Phase II of fat reduction

Having lost a lot of enthusiasm because I took 10 weeks to lose 5% instead of the planned 5 weeks, I decided to finish phase II quickly with a lot of cardio. First I started walking about 2 to 4 miles every other day. Since monday, wednesday and friday were my workout days I decided to go walking on tuesday, thursday and saturday. Sunday being the rest day. But walking did nothing to me. I continued for 3 weeks and my fat % was still in 11% range. First week (august 22, 2009) it was 11.9% no difference at all. Next week (august 29, 2009) it was 11.6%, next week (september 5, 2009) it was 11.7%. I thought I might have reached my plateau.

I tried again in one last desperate attempt to reduce fat by taking up running. I never jogged, much less run. I gave it a try on september 1, 2009. I ran as fast as I could. I ran for about 20 to 30 seconds before I was completely out of breath and thought I would die. My shins were killing me. Then it hit me, I was super unhealthy. My body is not made for endurance nor strength. What good am I? I decided to take it slowly so I looked up on the web for some tips on how to improve in running for the weak. I found couch to 5k. I did it for 2 weeks. Every time I did c25k I would feel I want to throw up. And my shins kept hurting me more and more. I finally have to give it up after doing only 5 workouts in 2 weeks. I went down to 10.9% body fat during this time.

While I was doing cardio I was also reducing the number of calories I was taking in. And was taking a toll. I always felt too tired. I was sleepy by 9 in the evening and morning started with a headache and feeling of tiredness. I was struggling with my weights too. Slowly I was going down. I was almost at the point where I started! It means I did not gain any muscle since I started (well I gained and lost it too). What am I to do? It is the curse of skinny guys I guess. After all the experimentation I decided to just give up leaning to 6-7%. It is not worth if I have no muscle left. Also it has been 4 months with my diet restriction. Now I started my gaining phase again. I will see how it goes.

Here is the body fat and weight graph up to date.

Filed under: Uncategorized, body fat, cardio, fat reduction

Phase I of fat reduction

I though the fat reduction process would be very easy for me, being the skinny guy by nature. So according to my plan I wanted to go from 17% to 6% in about 3 months. That gave me 12 weeks to get rid of 11% fat. Remember that I have never gone below 12% in my life. This will be the first time. My body generally settles around 12% BF. I guess every body has a baseline BF % to which the body tries to reach with normal food intake.

I split the leaning time into 2 phases. Phase I for 5 weeks and the goal is to reduce from 17% to 12%. A 5% reduction in 5 weeks. About 1% per week. It felt like it was totally doable in the given time without adding any cardio. Just tweaking my calorie intake should take care of it. As per the plan I started eating slightly less every week. I don’t know what I did wrong, but it took me 10 weeks to go down to 12% BF! Perhaps I should have cut more calories, but I was worried I will lose strength and muscle. Initially my strength was still going up as I was reducing calories. But in the last 3 weeks or so I stopped making any progress in strength. I was loosing fat and muscle at the same time.

It did not go at all like I planned. Here is the graph from phase I of fat cutting.

On August 15, 2009 I was 11.9% BF. On to phase II of leaning. For phase 2 I added cardio to further bring the fat %. More details in my next post.

Filed under: Uncategorized, body fat, fat reduction

Time to reduce fat %

After going through the bulking phase which left me with 127 lb weight and 17% body fat, I decided to shed all the fat while maintaining the muscle. I wanted to go down all the way to 6% body fat. For this I decided to lean in 2 phases.

The first phase of leaning would be cutting down the calorie intake. Still keep eating clean most of the time. Decided to go with 50:30:20 ratio for carb:protien:fat. And keep increasing the weights I lifted while leaning. No cardio at all. The workouts would be Chest, Shoulder and Triceps on Monday, Back and Biceps on Wednesday and Legs on Friday. Simple isn’t? I planed to keep doing this phase until I reach 12% body fat and then switch to phase 2.

The second phase would be reducing the calories further and still eating clean. This time the diet will be more protien, less carbs and fat. So the ratio I panned is 50:30:20 for protien:carb:fat. For the workout I will just try to do the same weight that I was doing at the end of phase 1. Not more, not less. In addition I planned on adding some kind of cardio. I will do this until I reach a body fat of 6%.

Simple plan. Should be easy to execute right? Nope. Wait for my next post to see what happens when reality hits you.

Filed under: Uncategorized, fat reduction