Anybody wanna take a stab at this?

Bigger Stronger Leaner Competitive Bodybuilding
21

thanks for the responses.

Some answers:

  1. I haven’t had a thyroid check. It honestly never crossed my mind.

  2. I get checked for diabetes everytime I go to my doctors due to a family history of diabetes. Nothing yet.

  3. I’m 6’1"

I’m not sure if taking time off will do anything, though it’s true – my body has been in a calorie deficit for more than a year which obviously can’t be good.

My experience with ephedra was that it seemed to stop having any effect on me. When I originally took it I got energy boosts, etc. I don’t feel anything from it at all anymore, and have stopped taking it for a good 2 months.

I will get my bf% tested and post results.

There seems to be 2 trains of thought – some people prefer daily cardio and some think it’s overtraining. Is this dependant on the intensity of the cardio?

I very well could be overtraining, though, with 3x a week of hard cardio and 1x a week of easy + 4x a week of hard lifting while not on a lot of calories. That just spells overtraining. I’ve only noticed one “sign” though and that’s trouble falling asleep even though I’m dead tired

Thanks for the tips

22

Yeah kahunaman ephedrine down regulates. How did we miss that? :wink:

23

Thunderous
the key point is whether he needs it. If this is the case “mentally” then of course he will re-enter dieting more jacked and hyped, thus creating a possibly greater caloric expenditure.

As for taking time off and eating “loosely”…this is very subjective. At any rate, calorie balance and hormonal levels are tightly controlled. Through in the mediational effects you mentioned of “clearing your mind” and you may reap some benefits (a la refeed); however, if he eats greater than mntc. during his time off, he will gain fat (particularly if not clean, and particularly because based on his previous weight levels, I highly doubt his metabolism is that jacked).

Vain

24

Again, I don’t agree. How would you explain someone coming off their diet for 2 weeks. not training, eating what they want and a lot of it, and dropping 3 pounds in that time frame.

25

What were:
their starting weights
foods consummed
supps taken
etc.etc. etc.

So many variables.

Weight? what type:
water?
fat?
LBM?

26

I have to agree with Thunder. Earlier this year, my strength started stalling, and so did my weight loss. I didn’t lose any weight during my month off, but it felt good, I felt energized and reinvigorated as soon as I got back to it. It took a little while to get my strength back up, but since then, I’m even stronger.

I can’t believe no one has mentioned Meltdown Training I, II, or III.

27

No, there aren’t ‘so many variables’. I think you tend to overanalyze things. Not everything has to be figured out down to the last detail.

The point is, that with time off dieting and training, people have lost weight even in those weeks. When they come back, it’s not simply an issue of renewed motivation.

This is what happened. No one can say no it didn’t because science says it can’t happen.

I’m all for all the science. I have my degrees, but it’s not just about the science. It’s about the practical applications.

28

I can just agree to disagree then

Vizzle

29

You’re agreeing to disagree with the fact that it’s happened?

You’re not trying to tell me what I observed wasn’t what I observed are you? That perhaps, the scale lied to me?

30

No thunder, not that at all.
what I am going to disagree with you on is what (i.e., what factors) caused it to change.

If coming off one’s diet and eating “whatever they wanted” caused your clients to lose weight, (fat), then hell, lets all giddy up on that band wagon and order some pizzas

31

I would also like to respectfully disagree with something TT said. Seven days a week cardio is too much. You can reach a point where you’re just doing too much cardio, and rather than it helping your progress, it hinders your progress.

Thunder, feel free to stop by and disagree with me anytime! That’s what makes T-Mag the resource it is; the discussion, debate and disagreement. Besides, I’m in good company since you’re disagreeing with Vain, too. (grin)

John222, Thunder is right. Excessive cardio will ultimately work AGAINST your goals. For those of us who are non-competitors, the trick lies in doing the type and amount of cardio that helps us to achieve our goals, and not ONE IOTA MORE. Competitors want extreme results (i.e., ultra-low BF percentages), and they?re willing to pay the energetic price (exhaustion, lethargy). In other words, they’re willing to flirt with overtraining to achieve their goals.

However, the term “excessive” is highly individual. Seven days of longer-duration, moderate-intensity FS cardio might not be excessive for me based on my metabolism, how I eat/diet, the weight lifting program I follow, the fact that I?m generally sedentary, and the other day-to-day stresses and demands in my life. Seven days of longer-duration, moderate-intensity FS cardio might very well might be excessive for the next person who has a different situation.

I’ve been testing a new dieting strategy that involves FS cardio as I’ve described it above. In 30 days I lost about 5 pounds of FM, put on muscle and dropped my BF% by 3.75 points. I got great results and my energy was good.

The next 30 days I added 3 evening cardio sessions on days I didn’t lift, same duration and level of intensity (70% of MHR for 45"). I also dropped calories (mostly carbs) by about 200 calories per day. The second month I DEFINITELY entered into an overtrained state. Energy sucked. I didn’t want to get off the couch. I had no interest in doing anything with my friends. And even worse, I made virtually NO progress towards my goals.

What I did a very poor job of getting across in my message is that cardio is not the answer to your problem. It is only one part of the equation. . .

Body Composition Success = Correctly Dialed-In (Cardio + Weight Training + Diet)

The bottom line is that you have to find the right combination of all of the elements above.

32

John222, I’m walking a pretty tight line dietarily and energetically. I could NOT do HIIT currently. I’d have to take in more carbs. The longer-duration, low-to-moderate intensity FS cardio cause me no energetic problems, however. Appropriate (not excessive) cardio, once again, is highly individual.

Re your being overtrained, how do you feel? How are your energy levels? How is your immunity? The fact that you have some trouble sleeping can be corrected with melatonin and sometimes results from doing a strength-type workout which results in CNS adaptations. It does not necessarily indicate overtraining in and of itself.

Re taking time off, let’s hit it from another direction. It is highly likely that some changes need to be made to your diet/program to jump-start your metabolism and break your current plateau. You very well may need to increase caloric intake. If that’s the case, it’s going to take your body at least two or three weeks to adapt to different macronutrient ratios and higher caloric intake. That may end up being be all the break (or shake-up) you need.

Re ephedra, how long have you been taking it and how much? Do you cycle off on weekends?

Many people make the mistake of thinking that once they no longer get the energy boost (down-regulation/adaptation), that ephedra/ECA has stopped working. That’s not the case. There are still thermogenic (fat burning) benefits to using an ECA stack, long after the body has adapted. In other words, a lack of the jitters dosen’t mean that your ECA stack is no longer burning fat.

Great info from some great brains here on the forum. There will always be different approaches to manipulating body composition. But that’s because we’re all biochemically unique. What works fabulously well for one person might very well be counterproductive for the next. That’s what makes it such an interesting game. (grin)

33

The one statement that needs to be given the most weight from all of these post comes in the last paragraph of TT’s last post. What works for 1 may be a hinderance to another. It is all about experimentation and finding what works best for u. That is what makes this forumn so helpfull, the diversity of different opinions and approaches to solve the same problem.

34

Answers:

Immunity? Not so great. I’ve oddly gotten sick in the past where I hadn’t gotten sick in a long time before.

Ephedra? I took it for a long time, but I would stop every 2 weeks or so for atleast a week. I thought this would prevent over-use.

I do not personally feel that I need any time off, just maybe some kind of change to ratios and training. I’ve always wanted to try T-dawgg v2 but I’m not sure if that would just send me down even further.

A question I had regarding T-Dawg v2 is – Do you count the fiborous carbs toward your total? For example, you eat 50g of carbs in green vegtables, but 25g of that is fiborous carbs. Is the total 50g or 25g?

If i went t-dawgg, I’d rather do lower intensity cardio because I personally know I couldn’t do HIIT without sufficient carbs, even if I had surge or something pre-wo.

I will correct myself in saying that low intensity FS didn’t work for me – not true. It worked, it was jsut boring :slight_smile:

35

Just a quick comment on ephedrine and its effectiveness.

Most of results from ephedrine usage are not attributed to its ‘thermogenic’ activity, but rather to its anoretic activity.

36

Have you tried HotRox? Not to sound like a Biotest shill, but virtually everyone who’s used it has reported that it works great. And it’s not ephedra-based.

And I’ll weigh in on Thunder’s side here about the re-feeds, taking time off. This is the whole idea behind Joel Marion’s Cheater’s Diet (and the subsequent CD/EDT thread). Again, the reports from knowledgeable people were that re-feeds work, and work well. Time off would be a bigger step in the same direction.

And I would NOT recommend HST for your situation. While some people seem to respond well using it for gaining mass, no one I know has used it for fat-loss with any success. There just isn’t enough activity involved in the workouts.

37

I was wondering around in google land looking for stuff written on EPOC, excess postexercise oxygen consumption. What I found was that no matter what position you want to take on EPOC, you can find supportive literature. one article showed that exercise of increasing intensities caused a longer EPOC, more than straight line increase. If I remember, 80% 1rm was 12x that of 40 1rm. Nother study found that EPOC studies were unreliable, that EPOC was not consistant for the same subject with the same protocol and conditions, yet another postulated that familiarity with an exercise caused a decrease in EPOC duration, yet another stated that EPOC duration was the same for a 25 minute bout than it was for a 50 minute bout and the second 25 minute bout the same day. What do I make of this? That people should train more frequently, should move more weight, should strive to increase the load every training session, should keep it simple, should change out the exercises very often, as resistance nears the top of an athletes ability, that a circuit of at least 3 compound movements should be utlized so that more work can be done as opposed to two, which causes local fatigue much sooner, maintenance calorie levels are highly variable. Is it beneficial to periodize weight loss?? Should one cut calories and perform a lot of work to cause a net caloric deficiency and weight, mainly fat, loss, alternated with periods of static bodyweight being the goal. Here is a question that I have regarding caloric intake. I often see that it is better to eat numerous small meals so that they can consume more calories. Why? Why is it necessary to eat more, besides liking to? If one could get all the micronutrients that are needed to maintain life, would it not be more advantageous to need to eat less? Of course I wrote this after eating a good sized dinner.

38

Ok, I can only give what my experience has been since I haven’t all this lovely scientific crap to validate my opinions.

I’ve been on one kind of low carb diet or another for almost a year. I’ve made what I consider to be really good progess but had plateaued at 133lbs and 20%BF (and no, don’t even start in on the whole subjectivity of BF%s because I don’t care). On the recommendation of a friend, and MUCH against what I considered to be my better judgement, I’ve taken a month off ALL dieting and training. Most of my food choices were clean… Well, who am I kidding. I ate pizza till I was sick of it, lasagna with whole fat cheese and sausage, drank way more than my share of adult beverages, indulged my Thai fetish repeatedly and ate some form of fast food on a daily basis. All this PLUS shoveling french bread in as fast as I could stomach. Believe me, I have never been so friggin’ bloated and felt so damn sloppy in recent (or otherwise) memory. Oh yeah, I had been using HotRox, Grow and Surge which I stopped during this time.

End result? I’ve lost 5lbs scale weight, 2%BF, my waking temperature is up 1.2 degrees, and while I feel mushier I am told by those in the know that I still have the same (or better) muscle tone.

Gee, all that from STOPPING all forms of diet and exercise for a month. I’m completely psyched to think how I’m going be feeling tomorrow morning when I start training and dieting again.

39

Whatsup. It seems my earlier post didn’t go through. Trying again :wink:

Re: Hotrox – No, I haven’t tried it. Though, this has been on my “to do” list since it came out. I may grab some.

Re: Refeeds – I’ve read every study and article I can find about refeeds, and they all basically say that when above 15%, they’re useless. I can see the psychological benefit for me, but I don’t see any other benefit.

The psychological benefit was seen today, as I had a “cheat” meal – my first “cheat” in over a year. It kind of felt relieving, not sure why.

Re: HST – I have always felt that diet and cardio shoudl take care of the fat loss, and what you do as far as iron goes shouldn’t be all that important, just as long as you’re doing something. Obviously I like westside, as even in a calorie deficit I’ve made very significant strength gains, even though they aren’t much for my bodyweight.

However, a program change may be in order, and maybe my train of thought is bad – considering I see so many “fat loss programs” such as EDT for fat loss, meltdown I, II, III, Fat to Fire, etc.

Thanks for all the replies. I’m trying to “digest” everything and figure out what I’m going to do. The #1 thing on my agenda is a bodyfat test, though, as that may help more than anything.

I have lost almost all the fat on my legs, the same cannot be said for my gut, though :slight_smile:

40

Of the programs you listed, I would recommend EDT for fatloss before any of the others. Both Fat to Fire and Meltdown are terrifically demanding programs, and will have even people who are in excellent shape sucking wind and thinking about puking.

I don’t know what your current physical status is - in other words, whether your current weight is “pretty good” for you, or whether you’re still really obese, despite having lost a bunch of weight - but if it’s the latter…man, I wouldn’t try Meltdown.