alright, looking for some advice from the ST powers that be. i’ve been pretty successful in terms of weight loss over the past year or so, but seem to have reached a very annoying plateau.
really let myself go after college, at my fattest i was about 207. currently i’m 5’8", 180, 13% body fat (decent amount of muscle, but i think i’m still obese according to the ridiculous BMI measurements). current training: running ~20mi/week; cycling ~ 100mi/week; swimming 7000 yd. I eat very well during the week, but usually let myself enjoy saturday night. point is, i’ve been stuck at 180-182 for the past month and half. may not train as much as those training for IM’s, but i certainly get more exercise than most. any suggestions?
Gotta shake things up a little. Catch your body off gaurd.
Also, when you first started the calories you burned up in a 4 mile run are not the same now that your trained. To get the same effect you need to increase your mileage.
Some other good ways to lose weight (Fat) is concentrate on training that keeps your meta stoked thru the day like strength training. Strength training followed by high intenisty cardio…ie sprints is also beneficial. Some will advocate the dangers of injury doing high intenisty following weight lifting. And, plyometerics.
Finally, look at your diet.
Eat smaller portions more frequently.
It’s been said here many times that we probably get more protein than we need but stick to the lean proteins.
Watch the breads and pasta’s
Lots of fruits and veggies. If you compare your protein size portion to fruits and veggies, the later should be nearly 4x as much.
Stay well hydrated
Sports drinks are often overused. If your training less than 1 hour stick with the water. Skip the gatorade, powerade, etc.
It is possible to lose weight and maintain a BMI percentage. And the closer you get to 10% the more your body wants to shed the muscle weight before fat. Your body looks at muscle as a liability, something it has to pay for and looks at fat as an assest, money in the bank. So we have to teach it that it is ok to spend and don’t worry saving. Better yet, lets get out that savings passport and make a withdraw.
Train more and cut out any refined foods, training “more than most” is irrelevant. You need to do whats best for you. Currently you are not seeing any changes so you need to increase cals burned and/or clean up the diet, thats it. You can also make your meals smaller and make time to eat every 2-3 hours, that will get you free cals burned. If you do all 3 of these i can guarentee you will lean up pretty quickly. If you do the “work” cheating is something you can get away with and you’ll never notice, thats the fun part.
You just want to lose weight. Same thing applies…If your not concerned about losing muscle mass to…the best is to train longer. But do add in some high intenisty.
Longer dosen’t mean more miles. Rather than running 4 miles 5 days/week…do 7 miles 3 times/week and use the other 2 days for some high intensity and strength training.
It was the other post that wanted to mantain his muscle mass…sorry.
no, i want to maintain muscle mass too. i have started lifting three times per week, which i’ve heard can have a positive effect on fat loss, as well as being beneficial for SBR.
Aim for at least 1g protein per lb of bodyweight. Physically building muscle inside your body takes a lot of energy. Try not to dip below a 400-500 calorie deficit, or a lot more muscles is going to come off with that fat. While cutting 3500 calories is sometimes equal to lose 1 lb of fat, don’t get too excited about the numbers like most do. A 1,000 calorie deficit will not always burn off 2lbs of fat.
continue lifting in the gym (real weight. Doing over 12 reps won’t help)
protein to not lose muscle (you won’t gain much/any size during this phase, but you should gain strength. If not, eat more) live by the insulin index
It becomes nearly impossible to maintain large muscle mass if your long distance training. If your races are oly’s and sprints then it should be no problem.
Work your largest muscles…legs. This will keep your metabolism stoked and increase your testosterone. Plus it will have a large impact on your Tri performance.
by real weight i’m assuming you mean high weight/low reps yeah? so you don’t think the low weight/high rep thing seemingly favored by endurance athletes is very beneficial for weight loss?
that brings up another question: of the three (swimming, biking, running) which is the most beneficial for weight loss? i get the feeling its running, because while i’ve been able to maintain my weight while cycling (even with a pretty crappy diet), it doesn’t seem to work as well for weight loss. thanks for all the replies everyone, appreciate it.
It is a myth to think that you can “maintain” or gain muscle while losing fat. Loss of weight is always due to a mixture of muscle plus fat loss. As Mike pointed out, when you expand more than what you take in, you lose weight. The best you can hope for is minimize muscle loss and maximize fat loss. Keep protein intake high while lifting weights. Nutrition is definitely 90% of the equation. The reason why “shaking things up” work to break the plateau, is because you’ll be using different combinations of muscle groups as well as different movements, or causing the same muscles to work differently(intensity, etc.). Since it’s new, your body isn’t as efficient at using energy to supply this work-hence increasing energy needs.
There is this one disclaimer though:
John Berardi, phD trains quite a few athletes. In one case, a female athlete hit a plateau such as yours and instead of dropping calories, he doubled it. She supposedly shed fat and gain muscle. Anecdotal evidence though.
I’ve used John Berardi’s regime with much success. You can take a look at it;
absolutely running. but add some variety…sure go ahead and do your easy base miles, but throw in some hill repeats, some tempo intervals, some short races (5k, 10k) etc. and as Fleck will tell ya…the more hills the better!
Are you asking about performance or weight loss? As far as weight loss goes, I'm a huge proponent of HST(Hypertrophy specific training)-heavier weights in the 8-12 rep range. As for performance, I would vary strength versus endurance depending on time of year.
So to your question- the higher reps is more for performance, rather than fat loss.
8-10 reps, nothing crazy. More muscle, more calories burned.
There really isn’t a point in lifting weights when you aren’t lifting enough to make gains. Lifting heavy will only make you bulky and cumbersome when you want it to. 21" arms don’t develop over night…
It is a myth to think that you can “maintain” or gain muscle while losing fat
Thats not true at all.
Many, many people lose lots of weight…fat…at the gym buy doing nothing more than weight training and building muscle.
I believe you have been taken in by some misinformation. Kindly point to a study that supports this statement. To date there has been no study(that I can think of) that states muscle can be gained while fat is lost simultaneously. This is a simple mathematical equation;
To gain weight(muscle or otherwise): you need to eat more than you burn.
To lose weight(muscle or otherwise): you need to eat less than you burn.
There’s no way for you to eat more(gain muscle) while eating less(lose fat)
some sound advice here but if weight loss (fat loss) is your goal don’t underestimate the benefit of zone 3 workouts. High intensity work puts your body in crisis mode and as such it will reach for the most available energy which will be your stored carbs etc from your last few meals. At lower intensities your body will elect to draw energy from fat which is a more complex manouver but it allows the body to then hold onto the more available form of energy for any upcoming high intensity efforts.
I’d recommend watching your diet, limit snacks, soda and beer, limit red meat, don’t eat before bed, do your muscle building at the gym and and your targeted fat burning at Z3 (slow and long).