“Your maximum achievability is not your maximum maintainability”
-Bumpers
How fast should you gain weight? Or lose it?
Fortunately, there is an optimal rate of change for a complex system. Unfortunately, you’re not going to like it.
The short answer is:
Slower than you want, faster than anyone else thinks is possible.
or
“A rate at which the rolling average stays within the standard fluctuation(s)”
A quick example:
Bodyweight will typically fluctuate about 1% in either direction day to day. So if you’re 200 pounds it’s likely that your weight will be between 198 and 202 on any given day - 1% in either direction - with an average of 200 pounds.
Since this is typical, there is nothing for the system to adapt to.
But Isn’t Adaption Good!?
For survival, yes.
But… The system has one purpose: keep you alive. And when the threshold of adaption is hit, it does what it needs to do to increase your chances of survival. The adaption to losing weight quickly is to lower your metabolic rate (a lower metabolic rates means you will survive longer without food, in the wild)
Which means if your body adapts to dramatic weight loss, it does so by making it more difficult to lose more weight.
So the trick, in my non-medical and totally amateur opinion, is to change your weight BELOW the the threshold of adaption.
Back to the example above…
If you’re 200 pounds it’s likely that your weight will be between 198 and 202 on any given day - 1% in either direction - with an average of 200 pounds.
If the next week your average weight is 199 pounds, which is within the range above, you’re less likely to experience a down-regulation of metabolism because the change is within the typical fluctuation - below the threshold. If the average is 199 pounds, the fluctuation will be between 197 and 201…
The following week?
An average of 197-98 with a standard fluctuation between 195 and 200…
So on and so forth.
Painfully slow, right?
Except it’s not.
And here’s why:
If you change the system too fast, it becomes harder to change the system further - because the system will adapt in an attempt to maintain equilibrium. There’s a little Tortoise and the Hare going here. (NOTE: There is no reason for nature to increase our metabolic rate, so this only really goes one way - which is why once it’s damaged, it’s so hard to correct/fix)
DO THE MATH:
SLOWER THAN YOU WANT:
If you painstakingly lost 1 pound a week it will feel like a slow, painful grind.
FASTER THAN ANYONE ELSE THINKS IS POSSIBLE:
If someone see’s you for the first time in a year and you’re 52 pounds lighter, it would be and unbelievable transformation. They would have a hard time believing it was possible.
Slower than you want.
Faster than anyone else thinks is possible.
More importantly (in my mind, anyway), changing the system within the standard flux leaves you in a better position at any given time. It will be easier to maintain or continue to make progress if you make the progress with the least adaption possible.
In a world of people promising you more, faster and easier, this is not a popular opinion.
And I get it.
Remember, I’m just an amateur applying principles to stuff. If your favorite fitness influencer disagrees with me, that’s okay.
Guardian Academy principles applied:
Your Maximum Achievability is not your maximum maintainability
The Process is the shortcut
Rate of change of a complex system
Understanding asymmetry (since the body is highly likely to down-regulate and unlikely to up-regulate metabolic rate, there is asymmetry)
This can get us down into the rabbit hole of “bulking and cutting” but that’s another rant, entirely. The TL;DR:
Gaining 30 pounds on the scale to gain 4 pounds of muscle is silly. Just gain 4 pounds of muscle.
Losing the 26 extra pounds from bulking is unnecessarily hard on the body. The extreme rigidity also has all kinds of physiology consequences
Most people that are cutting and/or bulking, in my observation, are just labeling their disordered eating patterns in order to excuse them: “I can eat like an asshole because I’m bulking” or “I’m depriving myself because I’m cutting”. Neither is terribly productive.
Note:
I’ve been tinkering with this new training methodology and I’m shocked at how my body is responding. It’s what prompted this post. It’s changing faster than it ever has, I expect it to slow down significantly.
Still, this is one of those “holy shit this is working better than I expected” moments - and it’s important to re-orient BEFORE it slows down so that I maintain proper expectations.
Onward
Nic