[quote]t-ha wrote:
I used it last July/August for 4 weeks. I found it good in terms of energy & mood while on a hefty caloric defecit. I did lose alot of weight (about 25lbs) but I’ve dieted successfully before without fat-burners and I found that the rate of fat-loss wasn’t particularly more than I was expecting. It did take will-power out of the equation pretty much which was nice.
The before/after pics are in my profile btw.
@PGA, if a supplement is making it hard for you to sleep, look into getting GABA and taking a few grams before you go to bed - it knocks me out like a light.
@the OP, how long have you been dieting now? You may be better off maintaining and building up for a while, upping your calories slowly to build your metabolism up a bit. Dropping bodyfat tends to be easier when approached for the second, third or successive times - like some kind of fat-loss memory or something.[/quote]
I really don’t look at is as “dieting”. Here is a quick rundown of my situation.
Was always a big “husky” kid. But was always athletic throughout childhood/high school so I was never obese by any means.
I probably topped out at 265 by the time I graduated college, and not a good 265.
Worked out on and off through my early twenties since I wasn’t playing sports but never really got into it. I wasn’t the fat guy walking down the street by any means, but I wasn’t in great shape either.
When I got engaged I decided to go on a “diet” and run/do cardio to get in shape for my wedding. In 5 months I went from 250 to 204, but I was definitely skinny-fat. I weighed a lot less but my body comp certainly was not good. I only concerned myself with the scale and that was how I measured my success.
4 years of marriage and I had ballooned back up to about 240. It was the day before Valentines day in 2005 and before dinner I went with my wife to by some pants. As I was struggling to get into size 38s, I decided something had to be done and I had to do it right.
So I started eating better and took a much more effective approach to fitness. I combined some cardio, weight training and boxing training for an overall attack on changing my body. In a year, I was looking good.
Last April I visited a nutritionist who gave me some advice and gave me a benchmark of numbers to gauge my progress from that would be much more effective than scale weight. I also found T-Nation and got much more serious about my workouts, especially my resistance training.
So, last April I weighed in at 196, 13.5% bf.
As I said, I got more serious about my diet and training and started taking suppliments to aid in my progress.
As of the end of the year I weighed in at 218, 11.1% bf.
So, essentially, I am currently in the best shape of my life. My diet is pretty dialed in and I had managed to eat enough above maintanence to put on some muscle and not increase fat.
So now I am trying to go one more step forward. Get myself under 10% bf while maintaining a weight of around 220lbs.
Problem is, as with a lot of guys, I just have this ridge of fat around 2" wide that goes from my lower abs to my love handles and it’s stubborn as hell. I have pretty good ab definition starting about my belly button (maybe a 4 pack, plus those two little bulges right under the rib cage) as well as decent overall size and definition (not huge, but that’s not what I’m going for).
So, I’m not sure how to “diet” to get any leaner as I am eating a fairly low amount of calories and I eat really clean. I don’t want to drop too far and lose lean mass and I don’t want to kill my metabolism. I just started adding more HIT (3-4 times a week) in an effort to be more of a fat burner and am hoping the HRX will help me make it happen.
I will try to take some “before” pictures tonight and continue this as sort of a “blog”. Not a day to day thing, but maybe do 2 week interval updates and we can all determine if it is working.
If anyone has any suggestion on what I should do diet or exercise-wise in conjuction with this experiment, I’m willing to listen.