Hi there,
I am currently doing a fat loss program, results after 5 weeks are a drop in Scale weight of 14 lbs, Body Fat loss of 5.5% (as near as I can tell, using the accu-measure - I marked my measure point with a permanant marker so I measure in the same spot once a week) so am sitting at 18.2% BF. Current scale weight is 191lbs.
My diet is very tight and I am very strict, gave up beer completely but I have a whitewater rafting trip coming up in August that may demand my attention be given to a couple cold ones.
I am 39 yrs, 5’8" and want to get to my Judoka fighting weight of 175 lbs with 7% bodyfat. I was mean sumbitch back then but years of neglect resulted in me losing some mass, roughly 10 lbs and gaining alot of fat. I would blame it on age but I won’t its because of me being a lazy bastard…
My current diet is as follows, 3 days of 40P/40C/20F at 1800 calories, 1 day of 30P/50C/20F at 2500 calories, as far as I can tell my maintenance is around 2200 Calories. Current training is 4 days a week of weights - nothing heavy yet, doing squats with 90 lbs dumbells, bench (db), lunges (db), crunches, curls and am going to pick up a dip/chin station (I cant seem to find a decent gym).
I have ordered some Red Bands but seeing as how things are going so far am not sure I need them. The only thing I supplement with is a multi-day vitamin.
According to my plans and calculations I should attain my 170 lbs sometime around Mid-October, but am wondering when I should switch to a mass building program. I have roughly 10lbs of mass to gain. Also, what kind of supplement regime should I look into? I think my diet end of this is pretty much planned out and plan on consuming around 2800 calories of a 35P/50C/15F diet. How does this sound?
thanks,
Dave
Dave,
Congratulations on your fat loss over the past five weeks.
As to your training regimen, I did not see any cardio. Do you have any in your program? If not, I would suggest that you consider it as I believe you will need to work it in at some point. You will probably find that it gets exponentially more difficult to shed the BF as you approach your goal of 7%. For now, I’d save the Red Bands until you hit a plateau that you are having difficulty getting through. I believe that your goal of 170 lbs is attainable as this represents an average loss of 2.1 lbs/week over the next ~10 weeks. Remember, however, that since the loss is non-linear you will most likely have to reduce Kcals or increase cardio more as you approach mid-October.
I would complete the cutting cycle down to your BF target prior to thinking about mass building. It is very difficult for most people to increase LBM while simultaneously decreasing BF. Even after you’ve hit your target BF level, you’ll want to stabilize for about a month and then begin to increase Kcals as you embark on the mass phase.
Finally, I would suggest that you supplement with Tribex to elevate you T-levels. For other ideas on supplements, take a look at CT’s “The Beast Evolves” and “Mutation” series. Both of those should provide some good ideas.
Best of luck.
Thanks T-Bone2
Yes I did forget to mention my cardio, I train on a stationary bike 5 days a week at 5 AM on an empty stomach. My total rest days are Wednesday and Sunday where I don’t do much of anything, maybe a casual bike ride around town for a couple hours.
I am currently doing a continuous cardio routine of 45 min at around 75% of max HR. According to my polar M61 monitor I am burning around 550 cal per session combined with a dietary deficit of around 500 cal per day.
I keep track of everything quite closely and will watch for these plateaus. I plan on doing the continuous cardio till Sept 1 then switch it to intervals/sprints and probably join one of these posh gyms in town - probably get booted out once I start doing deadlifts in between the chrome 
Are there any tips for getting through a plateau?
I will read those articles tonight.
Thanks again,
Dave
[quote]iluminatae wrote:
Yes I did forget to mention my cardio, I train on a stationary bike 5 days a week at 5 AM on an empty stomach…
I am currently doing a continuous cardio routine of 45 min at around 75% of max HR…
Are there any tips for getting through a plateau?
[/quote]
Very nice! It looks like you’ve got it dialed in quite well. As for additional tips, I don’t really have any. Personal experience for me was to change things up during the cutting phase. I went to a 5x5 regimen 3x per week and was doing HIIT 3x per week (in the evening.) When I plateaued, I changed the cardio over to constant speed running for ~20-25 minutes first thing in the morning prior to ingesting any Kcals. This worked for a while and when I hit the next plateau I added a second cardio session in the evening ~1 hour after my last solid meal. This assisted in the cutting, but given my diet I felt I was loosing too much LBM and I felt tired a lot.