When you don’t exercise, you rapidly start losing muscle and in a few months you can lose more or less all of your gains, since your body doesn’t have the need to keep the additional muscle mass, right?
Well I have a problem, I am skinny and underweight and my BMI tells me that a normal weight for my height (173cm) is from 55 to about 73 kg and ideal weight would be 65 kilograms, but at the moment I am underweight, with just 52 kg. (But I started gaining weight recently at least (weight from fat for now))
If I start working out really hard and eventually gain those 3 kilograms of muscle mass that I am lacking to reach the 55kg normal range, while keeping the body fat percentage the same (about 10%), if I stopped working out eventually, but continued eating enough calories, would I return to 52 kilograms or would I keep at least some of the additional muscle I gained?
The only other way to reach 65 kg would be through fat, but without increasing my current muscle mass, that would make me really obese. So essentially, in short:
Can I build enough muscle to get me out of the underweight range to the at least average weight range, without losing it automatically if I stop working out (which would bring me back to being underweight) or would I have to work out my entire life in order to not be underweight (without increasing my body fat percentage) ?
Most of my friends don’t workout, nor are they fat, they are just…average, so that’s my goal, to be at least average.
First of all, how old are you?
Secondly, why do you want to increase your BMI? Just to meet some general target BMI?
While there is some (questionable) evidence that being marginally overweight is preferable to being underweight in geriatrics, for normal adults, it is preferable to be underweight.
21, although I doubt that changes anything. I want to increase it because I am well…underweight and really skinny, plus I had some low blood pressure issues recently, when I was a little skinnier (so it was probably related to that), I occasionally feel lightheaded even when there’s no reason, so yeah, mostly because of health reasons, but also because I feel really uncomfortable whenever I go to the beach, I don’t have the need to have a perfect body, I just don’t want to look like a stick.
As I said, the ideal weight for me would be 65 kg, but I want to be at least around 55. On my medical charts it also says ,underweight", so it’s not just about fashion.
Btw, if it changes anything, the reason why I am underweight in the first place is because I ate only 2, rarely 3 meals a day and I drank a lot of cola, which has loads of empty calories and that kept me ,fed", so I didn’t feel hungry for most of the day, which just dragged me in the caloric deficit, without me even realising it.
You can lift weights, and that will add muscle, but if you stop lifting, you will lose much (but probably not all) of that muscle mass. If you stop lifting, and continue to eat at the same rate, you will get fat, which is exactly what you don’t want, and is unhealthy. So, if you want to increase (and keep) lean mass, you need to work out, and continue to do it - forever.
Just add weightlifting to you daily routine, and soon you will miss not doing it.
What is the basis for that belief of yours? Most literature (for example) supports that underweight is associated with increased mortality at all ages with “optimal” BMI increasing with increasing age.
As to the op, it is of course not a completely straightforward answer.
Detraining occurs in stages just like strength gains do and it depends on what your other activities are and how your total daily activity level has changed in response to exercise. The lifting itself and the resting metabolic rate of the few extra kg of muscle is not really all that many calories. But regular exercise that includes strength training often (not always) ends up in people moving more during the rest of the day too.
In that study the training phase was 3x/wk of 3 sets of 3 exercises (all leg focused for the study). Afterwards one group completely detrained, one did one day of the same/week, and one did one day of just one set of each per week.
Younger adults continued to make some gains with the once a week program and maintained even cut down to one set a week. Older adults only managed to blunt the detraining with either maintenance program.
Exercising daily is still a great idea but specific to the question, assuming you are a younger adult you can keep your gains with even just one resistance session a week. Of course you may get hooked on hitting new targets, many do … then you have to keep the frequency up and add intensity progressively along the way.
IMHO (I know, maybe not suitable for GQ), being slightly below the “normal” BMI standard is likely to be a better goal than being above the recommended BMI, since most people have a tendency to gain weight. But, also IMHO, BMI is kind of a blunt instrument. I’m currently at a BMI of 26 (overweight), but it’s all muscle…
I (normally) regularly work out and am pretty muscular. Recently, due to illness, I have been unable to work out with any sort of consistency. And I mean like a couple months. I feared losing a lot of muscle and I have been somewhat surprised at remaining relatively stable during this time. I guess this anecdote just goes to show how individual such things are.
When I was 18 YO, I was 6’1" and weighed 140 lbs. I joined the military which forced me to eat better foods and exercise. By time I was your age, I was up to 165 lbs. When I turned 23, I got married and started gaining weight. Then there were kids. An going to night school plus working a full time job. By time I was 30 YO, I was over 200 lbs. Now at 63 YO, I’m at 215 lbs and I exercise an average of an hour a day. This morning I rode my bicycle 24 miles before work for example.
Trust me on this - you will certainly start gaining weight shortly and maybe even regret it. If you want to gain weight now, exercise more and eat healthy foods plus get plenty of rest. Hopefully you aren’t a smoker as that can keep weight down.
Yes, BMI is for individuals a very blunt instrument (boy has that subject been beaten to death here before), and yes, that which is not optimal is … not optimal … in both directions. Tautology alert! Also what is optimal for population groups on average does seem to change with age, with the optimal average BMI being slightly higher for older age groups than younger age groups. “Optimal” for older age groups, as populations overall, may in fact be in what get officially labelled “overweight.” The point remains that overall the research, including your cite (“… Mortality was lowest in the BMI range from 20·0 kg/m2 to less than 25·0 kg/m2, and was significantly increased just below this BMI range and …”), demonstrates that underweight is not “optimal” and is not “preferable” to “normal BMI” for normal adult populations on average. That is a GQ not an IMHO answer as the data is quite clear.
JerrySTL very likely he will gain weight as he ages. But he wants to gain and maintain additional lean body mass and not excessive fat mass. The same scale number and the same BMI, as beowulff correctly notes, can be very different things for different individuals.
Yeah BMI is definitely a poor tool for anything other than general info. Individual factors can factor heavily in the revelance of the reading. I, for example, have an unnaturally low BMI (18.3) which is considered too low in general terms. But because I have extensive muscle atrophy and wasting in my lower body due to spinal cord injury, my overall BMI is way low. But looking at me, nobody would ever think I needed to gain weight.
But I 'ppreciate cha.