Quick fat question x

[charl_s]

Hello,

Love your site! Been on it all weekend reading up it’s so informative and all wrote in a easy way to digest the info unlike other sites.
Just wondering if I could post personal goal..?
I am 5’7 and weigh 136 Pounds (Nine and a half stone)
I have a clean healthy diet.
However am desperate to tone and loose those last 7 pounds. I go the gym regularly doing cardio and weights on a 3day split.
I was wondering can anyone offer any advice on becoming 9stone whilst not loosing muscle weight rather fat.
Am unsure what cardio I should be doing etc

[ReBuilt]

Hey! Congrats on your progress. You're really close to your goal.

Like you, when I'm in a cutting phase I want to preserve as much of muscle mass as I can. At those times I try to keep protein/carb/fat ratio around 40/40/20. That works for me but each person is different. I still lose a bit of muscle but not a lot. I have to keep lifting sessions intense without forfeiting good form. I also limit cardio to 3 short, intense interval training sessions a week. Once the fat has melted, I try to slowly boost the calories to maintenance level but then aim for a 30/40/30 macronutrient ratio. I'm not perfect at that (that's why I'm here ). Once I'm back at maintenance eating, lean muscle mass returns so long as lifting continues. This is just one person's experience. I'm sure some folks have had success using other methods that they'd be willing to share.

Good luck---you're almost there!

[cassiegose]

Hello,

Love your site! Been on it all weekend reading up it’s so informative and all wrote in a easy way to digest the info unlike other sites.
Just wondering if I could post personal goal..?
I am 5’7 and weigh 136 Pounds (Nine and a half stone)
I have a clean healthy diet.
However am desperate to tone and loose those last 7 pounds. I go the gym regularly doing cardio and weights on a 3day split.
I was wondering can anyone offer any advice on becoming 9stone whilst not loosing muscle weight rather fat.
Am unsure what cardio I should be doing etc

best advice for losing fat while retaining muscle would be to lift HEAVY weights 3-4 days per week and doing 1-2 sessions of HIIT or plyometrics each week. You could also add in a day of long slow leisurely cardio in the form of walking, hiking, biking, swimming, jogging. For the weights, if you do 4 days per week do an upper body/lower body split doing upper body twice per week and lower body twice. Something like this:
Monday: lower body
Tuesday: upper body
Wednesday: off or liesurely cardio
Thursday: lower body
Friday: upper body
Saturday: HIIT
Sunday: Off or liesurely cardio

Or you could do something like this
Monday: full body weights
Tuesday: HIIT
Wednesday: full body weights
Thursday: Off or liesurely cardio
Friday: HIIT
Saturday: full body weights
Sunday: off or liesurely cardio

For the weights stick mostly to compound exercises in the form of bench press variations, pushup variations, row variations, pull up variations, lat pull down variations, dips, military press, squat variations, lung variations, step ups, deadlift variations. Lift heavy- The last rep of each set should be a struggle to get up. If you can easily get it up then you need to increase weight or add more reps. For reps I would start with 3 sets of 10 until you get the feel of things. After a few weeks I would start changing it up a bit by adding weight and altering reps to 5x5, 4x6-8, even 10x3 ( personal favorite). Make sense?

You say you have a healthy diet... Post an example of a typical day. Simply eating "healthy" doesn't always mean that you're getting the proper amounts of each food group. Also, many people do eat healthy foods however make the mistake of eating too many or too few calories, which will greatly hinder progress.

Hope this helps.

Cassie

[Fygle]

Regarding lifting so heavy you can only lift ~3 reps, would you do that for any exercise, or exclude things like shoulders/back/other areas that are more prone to injury?

[cassiegose]

Regarding lifting so heavy you can only lift ~3 reps, would you do that for any exercise, or exclude things like shoulders/back/other areas that are more prone to injury?

I do the 10x3 for all compound exercises. The concept of 10x3 is actually a Chad Waterbury Program... Its a freaking awesome program in opinion.

http://www.tmuscle.com/free_online_arti ... r_fat_loss" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Fygle]

Interesting read, thanks Cassie. How about picking 1 (different) exercise every weights day that you do 10x3? I'm often confused about how I should spread out high rep/low rep across the exercises of the day. I try to mix it up, but yeah like I said, I have no idea if I'm doing it right. I took swanso's advice to pick a 5x5 movement every day, and then I try to do some 4x7 and 3x9. I'm aiming for mass by the way.

[cassiegose]

Cassie I just read that link. Awesome! I've been really really bored lately. I think this might be the trick! week starts on Tuesdays so I'm going to try this program out starting tonight! Cool! Thanks babe! Helpful as ever (:

Let me know what you think about it! I LOVE that program!

[cassiegose]

Interesting read, thanks Cassie. How about picking 1 (different) exercise every weights day that you do 10x3? I'm often confused about how I should spread out high rep/low rep across the exercises of the day. I try to mix it up, but yeah like I said, I have no idea if I'm doing it right. I took swanso's advice to pick a 5x5 movement every day, and then I try to do some 4x7 and 3x9. I'm aiming for mass by the way.

Yes, you can do one 10x3 movement each weight day then stick to 5x5, 4x6, 3-4x8-9 on the other exercises. Heres another link discussing the 10x3:

http://www.t-nation.com/readTopic.do?id=547470" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

[Fygle]

Awesome, will give this a try, cheers!

[ReBuilt]

Very interesting articles--thanks! I'll give it a try.

[ReBuilt]

Tried the 10x3 on squats and deadlifts today. I am already feeling it so tomorrow should be interesting. Thx for the sharing it!