So, you are following a good diet, you do cardio and train with weights. But are you getting anywhere? This is the question that so many people just don't ask themselves. They keep on doing what they have been doing for years and then say something to the effect that nothing works.
Hence, a very important component of a fitness regimen is getting constant feedback in terms of your weight, measurements, photographs, clothing size and most importantly body fat percentage and skinfold thickness. Ideally, you should check your weight and composition every week and observe some improvement. If you are following your regimen just right you should loose between 1 to 2 pounds per week. If you did not loose or instead the weight increased, examine your past week to make sure you actually followed the program, more likely than not you slipped. In that case, don't see it as failure but as valuable feedback about how much "cheating" is too much for your body. Tighten your belt and get set for the next week.
Depending on your weekly observation if you find that you have really hit a fat loss plateau you can try one of these or a combination of these: decrease calories, tweak the macronutrient ratio, meal frequency or timing, increase the duration, frequency or intensity of cardio, change the kind or timing of cardio, incorporate HIIT and if nothing works do double cardio (twice a day). So, unless you have tried all these the excuse that nothing works is lame.
The ultimate lesson of the whole process is simple: each individual is different and you have to find your program for yourself by doing a little experimentation. If someone tells you that you can eat exactly this and workout exactly that you will get your perfect physique then he or she is trying to hoodwink you (or they don't know any better). Also, there are "programs" which tell you that all the fat loss can be achieved by using their magic product and working out for 20 minutes a day because they know that "easy" sells. But ask yourself, if it was all that easy why don't you see a lot more fit people around?
My advice, get into fitness only if you can give it some priority and incorporate it in your lifestyle. If you want to do it for only 2 months your time would probably be better spent elsewhere. Hit the gym with passion and a clear sense of your goal, commit to your program and the results would astound you!
One more question for you. Where do you get a good instruction manual on how to do the weight training right? The gyms here don't have manuals.. I don't want to lift weights with wrong technique. So did you use the help of a trainer? Do you have some e-material on this topic that you can share?
ReplyDeleteI think if you go for books written by big shots like Arnold (a book which is almost a bible in size and reverence) it'll talk about form... But for most purpose you can check out the bodybuilding.com site, it even has videos to get the technique right... And you can definitely ask a trainer once or twice before u get it! or make friends with a regular gym goer who can guide u through the initial phase :)
ReplyDeleteI am testing this damn system because my (rather long and witty) comment was consumed by the demon they call "wordpress". My words are too valuable to risk another incident with, so ... test, test, test. :-/
ReplyDeleteBen
haha, yeah got this one! I have become really cautious about my long and witty comments, now I always command+A, command+C before hitting send :D looking forward to that comment :D
ReplyDeleteHey Sheeraz,
ReplyDeleteSo after seeing your bare nipples flash across my Facebook "friend feed" multiple times recently, I thought I'd take a look at your blog and see what kind of info here. It's really cool to see you using your research skills in a very different domain, and it looks like you've got some really interesting, useful information here. I think with some tweaking of the format and some SEO, you'd be able to make a useful web resource out of this (and make some money off it as well).
This blog is (of course) focused on your goals, which seem to be related to weight loss and some overall look you want to achieve. There are a couple of questions I had about health-related stuff; not sure if you can answer them, but I thought I'd ask!
1. You're very focused on boosting metabolism, because you say that higher metabolism facilitates weight loss. I always had the impression that higher metabolism wasn't particularly good for you, but I don't really have any info about that.. maybe just some suggestive stuff from rat research and ultra-low calorie diets. Have you come across anything that talks about the health implications of maintaining a very high metabolism?
2. So you talk about running a calorie deficit while you're trying to lose fat, and running a calorie surplus when you're trying to bulk up. So let's say you're running a calorie deficit, and then you hit your target % body fat. Would you then increase your calories to match what you think you're using? I think so, but it seems a little scary--you just lost all the weight, and now you start eating more :) But that seems like the straightforward answer. And what if you hit some bare minimum of body fat and were still on a calorie deficit? Would your body start breaking down muscle I guess?
3. Is there an optimal range for body composition (% body fat) for health purposes?
Ok, that's not a couple of questions, that's 3 or 4 (depending on how you count). But I'm interested to hear what you've seen or read or think!
Ben
Hey Ben,
ReplyDeleteI thought I'll get to this post once I am past my deadlines and travel preparations, so here I am. Apologies for the bare nipples on the friend feed problem :D I did hold back a lot of pictures you see. But thanks for the encouraging words :) Coincidentally, some one recently offered me to start writing a fitness blog for possibly some renumeration, still thinking about it.
When I was writing the blog, I was just focussed on fat-loss (not just weight) in the best possible way. However, almost all of it translates very well to maintenance and even bulking. It just comes down to tweaking things a bit to create a caloric balance or a surplus respectively.
1. I haven't read much about foul effects of high metabolism but I think the only thing that I remember is the dip in blood sugar, which might happen if you have a high metabolism and not eating frequently. Other than that, there are "inconveniences" like difficulty bulking, needing to eat a lot, etc. Slow metabolism, on the other hand, is much more problematic, the body is not efficiently burning fuel, a lot of the food is being stored away as fat, difficulty to maintain good weight and so on. Also, with slow metabolism, I think it can lead to a reinforcement cycle: slow metabolism => low energy levels => lower physical activities => slower metabolism.
2. Yeah, that's when keeping track of progress comes handy. No one becomes fat or lean in a week or two, so once you hit your desired fat percent, revise your goals: if you wanna loose more, stick to what you are doing, if you wanna maintain, eliminate the calorie deficit in steps. By that I mean, add 200 calories or so back and see how your body responds to that in a week, if you maintain your weight and BF% then you are done, otherwise add another 200 calories and so on. The numbers generated by math are truly just heuristics. My dietician told me that I should need 2400 calories for maintenance but I actually needed more like 3000 just because my metabolism is high now (and back then I was doing 6 days of card). Thus, hit and trial is needed. Hitting a very low fat percent is EXTREMELY hard, employing the regular techniques, I am not sure one can go below 4% or so, one will most likely start breaking down muscles at that point. Also, going that low is probably one does only for competitions, not something that can be maintained year round without going crazy :D Also, a very low BF% messes up the hormonal balance.
3. For guys, typical BF% goes like this: essential fat (2-5%), athletes (6-13%), fitness (14-17%), average (18-24%), obese (>25%). I just copied this off some webpage but this is more or less the range. I started obese (25.1%) and now at 4.7%, I think maintaining something around 8-10% is a good and long term sustainable goal.