Can't Get Rid of Fat

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
1

Hey guys I am 17 yrs. old and have been training for about 3 years now but I cant seem to get rid of my body fat! (I have just recently in the past 3 months started bodybuilding). I have tried doing 35-45 mins of cardio everyday then trying that but only 3 days out of the week and my stomach fat doesnt seem to go away!

I have a good diet in my opinion, I eat 4 - 5 meals a day (its hard for me to eat 6 because of high school and college) and I am working out 5 days a week: Mon, Tues, Wed off, Thurs, Fri, and Sat but I cant seem to figure out how to get the fat to go away!!! I know I have gained a lot of muscle because my body fat % hasnt changed and I jumped from 195 to 212 (with the help of creatine) and it is visible but I am conscious to take my shirt off in front of people because of my stomach and love handles!

Now I just want to let you guys know I am not looking for a magic pill to transform me in 2 weeks or anything but I would like to know how I could get the fat to get away!

2

Don’t eat carbs within 5-6 hours of going to sleep.

Get up early, do 1 hour of low intensity cardio (jogging, eliptical, whatever) on an empty stomach.

Don’t eat sugar.

Keep your overall carbs low.

Work hard.

It’s not magical, just takes time. See ya in 6 months.

3

How many calories are you eating?
What is your macro split?
Meal Timing?
Carb Timing?
Food Log?

Those all contribute to fat loss.

4

[quote]AndrewGpv03 wrote:
Don’t eat carbs within 5-6 hours of going to sleep.

Get up early, do 1 hour of low intensity cardio (jogging, eliptical, whatever) on an empty stomach.

Don’t eat sugar.

Keep your overall carbs low.

Work hard.

It’s not magical, just takes time. See ya in 6 months.

[/quote]

It’s not magical…you right. Just gotta find what works for you!

Fat Loss is a VERY slow process. It’s gunna take about 6 months(shouldn’t say that, but I’m giving you the idea you won’t wake up next month with a 6pack) depending on the rate at which you cut calories.

I’m 27, and just now figured out what I needed to do to drop the fat. It’s all in the diet…for years I thought I could exercise it off or do cardio until I passed out. Never worked.

Some things I’ve done recently to my diet to help get rid of fat:

-Spread carbs between when you wake up, and post workout.
-Drop carbs in the forms of breads, pastas, rice if fat persists and replace with veggies and fruit(but more veggies than fruit).
-NO CHEAT MEALS and refeeds! Cheating only hurt me, even if I did it every other week. If you’re supplementing properly, you should have enough energy to get you through a workout.
-Add VERY low intensity cardio(ie walking around the neighborhood or something just to burn some extra calories). Not a real big proponent of cardio…never helped me in the fat department. It helps speed things up, but should never take precedance over a good diet. IMHO, you’re better off dialing in your diet and bringing calories down since that’s what cardio is for during fat loss cycles(burning calories).

Probably most importantly…DONT STARVE YOURSELF. The worst thing you can do. Good luck!

PS I don’t count calories, just cuz I know what 8-10 oz of meat looks like. Everytihng else kinda falls into place. Best thing I can say is know your body. If you don’t…start counting, buddy!

5

[quote]AndrewGpv03 wrote:
Don’t eat carbs within 5-6 hours of going to sleep.

Get up early, do 1 hour of low intensity cardio (jogging, eliptical, whatever) on an empty stomach.

Don’t eat sugar.

Keep your overall carbs low.

Work hard.

It’s not magical, just takes time. See ya in 6 months.

[/quote]

So when I do the cardio in the morning should I do intervals on the treadmill for 30 mins or just walk on the treadmill for however long? same with the eliptical. And in my house we dont eat any sugars but we use Stevia or splenda as a substitute, whole wheat bread and pasta and a lot of low carb stuff.

6

You are making this WAY TOO difficult for yourself.

Focus on caloric DEFICIT. Don’t worry about the HOW as much as the HOW MUCH.

If you want to drop bodyfat, EAT LESS and MOVE MORE. Source of macros, when you workout, etc., are all secondary to the deficit. Once you get a regular BF loss going (after about 4-6 weeks) then you can start dialing in when to workout and where macros should come from.

For now, focus on the deficit. Great deficit = faster fat loss. It’s really that simple.

7

First off, congratulations on living a lifestyle at your age, I was eating everything, drinking beer and working out sporadically, you have a lot of dedication, don’t beat yourself up! If I were you, and I am not, but I would read some Alwyn Cosgrove articles as a start.

Keep up the good work!

8

[quote]Invictica wrote:
How many calories are you eating?
What is your macro split?
Meal Timing?
Carb Timing?
Food Log?

Those all contribute to fat loss.[/quote]

Well I cant really tell you how many calories I am eating per say but i am eating about 4 - 5 meals a day and here we go, In the morning i have 2 eggs in a tortilla with cheese and salsa, and a glass of water, snack about 3 hours later i have some almonds, lunch usually some type of chicken (teriyaki or buffalo style), if i do have a snack later its usually some nuts or peanut butter (cause granted I am trying to body build so I want to get bigger but I just want to lose my waist fat!) and for dinner usually i have some type of meat or fish and a veggie. and sometimes i will have a rice cake with peanut butter and honey about 8:30. now the meals are breakfast: 8:30, snack: 11 - 11:30 depends, Lunch: 1:30 usually, snack: 3 or 4 and dinner: 6:30 -7:30 depends when mom cooks it. and to be honest I am not sure what my macro split is and i dont really eat a lot of carbs besides for breakfast and whenever i have some veggies. and also i drink about 5 glasses of water everyday (24 oz cup)

9

To offer an alternate opinion, with you being 17 and unless you’re morbidly obese. I’d eat, and lift, and worry about the fat loss later. If I had worried about muscle gain my HS years I’d have had a much better foundation to work from into my 20s and 30s. I was focused on my hawt abz as well, and have regretted it ever since.

Just glancing through your diet, it doesn’t look like you’re eating all that much tbh even for a cut. If you’re set on cutting though, I’d log your food intake until you get a feel for it. Check out www.fitday.com You’ll probably be surprised at what you find for how much you actually are eating.

10

[quote]AndrewGpv03 wrote:
Don’t eat carbs within 5-6 hours of going to sleep.

Get up early, do 1 hour of low intensity cardio (jogging, eliptical, whatever) on an empty stomach.

Don’t eat sugar.

Keep your overall carbs low.

Work hard.

It’s not magical, just takes time. See ya in 6 months.

[/quote]

WHAT THE FUCK are you telling a 17 year old to do 1 hour low intensity cardio in the morning for?

OP. Dude. YOUR 17 and a growing man, get your T up do Sprints, go to the track in the summer and race somebody Bust your ass in the weight room. Go watch the Program, don’t take steriods but go all out in the gym like the Guy in the PROGRAM.

11

[quote]Airtruth wrote:
AndrewGpv03 wrote:
Don’t eat carbs within 5-6 hours of going to sleep.

Get up early, do 1 hour of low intensity cardio (jogging, eliptical, whatever) on an empty stomach.

Don’t eat sugar.

Keep your overall carbs low.

Work hard.

It’s not magical, just takes time. See ya in 6 months.

WHAT THE FUCK are you telling a 17 year old to do 1 hour low intensity cardio in the morning for?

OP. Dude. YOUR 17 and a growing man, get your T up do Sprints, go to the track in the summer and race somebody Bust your ass in the weight room. Go watch the Program, don’t take steriods but go all out in the gym like the Guy in the PROGRAM. [/quote]

Agreed. At that age, unless you are truly obese, there is little need for some all out diet filled with tons of cardio when you are already trying to gain more lean body mass.

12

If you can’t get rid of fat, its a diet problem. Assuming you’re training like you should. Fix your diet.

13

[quote]elusive wrote:
If you can’t get rid of fat, its a diet problem. Assuming you’re training like you should. Fix your diet.[/quote]

Elusive is right on the money, as usual.

The point is, you can’t outtrain a shitty diet. I’ll make it VERY simple for you (I’ve done this for literally dozens of people in my “real” life, with consistent and often amazing results. Mind you, this is with people that WERE NOT living a “healthy” lifestyle, so to speak)…

Step 1: Establish baseline caloric intake. If you want a rough estimate, use somewhere in the range of 12 to 14 times bodyweight. I would pick a number right in the middle. Diminishing returns below 10 x bodyweight, so I wouldn’t go too low.

Step 2: Subtract 500 calories.

Step 3: Divide the result by 6.

Step 4: Consume that many calories, give or take depending on the time of day, per meal, 6 times daily. It doesn’t have to be exact… just keep the 500 calorie deficit in mind.

Step 5: Move… Train + cardio to try to burn ~ 500 calories / day. Focus more on Free/bodyweight training than cardio, meaning get cardio in when you can, but you’ve got to lift. While lifting focus more on compound movements than isolation.

Net result, 1000 kcal deficit / daily = ~ 2 lbs / week.

To add to Elusive’s comments, the stricter you keep the diet (toss the junk, processed foods, white death, etc.), the faster you’ll harden up.

There you have it, fatloss in a nutshell… When you get to losing some weight after about a month or so, reassess your baseline calories. The more BF you lose, the harder it becomes to lose even more - this mostly in response to a variety of things (hormonal response, improved overall body efficiency to movements/cardio, reduced caloric intake, etc…). When you get to this point, you’ll have to ratchet up the intensity in training and possibly increase cardio to keep BF loss going. You’ll want to consider jacking up calories to 500 > maintenance 1 maybe 2 times per week for a mental break from the diet… but this doesn’t mean pig out. It means mix some natty peanut butter with yogurt occasionally to keep the fatloss going.

It’s all up to you… stricter compliance with the “plan” = continuous bodyfat loss.

14

Just a correction… If your muscle mass has increased, you technically should have a LOWER bodyfat percent. You may still carry the same amount of bodyfat, but you will have higher LBM percent. If you still believe you have the same bodyfat percent as before, then you may have gained fat as well.

When you first start lifting, you should be able to lose fat and gain muscle at the same time. Especially since you said you have been trying to lose fat.(noobie gains)

on a side note: i would focus on gaining muscle right now if i were you. the more muscle you have, the easier it will be to burn the fat.

15

I train hard every day I am in the gym and usually leave sore (in a good way) and feeling like I got a good workout but it just seems like no matter what the stinkin fat wont go away! now on another note I think my diet is kinda f’d up cause i dont always eat chicken and stuff and say for instance today i had 2 eggs and 2 strips of bacon in a tortilla with salsa and i had 3 pieces of pizza for lunch and when i do have chicken a lot of the times its processed chicken.

I will admit i am a newbie (even tho i have helped people in the gym before, i do know what i am talking about with some stuff!!! lol) but i just cant comprehend like what kinda foods i should eat you know and if i want a snack in the morning then i am going to have to have something easy that i can bring to school.

If you guys have any suggestions on like what i should eat like exactly i would appreciate it! (now im not talking about like an in depth meal plan but like what is good to have? I know steak, chicken, pork, fish, all that stuff but look at it from a 17 yr. olds point of view like what kinda stuff can I make?

16

You should read “Nutrition for Newbies” by Christian Thib. It explains how to eat fot fat loss and everything.

On the school snack thng, take it from a 20 year old (basically the same shit as a 17 year old bot going to college): Protein shakes and Nuts (almonds, peanuts, wallnuts…)

17

[quote]Professor X wrote:
Airtruth wrote:
AndrewGpv03 wrote:
Don’t eat carbs within 5-6 hours of going to sleep.

Get up early, do 1 hour of low intensity cardio (jogging, eliptical, whatever) on an empty stomach.

Don’t eat sugar.

Keep your overall carbs low.

Work hard.

It’s not magical, just takes time. See ya in 6 months.

WHAT THE FUCK are you telling a 17 year old to do 1 hour low intensity cardio in the morning for?

OP. Dude. YOUR 17 and a growing man, get your T up do Sprints, go to the track in the summer and race somebody Bust your ass in the weight room. Go watch the Program, don’t take steriods but go all out in the gym like the Guy in the PROGRAM.

Agreed. At that age, unless you are truly obese, there is little need for some all out diet filled with tons of cardio when you are already trying to gain more lean body mass.[/quote]

Being a naturally heavier guy, i’ve found low intensity cardio to be helpful.

Sprints are fine too. Just get moving and don’t gorge yourself before you go to sleep.

Also X, I don’t mean to imply he should even be in a calorie defecit. I don’t think muscle gain and fat loss are mutually exsclusive.

Also, as a larger guy, I think getting relatively lean is important (not ripped obviously), since it’s going to be rough to eat to gain if you’re constantly all fucked in the head about being fat.

OP, 1 hour cardio, 30 minutes, whatever… lower intensity has worked great for me. Just get moving.

18

Oh, and OP… the foods. Stick to the basics, eggs, chicken, steak, ground beef, etc… have your carbs, or a burger w/ fries, whatever, earlier in the day. Then eat your protein sources with vegetables in the evening.

Protein + Carbs earlier. Protein + vegatables later.

Do cardio.

19

[quote]Psfan wrote:
I train hard every day I am in the gym and usually leave sore (in a good way) and feeling like I got a good workout but it just seems like no matter what the stinkin fat wont go away![/quote]

I think I was in the same boat when I was in high school. I trained a lot and I thought I was training hard, but I never really looked jacked and I never got really lean. I was bullshitting myself though, just because your tired and sore and shaky, doesn’t mean you’re really accomplishing anything. I mean, no matter how sore you feel or shaky you get, you’re never going to look jacked if you can’t bench two plates, or get stapled by 135 in the squat.

Now, if this isn’t the case for you, I don’t know what to tell you, but I think the trick is getting your work capacity up in the weight room ie getting much stronger at similar or greater levels of volume.

Leave ‘dieting’ and tons of extra cardio for later.

20

Don’t eat so strict some days and then for Ex. eat 3 pieces of pizza the next at lunch.

Find a medium and work with that. Just stick with the basics at first, like no whites such as sugars and white bread. Control the amount you eat at a time and soon enough your body won’t crave crappy foods.

Good Luck