“You spin my head right round, right round when you go down, when you go down down” Yeah first thing empty in the morning or last thing after weight training.
[quote]Da Vinci wrote:
AaronFitness wrote:
Thanks for the replys…
Cardio in the mornings would be HIIT on a hill. 30sec sprints @ maxiumum effort then run back down at a slow pace then repeat 10-15 times.
Cardio after training would be steady state cardio.
Diet wise would be eating every 2-3 hours consisting of a high protein, high fat (nuts, avocado’s , Udo’s oil) and loads of veg
HIIT cardio in the mornings on an empty stomach isn’t going to utilize fat stores. It will burn a shit ton of calories but it’s typically recommended to do HIIT on off lifting days. I normally do them at the same time of the day I would have normally been lifting.
SSC after you train is fine, like I’m sure CC was thinking, if you employ earlier carb cut offs before bed, doing SSFC in the morning would likely utilize fat as the energy source but the intensity has to be lower.[/quote]
This is very good insight. I’ve tried sprinting in the morning and it would be much more beneficial to use HIT sessions later in the day when your CNS is more prepared to handle explosive bursts.
SSFC in the mornings is the ticket my man…
[quote]AaronFitness wrote:
Thanks for all the replies, appreciate it a lot! [/quote]
dude…
your normal weights routine 3 days a week
inteval training with barbell complexes 2 days a week on the days you arent doing your normal training.
2 days a week early morning SSFC on what ever day you want except maybey legs.
do all that while on a carb cycling diet and you will be peeled 
Kerley
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
I know that doing fasted low int am cardio for 30-40 mins every off day or every day but leg day just doesn’t do squat for me unless I stick to my cutoffs… Tried it out pre-DC for quite some time.
[/quote]
So you think that as long as you cut-off carbs say, before 6pm, you’ll have a better chance of utilizing fat stores with fasted am LI cardio?
I mean, that definitely makes sense to me too, but there’s been a lot of discussion regarding the actuality of glycogen stores vs. the theory. In other words, we’re not as depleted of glycogen in the morning as we think…
If performing cardio after weight training for fat loss, how much do you think peri-workout nutrition comes into play?
From what I am reading here, depleted energy/glycogen/sugar stores are what make fasted morning cardio and post-weight training cardio ideal. What if you are utilizing a workout drink like Surge Workout Fuel, which has carbs/sugar in it. While a product like that may be great for keeping up workout intensity and aiding hydration, is it detrimental to fat loss in a post-training cardio session? Seems like it would given the logic that I am reading here.
[quote]SkyNett wrote:
Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
I know that doing fasted low int am cardio for 30-40 mins every off day or every day but leg day just doesn’t do squat for me unless I stick to my cutoffs… Tried it out pre-DC for quite some time.
So you think that as long as you cut-off carbs say, before 6pm, you’ll have a better chance of utilizing fat stores with fasted am LI cardio?
I mean, that definitely makes sense to me too, but there’s been a lot of discussion regarding the actuality of glycogen stores vs. the theory. In other words, we’re not as depleted of glycogen in the morning as we think… [/quote]
I honestly can’t tell you. I do lean out when sticking to the cutoffs+cardio, but the cardio by itself is hardly different from just walking around. We don’t usually lose a lot of fat when just walking around, do we ? It’s only 30-40 mins tops of fasted low intensity cardio, after all.
I don’t think glycogen stores are that important here, but the ratio at which your body burns it’s own fat stores vs. glycogen stores?
If you want some info on the science behind the whole thing, then I’m sure browsing IM would help… The guys over there have posted a few studies about the whole thing, I believe.
Might also find some in that certain ancient thread, you know what I mean. I don’t recall if he posted studies there, but I do think so.
Oh, Skynett, I forgot… We also cut out fats. It’s really just lean protein + trace carbs (a vegetable /salad) after cutoff…
Well, the main idea is to just avoid getting in anything more than a trace of carbs or fat after cutoff… I still take in a few fish oil caps, for example.
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Also, if you don’t do any kind of cutoff (let’s call it a general cutoff or just “cutoff”… Eating a major amount of fat before going to bed doesn’t exactly help fat-burning either after all), then imo fasted, steady state, low intensity morning cardio for 30-40 mins is pretty useless by itself.
Works best in combination…
If you don’t utilize cutoffs, and instead eat meals with a lot of carbs and/or fat too close to sleep, your body doesn’t have much reason to shift burning priorities to it’s own fat stores while sleeping and in the morning, does it? Enough external fuel there.
And thus doing am low-int cardio then is pretty much just like walking around your house… Something you likely do a lot but which has little impact on how you look.
With the cutoff, your body will burn the trace carbs at first, sparing whatever protein you ingested (hopefully), and then shift emphasis to it’s own fat stores over the night.
In the morning, emphasis is likely still on your own fat stores to a great extent, and then you get in your fat burners (if you use any) and green tea extract or real green tea to enhance that and get you awake, do your low-int cardio (brisk walk around the neighborhood or so), and now it can actually enhance the whole fat burning process.
Without the cutoff, it’d be like farting against the wind.
I hope that explanation makes sense to you… I’m no biology major or anything.
Thing is… I don’t even know if that’s really what happens. And I don’t care much.
I know that doing fasted low int am cardio for 30-40 mins every off day or every day but leg day just doesn’t do squat for me unless I stick to my cutoffs… Tried it out pre-DC for quite some time.[/quote]
The timing of the cutoffs does not matter much, if at all. The “magic” of the cutoffs is to get your calories down so that you’re in a deficit.
Go to bed in a deficit for the day every day and you WILL burn fat. Period.
Cutting off intake at a certain time works because, when people are in a deficit for the day, they get hungry by evening and eat enough to blow the deficit (sometimes more).
When adding 30 minutes of cardio on off days, or 5 days, doesn’t seem to do much, it’s because 1) you don’t really burn that many calories during 30 minutes of cardio; it’ll take at least a week or two to amount to one pound of fat; or 2) cardio makes you hungrier so you inadvertently eat more unless you are METICULOUS about your intake; and 3) cardio creates fatigue that causes you to move less throughout the day without realizing it, so you actually burn fewer total calories throughout the day. Believe me, this happens.
Some on these forums seem to believe that if your carbs are low enough, you’ll always be burning fat, or that if you lift for muscle mass, that you’ll have this magical “metabolism” where you have to eat MORE to lose fat (!), or that the right fat loss diet has plenty of “healthy fats,” or that if your meals are always P+C or P+F, you’ll magically lose fat. (And BTW this is not directed at you, Cephalic_Carnage, just a general observation of so many posts and logs on the boards).
Well, none of those are true.
No matter how little carbs you eat, you must create a deficit to lose fat.
No matter how much you lift, you must create a deficit to lose fat. Did anyone notice how many calories The Mighty Stu was eating to get ripped for his contest?
“Healthy fats” can keep you out of a deficit just as easily as “bad fats.” ONE extra SPOONFUL of peanut butter can all but erase one’s deficit for the day. Fats are calorie dense, and it’s super easy to erase deficits with them.
I don’t care how strict you are about not combining fats and carbs in the same meal. You can combine them all you want AS LONG AS YOU’RE IN A DEFICIT.
I do believe that fancy strategies like carb cycling ARE effective, but their main benefit is to give you a better body comp result and better appearance as you diet down than you would have had with, say, Jenny Craig and cardio. You’ll lose less muscle (maybe none at all if you get everything dialed in) and more fat. But if you don’t create a deficit with your fancy approach, you WILL NOT LOSE. Period.
[quote]andersons wrote:
Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
Also, if you don’t do any kind of cutoff (let’s call it a general cutoff or just “cutoff”… Eating a major amount of fat before going to bed doesn’t exactly help fat-burning either after all), then imo fasted, steady state, low intensity morning cardio for 30-40 mins is pretty useless by itself.
Works best in combination…
If you don’t utilize cutoffs, and instead eat meals with a lot of carbs and/or fat too close to sleep, your body doesn’t have much reason to shift burning priorities to it’s own fat stores while sleeping and in the morning, does it? Enough external fuel there.
And thus doing am low-int cardio then is pretty much just like walking around your house… Something you likely do a lot but which has little impact on how you look.
With the cutoff, your body will burn the trace carbs at first, sparing whatever protein you ingested (hopefully), and then shift emphasis to it’s own fat stores over the night.
In the morning, emphasis is likely still on your own fat stores to a great extent, and then you get in your fat burners (if you use any) and green tea extract or real green tea to enhance that and get you awake, do your low-int cardio (brisk walk around the neighborhood or so), and now it can actually enhance the whole fat burning process.
Without the cutoff, it’d be like farting against the wind.
I hope that explanation makes sense to you… I’m no biology major or anything.
Thing is… I don’t even know if that’s really what happens. And I don’t care much.
I know that doing fasted low int am cardio for 30-40 mins every off day or every day but leg day just doesn’t do squat for me unless I stick to my cutoffs… Tried it out pre-DC for quite some time.
The timing of the cutoffs does not matter much, if at all. The “magic” of the cutoffs is to get your calories down[/quote] Not in the DC protocol… You still have to get your overall cals in, you just do it before the cutoff. (this is not for dieting down into contest shape, mind you, just for leaning out or at least keeping the fat at bay while training normally in the off-season. You could say though that it essentially puts you in a deficit at night… However… You still have protein in you and trace carbs…)[quote] so that you’re in a deficit.
Go to bed in a deficit for the day every day and you WILL burn fat. Period.
Cutting off intake at a certain time works because, when people are in a deficit for the day, they get hungry by evening and eat enough to blow the deficit (sometimes more). [/quote] You still get to eat lean protein sources + fiber/salad/vegetables after cutoff… Might be that we’re talking about different approaches, mind you. [quote]
When adding 30 minutes of cardio on off days, or 5 days, doesn’t seem to do much, it’s because 1) you don’t really burn that many calories during 30 minutes of cardio; it’ll take at least a week or two to amount to one pound of fat; or 2) cardio makes you hungrier so you inadvertently eat more unless you are METICULOUS about your intake; and 3) cardio creates fatigue that causes you to move less throughout the day without realizing it, so you actually burn fewer total calories throughout the day. Believe me, this happens.
Some on these forums seem to believe that if your carbs are low enough, you’ll always be burning fat, or that if you lift for muscle mass, that you’ll have this magical “metabolism” where you have to eat MORE to lose fat (!), or that the right fat loss diet has plenty of “healthy fats,” or that if your meals are always P+C or P+F, you’ll magically lose fat. (And BTW this is not directed at you, Cephalic_Carnage, just a general observation of so many posts and logs on the boards).
Well, none of those are true.
No matter how little carbs you eat, you must create a deficit to lose fat.
No matter how much you lift, you must create a deficit to lose fat. Did anyone notice how many calories The Mighty Stu was eating to get ripped for his contest? [/quote] He sure went the low-cal way.
There are, however, several ways to get you into contest shape… And while you will always have to reduce cals to some extent to get down there, going to such extremes isn’t necessarily the only thing you can do.
As a skinny kid I had zero muscle-mass, but still held enough fat to conceal any definition. I ate mostly carbs… Amounting to a few chocolate bars per day, with maybe 2 plates of pasta (no major amounts). I had to eat a ton to gain any weight, yet even while eating literally nothing (often fasting for 10+ hours while reading books and such) I did not manage to get into single-digit bodyfat… May be a bad analogy, but I don’t think that this is necessarily all quite as simple as you make it out to be.
[quote]
“Healthy fats” can keep you out of a deficit just as easily as “bad fats.” ONE extra SPOONFUL of peanut butter can all but erase one’s deficit for the day. Fats are calorie dense, and it’s super easy to erase deficits with them. [/quote] Sure. Has anyone argued against that? [quote]
I don’t care how strict you are about not combining fats and carbs in the same meal. You can combine them all you want AS LONG AS YOU’RE IN A DEFICIT. [/quote] The reasoning behind not combining them was, to the best of my knowledge, that the large insulin spike you get after eating a major amount of carbs causes the body to store most of what you just put into it… Including any major amount of fat you ate. That’s one of the reasons why we differentiate between “dirty” foods and “clean” foods… Milk (containing somewhat similar amounts of sugar, fat and protein) vs. chicken breasts and such.
Of course I’m no scientist and still don’t care much. I do however notice that I’m staying leaner when training in the “off-season” as long as I avoid combining major amounts of fat with major amounts of carbs in my meals… Sure, if I were eating little overall, I’d lose fat… But also a boatload of muscle and sure as hell wouldn’t be able to keep progressing in the gym.
So the whole p+c/p+f thing was not meant to help people lose fat as such, but to avoid excess fat gain…
Of course I’m partially talking about recomp here, rather than dieting down while maintaining mass.
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
andersons wrote:
Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
No matter how much you lift, you must create a deficit to lose fat. Did anyone notice how many calories The Mighty Stu was eating to get ripped for his contest? He sure went the low-cal way.
There are, however, several ways to get you into contest shape… And while you will always have to reduce cals to some extent to get down there, going to such extremes isn’t necessarily the only thing you can do.
As a skinny kid I had zero muscle-mass, but still held enough fat to conceal any definition.
[/quote]
All my life, I too was skinny fat and never had any definition. Cephalic_Carnage - you mentioned above low-cal is only one way of getting ripped. Are there others ways (besides carb cycling you mentioned in your previous post)?
Well, Justin Harris, Shelby Starnes, Matt Kroc, and Dante all advocate the carb cutoff + ssc approach, if that lends any sort of indication to its effectiveness/usefulness. Their theory follows the same thought C_C has outlined in his posts.
I’m tired of people speaking in terms of calories being the absolute rule of thumb. The law of thermodynamics supports that energy in = energy out, yes. That being said, I agree without question, calories are probably the overarching theme that should be followed, I don’t doubt or argue that.
However, if I were to eat ONLY sticks of butter everyday, keeping myself to a 500 calorie deficit, would I lose weight? We all know that technically yes, I would lose weight, however, how would it affect my composition? Something to keep in mind which is why manipulation of macronutrients are so important. This isn’t even getting into the various energy systems (aerobic vs anaerobic) and their preferred sources of energy and how nutrient timing can be manipulated in order to further manipulate your body’s composition, i.e. fasted cardio in the morning as one example. To the beginner, yes, it should probably all be about calories. To those who are more advanced, screaming over and over to just watch your calories gets a bit annoying.
[quote]AaronFitness wrote:
I thought I would ask everyone if it is more efficent to do cardio first thing in the morning on an empty stomach when sugar levels are at their lowest OR straight after a workout when sugar levels are also low…?
Thanks [/quote]
Far better to do it late in the afternoon. Don’t eat anything all day except for fruit (grapes, apples, avocado, and such) in small amounts. Do cardio before lifting, to really challenge yourself. Think like a Roman warrior/soldier: run all day on an empty stomach for 20 or 25 miles, go into battle, build your camp, THEN you get to pig out. You should be shaking violently from lack of food, before beginning your feast, late in the evening.
Everything you’ve ever been taught by modern day ‘experts’ is the exact opposite of what you should be doing; unless you want to be a modern soft pussified human. The Roman soldier averaged 135 pounds and could kill anyone on this site in seconds. Easily.
[quote]Gillium-001 wrote:
For me, cardio right after weight training works wonders for fat loss.
I’ve never tried doing early morning fasted cardio. I like having breakfast immediately after waking up.[/quote]
That will pussify you. Your parasympathetic system is supposed to induce digestion in the evening. Eating shuts off your Sympathetic (alertness) nervous system, which is why you get sleepy after a big meal.
Modern America is being pussified, eating like this.
[quote]kylec72 wrote:
Well, Justin Harris, Shelby Starnes, Matt Kroc, and Dante all advocate the carb cutoff + ssc approach, if that lends any sort of indication to its effectiveness/usefulness. Their theory follows the same thought C_C has outlined in his posts.[/quote]
I believe that Justin’s carb cycling approach might preserve muscle during dieting better than other diets.
But nonetheless, I have followed their logs and their clients’, and they still create greater and greater deficits cutting for shows, by cutting their intake and adding cardio.
There is no point designing a fancy diet to manipulate hormones for body comp purposes, but then fail to create a deficit, if your goal is fat loss.
What qualifies as a carb cut-off? 4 hours before bed? Also, if you work out at night, do you still have the carb cut-off?
I wouldn’t even try sprints or HIIT fasted or in the morning. That would kill me! I do them in the afternoon and workout a few hours later.
[quote]Da Vinci wrote:
I’m tired of people speaking in terms of calories being the absolute rule of thumb. The law of thermodynamics supports that energy in = energy out, yes. That being said, I agree without question, calories are probably the overarching theme that should be followed, I don’t doubt or argue that.
However, if I were to eat ONLY sticks of butter everyday, keeping myself to a 500 calorie deficit, would I lose weight? We all know that technically yes, I would lose weight, however, how would it affect my composition? Something to keep in mind which is why manipulation of macronutrients are so important. This isn’t even getting into the various energy systems (aerobic vs anaerobic) and their preferred sources of energy and how nutrient timing can be manipulated in order to further manipulate your body’s composition, i.e. fasted cardio in the morning as one example. To the beginner, yes, it should probably all be about calories. To those who are more advanced, screaming over and over to just watch your calories gets a bit annoying.[/quote]
I understand what you’re saying about body composition. But to be honest, screaming about calories is NOT what I’m seeing here on these boards. (Admittedly, I look at only a fraction of the threads.)
I am tired of reading about people who have been lifting, (supposedly) eating “clean diets,” not combining fats and carbs at the same meal – etc – NOT losing fat when their goal is fat loss. Or people who are just starting a fat loss diet (BEGINNERS) being given all this minutia – or told they need to eat MORE food – when we don’t even know whether their proposed diet will put them in a deficit.
And no matter how advanced you are, you still have to create a deficit. And some people on these boards are simply fantasizing that they can create a deficit with way more calories than they need, because they lift or their diet is clean or whatever.
[quote]debraD wrote:
What qualifies as a carb cut-off? 4 hours before bed? Also, if you work out at night, do you still have the carb cut-off? [/quote] If you train at night, you will still have to drink your PWO shake… That’s apparently fine though (I don’t train at night, never tried that way) according to what I’m reading…
If you want specifics, check with any of the guys advocating cutoffs… Dante, Justin Harris, Shelby Starnes etc… ScottM or Sentoguy on this board may be able to give you the answers you seek. [quote]
I wouldn’t even try sprints or HIIT fasted or in the morning. That would kill me![/quote] Indeed. I think if I for some reason had to do fasted morning sprints, I’d just stay in bed… [quote] I do them in the afternoon and workout a few hours later. [/quote]
[quote]andersons wrote:
Da Vinci wrote:
I’m tired of people speaking in terms of calories being the absolute rule of thumb. The law of thermodynamics supports that energy in = energy out, yes. That being said, I agree without question, calories are probably the overarching theme that should be followed, I don’t doubt or argue that.
However, if I were to eat ONLY sticks of butter everyday, keeping myself to a 500 calorie deficit, would I lose weight? We all know that technically yes, I would lose weight, however, how would it affect my composition? Something to keep in mind which is why manipulation of macronutrients are so important. This isn’t even getting into the various energy systems (aerobic vs anaerobic) and their preferred sources of energy and how nutrient timing can be manipulated in order to further manipulate your body’s composition, i.e. fasted cardio in the morning as one example. To the beginner, yes, it should probably all be about calories. To those who are more advanced, screaming over and over to just watch your calories gets a bit annoying.
I understand what you’re saying about body composition. But to be honest, screaming about calories is NOT what I’m seeing here on these boards. (Admittedly, I look at only a fraction of the threads.)
I am tired of reading about people who have been lifting, (supposedly) eating “clean diets,” not combining fats and carbs at the same meal – etc – NOT losing fat when their goal is fat loss. Or people who are just starting a fat loss diet (BEGINNERS) being given all this minutia – or told they need to eat MORE food – when we don’t even know whether their proposed diet will put them in a deficit.
And no matter how advanced you are, you still have to create a deficit. And some people on these boards are simply fantasizing that they can create a deficit with way more calories than they need, because they lift or their diet is clean or whatever. [/quote]
I already said that I agreed calories should be the overarching theme to be followed. Clearly weight will be lost when you’re in a deficit. The law of thermodynamics states that energy in = energy out, so weight MUST be lost. If you aren’t careful with your macronutrients and how you train however, who’s to determine where that lost weight will come from? I think we agree, but are just approaching it from opposite sides and yes I have seen people “scream” (I’m exagerating of course) that the only variable that need be considered is calories…and of course these are probably the high school students who have a high school student’s physique and would never post a picture of themselves to validate the methods they’re promoting…for obvious reasons. I also did say that for beginners, yes, they should probably only be worried about calories until they get a solid understanding of the fundamentals, but for those who are more advanced and already have a grasp on the fundamentals, there are more strategies that can be utilized besides simply counting calories.
[quote]Cephalic_Carnage wrote:
You still have to get your overall cals in, you just do it before the cutoff. (this is not for dieting down into contest shape, mind you, just for leaning out or at least keeping the fat at bay while training normally in the off-season. You could say though that it essentially puts you in a deficit at night… However… You still have protein in you and trace carbs…) so that you’re in a deficit. [/quote]
Have you experimented and found that even if you meticulously keep calories EXACTLY the same, that the bedtime cutoff timing of calorie intake makes a difference?
Yes, actually – I am talking only about fat loss. You are apparently talking about gaining muscle with minimal fat. They are different IMO. Fat loss is very simple. Fat loss while retaining muscle is slightly more complicated, but it doesn’t have to be very complicated, and you STILL have to create a deficit at the end of the day.
Muscle gain with minimal fat gain is much trickier. The cutoff you describe sounds like it could be an effective part of a plan to do that (although I would think that if you train in the evening, this cutoff wouldn’t be ideal for muscle gain).
I’m not trying to be a jerk here, but did you track your calorie intake and weight carefully when you fasted?
I say this because I have found that when people don’t track intake carefully when dieting, it’s NEVER what they think it is. They are miserable because they eat little or nothing for so many hours or even days, but they erase their deficit with little or big cheats at some point. When we look at the calories over the course of a week, they are not in a deficit for the week.
[quote] The reasoning behind not combining them was, to the best of my knowledge, that the large insulin spike you get after eating a major amount of carbs causes the body to store most of what you just put into it… Including any major amount of fat you ate. That’s one of the reasons why we differentiate between “dirty” foods and “clean” foods… Milk (containing somewhat similar amounts of sugar, fat and protein) vs. chicken breasts and such.
Of course I’m no scientist and still don’t care much. I do however notice that I’m staying leaner when training in the “off-season” as long as I avoid combining major amounts of fat with major amounts of carbs in my meals… Sure, if I were eating little overall, I’d lose fat… But also a boatload of muscle and sure as hell wouldn’t be able to keep progressing in the gym.
So the whole p+c/p+f thing was not meant to help people lose fat as such, but to avoid excess fat gain…
Of course I’m partially talking about recomp here, rather than dieting down while maintaining mass.[/quote]
Not eating major amounts of carbs and fats at the same time IS effective for both recomp and fat loss – but how can we argue that this phenomenon contradicts calories in, calories out? Forget about the insulin spike altogether – meals HIGH in carbs and HIGH in fats are also INSANELY HIGH in calories.
And they are usually low in protein and thus have a low TEF. And they are the tastiest foods (pizza, ice cream) that are easy to overeat.
I bet that if instead of high carb + high fat, you eat EXACTLY the same calories worth of just fat, you’ll get equally bad results without any insulin spike.
I might think no one would ever do that – but then we have threads where guys who want to put on muscle are told to get their calories up by drinking shots of EVOO!