Losing My Stomach After 'Bulking'


Okay, so here’s the skinny.

About a year and a half ago, i was a skinny little turd weighing in at 135. Today, I’ve become a slightly bigger, yet still pretty small, but still fat turd. I now weigh in at 200 +/-.

Obviously, I’ve gained quite a lot of fat during this period of time. And today, it really hit me, i need to loose some of it! My stomach for instance, is sticking a bit “too far out”.

I’ll post some pictures tomorrow, when I’ll have a chance to take some.

In the meantime, here’s my question. What can I expect of my training if i decide to go a slightly negative on my calorie intake? Will i be able to gain any strength, or do i have to settle for maintenance work?

As of now, i do 3/4 workout sessions a week, none of which are cardio. I was however thinking of adding gerilja cardio 3 times a week. So maybe I could just keep my current food intake, and loose weight with the extra cardio…

Maybe the best thing is loosing some weight, then start focusing on gaining strength? Isn’t there a way to gain strength/muscle while not packing on too much fat.

Are there any good articles i should read regarding this?

(Also, turns out I found an image of my back, it’s pretty recent. I’ll get the rest up later, with emphasis on my fat fat fat stomach.

Thank you very much for any input!

Edit:

And is running and training legs bad two days in a row?

Let’s say it looks something like this.

Mon: High intensity cardio (running)
Tue: Squatting
Wed: High intensity cardio (running)
Thu: Squatting
Fri: High intensity cardio (running)

Will that be too much strain on the legs, will i be more likely to “blow out a knee” or something. Basically, am I getting enough recovery?

[quote]sphaw asked four questions:

  1. Will I be able to gain strength in a caloric deficit?
  2. Is there a way to gain strength and muscle without adding too much fat?
  3. Are there any good articles i should read regarding this?
  4. Can I Squat and do HIIT on consecutive days? Will it interfere with my recovery?

[/quote]

  1. Yes, just not as much as you would have in a caloric surplus.

  2. Yes.

  3. Thibs has an article on carb-cycling, where on heavy workout days you have a lot of carbs, medium days have medium carbs, and off days have low carbs. For some reason my internet’s not responding. Search for ‘Carb Cycling Codex’

  4. Yes, but I wouldn’t recommend it. It really depends on your work capacity. It will interefere with your recovery, but you can off-set that by intentionally taking steps to boost your recovery, like stretching, doing yoga, sled-dragging, and sleeping an extra couple of hours a night.

Here’s the link

http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=811783&cr=

Thanks a lot for the link, I’m gonna give that an approach.

CT has also suggested when doing something like HIIT near a leg day, as grueling as it is, do them on the same day (HIIT after weight training), to allow for better recovery.

Okay, so I’ve set up my diet plan according to the formulas given in the article, with fat loss in mind. That means my cal. intake will be in the negative, even on priority days.

So what do i do about the actual training, and progression? So far, I’ve been eating with positive calories, and therefore I’ve been trying to add about 2kg to for instance my squat, each week i work out. Obviously, the body won’t be able to handle all that much progression when I don’t have a plus in calories? So how do I go about planning progression as far as the actual training goes?

On priority workout days you should be in positive calories, preferably extra carbs (oatmeal, etc) prior to your workout plus the post workout shake. That should give you the energy for your workout and crank your metabolism a bit.

Even when the overall goal is losing weight? Then I must’ve misunderstood the article.

Are you sure you’re right about that?

For this situation i would recommend a very strict version of the CCCodex. And by that I mean the carb sources you should be taking in should look mostly like legumes and beans. These types of CHO sources are supr fiberous and will help you lean down a lot and also will keep your glycemic loading very low which is the key to reducing body fat. It’s what I’m doing now and it works like a charm.

So basically keep your life very very low carb as in meat and veggies (spin, broc, coliflower, brussel, cabbage etc.) only. Then on the days where you get in heavy squats or whatever rock some beans/legumes. On cardio/fatloss days stay low CHO. Cardio does not qualify for carbs in your state of bodyfat/leanness/insulin sensitivity.

Also the leptin boost on the carb days will help you burn fat on the subsequent days where you do cardio. Also vary the cardio so that your legs don’t get to strained. A good method of non-running cardio is to do 20-35 lb dumbbell snatches for about 100-200 reps without letting the DB hit the floor. Also skipping is great.

-chris

Thanks Chris.

Sorry for the dumb questions, but does this in fact mean that I will be slightly in the negative, even on “heavy” days?

I mean, by my calculations, my calorie-days comes to this:

heavy 2651.16

moderate 2401.16

off-days 2151.16

This is with an 1.4 activity level factored in, and ive decreased my BMR with with 18% as TC article says:

“To gain muscle you should ingest more calories than you use up each day. To lose body fat you must do the opposite. A 20% increase or decrease seems to be ideal for most individuals. This isn’t a drastic increase/decrease, so it shouldn’t lead to excessive muscle loss or unwanted fat gain.”

Which puts me in a negative on all days?

I’m missing something big here?

I can’t speak for what Thib said, or meant to say, but other carb cycling diets I’ve read (Dr. Squat, Tom venuto) all say you have to go positive balance at least once every 4 days. Staying in constant calorie deficit will cause your metabolism to lower. Going in a positive balance on your priority days will allow you to build or at least maintain your muscle. If that’s not your goal, there is no point is cycling.

http://drsquat.com/articles/zigzag.html

Stu

Thanks Stuward, I’ll be sure to read through that first thing in the morning, now I gotta go to bed.

I may very well have misread, or not completely understood the article by Thib, but if anyone else here has read it, or are in any way familiar with it - how did you “understand” it?

I basically understood it in “two parts”.

  1. Loose fat
    1.1 Calculate all the numbers
    1.2 Subtract your BMR with 20%
    1.2.2 Which gives you negative calories all types of days

  2. To gain mass
    1.1 Calculate all the numbers
    1.2 Add 20% to your BMR

Maybe things will be “clearer” when i read thru your link Stu, we’ll see tomorrow.

Have a good night.

As I understand:

Low carb and slight calorie reduction (300-500) on most days.

Higher carb on “heavy” days. possibly go over cal limits, not hard to do with carbs.

Poliquin Rx’s low carb until your body fat is at 10%ish. I find that super easy to deal with as well.

It should be fairly simple, just not quite as easy.

-chris