[quote]bronco68 wrote:
How did you drop the weight?
Im kind of in the same boat…minus the sycophants.
Did you end up losing much muscle?[/quote]
The initial weight drop came from running. Just running 3 days per week. Training and diet stayed the same because I was paranoid about losing muscle. At first I couldn’t even run one lap around the track without dying, but I kept at it and eventually bumped it up to two miles and some stadium sprints. (I still hate running, but I’ve found that I can’t stay lean without it).
This took me down to around 260 after a few months. I didn’t lose much strength, so I’m guessing I kept my muscle.
Then I hit a wall and used a simple diet I found on the web. I was hungry, but the weight melted off and I didn’t have to run as much. I got down to around 240 and felt great, not too much muscle loss and I could wear 36 pants. Then I got the stupid idea of doing a BB comp (this was in 98). All I did was am cardio and cut cals to get down to around 230 and what I thought was pretty stinking lean. I got my rear handed to me and threw the trunks away.
I stayed around 230 for a couple of years and decided I wanted to get extremely shredded. Using some am cardio and diet tricks I learned on the web I got down to 205 and under 5%. I mentioned before that I’m a big guy and to get smaller than this I’d have to chop off a limp.
Anyway, fast forward to the present day. I’m over 30 now and my priorities have changed. I keep diet and lifting REAL simple.
Diet: 5 meals per day of protein, good fat, and veggies. Only “real” carbs are a half cup of oats with breakfast. Alcohol and free meals (within reason, no binges) on weekends.
Lifting: 3 times per week of whatever. Lately I’ve been doing DJ inspired oly stuff, but I’ll throw in a bb workout now and then. Let me put in a plug here: oly lifting is FUN. Much more enjoyable than bb workouts for me. Here’s the kicker; by doing these three days per week and focusing on performance I look better than when I was doing long bb workouts.
If being hyooge is not your goal, try training only the clean and press and snatch for a few months. You’ll be shocked. By using cardio and diet to stay lean I’m able to have fun in the gym and not worry about how huge the last set of curls made my arms look.
Cardio: Hill sprints, HIIT, old-fashioned jogging, jump rope, fast walk, etc. three times per week on non-lifting days for 30 minutes to 1 hour. As I mentioned above, one of these has to be a jogging session or I have a tough time staying lean.
Lord I was born a ramblin man. Sorry for the long post, but I hope my screwups can benefit someone. Ask any and all questions and I’ll try to point you towards someone who actually knows something…