Got Built?

Fat loss is a funny little beast.

When you’re VERY fat, your body will drop fat easily (honest!) as soon as you do ANTYHING that lowers calories and incorporates some sort of exercise.

Thing is, it doesn’t work the same way from start to finish.

This is the part where you’ll hear the rep-counters say things like “you have to trick your body” or “confuse your muscles” … when in fact your body will neither be tricked nor confused. It will simply respond to the stimulus provided. If YOU are tricked and confused by the nonsense these bozos try to sell you, you’ll spend a lot of money and work WAY too hard trying to get the results you seek. Don’t know about you, but I’m too cheap and lazy to spend money and effort for sub-par results that wear me out and starve me to death.

Here’s what I’m thinking: to the body, muscle is an investment – and beyond a certain point, a luxury that has to be justified – but fat is WEALTH.

When you’re still “juicy”, your body won’t freak out if you drop calories – you’ve got plenty of fat, and your body will let it go without too much of a fight, after all, there’s PLENTY more!

The end of a cut, now that’s where all the action is. Your body will fight you every step of the way, demanding that you justify – at every “budget cut” – the “expense” of carrying around ANY muscle that isn’t being used. I penned a few of my thoughts on this in “keeping it going” back in August of 2007.

I’ve managed to go from obese to normal weight, and even “healthy lean” to “fairly ripped”, and I can assure you the process feels very different along these stages.

Obese to normal weight: The trite “eat less and move more” is all you need to do here. Like cleaning a messy house, you simply start anywhere. Figure out how to eat less and not mind. Start lifting weights, try to get strong – move a bit. Build up a bit of a conditioning base – modest cardio. For me, this was the Atkins diet while lifting weights three times a week at a community centre gym and going for walks in the evening. Fatter people often find fats more satiating, so the fact that Atkins worked so well for me when I was obese should come as no surprise.

Normal weight to healthy-lean: Monitor your calories and your weight, prepare to make adjustments now that there is less of you to maintain. Plan your diet so you eat a little under maintenance but not too much – say 20% below.  You should now be aware of how to manage appetite, so do so. For those of us who are somewhat carb-sensitive, a carb-cycling approach may be a very comfortable trick to use for this phase, since carbs are great for lifting, but may make you hungry. Use whatever methods you need in order to do this: ephedrine/caffeine stack for appetite suppression, carb cycling, intermittent fasting – whatever it takes. Keep protein high, fats as high as you can “afford” but at this stage, you’ll find that fats aren’t as satiating as they were when you were fatter. For anyone who began their weight-loss with Atkins, this part may be a bit of a surprise to you, but really, it works with the “carb ladder”: as your bodyfat levels drop and insulin sensitivity improves, your diet will gradually move toward somewhat less fat and somewhat higher carbohydrate consumption. When you start gaining – the part where you have found your “carb tolerance” and are advised to back your carbohydrates down a smidge – will be associated with your bodyfat level. Atkins didn’t mention this, but we’ll forgive him. He had the method right, even if he didn’t expain it very well.

Lift heavy – you can now, you’ve been lifting for a while and you’re strong now – with short, fairly intense workouts 3-4 days a week.  Incorporate SOME interval work, metabolic work, complexes and so on, and be sure to take occasional diet breaks and carbups so you don’t completely tank and wear yourself down. How to do Cardio if you MUST outlines this process quite nicely.

Healthy lean to ripped:
I’ve managed to get pretty ripped – 14% bodyfat, confirmed by DEXA – but the legs… ah, they’re my bugaboo.

My partner-in-crime Lisa has gotten herself down from post-baby-224 lbs to a healthy-lean 145, only in her case it’s the middle that hasn’t leaned out entirely.

This year we’re planning our attack together, and will document what we do and what it does for us along the way.

What I am most interested to see is what happens to our problem-areas, since they are so different.

The plan
Lisa and I both started our cuts this year with a protein sparing modified fast. Training on a PSMF is very limited, so to bring up our conditioning base and work capacity, we will lift four days a week with post-workout cardio and one-day-a-week hill repeats as per “Cardio if you MUST” – which shows how to integrate the lifting and the diet into this protocol.  Diet will be at or just under maintenance for this phase – the plan is to stay fairly stong here while we get ready for Teh Journey to teh Land of Lean using UD2.0.

We are so ready for this!!!