I’m 6’4", and a hair over 300. I’m pretty damned strong, although nothing earth shattering. However, at 300 pounds, I’m nowhere close to ripped. I’m about to get very serious in my efforts to lose fat. I’ve been training to get strong, and while my strength has really increased, I’m still a fat slob.
Now, I’m looking for real world experiences with the various diets and exercise programs. For someone who is more concerned with losing fat than gaining muscle, would I better off with the T-Dawg diet, or a different one? Which would be better, Meltdown Training or Fat to Fire, or something else?
Each program and diet sounds good, and I think I can follow any of them, but I’m wondering if anyone has any recommendations. I also have no idea how much weight I need to lose. Anyone that’s a big boned 6’3" - 6’5" and ripped care to post their weight? I’m just curious, not looking for a figure set in stone.
First things, first. You need to get your bodyfat measured. And as you continue to diet/train, you can monitor your LBM/BF% to find out if you’re losing muscle or gaining. And if you’re losing, you modify your diet and training accordingly. Also, as you diet, get to know the mirror really well. Learn as to what you look like at the different BF% - which is what I’ve done in the past. That way in the future, you can eyeball your BF% rather than having to rely on calipers, hydrostic, etc. OR, do get a pair of calipers and read Jason Norcross’s excellent articles on body comp here in T-Mag! (lightbulb flashed in my head…)
If you are more than 12% (which sounds like you are), look into Meltdown Training and you can combine that with either T-Dawg or Fat Fast. (Some may suggest Fat Fast first, though). As your BF% goes down you can consider the 5x5 program. I hope this helps! And I wish you the best of luck and keep us posted here as to your progress!
My best personal experience is cycling T-Dawg and Fat to Fire with Fat Fast and Meltdown. I do the FF/MD for only 3 weeks. Don’t Diet didn’t work for me.
The fat to fire program is awesome for losing fat. I kept the base of the program and tweaked it with some boot camp style pt and was very pleased with the results and increased level of fitness. As far as diet, please don’t laugh me off the forum but I followed the BFL first sized portions and ate clean and went from 245 to 214 in 3 1/2 months.
Vman, I just assumed a flame would come my way cuz I didn’t have a food log or macro ratios. I’m really starting to like the bodyweight only training combied with weight training. In my opinion Hindu squats, mountain climbers, jumping jacks and squat thrusts, even heavy bag training beat the hell out of any treadmill or stationary bike. I would reccomend warrior training and combat conditioning from the tmag archives.
Well obviously your on the right path, being here… but anyways - Patricia is right, find out your body comp and get an idea of where your metabolism is at. That should be your first step.
Nutrition in general plays such a huge role in weight loss - its all been said already:
keep meals under 600 kcal a piece, don’t eat too much empty carbs (don’t eat any if you can!). Eat lots and lots of protein, Make sure you get a really healthy balance of fatty acids and all that. For what its worth, the thing that made the biggest difference for me was when i really started eating 5-6 meals a day consistently for a couple weeks. Even when I was not training for a couple weeks last november, I still was getting leaner just cause my metabolism was really starting to pick up (who’d think? the do-nothing protocol).
Really, you will be fine once you set your mind to the task of changing your eating habits to something that is more supportive of your goals.
Training? Probably should just look something up.
another question to consider is ‘how fast?’ If you are going drastic you could do a lot of things. If you are just looking at a long term, like 6months+ then you can do a lot of different things.