Height: 6’1
weight: 235
age: 25
Body fat%: 20+
Question: What is the fastest solution to do a solid body fat cut. Willing to do 2 a days and diet no problem. .
Opinions please.
if you’re willing, why not also post your current diet
(generally, what/when you eat daily)
[quote]bbattle wrote:
Height: 6’1
weight: 235
age: 25
Body fat%: 20+
Question: What is the fastest solution to do a solid body fat cut. Willing to do 2 a days and diet no problem. .
Opinions please.
[/quote]
I agree on the diet thing. What are you eating right now? If it’s on the dirty side, you can probably get away without going balls-to-the-wall no carbs/minimal fat/protein only lol. Those diets are crazy effective, but are pretty shitty from a quality of life standpoint (also unless it’s something like the V-Diet, they’re really hard to maintain without refeeding for more than a week or two).
As far as weight workouts go, are you currently doing anything? If so, plan please? You should probably hit the weights at least 3 days a week to maintain muscle unless you want to come out looking kinda skinny fat and mediocre. Obviously conditioning would be on top of that, at a higher frequency. Pretty much think of it as: lift to maintain muscle, condition to cut fat.
But yeah, nutrition and conditioning will be the keys to fat loss. If you can give an idea of what you’re doing now for weight training/conditioning/nutrition, that would be great. You don’t want to do too much too quickly because your body will adapt and become efficient at what you do, then the fat loss will stall sooner. You want to leave yourself somewhere to go, if that makes sense.
Also, if you could give an idea of exactly how much fat you want to lose and a timetable, that would be useful.
Workout:
MWF: TBT Full body work out. 4 core lifts, Bench Variation, Squat Variation, Dead Lift Variation, Back/Shoulder Variation. And two auxiliary lifts. Sets alternate between 4x5 up to 3x18. 15 mins of 60sec ride with 30 sec sprints HIIT.
Morning steady state cardio (30 mins-ish, usually about 400-500 calories)
Tues/Thur: Morning steady state cardio (30mins) and then evening steady state cardio)
Sat: Light Cardio/Conditioning
Sun: Off
Diet:
1500 calories a day, divided between 5-7 meals a day. Have not been hardcore on measuring protein, carbs, and fat. But I focus on trying to get at least 20g of protein at each meal, eating complex carbs, and staying away from saturated fats.
On an online calculator my daily maintenance at sedentary is 2,700.
I would like to lose 10-15 a month at the least. I am 235 and I would like to be 200 by mid March-April.
I hope this helps, let me know if you need more info. Thank you~!
a 1,200 calorie deficit is too severe for you IMO.
It takes a little bit of time to lose weight but if you cut that many calories and start doing 2 days with HIIT every day you’re probably going to get burnt out real quick.
If your maintenance calorie requirement is 2,700 I’d start out with a 500 cal deficit and see how that works out… maybe 700 and shoot for a flat 2K a day.
You should start measuring out your foods. You said you’re eating 1,500 cals a day but then in the next sentence you say that you havent been “hardcore in measuring” out your foods. How do you know you’re actually getting 1,500 and not 1,200 or 2,100? You should start measuring out your food and start a food log.
You sound like you have motivation and plan, which is good, but I think your plan could use a little tweaking.
[quote]gregron wrote:
a 1,200 calorie deficit is too severe for you IMO.
It takes a little bit of time to lose weight but if you cut that many calories and start doing 2 days with HIIT every day you’re probably going to get burnt out real quick.
If your maintenance calorie requirement is 2,700 I’d start out with a 500 cal deficit and see how that works out… maybe 700 and shoot for a flat 2K a day.
You should start measuring out your foods. You said you’re eating 1,500 cals a day but then in the next sentence you say that you havent been “hardcore in measuring” out your foods. How do you know you’re actually getting 1,500 and not 1,200 or 2,100? You should start measuring out your food and start a food log.
You sound like you have motivation and plan, which is good, but I think your plan could use a little tweaking.[/quote]
I agree with gregron about not pushing the caloric deficit too hard to begin with, and also with seriously measuring foods. I would suggest beginning with a 500 cal deficit and a relatively low volume of cardio, then alternating weeks of adding volume to your cardio and maintaining volume/cutting 200-250 cals.
I would recommend replacing the steady state cardio with HIIT as gregron mentioned, or using some kind of circuit training. Steady state cardio can get kinda miserable as you add more because you’ll get to a point where you’re doing the same thing for 60-90 minutes. If you are fine with that, by all means go for it. I’m just saying that you could get similar results from something with more variation that would take half the time.
T Nation has plenty of reading on the HIIT/circuit cardio if you’re interested. I can also let you know what I’ve been doing lately if you’re too lazy haha. I’m sure there’s better stuff out there than what I put together, but it’s working well and I don’t have to spend much time on it at all (I’m several weeks in and only doing cardio for 30 min or so a day).
On last recommendation would be to weight train in your first session and hit cardio for your second session on lift days.
It looks like you have good motivation, which is awesome. I put this together between sets, so if anything is too vague just let me know lol.
Thank you for the feedback.
I have been very careful about measuring actual calories. I am very exact with that. What I have not been exact about is measuring out my actual protein, carb, and fat ratios.
If I can maintain the 1,200 calorie deficit and still perform, is it necessarily bad to keep doing it? I am less concerned about burning out, and more concerned about not making good progress.
Thanks!
[quote]bbattle wrote:
Thank you for the feedback.
I have been very careful about measuring actual calories. I am very exact with that. What I have not been exact about is measuring out my actual protein, carb, and fat ratios.
If I can maintain the 1,200 calorie deficit and still perform, is it necessarily bad to keep doing it? I am less concerned about burning out, and more concerned about not making good progress.
Thanks![/quote]
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You should be thinking about macronutrients. I would suggest keeping protein constant and then keeping fats low/carbs higher on workout days and fats higher/carbs low on nonworkout days.
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I would HIGHLY recommend against starting off that low on calories. I’m guessing that one or two things will happen if you try to maintain that:
a- You will fry your CNS completely by running yourself down for too long
or b- your gains will stagnate, you will try to drop calories even more, then “a” will happen.
Part of learning to manipulate your physique is realizing that it’s NOT a sprint. 25-40lbs is quite a bit to lose, and I highly doubt you will be able to get all of that weight off if you start your nutrient intake so low. It’s not always “less is more effective for fat loss” with caloric intake. You can be too abusive to your body by throwing too much at it, and it will deal with it by doing everything possible to survive- which isn’t always getting sexy and showing abs.
One other thought- the HIIT bike stuff you mentioned- is that what you call steady state cardio, or is that at the end of the weight workout?
[quote]bigmac73nh wrote:
If I can maintain the 1,200 calorie deficit and still perform, is it necessarily bad to keep doing it? I am less concerned about burning out, and more concerned about not making good progress.
Thanks![/quote]
2) I would HIGHLY recommend against starting off that low on calories. I’m guessing that one or two things will happen if you try to maintain that:[/quote]
X2^^
the thing about starting off that low is, Where do you go from there? Are you going to drop down another couple hundred? Will you start eating less than 1,000 cals a day?
Your body is VERY adaptive and will get used to your diet after a while, that is why it is better to start off with a smaller deficit and then you when your body adapts to that (and it will) you can drop a couple hundred more.
Ok thanks guys I appreciate the advice.
In answer to bigmac37nh
“One other thought- the HIIT bike stuff you mentioned- is that what you call steady state cardio, or is that at the end of the weight workout?”
No. My cycle HIIT is what I do at the end of a lifting session. I do 60 seconds normal ride followed by 30 seconds of sprinting as hard as I can with a moderate resistance for 10mins. At the end of it the calorie read out is somewhere around 100ish but I feel like I kicked the shit of myself.
My steady state cario is typicall 30mins of a stairstepper at a higher intensity (about 3 miles in 30 mins, which comes out to be about 500 calories on their calorie count at my weight, which was my read out today).
When I do 2 a day cardio (Tues/Thurs), I typically do the second bout on something lighter than a stairstepper, like an elliptical. In the past I have experimented with low weight complexes as well etc.
I understand the idea of my calorie and macro nutrient intake. What I was planning on doing is changing phases to compensate for my bodies adaptation. For example, do the lower cals for 6-8 weeks, followed by 2 weeks of ketosis induction phase, followed by a 6 week animal cuts phase etc. Something like that.
I guess another question that comes to mind is if I do not feel exhausted or super hungry at my current calorie intake, should I still force myself to consume another 300-500 calories to bring myself to 1800-2000 for the reasons you both stated above?
Thanks!
Blake
Oh and bigmac, I would appreciate it if you shared with me your program that has been working well for you.
[quote]bbattle wrote:
Ok thanks guys I appreciate the advice.
In answer to bigmac37nh
“One other thought- the HIIT bike stuff you mentioned- is that what you call steady state cardio, or is that at the end of the weight workout?”
No. My cycle HIIT is what I do at the end of a lifting session. I do 60 seconds normal ride followed by 30 seconds of sprinting as hard as I can with a moderate resistance for 10mins. At the end of it the calorie read out is somewhere around 100ish but I feel like I kicked the shit of myself.
My steady state cario is typicall 30mins of a stairstepper at a higher intensity (about 3 miles in 30 mins, which comes out to be about 500 calories on their calorie count at my weight, which was my read out today).
When I do 2 a day cardio (Tues/Thurs), I typically do the second bout on something lighter than a stairstepper, like an elliptical. In the past I have experimented with low weight complexes as well etc.
I understand the idea of my calorie and macro nutrient intake. What I was planning on doing is changing phases to compensate for my bodies adaptation. For example, do the lower cals for 6-8 weeks, followed by 2 weeks of ketosis induction phase, followed by a 6 week animal cuts phase etc. Something like that.
I guess another question that comes to mind is if I do not feel exhausted or super hungry at my current calorie intake, should I still force myself to consume another 300-500 calories to bring myself to 1800-2000 for the reasons you both stated above?
Thanks!
Blake
[/quote]
Ok, sounds good sir. A few things:
- If you would like, you can make your steady state cardio sessions more like your HIIT stuff on the bike. While it may not give you the same readout of calories burned on the machine, HIIT stuff tends to ramp up your metabolism and continue burning calories following the workout in my understanding. I suggest this option simply for time reasons. It’s just a lot easier to add 5 min per cardio workout per week than it is to add 10-15 min of steady state cardio, both in terms of scheduling and maintaining interest. If you’re happy with the steady state cardio, just keep that up.
2)I would recommend adding the calories back in. Sometimes you can actually see an improvement in leanness when you add calories back in following a period of lower nutrient intake.
3)As far as my conditioning plan goes, it’s pretty simple. One round of a circuit would look like this:
A1. Upper Body Move x 20 sec (pullup/chinup/pushup/speed pressing/etc)
-10 sec rest-
A2. Lower Body Move x 20 sec (DB swings/BW squats/squat jumps/etc)
-10 sec rest-
A3. Ab Move x 20 sec (crunch/v-up/cable crunch/etc)
-10 sec rest-
A4. Conditioning x 20 sec (DB swings/mountain climbers/backwards walking against a treadmill at max incline/etc)
[repeat A1-A4]
It’s similar to Tabata training in the exercise/rest periods, but it’s more flexible with just what exercises you choose to include. That way if anything is sore, you can go light on it and it won’t hurt your weight workouts. There’s a lot of variety and a round only takes 4 minutes, so it isn’t very boring either. I do plenty of weight training as well, but that is highly personalized for me- I’m currently up to 4 rounds of the above conditioning circuit per day though in addition to some other small stuff.
Overall, as I mentioned before I recommend alternating weeks of adding conditioning volume with weeks of cutting calories. You should start at 2000 cals, because that could give you up to 4 weeks of cutting before you’re eating as little as you are now, and you’ll still have plenty of room for adjustment.
If you’re worried about the added calories for this week, you can add in more conditioning. Try adding 1 round of a conditioning circuit like mine, or maybe 5-10 minutes of steady state work. Then next week, you could drop 200 calories and keep the same work volume. In two weeks, don’t change what you eat, but add more conditioning, etc. You get the idea. Once you’ve gone through a month and added conditioning twice/dropped calories twice, you can evaluate whether or not you should do something more drastic like forcing yourself into ketosis or adding fat burners.
It also might be easier for you if you make a training log to gauge progress on here. It can be helpful to take weekly measurements/photos in addition to just using the scale. The training log might be a nice way to keep track of your programming, nutrition, and progress. Whether you post a log or not, I do recommend that you keep track of your progress personally. The scale can be screwy, but pics and measurements taken under the same conditions don’t lie.
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]bigmac73nh wrote: