Dropping weight

[kumite]

I decided to go ahead and make a seperate thread so not to derail Dadi's original thread further and so Jeff Burger(and anyone else) can help too. Currently I'm not wanting to make weight for a fight, but rather get back into fighting shape.

Ok guys here's my situation. From Sept to May, my mom fought cancer, she passed away in may. During that time I spent most of my free time at the hospital only going to practice when it was my responsibility to teach. Ialso started drinking heavily. Since Momma passed away, I have resumed training four night a week, besides my nights to teach. And I've barely touched alcohol since.

I'm 5'8, 190lbs, 19.5% body fat.

Where I'm having the problem is that my weight isn't going down. My body fat has dropped from 21% to 19.5%. I have never had problems slimming down in my life rather, I've always had problems adding muscle. I've been working to get my water intake up to 2 gallons a day. Right now, I'm doing good on a little over a gallon a day. I'm eating mostly baked potato, grilled chicken breast, Ramen noodles, protein and creatine shakes. My cardio is 30 minutes on an Eliptical machine at 75-80 rpms. Due to work, how often I do cardio varies.
I've been wondering if most of the weight I put on was due to the drinking and is that harder to take off than say over eating? I'm hoping to get back in the ring before Thanksgiving.(Either amatuer kickboxing or amatuer MMA) It would be my first fight since '98. Thanks for the help guys.

Cheyenne

[ezzthetic]

Sorry to hear about your mother, my condolences.

I'd start with weeding out the Ramen noodles and start doing interval training. You've probably hit a plateau as far weight loss goes and need to up the intensity of your cardio and spartanize your diet a little. I recommend taking it one step at a time, especially after such a long time away from competition. I'd just concentrate on consistency and then on progression. Start setting small weight goals... something like 183 lbs. I tried fruit fasting for five days to get on track and that really worked.

I'd try adding long walks every day and no carbs afters 5 PM if you want some simple things to make a dent at this phase. Just keep it simple. If you feel you're ready for the next level, go for it.

Add dips / chinups to your workout 3 times a week as soon as you can manage, I'm a strong believer in them, and you are more likely to stick with these simple exercises than a weight training program and the payoff is awesome.

[Carol Kaur]

Deepest condolences on the loss of your mom, my friend. :bow:

Drinking lots of water is good but don't go to crazy on it. Granted you might be losing a lot more water over the course of the day as you live in a lot warmer place than I do, but it's possible to overdo it as well.

Fat is burned in the muscle tissue. By just doing cardio, you use your existing muscle mass to burn fat. By putting in some strength training, you can help enhance your body's capability to burn fat. In classic cardio training your body typically works off its existing energy (largely from the carbs in your system) and then switches over to burning fat after about 20 or so minutes of working out at a moderate pace. Moderate pace meaning, you should be able to hold a conversation while doing your workout. Alternatively, measuring your heart rate with a heart monitor and keeping the pace within the fat burning range.

If you can get in to a routine where do strength training for 20-30 minutes, then do cardio, it's highly probably that your body will move in to it's fat-burning mode much faster, and your time doing cardio will be more effective burining fat.

Sometimes women run in to issues with burning fat because we carry around a lot less muscle than you guys do . ;) A suggestion that is made to women is to start working out with bigger weights and making more attempts to put muscle on instead of simply working with what we have. I suspect the same advice (more muscle generally equals more fat burning power) applies to you gentlemen too.

Muscle weighs more than fat, so don't be tooooo obsessed over what the scale says. Pay more attention to whether your bf percentage is going in the right direction, and how you are doing week over week instead of day over day.

I hope that helps......somewhat? For all you guys that know more than me....please correct me if I've goofed here. I sure don't want to go steering anybody wrong. :D

[Cliff Hargrave]

check this out

http://www.hussmanfitness.org/

[asdf]

Hey man, I'm sorry to hear about your mom.

Is it more important to drop weight, or to drop fat? The two are not necessarily the same. As Carol was saying before, building more muscle actually helps burn more fat.

If you're interested in burning more fat, try decreasing your cardio intensity and increasing the total time to about an hour each time, anywhere between 50-70% of your max heart rate reserve (use Karvonen formula). Because the decreased intensity should be less taxing on your limbs, you should be (time willing) ablt to do more frequent cardio sessions per week.

You should also be adding some weight training to maximize fat loss. According to NFPT (National Federation of Professional Trainers), weight training with compound joint exercises at low weight, high rep sets will maximize mitochondrial conversion of slow twitch muscle fiber, which will increase its glycogen capacity. This basically means that it will enable to your muscles to absorb more glycogen from the consumption of complex carbs. When you exercise to failure at sets of 20-25, you are maximizing glycogen depletion in the muscle cells. Doing sets of less than 20, according to NFPT, has been found to be less beneficial for fat loss because you are more likely to achive muscle tissue failure, as opposed to mitochondrial failure (mitochondrial failure = inability to continue doing reps due to lack of glycogen in muscle and the accumulation of contractile-inhibiting substances, such as lactic acid). Where does fat loss come in? After a glycogen-depleting exercise session, the ingestion of additional complex carbs will require energy in order to facilitate the transport and re-uptake of sugars into your muscle tissues (and conversion into glycogen). This energy is provided by fat. You may have heard the expression "fat burns in the carbohydrate fire."

The recommended circuit for the fat loss weight-training client is:

bench press
lat pull down (or barbell bentover rows)
squats (free weight, not machine)

5 circuits of 20-25 reps, as a circuit (bench - pull - squat - bench - etc.), with a recommended between-set recovery heart rate of about 125. This is NOT easy, as you're looking to find a weight at which you will FAIL between 20-25 reps. You will notice that as you approach the later circuits, you will require a LOT more time to recover. This is normal.

Ok, I hope this helps. This is something I've used personally (I work out with an NFPT certified trainer), but if you want a better explanation, check out this website (http://www.nfpt.com/) for more info.

[rubberband]

my advice would be to cut down the ramen and baked potatos to one serving a day during the first meal of your solid food eating cycle... also eat yoru protein early during this cycle... limit your solid food eating cycle to 8 hours a day... increase your green vegetables through out the eating cycle and try to end the cycle with just protein and vegetables .. omit yeasts... decrease your water intake by replacing some of your water intake with whole unsweetened vegetable or fruit juice or juice smoothies... This can be consumed outside the 8 hour eating window... also drop the use of creatine... Although it makes you stronger it throws your body out of water balance... If you are getting lean but not dropping weight it is time to get off the protein shakes for a while... if you decide to get off the creatine and protein shakes expect an upward spike in weight before water and fat balance returns then you will lose rapidly...

this is my version of a diet found in the book "Warriors Diet"...

take care, steve

[Jeff Burger]

Sorry to hear about your mom.


Wow...didnt know that about creatine. I just started it like a week ago. Did it some years back and I think it help me maintain power longer.
I have been looking into supplemements cause I think im starting to feel the birthdays.
Currently doing a multi vit, creatine and glutamine.

"IF" I do specific diets I will cycle them. The Warrior Diet being one of them. In general I follow it some what.

Yup...toss the Ramen.
Unless your using the protein shakes a meal supplement or trying to gain muscle toss that too.

Jog / cardio 6 - 7 days a week build up to 1 hour. Get up early and do the road work. If you get a day off consider doing 2 or 3 jogs that day, then take the next day off.

Workout twice a day. Do your am jog and then something more strength, conditioning, sport specific in the evening.
Once a day is mainatainance.

Dont starve yourself. You need energy to do the work.

Like Dadi said add intervals. The last 15 minutes of my jog I do like 3 minute rounds. 1 minute pretty fast, 1 minute medium, 30 seconds fast 30 seconds sprint, 1 minute slow repeat 3-4 or 5 times.

Get a coach or a partner. Someone to cheer or scream at you to do a little more.

Variety... I dont know about you but Im easily entertained and it doesnt last long before Im bored.
I hate jogging but I like how it makes me feel so I do it. When I jog I have to have my nano, watch and heart rate monitor to keep me distracted. Ill also change where I run alot.

Those tips I gave on the other thread are temporary water weight loss tips.

[kumite]

What wrong on the Ramen? I eat because it an inexpensive source of carbs. ($.15 a pack, 52grams of carbs) Is it the wrong kind of carbs?

[Carol Kaur]

What wrong on the Ramen? I eat because it an inexpensive source of carbs. ($.15 a pack, 52grams of carbs) Is it the wrong kind of carbs?

Yep. Those noodles metabolize almost instantly to sugar, which then gets turned to fat if you don't work it off right away. The Ramen noodles are about as bad for you as a sugary soda.

Best to get your carbs from fruits, veggies, beans, whole grains, that kind of stuff. Avoid white flour and sugar if you can.

[Jeff Burger]

Nutrition tip.... stay close to nature. The further you get from nature the more achance you take of it being bad for you.

[kumite]

On the fruits does it matter between citrus and non citrus?

[asdf]

What wrong on the Ramen? I eat because it an inexpensive source of carbs. ($.15 a pack, 52grams of carbs) Is it the wrong kind of carbs?
Total Fat 16g (25% of RDA)
Saturated Fat 8g (40% of RDA)
Sodium 1780mg (75% of RDA)

If you want complex carbs, try just buying a box of regular pasta, and eating a bowl without sauce. Much better for you than ramen, man! And all that salt will probably not help with water weight.

[Cliff Hargrave]

One pack of Ramen noodles is about 400 calories.

[Rasputin]

One of the things I found interesting was that Ramen noodles are actually deep fried in tropical oil.

http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mramen.html

"Ramen noodles unfortunately are not very good for you. Each package contains about 1560 mg of sodium. To remove the water and form them into blocks, they are deep fried in palm oil which is about the most saturated fat there is. Look in your local Asian food store, though, and you may find some that are baked or freeze dried without the oil. Check the ingredients--about 720 different varieties/flavors of ramen are available."