For those with higher levels of subcutaneous fat...
I'm wondering if anyone out there has some advice for those of us who have higher levels of subcutaneous fat. I'm at the point now where my body fat % is low (around 7%), but the definition in the muslces is not as visible as I'd like. I know much of it is genetics, but I'm sure someone *wink* (Jamo, Julien, Nick, come on guys!!) has some super technical nutrition and/or cardio schemes to help with this.
Related to this, should I be setting a daily carb intake goal or a daily fluctuating carb intake goal (i.e., light, medium, and heavy carb days)? How many grams per pound?
Thanks everyone -
BJ
Simple Logic..
Hi buddy, i competed in 2 bodybuilding competitions this month, and to lose 11kgs for contest over 3months i simply used simple logic =D
I created a negative calory intake by finding a balance between eating less calories ( - calories) then my body spent in the day, and being physically active to burn calories ( + calories) such as going for walks!
My eating style was chicken or steaks, vegies and fruits.. no bread, pasta or rice! This ensured my protein intake was high, fat was not excessive, carb was very low ~i found this to be the optimum way to look really ripped and muscly, and lose a lot of fat, and still maintain my busy day schedules!
Through the experience of competing tho, i learnt that my upper body looked very ripped, by legs were smooth, reason being 1) genetically i store fat in my legs more than any other bodypart and 2) i had only trained legs 3 or so times during the year, wheras i trained upper body every week for years!
Lesson learnt is for me to attain higher definition in my quads and calves, i need to incorporate training my legs with weights within my weekly routine, and i will let you know how that goes over the next year!
The same principle may apply with you, try creating a whole body weight exercise program u can manage every week and stick with it! Try stripping away ur bodyfat at that point and see if you can see more muscles then, im sure you will be very happy with the results! =D
R!C}{y* ~ Go HarD or Go HomE!
getting lean.
Whats your weekly cardio routine? do you have one? If your trying to gain definition, you need some cardiovascular activities.
Jump Rope, Run/Sprint, Swim, and (if you have the facilities) Rock Climb.
When it comes to this stuff, you need to make it high intensity so you'll get rid of that (most likely very small) layer of fat that is preventing you from seeing definition in your muscles.
On second thought, after looking at your pictures, you definitely do not need to lose much more weight. I would estimate that you specifically losing more than 10 pounds is a bad idea. I forgot if its 3 or 4 percent, but once you get too little body fat, you can have realy bad problems in the future. If your 7% now and you really really feel that its necessary to lose fat, try to go down to 5%, then stop.
I agree
7% seems pretty lean already. Are you competing? 5% would be a bit on the low side for a maintenance percentage, just my opinion though.
getting lean
Thanks for the feedback...always appreciated. I typically do cardio once or twice a week for 20 to 30 minutes. I'll try bumping that up to 3 times a week. I think that, along with skiing, should help tremendously. Thanks again.
Hmm...
Yeah I mean I can't see you losing enough fat by doing cardio once or twice a week. Some of the competitors I know do cardio for like at least an hour a day for 5 days a week prior to a contest to get lean enough. Even for myself, I know that if I need to lose any amount of fat, I need to do at least 45mins of cardio 5 days a week. Also, there is a lot of literature to suggest that you don't use much fat for fuel until about 20 mins AFTER you start doing cardio... so for example, the first 20 mins would be mostly glycogen reserves and very little fat energy used, but then after 20 mins you would use a higher percentage of fat for energy. I don't know if there are any official studies to support this theory, but I know in my own personal experience, I didn't lose any fat unless I really did longer duration cardio (say 45 mins to an hour) at a moderate intensity.
interesting...
Have you found it more effective to do interval cardio routines (like sprint intervals or increasing and decreasing intensity/speed) or basic cardio (same intensity/speed for longer duration) or maybe even a combo of the two?
....
I have tried both but the longer interval cardio always lost more bodyfat for me. Basically, I think anything more intense than walking would work well. Sometimes when you are weight training hard and you blast your legs one day, doing high intensity interval cardio the next day might not feel too good :-) I did find that when I was doing relatively high intensity cardio I lost a lot of weight, but no more than when I did longer duration at medium intensity. To give you an example, one summer I was doing the navy seal workout, which involves a lot of cardio, mostly at relatively short intervals, but at relatively high intensity. I lost a fair amount of fat and ran between a 7:30 (min per mile) and 8:30 pace most days. However, it was hard to get the normal intensity in my strength training workouts and I often got shin splints and running injuries.
Normally I would cycle 30-40 kms in 1-2 hours and had been doing that 5-6 days a week for about 2 years. During this time I could easily lose 2lbs of bodyfat per week.
So I guess it depends a lot on the individual and how much time you have to spend doing cardio every week. 1-2 hours a day is a lot for some people. Personally though, I think it is the only effective way to lose bodyfat. If you starve yourself your metabolism will just slow down, you'll enter into a stress response and your body will cannibalize any tissue available (including your precious muscle). I rarely ever saw any muscle loss just doing lots of cardio and mild calorie restriction. Also if you do super intense cardio every day, you open up the doorway to injury.
Weight Training!
From what i understand.. you have been using cardio and eating right, to get you at the BF% u are now at currently, ~7%.
Well, it seems what you are doing is effective. Increasing ur cardio from 2 days to 3, will be increasing the total calories spent during the weekly period, so you will lose more fat! Hence more definition in the muscles =D BUt!
In my experience, it seems necessary to incorporate specific weight training to target every part of your body in which you want to get defined. Reason being, 1) increases the muscle size, so when you strip the fat it becomes very visible, 2) more muscle burns more calories at rest, which also means the fat is burnt
A friend of mine last year competed in the half iron man, and this year in the full iron man, his BF% is quite low, and his legs are huge, he is defined but not as ripped as i look, and i base that upon my training style, being predominantly based on weights wheras his is a huge amount of cardio, like 20km run, 1hr swim, 2hr cycle everyday since he was 13 lol
The other day i asked to see his legs, flexed and they aren't as shredded as what is ideal for a bodybuilder on stage, being able to see all the different leg muscles.
So, if you want to get shredded, base your training style on weights, to bring out the muscle definition!
R!C}{y* ~ Go HarD or Go HomE!
It takes seconds not to eat
It takes seconds not to eat 500 calories yet an hour to burn them off, at 7% your definition should be ripped. Probably one of your biggest blockers here is hydration as it is for so many.
As ric pointed out increasing cardio will not be best placed for achieving your goal, if you have that energy to spend on running or whatever your poison is then invest that time in the weights room it will pay far more dividends in the long term.