This not about getting back at the ex. My new girlfriend wants to lose the fat in her lower abs. She runs 90 minutes a day on the elliptical and does weights twice a day. I already corrected her on that massive amount of cardio. Anyway, I was thinking about putting her on Meltdown Training. The only problem is, she’s got a bad lower back. Any ideas on what a good program would be, and a diet as well? She’s about 5’2" and about 110 pounds. She’s in pretty good shape. Thanks everyone.
Weights twice a day? What’s she doing, diet wise now? Would be the question.
But man, why weights twice a day? And SO much cardio?
I would have her read the Beginners Blast Off Program, Foods That Make You Look Good Nekkid and maybe The Diet Manifesto.
man, i have the same problem with my girlfriend. must be something with the name damn it. Anyways, try searching for a post i made a couple weeks ago. i think it was called, “need help convincing girlfriend of workout program” first you need to teach her that more isn’t better, when it comes to training. by the way, how is her diet? does she just eat a bagel and a grape each day too or is she smarter than my girlfriend? i swear, women are crazy!!! (don’t worry, i said women, not t-women. don’t want to offend any of the cool t-women on here that actually know what they are doing)
Well, like every other college girl, she thinks she’s fat, even though she looks really good. She usually eats cereal in the morning, sandwich and sald for lunch, chicken for dinner. She’s willing to completely change her diet and workout if I promise her results ( and a little incentive if you know what I mean 
) What do you guys suggest? She’s got the attitude to change and that’s half the battle so I’m not worried about giving her a hardcore program.
just get her on a good all around program that contains mostly compound movements. have her hit the weights 4 times a week and let her either do 30 minutes or so of cardio after the weight work and then take the other 3 days off, or have her do just the weight stuff a few days a week and then do the cardio on the off days if she insists on going to the gym every day.
A little more info… She normally intakes 1000 calories, 25 of protein, 70 carbs, and 10 fat. I’m thinking of giving her a low carb/high fat diet. Something like a 60-10-30%. 120g protein, 20g carbs, 60g fat. Also, I think I’m gonna put her through Meltdown training. What do you guys think? Suggestions would be greatly appreciated. I’ve already read the diet manifesto and the other diet articles.
Unless she is self-motivated and totally sold out on the bodybuilding lifestyle, you are going to kill her with the combination of Meltdown and a low carb diet. Get her eating more calories from better foods. She needs to learn how to eat and 1000 calories a day is just going to put her body in starvation mode. Use Berardi’s calculations for caloric needs and you will see what I mean. Get her lifting M,W,F. One day can be a total body workout with 10 exercises at 2-3 sets of 10 reps and the others can be a lower body and upper body day. Do a lot of supersets to make things go faster and to break up the monontony. You can do 20-30 minutes of cardio after weights and on off days. As much as this might be called forum blasphemy, you could put her on Body for Life. It is a great beginner program. Even the diet is ok, just make sure that she gets some good fats in her diet. The non BFL workout that I suggested above is what I’m doing with my wife combined with an isocaloric diet (Don’t Diet). As a side note, she did Body for Life to a T for 12 weeks and dropped 20lbs of fat while gaining 6 lbs (could be more, but I don’t remember)of lean body mass. The program works for beginners. Once she is done with that, you can get her experimenting with more complex diet and exercise regimes. Keep it simple. Keep it doable. Keep it fun. If you start out too hard with her, you are asking for failure.
You said your GF has a bad lower back? So I would question Meltdown Training - since deadlifts are part of the routine. And I would consider Nic’s last suggestion regarding the routine.
And I don't know if she needs such a drastic change in diet. I betcha she'll notice some differences (in a good way) once you change her weight lifting routine and so I would go with just slight changes in her diet. Maybe increase protein content rather than making significant cuts in her carb intake? And another thing to consider, she's already consuming really low calories (in accordance with what you said about her activity level), maybe she needs a little boost in caloric intake to pick up that metabolism a bit?