Whatever works for you. Here's some stats though. I got these by asking these climbers in person FYI.

Chris Sharma, 6 1, 155-160 naked. According to him, two years ago. It seems most media says he's heavier then HE thinks he is

Three local v13 plus boulders. I know them all very well. I climb with them for years.

6 1, 162

6 2 170 (this guy looks so ripped that the other day i heard some local climbers say "he must be 190 lbs, weight doesn't matter" lol, I didn't correct them.

5 11 150

Of course they are all 4-7% body fat.

It really is magical how big of a difference 10 lbs makes, let alone 20 or 30. The body carries alot more body fat then most ppl think. When I was 15 lbs heavier, people thought I was skinny and strong. Now they just think I'm skinny, even though I'm stronger in literal terms.

if you drop 20 pounds, and 10 pounds is muscle, you won't see that big of a difference...you will have less strength and less weight, and could easily end up right where you started...

Eating 1800 cals a day isn't good. At 160 pounds, you burn between 1920 and 2240 cals by sitting on your butt all day (12-14 cals per pound). Mix in cardio and you could easily have a deficit of over 1000 cals per day. Sorry, but on a less than pristine diet , you are burning muscle, and thus being counter productive.

If someone loses 20 pounds total, 10 of them being muscle, do you really think that the forearms/lats/biceps are really going to make up much of that 10 lbs? Compare with giant muscle groups like the quads, especially for someone doing cardio (ideally with low resistance to minimize stressing the quads into muscle growth). Moreover, it's not necessarily how much muscle you've got, but how well it is used (but on a cellular level, as well as a general technique level).


Experiment results are going more important than your theory here, in my opinion. There are many individual components that are lost in generalizations involved in how an average person's metabolism works. He's found that it's worked for him for sometime, and that is all that he cares about.

To you first quote, losing muscle is losing muscle. Its being counter productive. By losing weight slowly, you will keep more muscle.

And too your second quote, this isn't a theory of mine, do any serious reading about 'cutting' and you will find article on top of article (with scientific evidence) that would side with me more than him. Sure, some peole are succesful in keeping muscle and losing weight by having a large calorie/day deficit...but no way does that happen with such a terrible diet. His post was giving advice to people on how to lose weight, and to the general climber, it was terrible advice.

[I]f you drop 20 pounds, and 10 pounds is muscle, you won't see that big of a difference...you will have less strength and less weight, and could easily end up right where you started...

Eating 1800 cals a day isn't good. At 160 pounds, you burn between 1920 and 2240 cals by sitting on your butt all day (12-14 cals per pound).

Mix in cardio and you could easily have a deficit of over 1000 cals per day.

Well, he did increase his bouldering by three V-grades.


No, those figures are too high. Based on his age, height, weight, and gender, his resting metabolic rate should be around 1800 kcal.


His results show that that is not the case. He lost 14 lb in 2.5 months, about 1.4 lb/wk, or about 0.19 lb/day. For ease of calculation, assume that all the weight loss was from fat*, and that 1 lb of fat contains 3500 kcal. Then his caloric deficit was 3500 × 0.187 = 655 kcal/day.

Jay

*This is plausible because bouldering is anabolic. Muscle mass accrual in the muscles exercised by bouldering could offset muscle mass loss in the other parts of the body.

It seems as if our calculations are within about 10-20% of each other.... isn't this splitting hairs? I can tell you this, Losing around 14 lbs in 2.5 months I have jumped three bouldering grades in combination with power training. If I was doing it wrong, would i be getting these results? I can only assume I haven't lost muscle, if I was losing muscle, I would be able to lift less weight in the exercises I do reguraly, however I can lift more weight and I weigh less, I"m not an expert, but this leads me to believe, I haven't lost muscle. Lets say I did though, it's still working quite well? Right now, I'm psyched to be able to add 500ish calories a day to my diet once I hit my target weight, I think I'll see another big improvement there. Also, many of the best climbers I know, have pretty much the same diet.

Maybe one place we're mixed up... On climbing days, an hour before I climb and for about the first hour I climb... I'll eat/drink around 600 calories during this two hour period. Also, for example, I had a bouldering comp recently, I ate plennty of calories the night before, before the comp, and during it. On climbing days, I eat about 2-2500 calories, on non climbing days about 1300-1800. I really don't know how many calories I burn climbing. I just know that doing it this way, allows me to lose weight and have energy for climbing.

Maybe you could put together your version of a gameplan and post it so we could discuss?

I did a quick google and found an average of rougly 2300 cals for someone who is 6'0, 160 and 27 years old..(not sure how old he is)...

Again, maybe you have a different calculator . . .

...but I'm pretty sure 1800 is on the low side.

You are right that bouldering is anabolic, but you aren't building muscle while you are on a calorie deficit...

That figure is too high for resting metabolic rate. That's more like total caloric expenditures, including exercise.


I used the Mifflin equation, which using your parameter values, gives an RMR of 1740 kcal/day. the Mifflin equation is pretty much the standard equation used in nutritional science when body composition is not taken into account.


Well, I'm pretty sure it's the conditional mean from a regression study of 500 subjects published in 1990.


Yes, you can, actually.

Jay

See this link, university backed sources from 2002 and it shows him needing 2500+ cals, and that's resting burn.

And for the most part, 'athletes' do not create muscle while losing fat. It gets harder and harder to put on muscle with the more muscle you have and the less fat you have...for a lean, in shape climber to think he can put on muscle and lose fat is just crazy talk...Sure, there are people who have put on muscle while losing fat, and there have been people who couldn't do it...generally speaking, its not happening. If you disagree, please, go to a gym and talk to the 10 most in shape guys...

http://nutritiondata.self.com/tools/calories-burned

What source shows high end atheletes creating significant amounts of muscle mass while at extreme calorie deficits and eating high fat diets?

One look at that web pages shows that, just I suggested up-thread, your source is not calculating resting metabolic rate. It's calculating total energy expenditures. Your claim was that the OP would burn 2300 kcal just sitting around, which is essentially the definition of RMR, but that's not what that calculator purports to calculate.


I don't know of any such studies, but such studies wouldn't be applicable to the OP anyway, since his caloric deficit was moderate and his diet not high fat.

Jay

The website says 2500 cals per day, sedentary lifestyle...meaning he burns 2500 cals a day by working an office job, not taking into account any exercise he might do at night or climbing or running. If he's eating 1800 cals a day, he's already -700 cals. Then add in work outs and its extreme amounts...

The website says 2500 cals per day, sedentary lifestyle...meaning he burns 2500 cals a day by working an office job, not taking into account any exercise he might do at night or climbing or running. If he's eating 1800 cals a day, he's already -700 cals. Then add in work outs and its extreme amounts...

You can't show me a study of a high end athelete eating an average diet of -500 cals and gaining significant muscle mass...it doesn't happen...Go speak to any nutritionalist or trainer or gym rat, they will tell you the same.

Also, according to you, most top climbers are "pullers". .

Top climbers on your lists perhaps...

I know many of those climbers you refer too and they have heard me say all of this long before you knew what a campus board was.

When your referring to any climbing with V-whatever/V-whatever and who you can climb V-whatever too, your pretty much begging to be recognized for repeating what has already been done.

When you find "new" climbing/bouldering where you have been able to decipher fun and challenging sequences that had never been done before you, then you will have reason to spray.

I am a nutritionist.

No, a freakin' nutritional epidemiologist.

-Jay

Changed careers, or just a little moon-lighting on the side?