Help with Direction

[Chris_Colucci]

[quote]Cinephile wrote:
I haven’t lifted at all in 9 years. I’m 31 now. I have ballooned to 295lbs at 6’2.
My BF% is 41. Bad, right?[/quote]
If by “bad”, you mean legitimately morbidly obese, then yeah, kinda bad. The best thing you could do for your health, nevermind your strength and physique, is drop fat like your talking about. It does sounds like your attitude is right on track. That’s a huge plus.

After making my little resolution to change my body, I prepped some healthy meals and got my macros where i needed them […] Even though I’m under maintenance, its really hard to eat this much whole food.

What, exactly, did you eat yesterday?

And what’s your target daily calorie goal?

I shouldn’t worry about ‘no direct bicep work’ at this stage, right?

Building well-peaked biceps aren’t really a priority right now, no. But there is room in a well-designed, goal-appropriate program for some direct arm work, for sure.

1) Is it, in your collective opinion, a dumb idea to train in the big lifts (5 reps) 3 times a week (or even 1 on 1 off) for fat loss?

Twojarslave is a dude who, I think, was pretty chubby and dropped some fat with Starting Strength (doing his 5s, 3 days a week). But I think he even said the fat loss wasn’t what it could’ve been with a different approach. I might be making that up or leaving out some parts though. He has a log around here. 1-Man Island is, if I remember, another guy who was big and used Starting Strength to get into better shape. So it’s possible, sure. But I still wouldn’t say it’s ideal and the most efficient way there.

2)if it is ok to continue doing the full body compound movement workouts, would it be beneficial to throw in some of the farmer’s walk/tyre flipping stuff after I’m done to increase fat loss? Should i do it on off days? SHOULD I DO ANYTHING ON MY CURRENT OFF DAYS?

Depending on your current conditioning/endurance level, you might not be able to go hard enough, long enough on higher intensity work (like tire flips, farmers, and other strongman-y conditioning work).

Plain old boring-ass walking 20-30 minutes at a time or longer, done most days of the week if not everyday, would be a better start to get your base-level endurance up a bit.

Get Ripped. Get Walking

After you see and feel some progress from there, then you could bump up the cardio intensity and switch to doing some of the harder stuff.

Thibs says in a recent article that “When trying to drop a lot of fat to get super lean, you won’t build much muscle, so it doesn’t make sense to use a million lifting exercises.”

Thing is, you’re not trying to get “super lean” right now. You’re trying to get not-super-fat. (Sorry man, no offense meant). Understand that your current state is outside the “normal” bell curve, so most advice either won’t totally apply or isn’t necessary just yet.

I think walking at least four or five days a week, plus some basic lifting three or four days a week, plus nailing your nutrition, is the best way to build momentum with some results.

There are tons of lifting plans on the site here. This is one example of a straight-forward plan that would be a solid choice:

The Waterbury Method