body fat

Do you feel like I feel? Did you have this problem and have now found a way to overcome it? I have tried the super diets, I have killed myself in 2 half marathons, 5 times a week in the gym and still the belly remains...

I am so frustrated, I have been up and down for the last 2 1/2 years but still I have a belly...

I've been down to 170 pounds, currently at 180 (down from my max 220) and I am so depressed that no matter how much hard work I have done I still have a jiggly midsection.

I'm counting calories and even have done really but still the belly remains. I have been reading this weekend that it is all about interval training? I don't have a ton of money to put in a trainer and I am a good self motivator so if you have thoughts, feel the same or just want to blow some steam about the same damn problem, go right ahead.

This belly will lose the battle - Not me!

G

I have the sollution for you man. I was in the exact same boat. I used to do cardio 45-60 minutes a session for 5-6 days a week easy. I also only took in 2000 calories per day. My bodyfat never really dropped and my strength gains suffered in the weight room. It was until I started eating more of the right foods, hitting the weights harder, and doing less cardio with more intensity that I saw results.

First of all, you need to re-work your nutrition plan. When trying to lose bodyfat, counting calories is never a good idea. You actually need to EAT MORE. However, you have to eat more of the RIGHT FOODS. Since you weigh 180 pounds, you should be getting at least 3000 calories a day. Your food sources will be protein (1 gram per pound of bodyweight), complex carbs from whole grains (whole wheat spaghetti, oatmeal, brown rice, whole wheat bread, etc) and fruits/vegetables, healthy fats (almonds, peanut butter, etc), and you should be drinking at least 1 gallon of water per day. So the final numbers would be 180 grams of protein, 250-300 grams of carbs, and 30-50 grams of healthy fats. Make sure to eat 6 small meals over the course of the day too (1 meal every 3 hours). Eating more often raises your metabolism. Choose one day where you have one or two moderately sized cheat meals and that is it. My cheat day is Sunday. Nutrition is most important, and more times than not people actually aren't eating enough. When you count calories and do a lot of exercise, your body goes into starvation mode feeding off muscle.

You want to hit the weights hard at least three times per week. Lift heavy (4-6 reps) and do compound exercises with free weights for the most part. Building muscle is what will help you lose bodyfat. The more muscle you have, the higher your metabolic rate.

Finally do HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) for cardio three times per week. Why is HIIT so effective? The intense nature of the exercise is anabolic in nature which helps to spare muscle a lot better. A lot of steady state cardio feeds off muscle, which is what you don't want. HIIT also focuses on bodyfat a lot better. Finally, HIIT raises your metabolism anywhere from 12-36 hours after you are done exercising. Which means that even when you are at rest, you are burning calories.

Here is an easy and effective HIIT routine for you that can be done on a stationary bike. Do a three minute warm up. Then pedal as hard and as fast as you can for 30 seconds. I mean go all out @ 100%. Really push yourself. Then dial it back and pedal at a much slower pace to recover for 90 seconds. Then keep switching from 30 seconds hard to 90 seconds slow and do this for 15 minutes. Then do a 5 minute cool down. The whole thing takes 23 minutes. As the weeks progress, ad more time to the HIIT porition. A good rule of thumb is to add a minute on every week doing it 16 minutes, then 17, etc.. Once you have reached 20 minutes with 30/90, start shortening your recovery intervals until you can do 20 minutes with 30/60 for your intervals.

Ever since I started eating more calories, lifting harder, and doing HIIT my bodyfat has dropped considerably. It used to be @ 19% and now I am down to under 10%.

This is SOOOOO appreciated!! Thanks so much for taking the time to write and give me such valuable information! I am off to the gym today to start my first HIIT and will follow your nutrition information as I am desperate to get the fat off and the six pack ON!

I hope you don't mind if I check back with you on any questions or just general BS'n?

Have a great one!

Justin

No worries man. I hope it works well for you. Feel free to check back and ask questions if you have any. I am so happy to finally be getting results after all these years, that it makes me feel good to help others out and see them succeed like I have. One thing I forgot to mention about nutrition is that the three most important meals out of the six are - the pre-workout meal, the post workout meal, and the meal after the post workout meal. 

Pre-Workout : 60-90 minutes before a lifting session or an HIIT session make sure you consume at least 50-75 complex carbs and 20-30 grams of protein. Never do either one on an empty stomach. My pre-workout meal is 4 OZ of whole wheat spaghetti (82 grams of carbs) and 4 OZ of chicken.

Post-Workout : You will need to invest in a good whey protein powder and a form of simple carbs like Dextrose. You can find both of these things online cheap. I was able to get a 15 pound bag of Dextrose for 10 bucks. You usually want to avoid simple carbs. However, after your workout is the one time you want to have them because they are absorbed into the body much quicker. Mix 40-60 grams of the whey protein, and a 1/3 of a cup of Dextrose (50 grams) with water to serve as a post workout shake. Drink this within 30 minutes of finishing. You only have to have the Dextrose after lifting though. Not after HIIT.

The meal after post workout : Within two hours of consuming the PWO shake, you want to have another meal that is heavy in protein and complex carbs.

One piece of advice about HIIT :

Never do it before a lifting session or right after. You want to make sure that you save all energy for lifting and you need to get your post workout nutrition ASAP after lifting. It is recommended to either do HIIT on days you don't lift, or to do it 6-8 hours after a lifting session.

Original Post by vyperman7:

No worries man. I hope it works well for you. Feel free to check back and ask questions if you have any. I am so happy to finally be getting results after all these years, that it makes me feel good to help others out and see them succeed like I have. One thing I forgot to mention about nutrition is that the three most important meals out of the six are - the pre-workout meal, the post workout meal, and the meal after the post workout meal. 

Pre-Workout : 60-90 minutes before a lifting session or an HIIT session make sure you consume at least 50-75 complex carbs and 20-30 grams of protein. Never do either one on an empty stomach. My pre-workout meal is 4 OZ of whole wheat spaghetti (82 grams of carbs) and 4 OZ of chicken.

Post-Workout : You will need to invest in a good whey protein powder and a form of simple carbs like Dextrose. You can find both of these things online cheap. I was able to get a 15 pound bag of Dextrose for 10 bucks. You usually want to avoid simple carbs. However, after your workout is the one time you want to have them because they are absorbed into the body much quicker. Mix 40-60 grams of the whey protein, and a 1/3 of a cup of Dextrose (50 grams) with water to serve as a post workout shake. Drink this within 30 minutes of finishing. You only have to have the Dextrose after lifting though. Not after HIIT.

The meal after post workout : Within two hours of consuming the PWO shake, you want to have another meal that is heavy in protein and complex carbs.

One piece of advice about HIIT :

Never do it before a lifting session or right after. You want to make sure that you save all energy for lifting and you need to get your post workout nutrition ASAP after lifting. It is recommended to either do HIIT on days you don't lift, or to do it 6-8 hours after a lifting session.

 You really know your stuff bro!

I salute you sir!

This is great information. I knew all that vyperman7 has written except the "Eat More" part. I keep increasing my weights and my cardio, doing them on same day. I feel damn hungry afterwards but week later there is no loss of inches and no gain in muscle. I guess he is right when he says doing cardio maybe feeding off your muscles.
Well I am going to give it a shot. I consume around 2000 calories/day with working out 3 days a week which I do 10 min cardio, followed by Full Body Circuit without rest, then 15 mins of cardio. I am going to increase my intake to 2500 cals/day and see what changes.

Thanks again to this great piece of information.

No worries keepalog.

I was extremely skeptical when my doctor actually told me to eat more calories months back. Now after eating 3000-3200 calories per day, I have gotten much better results. My scale weight is up 15 pounds, but my bodyfat is much lower. The trick is eating more of the right foods. As long as you keep your diet clean, the increase in calories will help you to build muscle better and recover faster without making you fatter.

Make sure you are lifting heavy with free weight compound exercises (bench press, squat, deadlift, standing military press, barbel row, etc). They work multiple muscle groups and get the best results when it comes to increasing strength and muscle. There is a great program called "Starting Strength" where you use these exercises as part of a fullbody weight-lifting routine three times a week. In workout A, you do three sets of five reps for squats, bench press, and barbel row. Afterwards do three sets of dips to failure. For workout B, you do three sets of five reps for squats and standing military press, one set of five reps for deadlift, and three sets of pull-ups to failure. When you complete three sets of five reps with good form, you add 5 pounds to what you were using before. By progressing the weight, you avoid adaptation. Switch off between A and B every other day three times per week (Mon/Wed/Fri).

Then for your cardio, try HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) 2-3 times per week on non lifting days. It is much better at targeting bodyfat and sparing muscle. You can read more about it here :http://caloriecount.about.com/hiit-thread-pos t-all-questions-routines-ft143813.

In May 2008 I was 180 pounds 17.5% bodyfat (148.4 lean lb. and 31.6 fat) and in the same position as you.  I was doing tri...bike races...ran everday and was eating 1900 calories per day...exactly. 

I almost did exactly what vyperman suggested except I did no extra cardio and I lifted 5 days a week.  I am now 185 pounds (165.9 lean lb) and 10% bodyfat.  I gained 17.5 pounds of muscle! I am not dissing those people who use cardio but it is not required if you hit the weights hard and put less time between each set.  (In order to accomplish the above I went from 180 to 206 over the winter time... I was soft but no one would have accused me of being fat.  In fact because I was not in a bathing suit everybody thought I was getting huge muscles)

It takes a long time so set your mind for what you will look like in one year.  It is very difficult to obtain the muscle that makes you look like a bad ass.  Low bodyfat is from what you put in your mouth.  Your bodyshape, muscle building and retention from your work in the gym.  Change your thinking to not how much weight you can lose but how much FAT you can lose.  Your scale lies to you...stop looking at it.  Get a hydrostatic body composition analysis if you can... it helps with your progress.

Just to give you some stats on where I am on the weights.  I bench 225 as my 6-8 rep max.  I can throw up 275 once on my own.  I squat 225 8 times easily.  My deadlift is awful and it is 185 max.  I can curl 45 plates and I am able to do 12 slow controlled wide grip pullups.  I can row 120 dumbells.  I share all this because a year ago I was benching 135 / could barely squat 135 / curled 60 pounds max / never did a deadlift and was scared because of my back / and could row maybe 50 pound dumbells and could do maybe 4 pullups. 

By the way... T Nation has a website which should be the bible for all newbies.  There are 100s of articles explaining all the above in more complex terms.  Read, research and then apply. 

golla20,

Awesome story! It is great to read when people make that kind of progress. It is so great to have someone else preaching the same thing of being in the mindset of losing fat and not weight. That is why I hate the BMI index. It is far too general. So many people think that they have to be a specific weight for their height and end up sacrificing muscle because of it.

Very cool on your strength gains too.

The best way to increase your deadlift is to keep doing it and to keep your reps low. Now with me it is funny because even though I have been into lifting and fitness for like 12 years now, I never did a single deadlift up until three months ago. Growing up, I had some lower back problems and I was always worried that deadlifts would kill my lower back. However, after reading about all the benefits deadlifts offer, I studied up and learned the correct form. My body has really taken to deadlifts and it has become one of my favorite exercises. In three months, I am already pulling double my bodyweight @ 430 pounds. I did this by keeping my reps low (3-5) and steadily increasing the weight when I would complete the sets. Increasing my deadlift has become somewhat of an obsession now..LOL

When you first get into lifting, all you ever hear about is people focusing on their bench press. Like many others, I fell into this. It actually does you a dis-service because you don't put the same amount of intensity into your other lifts as you do your bench. Now I make sure to put just as much focus into my squat, deadlift, barbel rows, and standing military press, as I do my bench.

Congrats again!!

Thanks Vyperman... I know I will never see the level of newbie gains I got this past year but I am hoping for a clean 5-10 pounds in the next year.

I agree 100% on BMI... it is useless as a tool for just about everyone.  I cannot stop preaching about hydrostatic body fat testing.  It costs me $49 and it is very accurate. 

The strength gains are addicting...however, I lost a lot of strength when I went into cutting mode..looking forward to getting super strong again once summer is over and I can let 2 or 3% bodyfat go to getting bigger.

I think the most limiting factor in my deadlift is me... I am scared to wreck my back (despite the fact that I yet to hurt my back doing a deadlift)  When the weight goes up I strain and then I get worried.  My posterior chain sucks and I plan on correcting that.

By the way...this is not just the method to lose fat for men!!!  Any ladies that read Vyperman's response please do the same thing.  My Wife after two kids has lost 30 poundS.  She eats like I do..( a little less calories) and she lifts like I do. (She gained a whopping 3 pounds of muscle over the last year and she is STRONG!!!!! and LIFTS HEAVY.) (It proves the point that ladies WILL NOT BULK UP in calorie deficit LIFTING HEAVY)  Our 15 month old weighs 26 pounds and she is picking him up and curling his ass every day all day.... DO NOT BE AFRAID OF WEIGHT!  (P.S. I think it is sexy when she cranks out pushups in perfect form)

Sorry if I am getting preachy.... I just read the other forums and I want people to know what actually really works if you are a former fatty and not genetically gifted.