Looking for some recommendations

Ok, to start out i will tell you about my personal stats. I am 18 years old, i weigh about 230lbs with 28%BF. I want a kick ass diet with a good workout that will keep LBM as much as possible. I am leaning toward t-dawg 2.0 and Chad Waterburys ABBH program, but there is a problem. I am a poor teen who cant afford those supplements. I would like to try them when i get the money, but for now at chrismas time it is impossible. My final goal is to have 10% or less body fat as soon as humanly possible, so please help a poor teen out

You can lose weight just fine without supplements, especially at age 18. I’ve seen teens drop 10 pounds just by replacing soft drinks with water. Eat according to the “Foods That Make You Look Good Naked” and “Lean Eatin’” articles and as long as you’re training you’ll drop fat - probably build muscle too.

Let us know what you’re doing now diet and training wise and we’ll help you out further.

The Waterbury program is a great choice. Some may say it’s not the best “fat loss” program, but I say fat loss is all about diet; no need to sweat the specifics of the weight training, as long as you’re doing something. I dropped fat easily on the Anti-Bodybuilding Hypertrophy program while the person I’m training gained 12 pounds of muscle. The difference: dietary choice. We trained the exact same.

Just some food for thought.

To echo what Chris S. is saying, here’s a little something from a book on body transformation I’m working on…

"I’ll say it once and for all: the purpose of strength-training while dieting is primarily to prevent muscle loss while on a caloric deficit diet. A lot of gurus now like to use strength training exercises to burn fat by using long series (15-20+ repetitions) and short rest intervals (30-60 seconds). Their logic is that this form of training increases growth hormone output. GH being a lipolytic (increase fat usage) hormone they argue that a training method leading to a production of GH will naturally lead to an important fat utilization. This theory is interesting however in the real world it is just not that effective. Why? Consider that when a bodybuilder uses exogenous human growth hormone a minimum dose of 2IU per day for at least 3 months is required to produce noticeable changes. Many bodybuilders even argue that below 4IU per day is useless for body composition purposes. The medical dose recommended for GH is around 0.20 to 0.5 IU/kg per day, so for a 90kg individual (200lbs) this comes up to a daily dose of 2.6 to 6.5IU. And this is for medical use, which is often too low to cause any “bodybuilding” results. As a comparison, the natural production of GH by the body varies from 1IU to 2IU per day (so maybe 0.25 to 0.5IU during exercise). So it is unlikely that the slight, transient, increase in GH levels from strength training would cause any significant short term improvements in body composition.

High-intensity strength exercises (in the 70-100% range) are better than low intensity strength exercises (in the 40-70% range) while dieting. The higher training loads helps you preserve strength and muscle while on a hypocaloric diet much better than super-high volume/low intensity workouts.

We’ve been brainwashed by the various muscle magazines to believe that you should do high reps training for definition. This is absolutely ridiculous! Sure you use a little more energy, but think about it: the higher the training volume, the more energy you need to recover. The more glycogen you burn while strength training, the more carbs you’ll need to recover and progress. While on a hypocaloric diet your body has a lowered anabolic drive, meaning that it can’t synthesize as much protein into muscle as if you were eating a ton. A super-high volume of work leads to a lot of microtrauma to the muscle structures; a lot of microtrauma requires a great protein synthesis increase.

So if you use high-volume/low-intensity training while dieting you’ll breakdown more muscle and build up less. Not exactly good news! Perhaps one of the greatest benefits of high-reps training is an increase in blood and nutrient flow to the muscles, but if you have a reduced amount of nutrients available in your body, this benefit is pretty much wasted."

Well right now i am doing a low carb diet, and i am not following too many of the guidlines ( i know i need to do that) and I was doing high rep/30sec rests.

CT, when will your transformation book be out?

I think a chapter (or part of one?) might make for a great teaser/leader prior to release.

Great explanation of why lower volume work is more effective while dieting CT. Thanks for providing me with some language to explain it to people who ask me why. I may just have to buy your book for that.

Tampa … the book on body transformation is ready to go in pdf format. However since it’s more of a “bodybuilding” book, I’m waiting to see if T-mag comes up with a way to sell pdf books online. My other book which is on sale at www.charliefrancis.com is more performance related, but I doubt that a bodybuilding book would be popular over there.