Here it is just in case:
Most trainees lose WAY too much size and strength when losing bodyfat. They simply go to extremes with caloric restriction, while usually being miles away from optimal macro-nutrient profiles. Add to much high intensity cardio and you have a great recipe for catabolism.
With the proper approach to diet and training you should continue to build strength the whole time you diet. I know this may sound like heresy to people that have been lead to believe that the best one can hope for is holding onto what you have or more likely only losing a little muscle while dieting. THESE PEOPLE ARE FLAT OUT WRONG!
You CAN build substantial amounts of muscle WHILE losing bodyfat. This is what I have the majority of my trainees doing. Not because this is the ideal situation, but simply because most people come to me overweight and under-muscled. It is NOT an optimal situation as it is easier to build muscle in an environment with an abundance of macro-nutrients and kcals.
But……..that doesn't mean you need to be a lard-ass to build muscle. An optimal situation is getting the trainee down to 7-8% then doing a mass phase and "bulk”, to 10-12% and repeat.
THERE IS NO REASON TO WALK THROUGH LIFE A FAT-ASS WHILE GAINING MASS. IT CAN BE DONE VERY EFFECTIVELY WHILE BEING RELATIVELY LEAN. You will look and feel much better about yourself if bodybuilding is your goal.
I rarely make drastic changes to routines from mass to cutting cycles. The only things that may change is a slight decrease in volume if someone is being very aggressive with bodyfat loss. And by the way, I do not recommend this approach. Being extreme, as in trying to strip fat at a very fast rate is usually a recipe for catabolism. With the proper approach to diet and training you should continue to build strength the whole time you diet. I know this may sound like heresy to people that have been lead to believe that the best one can hope for is holding onto what you have or more likely only losing a little muscle while dieting. THESE PEOPLE ARE FLAT OUT WRONG! If you are training and dieting properly you will be able to add strength and at least a some size while stripping the fat.
Let me take the time to address those people (trainers especially) that use weight training to burn additional calories. This is soooooo absolutely mis-guided. Lifting weights is an anaerobic activity. The energy pathways are mostly ATP and glycogen. Doing endless sets in the gym to burn more calories is a cruel joke played out on those people that subscribe to its practice. Weight training should be used to stimulate muscle growth....period.
Aerobic work is what you need to increase fat loss. Light intensity cardio, done at an intensity level that will allow one to talk fairly normal while being done is the best activity for using fat as a fuel source and keeping catabolism from occurring. The rest is up to diet, which should be a timed carb diet, as in little or no carbs until post workout. To answer your question in brief, the same routine that works best for you while focusing in size should be the one you use while dieting.
I will post much more info here about how to go about losing body-fat effectively without becoming "Captain Catabolic", or spending your whole life on a treadmill. Until I do though, here is a hint.....timed carb diet. Just enough carbs to:
Keep performance good
Keep you from going crazy, like when you do a keto diet
Keep thyroid from shutting down
Retain some semblance of being semi-normal (not really)
Once you understand the ratio's it's simple as can be to balance the macro-nutrient profiles/K-Cals to give you whatever degree of fat loss is desired. WHILE maintaining progression in the gym! Yes, you should still be able to continue to make progress with your poundage's while the bodyfat slips away. If you're not able to build strength and add at least a reasonable amount of muscle while dieting, you are simply doing it wrong, or are being WAY to aggressive with caloric restriction, or overzealous with cardio--or both.
There are no surefire percentage guidelines to use that can determine the correct macro nutrient profile. Two routines I wrote very recently are a good example. Both lifters weighed approximately the same amount (200+- a few lbs) and both had the same goal of gaining LBM while keeping fat gain minimal. Based on responses to my questionnaire and the subsequent phone interviews the diets varied 1200 calories a day for these two. Without knowing a lot more, here are a couple of guidelines and info-bits to take into account:
Protein should be 1.5-2 grams per lb of bodyweight unless you are WAY overweight, in which case it should be scaled back somewhat.
If you are getting fat, either overall kcals are too high, or carbs are too high. Usually the latter. If bodyfat is coming on too fast, reduce the carbs until:
A) Fat loss gains subside
B) Performance starts to suffer
If B) occurs first add a few more carbs and reduce fats to compensate for the cals if needed.
A couple other things that are important are:
No carbs at least 3 hours before bed, unless it is post-workout.
No fast cartbs unless it is post-workout.
Do the “Anarchy Stack” while bulking. It will help keep you lean.
Doing low intensity cardio 3-6 times a week will help keep you lean with little impact on gains unless you are a fairly extreme hardgainer or have a physical labor job.
These are just a few pieces of the puzzle, and I will keep adding to it. Don't want to give it all up at once-lol.
OK, Here is more info for everyone:
Timed Carb Dieting
Most of the people that come to me seeking personal training advice have their number one priority listed as dropping bodyfat. And when I say most, I am talking about 75-80%. The sad part is a big percentage of those people were NOT fat when they started bodybuilding. Yes, they got that way trying to “bulk up”. I guess you can say they were successful at “bulking” if you consider fat to be “bulk”. What they should have been doing is “muscling up”. That is rarely done until the trainee is quite experienced. The yo-yo approach can work well if you are blessed with a great metabolism……few are. Had they done it right they wouldn’t be in that situation. But, past mistakes are best left in the past. This article is about how to leave those mistakes in the past where they belong, and give you some general guidelines about timed-carb dieting, which I FIRMELY believe is the best approach to dropping the bodyfat while at a bare minimum retaining 100% of your muscle mass, and in the VAST majority of cases, adding some muscle and lots of strength while shedding the unwanted fat.
Before I outline the timed carb strategy, I am going to go over the typical types of diets followed by those in search of their abs, and talk about the pros and cons of each technique. Lets get started!
Low calorie, low fat diets
This is probably the #1 approach taken by those that have taken the plunge into the realm of dieting and it also happens to be the #1 reason many are afraid to diet. Why are they afraid? Because past experience has taught them that when dieting, they lose hard-earned muscle. And with this type of diet you can EXPECT at least a 50/50 muscle to fat loss ratio! YES! You lose 10 lbs and at LEAST 5 is usually muscle!!! Why? You first need to understand a bit about bodyfat metabolism. Your body stores bodyfat as “reserve fuel” in case of famine. Which is not much of a problem in today’s world in industrialized countries. OK, now you’re fat and you decide to drop it using this approach. The problem is, that when carbs are present, the fat burning pathways, which are driven by an enzymatic process are SHUT-DOWN, because carbs produce the release of insulin in your system, and insulin stops the enzymatic processes that allows you to burn bodyfat as a fuel source.
But wait! Calories are too low to fuel basal metabolism, and since your body can’t burn fat what is left? Ahhhh, you guessed it! Protein! Where does this protein come from? Well first your body will convert the recently ingested protein to glucose, but that still doesn’t cover daily caloric demands. So what next? Yup, your body starts catabolizing it’s own muscle to use as a fuel source, and…..you LOSE!
ISO-Caloric Diets
This is the diet made famous by Barry Sears of the “Zone Diet” fame. The idea here is to make the diet as balanced between protein/carbs/fats as possible and reduce insulin secretion as much as possible. These types of diets do quite a bit better at holding onto muscle while beating down the fat than low-cal, low-fat diets, but once caloric levels get low enough to drop bodyfat levels at a reasonable rate, you will still be chewing up a bunch of muscle unless on a LOT of gear, and you won’t really be on an ISO ratio if you are going to be getting enough protein to build/maintain muscle. These types of diets (with additional protein skewing a true iso-caloric profile) are GREAT while adding mass, but not really what the bodybuilder needs to get rid of bodyfat. Same problem as listed above arises since carbs/insulin are still present.
Keto Diets
These diets are based on the fact that when you reduce carbs to ZERO, and keep it that way for a period of anywhere from 12 hours to 48 hours (dependant an a variety of factors) your body will shift from first burning carbs, to then burning fats, to ultimately converting fats into ketones, and using the ketones as the primary fuel source. The name given to this process is ketosis, hence the name keto-diet. Keto diets are protein sparing, which means your body will tend to hold on to protein (muscle) which is exactly what we want when dieting.
These diets do work extremely well for dropping bodyfat while holding onto muscle. Just what the aspiring bodybuilder wants. So what’s the catch? Well……the catch is that to achieve and stay in actual ketosis, you usually have to be carb-free about 2 days. These diets are typically done by going without any carbs for 5 days (sometimes 6) and then doing a 1 or 2 day “carb-up” and repeating the cycle. Sound simple? Try it and then tell me how easy it is. If you can breach that stumbling block, you then reach the second problem. Without ANY carbs for so many days performance in the gym suffers. So while these diets are protein sparing, they don’t allow you to go all out in the gym, and you end up losing strength because you are held at reign in the gym. The third big reason they fail many is because with zero carbs, and low calorie levels, thyroid metabolism tends to get S-L-O-W-E-R. Bad thing! Even with these drawbacks, this is not a bad diet for dropping bodyfat and definitely many notches above the previously mentioned diets. But……there is a better way! Enter timed-carb dieting!
Timed Carb Diets
A timed carb diet works on the same basic principle as a keto-diet. Take away the bodies preferred fuel source (carbs) and provide enough fat in the diet that the body will switch to using fat as the fuel. But instead of going 5-6 days without ANY carbs, this diet allows you to take in carbs when they are most needed, and least likely to spill over into fat stores—right after the workout. Also, since we are not worried about actually hitting ketosis and staying in ketosis, if you slip, or just feel the need to bump up carbs a bit to replenish glycogen stores, you didn’t just bump yourself out of the ketogenic state you just spent 2 days to achieve.
What do these diets accomplish?
Fat is burned as the preferred fuel source and protein (read that muscle) is spared.
Performance in the gym stays good.
Thyroid function remains higher for a longer period of time.
You don’t go out of your head waiting 5 days to eat some damn carbs!
OK, now the how-to of a timed carb diet. Again, we are trying to get the body to switch from being a carb or protein-burning machine into a fat burning machine. Remember, if caloric levels are low, and carbs, thus insulin is high, your body will convert protein to carbs via glucogenisys and that is to be avoided at all costs. Anyway, to get on the path of burning fat as fuel, we simply remove the carbs out of the equation, AND keep fat in the diet at (at least) a 40-50% ratio. This lets the body know there is still a primary fuel source (fat) and allows it to be burned as fuel, while sparing protein
So, we decide to start a timed carb diet on Monday. Sunday night you cut out the carbs about three hours before bed. When you wake up in the morning blood sugar levels will be very low, and your body will be wanting some carbs---too bad, it doesn’t get any! You will eat only fat and protein. Ensuring fat makes up at LEAST 40% of the caloric profile. You may have a leafy green salad with oil based dressing, or some string-beans, or other such low-carb veggie, BUT NO MORE THAN 6-8 grams of carbs per feeding. You keep this up right until pre-workout, where an apple is allowed IF you feel the need to put a few carbs in your system to raise energy levels. MOST guys do not find this to be necessary and if it does not provide a big advantage DON’T do it. If the carbs don’t help much, have a small protein drink and proceed with the workout.
Post-workout, and it’s time to replenish the carb-stores in the muscles you just worked. As the vast majority of you already know, immediately after a hard weight training session there is a “window of opportunity” in the muscle cell when insulin sensitivity is very high and the body is most receptive to nutrient uptake. So…..you slam down 65-100 grams of fast liquid carbs (malto-dextrin, dextrose, and yes, even sucrose will work). About 10 minutes later follow it up with a 65-100 gram whey protein drink. As soon as you are hungry again, you can eat a small “regular” meal with a 40/30/30 protein/carb/fat profile to “top off the tank” of glycogen stores in the muscle. Then, you are back to zero or trace amounts of carbs until the next workout.
You then repeat the this format for a maximum of five days, and then have a 1-2 day carb-up. On days that you don’t train, you don’t eat any carbs except for a green salad or two. You do not have to run these no carb to carb days for the full five days and for many of you, having a lower ratio of no carb Vs. carb days will be advantageous. Also you do NOT have to do the carb days back-to back. You may do a couple of no carb days, followed by one or more carb days. This is determined on YOUR metabolism and how fast you want to drop the bodyfat.
