kind of thing you think about as you're training, and then you forget to kind of look it up. So he says, How long can you rest between reps before it becomes a separate set? Now he's doing squats, especially that third set, and he's resting two or three seconds between reps to catch his breath, and he wants to know if that's okay. And we see this with heavy work. We see this with, for example, deadlifts. It gets confounded by the fact that people have trouble knowing how and when to breathe and brace very often. Again, that's something we teach you to do. So it all is connected. But the short answer answer for Tim is that it's totally fine for a few seconds to take a breath, and that's it. That's the short answer. But I want to explain why, because there's real science here. There's a whole, there are entire training methods built around deliberately resting inside a set. So inside a set, like Tim is asking. You've got cluster sets where you break the set into little groups of reps with short rests in between. You might have heard the phrase density sets as well. You've got rest pause where you go to near failure, you stop, you take a few breaths, then you squeeze out a few more. You in in both of those, the rest is usually around 15 to 30 seconds. That's where you've restored enough that, say, your bar speed comes back and your fatigue drops. So when a coach wants to intentionally build rest into a set, that's the kind of pause that they're using. You might have heard of the dog crap method, the same idea. It's like 15 to 30 seconds. If you've ever done BFR, same thing there. So two or three seconds, Tim, just to breathe and rebrace, obviously it's nowhere close to that 15 to 30 seconds. That's actually totally normal. That's just lifting. In fact, that's good lifting in many cases because sometimes you do need that to get reset in that brief moment. We see the same thing with the deadlift. Whether you're breathing at the top or bottom, these days I tend to recommend breathing at the top. But what the, you know, when I looked into the research, there is a meta-analysis. So meta-analysis is a study of studies. This was 29 studies that compared these broken up set styles to traditional straight sets. And when you match the volume and effort, the muscle growth is identical. The strength is identical. So even if you rested long enough to technically split the set, it actually wouldn't hurt your results as long as you're getting the work in. The micro rest, if you want to call it that, is not what really matters. It's the total quality reps. Now we've talked about training close to failure and mechanical tension and all that. That's kind of where the thought is. I'm less and less of a stickler about, you know, even the number of sets, for example, or reps, if you're getting the similar effort is. I think more importantly, is can you objectively measure it and track it session to session so that you're not just all over the place? And then Tim mentioned in the thread in our program where he asked the question that some people rest like 10 seconds between deadlifts and wonder if that's too long. And my take is that on that is, you know, taking 10 seconds to reset your breath, rebrace, get your setup right is probably on the upper end, but it's not quote unquote too long per se, especially if you're doing extremely heavy reps. I mean, we're not trying to let's take ego out of it. Let's take, you know, critics from different groups or philosophies, whether it's starting strength or other, and just think of the what you're trying to do. Well, you're trying to lift the weight with good form and you're trying to get the mechanical tension, you're trying to recruit all those muscle fibers. So if you take a few seconds to get braced properly and it helps you do that, so what? Okay, so what? I mean, if you were in a competition, you're only going to do a single anyway. So on the big compound lifts, squats, deadlifts, especially, breathing and rebracing, like if you're wearing a belt and you really fill that up, that interabdominal pressure between reps is a very good technique. So with a squat, that's where it's on your back. Now I don't want you sitting there for 15, 20, 30 seconds and taking forever and shifting around and all of that. I just want you to, you know, take that breath, get braced, go down. It really shouldn't take more than two or three, maybe at most four seconds if you're really heavy and getting a little bit winded. Now, improving your work capacity, because you know, having slightly better conditioning through things like speed work or just a decent amount of volume probably will make it such that you don't need as much time. But there is a difference between like the respiration you need and the support you need through a big breath. So I wouldn't overthink it. Tim, you you're doing that, was a lot to answer your question, which I basically answered at the beginning, but I wanted people to understand the full context. So that is the rest between reps question.
What perimenopause does to muscle and bone, and what protects it
Philip Pape 7:04
I wouldn't overthink it. And that's it. So moving on to the second question is from Ajana B. And this is a really good, I'll say forward-looking question, trying to be proactive. She says that she's strength training and eating whole foods right now. And she's wondering when she eventually hits the perimenopausal stage, what effect that's going to have on her, given that she's built this foundation of good habits and fitness. And I do love this question. I think you're thinking ahead and probably hearing a lot of things online or social media, or, you know, there's a lot of fear-mongering as well about around perimenopause, which is the period that could last several decades for some women. Some women, it's a lot shorter than that. But what's actually happening during that transition, starting as early as, say, your mid-30s, for many women, it's in more like their mid-40s before they get to the menopause transition, usually around 50 or a little after that, estrogen starts to decline. It gets a little bit more volatile, a little bit more erratic. And estrogen has an important, you know, stimulus in the body. It supports your muscle stem cells. Those are the cells that repair and build muscle. Estrogen supports your bone. It helps, you know. So when we hear about osteoporosis being more of an issue for women, that's why. It helps keep fat in the lower body so that the like the more hip and thigh pattern instead of the abdominal fat around the organs. So as estrogen drops, you tend to see on average accelerated muscle loss, accelerated bone loss. Women can lose somewhere in the range of one to two percent of bone density a year in that transition. And there's a shift toward more visceral fat and a little drop in insulin sensitivity. And then sleep is often getting disrupted. That affects your recovery. Your lifestyle tends to be more stressful and more difficult on all these things as well. And you know, it sounds kind of grim when I say it that way. And honestly, the whole industry is built on selling against that fear. But what's really fascinating and empowering about this, and this is how we're gonna reframe this. I'm a big fan of reframing, not delusion, but literally just looking at it from the productive angle that's gonna help you. Every single one of those changes I mentioned above is directly opposed to what you are already doing in our program and what we talk about on this show for that everyone should be doing. And we also think there's a lot of confounding evidence in the in the literature that these things aren't necessarily caused by perimenopause and the hormone changes per se. They're just correlated with many other things happening during that time of life that believe it or not, some of those things happen to men as well, like the muscle loss and the drop in bone density, which gives us even more evidence that you can control counteracting that with your lifestyle. So lifting and lifting heavy, and again, heavy is a relative term. When I say heavy, I simply mean heavy enough for you to make progressive, to progressively overload, to hit the mechanical tension. That is the single best stimulus we have, stimulus we have to keep muscle and to keep bone, because mechanical load is what tells your bones we need to stay dense, have that dense matrix. Adequate protein fights the muscle loss. You know, eating whole foods, staying relatively lean without too much body fat, that keeps visceral fat low. It helps with your insulin sensitivity. Obviously, muscle helps with all of this as well. So you're not starting from zero already, AJ, because you're doing so many great things and getting ready for that. You are actually going to be in a better position, a better starting position. Kind of like when someone has surgery and they've been lifting for a year. Now they're super strong, they're in a much better position to recover. Well, going into perimenopause, you're already way ahead of the game. And by the way, anyone listening who hasn't started, today's the best day to start. And you can reverse things, you can enhance things, you can build muscle till any age, till your 80s and 90s. And so if you're already doing it, well, of course you have a head start with more muscle, denser bone, better insulin sensitivity, habits that are more automatic, or I should say behaviors that are automatic with a series of habits that you've developed. So a woman who's built that foundation would have a different experience than a woman who is trying to do it for the first time when they're say 50 years old while dealing with other symptoms like hot flashes, bad sleep, and so on. So it kind of makes sense, right? But what do you actually have to adjust when you get to perimenopause? Well, honestly, not much. That's the good news. You keep lifting heavy, you don't back off on the intensity. That's, I guess, a lot of women have that instinct where they start to hear that you need to change things like uh how you eat, or you have to cut carbs or intermittent fast or something ridiculous like that. That's often counterproductive. You tend to have to eat more, a little bit more protein because of a little more anabolic resistance. You know, you supplements like creatine are helpful. We're going to talk about creatine later in this episode on the very next question. You know, you still want to get plenty of sleep, if not more sleep. You want to ramp your training appropriately, depending on what phase you're in, how much energy you have coming in, because your recovery might be more sensitive. Maybe your bones and joints, you know, take a little more stress. So you just have to be aware of it and have good form. And I know you've been asking about form in the community as well. So, bottom line, the foundation you're building right now is the best perimenopause insurance policy you could possibly have. Keep doing what you're doing. And for all those listening, I hope that inspires you to get on it today.
Why the scale jumps when you start creatine
Philip Pape 12:17
All right. The next question, question three, is about creatine. We love creatine. So Denise M asked, and then and then a few others piled on, is creatine a benefit? She said specifically, is creatine a benefit while doing eat more lift heavy? And if so, is there a better time to take it anytime during the day or around the workout? Short answer yes, creatine is one of the few supplements I'll recommend across the board. When you get to, I forget which week of the program, it's like week 16. There's a tool that I've developed that helps identify all the supplements that would be a good idea based on your specific situation. And creatine is going to be on everybody's list. I'll be honest, it's just gonna be there by default because it's good for anybody. I want to break down the how though. So dosage, very simple, five grams a day of creatine monohydrate. That is it. You don't have to do a loading phase. You don't have you can take it with anything at any time. In fact, I'll just mention timing real quiz real quick because she asked about that specifically. Denise did. It doesn't matter. Daily consistency matters more than when you take it. There, there has been a tiny bit of research that hints that post-workout has like some microscopic edge over pre-workout, but it's so small, it's probably not actually meaningful, let's just say. So take it whenever you actually remember to take it. Like I will take it, I tend to take it post-workout on my training days or with my lunch. Like, I have a mix that I take with lunch so that I could take all my supplements and whatnot on my recovery days. So whatever it works. You know, people have talked about like caffeine and should you take it in hot beverages? Is that gonna hurt it? No, just take five grams a day. There is some evidence that higher levels of creatine might have cognitive benefits. I don't want to overstate that until we know more, but some people have asked about that. I tend to take somewhere like 10 to 15 a day just uh for a little extra boost. It's gonna get metabolized and excreted anyway. And when you start taking creatine, this is the thing that freaks most people out. So to all my members and eat more lift heavy, you know, you've heard you've heard this before, but to everybody listening, when you start creatine, the scale is going to go up almost inevitably. Of very few people have I seen it not happen to. For most people, it's gonna go up like two to four pounds. Now, if you load it, like the old days, like if you take, if you take the loading phase, you might go up even more, but there's no need to load it. So two to four pounds, it's not fat. It's water being pulled into your muscle cells and muscle cells, and that's what you want. That's a sign that it's actually working. Your muscles are fuller, they're better hydrated, they function better. That's why you get a few extra reps in the gym when you take creatine, you get more performance and more results. So when you see that first, that bump in the first week or two, be like, okay, yeah, good, good thing. That means the creatine's working. I'm getting more muscle water. And, you know, for a lot of people, it actually looks better. It doesn't look bloated or puffy like some myths have held over the years. It often looks better. But you have to account for that, which is why I prefer taking creatine when you're at maintenance, so you can just allow for that bump to kind of normalize. If you're tracking with something like Macrofactor, it might interpret it as a drop in expenditure temporarily, but then it comes back. And then when we talk about, okay, is creatine even more helpful for older folks, especially women over 40 than for younger folks, younger guys, whatever. Women have lower creatine stores to begin with. And I found a two-year randomized control trial, okay, RCTs, we we love randomized controlled trials with humans. And these were postmenopausal women, average age of 59, where creatine combined with resistance training helped maintain bone strength at the hip, the femoral neck, the femoral neck of the hip, which is the part that's very, very important for fracture risk. So they weren't looking at bone, not just muscle, which is very interesting. So take take take for that what it is. Feel free to look up the evidence yourself. I haven't really deep dived into that aspect, but if you're anybody, if you're a woman who lifting through perimenopause, menopause, creatine is definitely going to be helpful for you. Nobody should shy away from it unless they're, for example, allergic to it, which is very, very rare. Five grams a day, easy peasy, lemon squeezy as they
Building a strong physique without bulking up
Philip Pape 16:19
say. So I think this is a good place for me to mention something because all of the questions today came from inside Eat More Lift Heavy. And I just want to explain what that is, real quick, for folks who are curious. It is my 26-week coached program. We have another coach in the program, Coach Carol. She's amazing. She's a women's and hormone and thyroid expert who's also really good with like recipes and meals and nutrition. And she actually jumped into the comment thread to talk a lot about the glute training, which we're gonna talk about in a little bit. That's actually the next question. But about the program, it's not a meal plan and a workout. It is a 26-week program where every week you learn a skill and you develop the skills over time, and then we have you apply those skills and we give you feedback. So it's across three phases. The first one is called stop guessing, where we get your nutrition and training dialed in with the right level of tracking and measurement for you. And I know if tracking people are like, oh, tracking, just note that we make it flexible enough that it works for you and we get you, you know, uh seeing the results of the tracking and how they help you make better decisions. And everybody who comes through tends to, I shouldn't say everybody, but almost everybody who comes through tends to realize, oh my gosh, this is what I've been missing. It's actually not that hard and doesn't take much time at all to track these things, but I get tremendous benefit from it. And we show you what tools to use, how to use them, how to interpret the numbers. That's the first phase. The second phase we call eat more lift heavy. That's where you really just focus on building that muscle, that metabolic capacity, that that just great lifestyle and health for movement and training and eating that will pay off long term. And then the final phase we call trust yourself. You learn to run your own, I'll say your own physique, but basically you're learning to be more autonomous and independent with a lot more advanced tools that we give you, as well as things that you can use on your own. So you can make the decisions and then you can get us to help you with the feedback on that. And that last phase is the whole point because I don't want you to be dependent. I want you to know how your body works, why it works the way it does, how to gain and lose body fat, how to build muscle, how to measure it all successfully. And then you're kind of off on your own, or you go to the next phase and keep leveling it up from there. So the reason these questions today are so good from our members in EM in Eat More Lift Heavy is, you know, they've gone past the basics and they're asking deeper questions. And I get that from a lot of listeners as well who've been listening to the show and been training, following their nutrition, doing the thing. Guys, this is a skill. This takes effort, this takes uh time. I've had folks write in who, you know, they've never used my services in any way, but they've listened to the show and they said, you know what, I've tried some cuts, I've tried some bulks, I've tracked like you've suggested, I've I've been very thoughtful and intentional about it. Just, and look, I've had some great outcome. And you know, my response to them is heck yeah, more power to you. I love to see it and tell the world we need to inspire more people to do this stuff because everyone can do it. I don't care if you're a man, woman, what age, menopause, doesn't matter. You can get the results
Bigger glutes without your quads taking over (muscle specialization)
Philip Pape 19:17
you want. Okay, let's talk about glutes, everybody's uh favorite topic. Or a lot of people, I'll say people, but let's be honest, a lot of women ask about glutes. It just is what it is. And the question from Desiree is what are the best exercises to grow glutes? How often, how many sets and reps? Uh, we've had several episodes in the past, and I've had some guests on talking about glutes. And, you know, remember, this is the general, the general answer to anything about how do I grow something is not just about exercise selection. It's also about the principles that underlie training in general. But we're I do want to get specific about glutes. And then JC jumped in with a follow-up that I think a lot of women are thinking about, which was hey, she wants a fit-toned shape. She doesn't want her quads to get too huge, she wants the right, we'll say symmetry. She doesn't want to get, she doesn't want to look ripped or like she got a, in her words, a certain kind of surgical enhancement. She just wants the glutes to grow without everything else blowing up. And you know what? I could personally identify with that, JC, because as a man, I genetically have a larger derriere. Hopefully that's not too much information, but for a man, that may not always be a good thing if I'm doing a ton of squats and it's like out of proportion, right? And I think I get what you're talking about. So let me talk about the training first and then the I don't want to get bulky or blow up other parts of my body part second. They're like two different questions. So the glutes, the glutes grow from loaded hip extension. Okay, that is the movement pattern. So your best exercises are things like Romanian deadlifts, hip thrusts, regular deadlifts, hip extensions, cable pull throughs, even cable and band kickbacks. So Carol mentioned that in the post in our community when she was providing specifics. Because again, if you want to grow something beyond average and you really want to get enough volume, you want to hit it from different angles at different positions, like lengthened, shortened positions and enough, you know, enough volume, right? Enough frequency and volume. So it's it's nice that we have all these different exercises to choose from. Now, you might hear that hip thrusts light up the glutes more than squats on the muscle activation tests, right? And that's true. Muscle activation is way higher. But I don't like isolating conversations to just muscle activation. If anyone is making a claim on social media that that's the main variable we care about, they're they're like 10 years out of bed with what really moves the needle here. This is the nuance, this is the evidence. When you look at the training studies that measure actual growth over time with MRI, okay, actually looking at your body composition, hip thrusts, and score. Squats grow the glutes about the same. So activation, muscle activation does not perfectly predict visual muscle growth and size in and of itself. What you need is both. You need both form, you know, both movement patterns. You need multiple movement patterns here. And that makes sense because you just need to use hip dominant stuff and squat pattern stuff and kind of make it all work together. Now there's a bunch of other exercises I didn't even mention, like I don't know, step ups and reverse lunges and walking lunges and all of that. That could also help. And what's cool about it is there's so much flexibility that as long as you have enough different exercises at frequency and volume and you're training hard progressively overload, you're probably going to be good. And that's honestly the training hard part and the doing it consistently part is usually where people are not doing it and therefore their glutes aren't growing. I've known people that they just do a basic program with squats. You know, women just and their butt blows up because they're they're lifting heavy with squats, and I'm talking low bar squats that use all the hip musculature. But it all depends. It all depends. So frequency-wise, you're gonna want to train those muscle groups specifically two to three times a week. It's kind of the sweet spot. You're gonna aim for 10 to 20 hard sets a week. So the higher you get, the higher dose response, but it's it's diminishing returns. So if you really have the time in the gym and you really want to dedicate, you know, aim for that 20 sets. You may be more or less responsive to someone else. Sometimes women respond to a little bit more volume. That's on average, just speaking, generally, for you, you may not need 20 sets, you may need 15. Um, heavy compound work in there, you know, in the 6 to 12 rep range, let's say you've got the accessory stuff like the kickbacks, pull throughs, and stuff, maybe in the 15 to 20 plus range. Um, doesn't have to be, but in a range where you can have really good form and really feel it and get that mechanical tension and get close to failure, and then progress it over a few months. So we're talking 8, 12, 16 weeks, just run that program straight out and see what happens. Now, you're gonna want to measure them as well, right? And so I'm gonna I'm gonna pivot to JC's part of the glutes question, which is how do you grow the glutes without the quads taking over? And of course, you want to be measuring your glutes, measuring your thighs. Like if you really care about that level of detail, you've got to measure them with circumference measurements on a regular basis to just validate what's happening and try to offset other variables like food and sleep and inflammation and things like that. But for growing the glutes specifically, you want to isolate them more. That's really what it comes down to. You're gonna you're gonna go lean into like the hip dominant movements, hip thrusts, RDLs, kickbacks, pull throughs, because those all load the glutes and barely touch the quad. So you just want to look at the exercises and shift around the number of sets that are hitting the X, the, the muscle group that you want to outpace the other muscle group. Now, I have heard some coaches say, just cut out altogether things that hit a muscle group that you think is already too big. And there's logic there, isn't there? There is some logic to that. I wouldn't want you to get what they call imbalance, but that's very hard to do if you're doing regular movement patterns on a regular basis anyway. You can go a little lighter on the deep, like knee dominant stuff, the deep squats, the leg presses that drive a lot of a lot of the quad growth. You know, if you've got a lot of, it's not really so much about the lightness, though, as the effective reps or the number of um hard sets and reps. So it's really more about volume. You can kind of lower the volume on those and shift that volume more to the hands and the glutes, right? You can't perfectly isolate the glute from the leg, right? Nobody can do that. We're a system, but you can bias the ratio. You can make the glutes the priority and the quads then come along for the ride. So again, Carol gave specifics in the group on like, do these specific exercises. Here's a program. We've got a glute and leg program in our in Eat More with Lift Heavy as well. We've got all that stuff. That's like the mechanics of the specifics, but I wanted to hit on the principles. Now, the big fear behind JC's question about not wanting to get bulky. Um, I think that was part of the question. I want to put this one to rest because women already have less muscle than men, just in an absolute terms. Women also have more body fat. The women, female body, it's it's not designed to get bulky, is kind of the way I'm gonna put it. It's very, very, very hard. You're not gonna accidentally get big and bulky, let's say. The toned look that a lot of women want that you're describing, that is a function of proper hard training, plenty of heavy work, training close to failure, enough fat loss to see the muscles. If anything, what you might be worried about is when you gain some fat, some body fat, or you're eating a lot and you're in a surplus, and then you get a little bit bigger or bloated or puffy or whatever from body fat. Well, that happens to men and women, right? That but that's not really bulk, that's body fat, that's not from muscles. Um, now, granted, having more muscles, could it push that out a little bit more? Yes. But I've never seen a woman that is not taking enhanced, you know, drugs that looks bulky, at least in my opinion, from from a male who, you know, I'm married with a wife, so I'm a straight guy who finds women attractive. And all I'm saying is that from my point of view, I've never seen a bulky woman who trains and build muscle. So that's kind of my thought, all right? And I joke about it that as a man, I wish I could get quote unquote bulky. Now, I I can definitely put on the fat, but it takes a lot of work to put on muscle. You have to train hard, and it's gonna take years and years and years to put on muscle. And for women, it's gonna give you the toned look you want. And if you want to get ripped or shredded or whatever, that's just a function of leanness and body fat. We're not even gonna go there right now. All right, the next one is one of those questions where I think the answer is the opposite of what a lot of people hear.
Does protein after a workout (the anabolic window) matter as much as you think?
Philip Pape 27:47
And uh, JC asked on a zero to 10 scale, how important is it to eat protein right after lifting? What's what can be held back or what can stall if you don't do that? She changed her workout time. She's now going to the gym after dinner around 7:30 or 8 o'clock at night, and she doesn't want to eat a big heavy meal when she gets home. So she asked. And I said, that's maybe a three out of 10, maybe a two out of 10. Uh, this is the famous anabolic window, the idea that you've got this narrow, like 30 to 60 minute window after training where you have to slam in your protein, or then you you waste the workout, or you don't get as much muscle protein synthesis or whatever. And a lot of people believe that for many years. And we know how much body, you know, bodybuilders way back in the day believed in tons of protein and the raw eggs right after your workout and all that. But the actual research, there is a a well-known meta-analysis on this, found that once you account for total daily protein, there is no magic anabolic window. It's it, if there is, it's more like many hours on both sides of your workout, which is awesome. Okay. And the part that I think is great for JC, for your situation, is that a protein-rich meal will keep your amino acids elevated in your blood for many, many hours. So if you ate dinner and you train right after dinner, your body's still digesting and using that protein all the way through your workout and after it. So you're totally covered. The pre-workout meal is covering the post-workout window. So if you eat a second big meal at nine o'clock, it's not really going to do anything for you. It's why you don't need to do the pre-bed casing protein. It is why I recommend a lot of people do not train fasted or at least experiment with training fasted versus not training fasted. But if you do train fasted and you had a huge dinner the night before, not huge, but like you had a decent dinner with plenty of protein and carbs, especially the night before, some of that even carries through to the next day a little bit. So, what actually matters, JC, is not the timing, it's the total protein. That is really the game. That's like 90, 95% of the equation. Hit that target consistently, spread it across your meals, mainly for practicality purposes and potentially a tiny, tiny edge, but don't worry about the workout timing when it comes to the protein. If you want something small after, like a small shake or some Greek yogurt, it's fine, but you don't have to force a heavy meal down at night. Just get your sleep. Like that's what I would recommend is focus on the sleep. All right, we got one question left, the one about how fast you lose your gains. Before I get to that, just a reminder about how to submit your question to the podcast. Every question today came from a listener. In this case, all of our listeners were also members of Eat More Lift Heavy, but we definitely air questions for listeners and we make entire episodes based on listener questions. I really love these because that way I know you are thinking of something specific that you're not sure of the answer to or have not heard a good answer to out in the world. And a lot of other people are thinking about it as well. So if you've been chewing on something, if you saw a claim online, a piece of advice you're not sure about, you want another opinion, something about your own training that doesn't seem to make sense, send it to me. Go to wits and weights.com slash question. That's wits and weights.com slash question. Give me as many details as you can, especially your own personal contacts, so I can help you out directly, not just a general question. I always reply to the emails directly. And then if you want, I can give you a shout out on the show. You can select whether you want a shout out when you submit the question. So go to witsandweights.com slash question. Okay, speaking of questions, last question. How
How fast you really lose muscle, and the minimum to keep it
Philip Pape 31:21
fast do you lose your gains? So this is also from JC. She asked, How many days of not working out before you start losing your gains? And I told her about two to three weeks, but I want to expand on the details. This is a very anxiety-inducing question everyone has because we're always having things that come up in our life that force us to take a break in some way, right? My my brother and parents visited for a week, almost a week and a half, and I worked out the morning that they arrived so that I could get in a workout in knowing I probably wouldn't train most, if not at all, while they were here, which turned out to be the case. You know, we were just all over the place, we were exhausted, we were traveling, everything. But then I fit one more in during the middle of it. But sometimes I'll go a week, week and a half without training. And a lot of people, when they take time off, there's probably more of a psychological panic than a physiological change, especially if you're into training. Like you once you get into this game, once you get into lifting regularly, you love doing it. You you enjoy doing it, you know that the results are there. And you know, you start to feel a little bad when you take time off. Because you're like, I don't, what am I doing? Am I setting myself back? And you might look in the mirror and say, okay, I'm looking flatter, smaller, like from a muscle perspective, you think you're like deflated, right? Have you ever had that feeling? I've had that feeling. You know, I look at my chest and I'm like, oh, it's like I don't have a as big of a chest. What you're probably seeing though, in that first week without training, is a reduction in glycogen and water from your muscle because you don't have the training stimulus. So it's more like a deflated balloon, not a you lost the balloon. Does that make sense? As soon as you start training and eating normal again, normally again, it fills back up really, really fast. And I know this both anecdotally and in the research, but anecdotally, what's interesting, or I guess this is supported by research as well, people who are detrained for years. So they haven't trained for years, their muscle comes back fast as well. So, I mean, if that can happen, imagine how much faster it must be if you only take a week off. Also imagine how much you gain in a week. Are you gonna lose any more than that in a week? Yeah, you know what I mean? So it's not, it's not much at all, even if it were that, but it isn't that. So the actual muscle mass, you hold on to that a lot longer than you would think. The research tells us that trained people can take one to two weeks off completely, zero training, and lose essentially zero muscle. So your strength then holds a little bit longer for about two to three weeks, even up to four weeks, you know, the strength, because that's more neuromuscular. Those are movement patterns that's wired into your brain. Real meaningful muscle loss usually doesn't start until past that three to four week mark of doing nothing. And then there's this muscle memory, right? This is a real thing. It's not gym, Jim Bro, what do we call it, bro science. When you build muscle, okay, and oh man, that we had a great conversation. Who was on the show? I wish I could remember, or did was this a solo episode? Well, anyway, when you build muscle, you add nuclei to your muscle cells, and those nuclei stay even when your muscle reduces in size, when it I'll say shrinks when you're not training. And there's research showing that those nuclei are retained for many, many months. So even if you lose some size on the long break, it snaps back really, really fast, way faster than it took to build, because the memory is still there. The cellular memory or machinery, if you want to call it, is still there, just waiting to be sort of reactivated and refilled up. Now, the practical version of all of this is probably more of a thing that you should care about. When life blows up your training because of travel, because of a sick week, because work is just crazy, because family's visiting, you don't have time. You don't have to have your entire program to hold on to the muscle. You actually only need a tiny bit of volume. So, as little as, for example, one session a week, sometimes a third or less of your normal volume. I've heard of it as little as one eighth, but I wouldn't go that extreme. That's basically just taking it off. So as long as the intensity is up, if you have like one session, a few hard sets for your legs, pushing, pulling, right? Just a simple upper or full body and you're still training close to failure and all that, maybe 20 minutes, then you're gonna do an even better job of maintaining. I'm not saying you have to do that. I'm just trying to say it's so little that like what I did when my folks visited, I just squeezed in that one morning session while everybody was still sleeping, just got it done. It was, it actually felt really good. You may not be able to do that, but honestly, even if you're in a hotel, if you're somewhere without a gym, there's some basic movement you can do. But you don't even have to because we know that most of this is maintained for at least one to two, if not three or four weeks, and then it comes back super, super fast. That is the takeaway. If you feel a little flat, if you feel a little bad or untrained, whatever, it's mostly psychologically, psychological with a little bit of a fluid mechanics going on. And then you come back. I would say you start with roughly where you ended if it's only been a week or two. Some people find they're even they feel stronger when they come back because they needed the recovery. But if if it feels kind of sluggish and hard, you can drop off the intensity by maybe 10%, you know, like the load by maybe 10%. But it's gonna come back right really fast. The minimum effective dose is way, way lower than what you might have thought. So that's it. I'm just answering questions today and nothing else. And if you want to submit your question, go to witsandweights.com slash question. I'll give you a shout out on the show. Until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the people asking the best questions are the ones who keep getting better. So keep asking them. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights Podcast.
