T Nation

Possible to Lose Muscle and Gain Strength?

#1

I am 48 years old and have been working at a new job for 2 months that has me walking(at a high pace) 8 hours a day. Over those 2 months, I have lost about 12 lbs of bw. When I look in the mirror, I look and feel small however, my lifts have actually gone up. I am not one to train for strength, but I don't like this feeling I have when I look in the mirror.

I am just wondering if its possible to lose muscle and gain strength. I am wondering if my problem isn't how I see/view myself and if I just lost unwanted bodyfat without training and my weight loss is purely excess fat. Thanks.

#2

[quote]AZMARKTB wrote:
am just wondering if its possible to lose muscle and gain strength. [/quote]

Possible, yes. Likely, no. Assuming you didn’t make any significant changes to your training regimen and/or diet, it’s most likely you simply lost some bodyfat.

You didn’t describe your body composition, but at certain BF levels (in males, ~12-20% or so), loss of BF is notorious for having a negative effect on perceived body composition. That is, when men are in this BF% range, losing fat often makes them feel smaller, because there’s no appreciable improvement in their definition.

#3

Thanks for the response. 6’0 197 now. Was 211 at highest. I estimate body fat at 211 at 15-18%. At 211 I looked great in clothes and terrible shirtless. Lol.

#4

ive noticed that whenever I overload my CNS I look smaller for the next few days. Recently, I switched from HIT, 2-5 sets per muscle group, to thE BEAR PROGRAM by Pavel. With the BEAR, I would do 15-20 sets of sub-max effort of 3-5 reps.