Devlin Brown at the water cooler: Don’t treat your body like the City of Joburg

You recently spoke about short breaks leading to longer breaks and then eventually to falling off the gym wagon. I haven’t trained in two weeks and I can see all the muscle loss. How long will it take to regain what I’ve lost?

This question is a good example of the anxiety that comes from the saying “Use it [muscle] or lose it”. But before we trigger panic: if you’ve actually lost any muscle it is likely to be minimal, assuming you haven’t been on a fortnight’s bedrest.

Muscle is expensive. And no, I am not referring to the thousands of rand people spend on supplements and high-protein meals. I am referring to the fact that you have to work incredibly hard to build it. The older you are, the more difficult it is. Regardless of the debate about the gender continuum, your sex matters — men, generally, can gain much more muscle than women.

It’s significantly harder to maintain metabolically active tissue, such as muscle, than it is to maintain almost entirely inactive tissue such as white adipose tissue, made famous by the universal phenomenon called love handles. Sufficient protein, sufficient stimulus in the form of physical activity, targeted strength training and many other variables, such as hormones, age, health and sleep combine to build and maintain muscle mass. 

When you stop training, when you don’t eat enough, or properly, when sleep is no longer a priority and when you add alcohol and other destructive habits into the mix, the body has no problem shedding muscle. Diet is vital. Some people, in their efforts to become as lean as possible, eat in such a caloric deficit that they end up losing muscle as well as, and sometimes in place of, fat.

Think of the City of Johannesburg. It started as an odd pothole. A traffic light was vandalised here and there. Transmission grid failures were not dealt meaningfully. The water pipes were basically ignored and just repaired on an ad hoc basis when leaks appeared. Had that gone on for a few weeks or months, perhaps the city would have been okay. Instead, we now live in a paradox: it is still an economic heartland with a few well-maintained areas (on the surface, at least) but it is so far gone not even the spectre of Comedy Central’s star attraction and the DA’s trump card fills me with any inkling of hope.

You don’t want to be in that position with your body. Start eating properly today and start exercising tomorrow — don’t get to the point of collapse.

Luckily, your body has something that the City of Johannesburg lacks: muscle memory. When you have previously had muscle, your body “remembers this” and regaining the muscle is far easier, and quicker, than the first time. Getting into shape therefore takes less time, though it still requires effort.

How fast does muscle start “fading away”? There is likely to be no muscle loss in the first week. Instead what you see and feel will be water and glycogen stores leaving the muscle cells. Experts, and anecdotes, suggest that noticeable muscle loss occurs between two and four weeks. This is assuming you’ve stopped all, or most, of the activity that built and maintained the muscle in the first place.

However, if you are eating sufficient protein, are active — moving around and doing things — and do some degree of physical exercise you should be able to maintain muscle or at least minimise its loss.

The other side of the coin is that if you were well-trained to start with (we won’t even say highly trained) a break of up to two weeks may be good for you. The fitness community calls it a deload. After months of consistent strength training you will probably hit a plateau or lose some of the motivation you need to do your workouts properly. Stepping back and enjoying a deload while still moving can do wonders in energising your motivation and rekickstarting some results.

What you “see” as “all the muscle loss” is most likely just some loss of water and stored carbohydrates — easily replaceable once you start eating and training properly again. The longer you wait though, the more likely it is that real strength and muscle losses will begin to occur. Pretend you’ve been on a deload and start again tomorrow.