Weight Loss Thread

Preface

I made the decision a couple weeks ago to get serious about getting down to 13-15% body fat and hitting the gym at least a couple times a week for some heavy lifting. While I don't have a whole lot of interest in competing, I figured I'd go with the body building approach as I have at least a basic understanding of weight lifting from school and the military. Like most of you guys I like to min/max, well, everything, so I spent hours researching the best supplements, asking advice, reading this thread, wading through a lot of shitty bodybuilding.com articles and threads (and occasionally finding some gold), and listening to podcasts and youtube videos. Since the idea behind this lifestyle change was for better overall health, I committed myself to ignoring anything like steroids or shady, unproven supplements that promised quick gains (who actually thinks synthrol looks good??).

One guy really impressed me - Dr. Layne Norton. If you haven't heard of him, he's a "natural" body builder (aka no steroids) and was very successful when he was competing. He has since moved on to power lifting and coaching. Several years ago he published thePHAT (Power Hypertrophy Adaptive Training) routine. I really appreciated how his routine was rooted in scientific reasoning and an advanced understanding of the mechanics of the human body. (Note: Though PHAT is probably a little intense for a beginner, he does say if you're just starting you can drop some auxiliary and assistance lifts until your body adapts to the frequency and intensity.)

Layne Norton has abunch of videoswhere explains the science of body building, debunks myths, and gives his opinions on recent popular fitness trends. He's all about If It Fits Your Macros (IIFYM) eating, but he explicitly states that you should not ignore the nutritional value of the foods you eat (aka don't make your daily staples chicken breast, pizza, and ice cream even if it fits your macros). He also addresses low/no carb diets, homegrown theories (like "metabolic damage"), and the right kind of cardio for body builders.

Being that I'm a fat ass (33% body fat as of 1 month ago), I decided I would have to temper my desire to just lift heavy and commit some serious effort into cardio. Due to Layne's incessant praise of high intensity interval training (HIIT) (as opposed to low intensity steady state - LISS), I decided to look up routines that I could squeeze into just a couple days of heavy lifting (gotta have something to look forward to!).

After an hour so of researching routines and articles on why HIIT is superior, I stumbled acrossthis podcastwith Layne Norton and Jake Wilson. To briefly summarize, Dr. Wilson and his team have been studying cardio in their lab and found that while LISS burns more calories, only 6% of calories burned are from body fat. Though HIIT burns fewer total calories,66%of those calories are body fat. Talk about min/maxing! He specifically recommends using a wingate bike, pedaling with no resistance to ~170 RPMs, then cranking it up to max resistance and putting an all out effort for 10 seconds for 4 sets (resting 2-4 minutes between sets). It might not sound like much, but if you're doing it with 100% intensity, you'll be sucking air and wanting to hurl (if you aren't already). He says regular stationary bikes are about 70-80% as effective as the wingates.

So, after all that research, I felt pretty comfortable that I was informed as I could reasonably expect to be so I ordered supplements and began my routine last Monday (Oct 26):

Routine
Day 1: Lower body (HIIT)
Day 2: Heavy lifting upper body (PHAT Upper Body Power Day)
Day 3: Heavy lifting lower body (PHAT Lower Body Power Day)
Day 4: Upper body (HIIT)
Day 5: Rest
Day 6: Full body (HIIT)
Day 7: Rest

Supplements

1. Creatine (bigger and firmer muscles, endurance)
2. Beta alanine (intense muscle activation endurance)
3. Taurine (counterbalances beta alanine - unhealthy to take only BA because one will suppress the other due to using same receptors)
4. BCAAs (reportedly excellent for protein synthesis when taken pre or intra workout)
5. HMB (temporary, for soreness)
6. Glucosamine Chondroitin (for joint health)
7. Multivitamin

Diet
2600 calories/day
20% Carb (130g), 50% Fat (144g), 30% Protein (195g)
Eat 3 meals/day, One protein shake in AM and another immediately post workout





Progress

Week 0
Here's a picture from a few weeks ago when I decided it'd probably be a good idea to start losing weight, but hadn't fully committed yet:


Week 1
At the end of week 1, I'm feeling pretty good. For HIIT I did stationary bike sprints, battle ropes, and finally a super set of pushups, body squats, pull ups, dips, and planks for my lower/upper/full body HIIT days respectively. My legs (specifically quads) were super sore on Day 5 but only somewhat sore on Day 6. I've dropped from ~258 lbs (Oct 14) to ~246 lbs (Nov 2) with noticeable gains in tone and size in my arms, pecs, quads, glutes, calves, and traps. I can't claim that my results so far have been completely due to gym activity as I've also cut soda (was drinking an average of 48 oz/day, roughly) and am actively tracking my macro nutrient intake with the MyFitnessPal app. Sugar cravings were killing me the first few days after giving up soda, but I took some chromium (niacin bound) in the AM and after dinner for about 4 days and that helped a lot - way more than I expected when I read about it. I haven't had any cravings for a few days, but I expect they'll return intermittently. I'm finding that I'm actually struggling to reach my caloric goals because I'm just not as hungry. I still try to get within a few hundred calories (never with carbs unless I have some remaining in the budget) as I don't want my body to adapt to a low calorie intake and have nothing to shave off when my fat loss inevitably plateaus.

I'll get mrs. dandai to take a progress picture for me tomorrow and edit it in.

Sorry I went all livejournal on you guys. As I started to write I found it therapeutic to just explain it all. My wife is thrilled that I'm losing weight and getting jacked, but she doesn't really care about the details. My buddy doesn't really have any interest in the science; he just knows when you move heavy shit around you get thinner and your muscles get bigger... so I guess that leaves me no one to talk to about my research but you guys. If it's alright with you, I'll drop in and update every now and then. I've always really enjoyed looking through other people's progress picture series' so I'm going to try to take a progress picture at least once a week.

They weren't saying it's pointless to engage in steady state cardio, just that it wasn't optimal in terms of time and energy. Congratulations on the 100 pounds! I'm hoping to eventually get down to 160ish so I'm also aiming for 100 lbs (or 13-15% body fat, whatever weight that happens to be).

Edit: Unless you really enjoy LISS, you should give it a listen. It's neat stuff.

I've heard it explained as body fat is 80% diet 15% activity and 5% genetic make up, at least for us average Joe's who aren't aiming for superlow or single-digit body fat numbers.

Warmuth_sl said:

Pull ups and dips at a bodyweight of 250? Thats impressive.

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Sorry, that's definitely misleading. I use the weight assist machine at -70 lbs for pull ups and meant the overhead press form of dips. Can't find the name of the movement.

Itlan_sl said:

Jesus Dandai. You're overcomplicating this shit dude lol.

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I'd agree if I just wanted to shed some pounds, but I'd also like to get some sexy muscles too. I think that takes a little more planning than just changing your diet, but admittedly I haven't ever really been lean and jacked, just chubby and jacked. What's your experience been?

Ossoi_sl said:

...going low carb/carb cycling...

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So I specifically aimed for roughly 150g of carbs/day because Layne Norton says you want to eat as many carbs as you can while still losing weight. He says your metabolism is fluid and eventually adapts to what you give it. He's quick to point out that this philosophy is still anecdotal and based on countless observations with his clients and peers and isn't yet scientifically proven by any studies. When talking about "metabolic damage" he talks about females who are trying to get show ready and aren't losing any body fat on 800 calories/day and 2-3 hours of LISS every day.

I bring all this up because one thing I'm afraid of is setting my carb count too low and artificially inhibiting easily obtained future weight loss. I'd guess that my daily carb count was easily 300+ g/day before I restricted my diet so I could probably still lose weight at 200, but I think I'd have to eat a lot of fruit or sugary junk to get there.

What has your experience been with the low carb and carb cycling? Norton recommends a carb refeed one day every couple of weeks (for an overweight person such as myself) where you ONLY eat carbs and protein that day for your caloric needs (no fat because fat + insulin spike means the ingested fat gets taken right to storage).

Tenks_sl said:

Why not just lift weights and lower your food intake? More muscles will burn more calories to get rid of your fat while you're still building muscle. I don't think it needs 5000 words to figure out how to lose fat and gain muscle.

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In a nutshell, that's what I did, but I did it in a very specific way. The 5000 word count was just my proclivity to be a thorough (and wordy) guy. I figured people who weren't interested in the monologue could just skip down to the progress pictures. But if someone else was curious or wanted to check out some of what I'd been looking at I'd put it out there for their entertainment.