Listen to the guy, he knows what he's doing. Muscles need protein and glucose (in the form of glycogen) to build up and you need that from your diet. Fat is broken for energy, but you can't use that energy to form muscles because it only yields energy not glycogen. In addition your body has trouble losing and gaining at the same time, which is why people tend to lose fat and muscle at the same time, or find it very hard to lose fat and build muscle. Often people have lose most of their fat to then build the muscle. Basically your body tries to stay in an overall anabolic (building up) or catabolic (breaking down) mode.
What that means is the longer you stay in a calorie deficit state, the harder it is for your body to undergo anabolism to build up muscles because your hormones are telling your body you should be in catabolism to break down fat (and therefore protein aka muscles). Its a very fine balancing act. Hope that makes sense, I happen to be teaching metabolism biochemistry this week so I'm in that brain mode.
Scales are just one way to track, we rely on them too much I think because at first when its just about losing the weight its a real rush to see the change. But fitness, clothes, body measurements are all excellent modes to track as well.
Last edited by jitterfish; 08-08-2013 at 05:15 PM.
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