So I’m making great gains on CW’s TBT program. I absolutely love it and have never enjoyed training this much.
My diet is clean, about everything is in place. All I need to figure out is what I can and should do as cardio. I’m still high on BF… About 20% and I want to drop this cosiderably to 14% at least and see where I wanna go from there.
I have a natural “talent” for gaining fat, never was a skinny kid. So what can I “safely” do as cardio so I’m shedding fat but not obstructing my muscle gains.
HIIT style? Long period low intensity? Simply a long walk in the morning? Sled dragging? I’m reading so much contradictory stuff I’d really like a solid answer to this one.
If you tend to store fat easily you are like me and would likely benefit more from a lower carb diet than lots of cardio. I like to do HIIT but have given up on long cardio sessions. I alternate high volume weightlifting and HIIT with my normal heavy work.
I’ve also found that simply not eating so much/often takes off the fat faster than trying to burn it off. Your metabolism is designed to keep you big. An occasional fast will not interfere with muscle gains but will shock some of the fat off your midsection. However, don’t give up your sports, if you like to climb, bike, run, swim or whatever… Do It and have fun!
[quote]pradaboy wrote:
So I’m making great gains on CW’s TBT program. I absolutely love it and have never enjoyed training this much.
My diet is clean, about everything is in place. All I need to figure out is what I can and should do as cardio. I’m still high on BF… About 20% and I want to drop this cosiderably to 14% at least and see where I wanna go from there.
I have a natural “talent” for gaining fat, never was a skinny kid. So what can I “safely” do as cardio so I’m shedding fat but not obstructing my muscle gains.
HIIT style? Long period low intensity? Simply a long walk in the morning? Sled dragging? I’m reading so much contradictory stuff I’d really like a solid answer to this one.
Thanks in advance everyone ;-)[/quote]
I dunno,I think all of what you’ve listed work for some people.Guess you have to decide what not only works for you but whats the least tedious.I prefer to switch it up.Twice a week I do HIIT, while once a week I do 40 minutes 8% incline. I used to do longer periods 3 times a week(1 hr+) but it started killing my calves so I try to stick to intervals most of the time.
My diet is clean, low carb. I only go over 100 grams on training days.
How many meals/time between meals would you suggest?
[quote]Kruiser wrote:
If you tend to store fat easily you are like me and would likely benefit more from a lower carb diet than lots of cardio. I like to do HIIT but have given up on long cardio sessions. I alternate high volume weightlifting and HIIT with my normal heavy work.
I’ve also found that simply not eating so much/often takes off the fat faster than trying to burn it off. Your metabolism is designed to keep you big. An occasional fast will not interfere with muscle gains but will shock some of the fat off your midsection. However, don’t give up your sports, if you like to climb, bike, run, swim or whatever… Do It and have fun![/quote]
[quote]pradaboy wrote:
My diet is clean, low carb. I only go over 100 grams on training days.
How many meals/time between meals would you suggest?
[/quote]
that’s a good question:
hey, i too have a propensity for being a fat f*ck. for me, it’s 4-6 meals @ 4-6 hours apart.
a lot of people miss the boat here. they think you gotta eat every 3 hours. so they eat every 3 hours during the day, and then they go to bed and fast for like 8-10 hours. that is just plain dumb. it f*cks my metabolism.
so, bigger carbier meals in the early day. smaller p&f meals later in the day. small P&f snacks at night.
you gotta eat to lose fat. otherwise, you just lose metabolic momentum.
as for you “cardio”, pretty much what the other guys said. i’ve had the best results with GH lactic acid type weight training for fat loss, HIIT, EDT, sprints, etc. combined with low carb, moderate calorie diets and HOT-ROX.
Damn, I’m doing 6-7 meals at 2-3 hours apart. Sometimes I get hungry even before the 2 hours are up! I’d have trouble getting enough protein with only 4 meals, that’s min. 50gr. per meal to get to 200 at the end of the day. Not to mention the portions would get bigger. Aren’t small portions more often better for the metabolic rate?
[quote]BFG wrote:
pradaboy wrote:
My diet is clean, low carb. I only go over 100 grams on training days.
How many meals/time between meals would you suggest?
that’s a good question:
hey, i too have a propensity for being a fat f*ck. for me, it’s 4-6 meals @ 4-6 hours apart.
a lot of people miss the boat here. they think you gotta eat every 3 hours. so they eat every 3 hours during the day, and then they go to bed and fast for like 8-10 hours. that is just plain dumb. it f*cks my metabolism.
so, bigger carbier meals in the early day. smaller p&f meals later in the day. small P&f snacks at night.
you gotta eat to lose fat. otherwise, you just lose metabolic momentum.
as for you “cardio”, pretty much what the other guys said. i’ve had the best results with GH lactic acid type weight training for fat loss, HIIT, EDT, sprints, etc. combined with low carb, moderate calorie diets and HOT-ROX.
[quote]pradaboy wrote:
Damn, I’m doing 6-7 meals at 2-3 hours apart. Sometimes I get hungry even before the 2 hours are up! I’d have trouble getting enough protein with only 4 meals, that’s min. 50gr. per meal to get to 200 at the end of the day. Not to mention the portions would get bigger. Aren’t small portions more often better for the metabolic rate?[/quote]
Ask Lonnie Lowery or John Berardi or Dave Barr for a scientific answer. All I have is anecdotal evidence from my damn self.
And it says this: eating every 2-3 hours leads to ever present hunger AND overconsumption. I tried that shit for years, and it didn’t work for me.
I suggested 4-6. Four at minimum, 5 is good, 6 may be better. Some of these meals may only be half the size (calorically) of the others. Most of us DON’T need a million grams of protein either. 1 g / # LBM is sufficient. Thats at most 40g x 5 meals or 35g x 6 meals for 90% of us.
Hey, it’s ok to be hungry. Try to throttle back to eat no sooner than every 3 hours and no less than every 5 hours with a 4 hour target. Adaptation isn’t painless, but it works.
Thanks for the input… maybe I’ll throw the question up at Prime Time
[quote]BFG wrote:
pradaboy wrote:
Damn, I’m doing 6-7 meals at 2-3 hours apart. Sometimes I get hungry even before the 2 hours are up! I’d have trouble getting enough protein with only 4 meals, that’s min. 50gr. per meal to get to 200 at the end of the day. Not to mention the portions would get bigger. Aren’t small portions more often better for the metabolic rate?
Ask Lonnie Lowery or John Berardi or Dave Barr for a scientific answer. All I have is anecdotal evidence from my damn self.
And it says this: eating every 2-3 hours leads to ever present hunger AND overconsumption. I tried that shit for years, and it didn’t work for me.
I suggested 4-6. Four at minimum, 5 is good, 6 may be better. Some of these meals may only be half the size (calorically) of the others. Most of us DON’T need a million grams of protein either. 1 g / # LBM is sufficient. Thats at most 40g x 5 meals or 35g x 6 meals for 90% of us.
Hey, it’s ok to be hungry. Try to throttle back to eat no sooner than every 3 hours and no less than every 5 hours with a 4 hour target. Adaptation isn’t painless, but it works.
I’m a FFG and following CT’s carb cycling idea helped me drop 2lbs of fat (while sparing all LBM) last month with 3 HIIT spinning sessions per week. Yeah, 2lbs ain’t a lot but it gave me a baseline for how my body responds. I plan on maintaining the carb cycling and spinning and adding in some low/mod intensity 30-40min cardio sessions 3x weekly, and also making some dietary tweaks.
Just remember, the concepts espoused here may be based in science but we all will respond a tad differently. Don’t get discouraged because a cookie-cutter approach isn’t producing cookie-cutter results. Log the shit out of everything, evaluate, tweak, rinse, repeat till you hit your goal.
I’m a FFG and following CT’s carb cycling idea helped me drop 2lbs of fat (while sparing all LBM) last month with 3 HIIT spinning sessions per week. Yeah, 2lbs ain’t a lot but it gave me a baseline for how my body responds. I plan on maintaining the carb cycling and spinning and adding in some low/mod intensity 30-40min cardio sessions 3x weekly, and also making some dietary tweaks.
Just remember, the concepts espoused here may be based in science but we all will respond a tad differently. Don’t get discouraged because a cookie-cutter approach isn’t producing cookie-cutter results. Log the shit out of everything, evaluate, tweak, rinse, repeat till you hit your goal.[/quote]
I’m not suggesting that you lower your meal frequency in general. My point is that some of the recent articles and research have prompted me to do the occasional fast or limit my food intake for a couple of days. If you tend to build muscle easily and gain fat even more easily then cutting food intake and doing cardio on an empty stomach will likely be effective. It has been for me and I’m the type that loses 1 or 2 pounds at the beginning of every diet attempt only to have the progress come to a complete stop before the week is out. Think of it as an extreme carb cycling. IMHO, this is the way that humans are genetically designed to live, like hunter-gatherers who had to perform even when there were no convenient supermarkets. Give it a try for a week or two and I’ll bet you’ll lose fat without much loss of muscle.
