truth about losing fat/HST? please

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noobie

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i've recently looked up a lot of the HST forum nutrition section about losing fat, gaining muscle mass, and weight. Really what i'd like to get clear is how does muscle not grow and use the stored fat in the body if the calorie intake is at maintenence? I understand eating for size when calorie intake gets larger to compensate for the energy usage, but what if someone already had that energy stored up as fat, do they still need to go above maintenance? or stay with HST until they are satisfied in the mirror and then begin above maintenance calorie intake? Someone please send a link or clarify on how to lose the fat, but also not sacrifice too much muscle mass(during sleep/recovery) or maybe is this just too perfect a situation :confused: thanks guys

status: 17 years old. used HIT for about 4-5 months. minimal gains maybe 10-15 lbs in most workouts better than 5 months ago. 5'9, 165 lbs. decent layer of fat. starting first cycle of HST Monday aug 30.2004. hoping for some great results :)
 
If you are at 15% BF or more, I would recommend getting below that before focusing on gaining any mass. Definitely below maintenance cals and cardio. This could be done during the 15's and 10's, or you may need to take a whole cycle to shed the extra fat lbs.
 
oo. alright that sounds cool. And is it ok to gauge my progress through the mirror? And what will be going on with my muscles while im under maintenance? I heard something about protein synthesis and catabolism while you sleep and the quickest source of energy for recovering muscles is the muscle itself, so it wont actually go to my fat that quick? is this true and is there a way to reverse the effect, Ie: use fat instead of muscle as energy? thanks again
 
o yea, if i'm about 18-19% bf, will that fat actually go away in one cycle?
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that'd be awesome. I've stayed in the 165-175 region for the past yr or so. It would be great if HST could work these wonders :)
 
I'm afraid I don't completely understand your first set of questions. I believe you are asking if you can loose fat and gain muscle at the same time, or something to that effect. Well, as I suggested above, simply entering into a calorie deficit will cause your fat to be used as energy. Using cardio will expedite this process. This is the same with all weight loss diets. The muscle gain or maintenance will come with regular resistance exercise.

And it is OK to gauge your goals on your appearance in the mirror. You can train your body to be however you want. But it isn't possible to say how much fat you could lose, or muscle you can gain using HST. What you can count on, however, is that the science backing it's principles proves that is the most effective training method around today.
 
o sorry for the confusion in the first post. what i read around lately like in mentzer's site and menshealth there were some articles about how if you were working out, and going on a calorie deficit diet, it was not necessarily true that you use fat as energy to recoop, but it uses protein from your own muscle to rebuild itself(strange) but this is hindering to muscle development im guessing. i was wondering if that was true, and if it was, how to minimize the muscle hindering and increase the efficiency in burning the cals from fat. I've been on a calorie def diet for about a month or so, my weights gone down 5 lbs from the 170, but i can't really see it in the mirror so im not sure if its fat im losing? or fat lose and muscle loss? i dunno if that clears things up =\, i just have a lot of questions and really tired of not getting results. thanks again baby a
 
o yea, what meant by "does muscle not grow and use the stored fat in the body if the calorie intake is at maintenence?", is that i've seen in a lot of posts that your body will most likely not lose fat and gain muscle mass at the same time. i was wondering why that is? some posts say that the novice will lose fat and make gains and the "vets" wouldnt, why is that? thanks again
 
If you're a complete newbie, you may expect to see some fat loss while gaining muscle. However, you probably won't go too far with this method before you need to change stuff around anyway. Your best bet is to do one thing at a time. Diet OR gain.

Think of it this way. Your body can either gain fat or lose fat. It can also only either gain muscle or lose muscle. Gains in muscle and fat are stored calories, so calories should be above maintenance for this to happen. Now, losing either indicates a lack of calories. You wouldn't expect to gain muscle and lose muscle in the same cycle, would you ? No, I hope you wouldn't. You can only either eat below, at, or above maintenance - and so your body can only gain or lose weight, but you can help stimulate it to gain or lose where you want it to. Now, this is a pretty broad generalization, but even if you should manage to lose fat while gaining muscle it wouldn't be optimal.

(Yeah, yeah, I know...I'm generalizing here, so don't flame me)
 
[b said:
Quote[/b] (noobie @ Aug. 29 2004,8:13)]some posts say that the novice will lose fat and make gains and the "vets" wouldnt, why is that? thanks again
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Mostly because most novices have not been doing any exercise, so the change requires more energy than their bodies are accustom too, so they use their fat stores for this energy. Also most really underestimate their caloric needs, so again their perceived maintenance level is truly lower than their energy expenditure, hence fat loss.
 
oo. understood. so does that mean i need to go on "bulking" and "cutting" cycles? and if so, how does that work in with the HST prgrm? during SD stack on carbs and cals and during the 6 week cycle go on lowered cals?
 
thanks dkm. if you could relate that post to Lars' post about losing fat and gaining mass. does that mean i can just stay in the maintenance cal area, stay on my HST cycles, and lose body fat til im happy? a bit of vaguness between what Lars was saying that its not wise to do that because it's not very efficient? thanks again guys
 
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