I’m 6 pounds away from my goal weight class which is 181. The meet is in mid december which leaves me 16 weeks to loose the weight and add the 10 pounds on my bench and 20 to my squat and deadlift that I want. I know this isn’t an impossible task. I’m however unsure of which way I should go about doing it. Should I lower my calories for a while, or just do some cardio on off days or what?
What is your federation’s rule regarding weigh ins? 2 hours before the meet? 12 hours? 24-48 hours?
2 hours before meet unfortunately.
Find a different meet 
Seriously though, it shouldn’t be difficult to get down 6 lbs from 187 just by watching what you eat, doing a little extra cardio, and cutting water/food early the day before.
Just go for a long walk a couple of times a week
Unless you’re already below 10% body fat the best way to go would be to lose 8-10 lbs of fat ASAP which can be accomplished in 3-4 weeks with minimal or no strength loss.
After that, Go back to your normal maintenance calories and increase your non-lifting activity like daily cardio, parking further away, taking the stairs instead of elevator, etc…
You’ll have a good 2-4 lb buffer to gain weight and strength before the meet and you don’t have to lose it last minute by dehydrating yourself or doing intense cardio in your deload week which will hurt your performance for the meet.
- 6 lbs in 16 weeks could be lost as real fat, real easy.
- It’s 181.8, that .8 is a lot when you’re cutting.
- If you want to cut water instead of fat, check out the various water cutting threads here and in Combat Sports. It isn’t hard at all to cut 5.2 lbs of water, even for a 2 hour weigh in.
Yea I definately don’t want to have to dehydrate or do cardio in the couple weeks prior to the meet.
I’m making good strength gains at the moment so I don’t want to turn around quite yet. But maybe spending october doing a serious cut, that leaves me all of november and a week in december to gain my strength back. Would that be the best plan?
My buddy is telling me “just loose it naturally by eating low-fat, keep the calories up, and do cardio”, does this really work for anyone? It seems like the only way I can reduce weight is by lowering the calories but I’m not that experienced with it.
BTW Thanks for the help everyone!
This is pretty much the procedure I use pre competition: http://www.elitefts.com/documents/making_weight.htm
disclaimer: I am a little bit of a fatty, so it is easy for me to lose the excess weight. My last meet I overshot by 5 lbs and still did okay (215 in 220lb class). If you combine the water technique and the dieting in that article, even at your lighter weight i could see you losing 6 lbs w/o issue.
dave tate does a nice job of describing what you should do dietwise here as well: You searched for indexTitle - T NATION
the gist: lower your carbs, keep the protein up, eat some healthy fats, cut water if necessary. If we knew your bf % it’d be easier to tell you exact macro breakdowns.
With a caliper, I measure 10.5%
Chest-7mm
Abdominal-14mm
Thigh-15mm
23 years old, 6’0", 188 as of this morning.
You dont have to dehydrate. Cardio is a must though if you want to lose the weight the right way. Clean up your diet a little bit and eat more protien. Also, double the amount of water you are drinking. This is not hard. you just have to do it.
A little bragging, I have been dieting for the Night of The Living Dead. I am only on week 6 and I have lost 21lbs and none of it has been muscle. I am constantly hitting PRs. Whats the secret? I am just doing it.
[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
You dont have to dehydrate. Cardio is a must though if you want to lose the weight the right way. Clean up your diet a little bit and eat more protien. Also, double the amount of water you are drinking. This is not hard. you just have to do it.
A little bragging, I have been dieting for the Night of The Living Dead. I am only on week 6 and I have lost 21lbs and none of it has been muscle. I am constantly hitting PRs. Whats the secret? I am just doing it.[/quote]
What? I wish I could just do it.
My diet is already pretty clean. Lowish fat. Prob no more than 50g per day. Only lean cuts of meat like tukey or chicken, only whole wheat good carbs except post workout. I’m eating over 200g of protien per day. 3500 calories. I don’t know how much more I can clean it up.
Cardio is the only thiing I’m not doing. What should I get on the eliptical for 20 minutes on off days o something?
[quote]anom1k wrote:
This is pretty much the procedure I use pre competition: http://www.elitefts.com/documents/making_weight.htm
disclaimer: I am a little bit of a fatty, so it is easy for me to lose the excess weight. My last meet I overshot by 5 lbs and still did okay (215 in 220lb class). If you combine the water technique and the dieting in that article, even at your lighter weight i could see you losing 6 lbs w/o issue.
[/quote]
My wife and I use this as well. It works almost too well. I eneded up being 6lbs under my weight class last meet.
[quote]mattho wrote:
[quote]StormTheBeach wrote:
You dont have to dehydrate. Cardio is a must though if you want to lose the weight the right way. Clean up your diet a little bit and eat more protien. Also, double the amount of water you are drinking. This is not hard. you just have to do it.
A little bragging, I have been dieting for the Night of The Living Dead. I am only on week 6 and I have lost 21lbs and none of it has been muscle. I am constantly hitting PRs. Whats the secret? I am just doing it.[/quote]
What? I wish I could just do it.
My diet is already pretty clean. Lowish fat. Prob no more than 50g per day. Only lean cuts of meat like tukey or chicken, only whole wheat good carbs except post workout. I’m eating over 200g of protien per day. 3500 calories. I don’t know how much more I can clean it up.
Cardio is the only thiing I’m not doing. What should I get on the eliptical for 20 minutes on off days o something?[/quote]
There are so many stigmas attatched to cardio and strength. I talked more shit about it thatn anyone until I started doing it. I am taking this meet very seriously. So, I forked out the money and hired Shelby Starnes (the elitefts nutrition guy). My diet was already pretty clean as well, he just helped me structure out my meal planning a little better and gave me cardio reccommendations.
I have just started my second week of 7 days of cardio but I have been doing 5 and 6 days for the last 6 weeks. My only drops in strength have been on some bench exercises but, I have been logging and calculating this, there is only a 3% difference in most cases. And the loss is attributed to not being such a fat ass anymore… which just means I need to get stronger. My squats and deads are through the roof and so is my work capacity(from the cardio).
Today for example, I did 30minutes on an incline treadmill before I did Max Effort Safety Squat Bar Squats… I hit a 30lb PR… at a 23lb lighter bodyweight.
Anyway, my point. Yes do cardio. Yes, hire Shelby Starnes.