Cardio does not help in body fat reduction?

I found this very interesting article: http://www.biologiclabs.com/advice/details.asp?article_id=23

If you read it and take everything to heart then you will never do cardio again! I like how he debunks the claim that cardio reduces fat %. I agree with almost everything he has to say. I like his simple equation which relates food, muscle, weight and fat.

• Food determines your weight
• Strength determines your lean mass
• The difference is fat

If you eat more, you will gain weight. Now if you increase strength proportionally then you will keep the same body fat. At the end of the day you have less body fat % yet you weight more and have more strength. Although putting this principle into practice is not easy. Because you cannot exactly measure how much to eat so that you just gain muscle and not fat (with excess calories). Similarly you cannot be eating less than what is required otherwise you will not see the best strength gains and your recovery and metabolism slows down too.

Many people attribute losing weight to looking lean. They are completely 2 different things. Looking lean means having a low body fat %. You could loose weight by getting rid of all the muscle. You will look thinner and smaller, but definitely not stronger or leaner, let alone healthier. You will look soft and rounded and your skin sags with the fat it is holding.

So to close:

body weight = muscle weight + fat weight
fat weight = body weight – muscle weight
fat weight = food intake – strength

To reduce fat either increase strength or reduce food intake. I prefer to increase strength please

Filed under: Uncategorized, body fat, cardio, food, muscle

How much you eat matters

During my strong lifts phase I decided to up my calories by at least 500 calories. But how much am I eating now? To get that number I opened an account in dailyburn and started entering what I usually eat. It came out to be something like 1350 to 1500. Then I made a conscious effort to eat 1750 to 2000 calories. Also decided to eat every 3 hours for a total of 6 meals. So I have to eat about 300 calories per meal. Simple enough. I then increased the amount of food that I ate and logged everything in dailyburn. I was not easily able to eat that much food every 3 hours. I felt very full all the time. Then after reading about another skinny guy in strong lifts I decided to go with a lot of milk instead of solid food. I felt slightly better but still felt like I was over eating. During this time I tried to eat clean, but cheated several times.

I weighted about 120 lb with about 12.5% body fat when I started. My goal was to gain 10 lbs while not going beyond 17% body fat. I tracked my body weight and fat every weekend. My plan during this time was to go on a bulking phase until I reached 17% body fat, followed by a leaning phase to get my body fat % down to 12%. I envisioned that with my exercises I will slowly weight more (due to increase in muscle) and still be at 12.5% body fat at the end of a few bulking and cutting phases. However I don’t think it did really work well for me. Either what I ate is wrong or how I trained is wrong. Anyway here are the raw numbers.

I started increasing my calories on 2/21/2009 and it went on until I reached 17% BF on 5/23/2009. Incidentally this is also the time when I quit strong lifts. Here is a composite graphs of weight and BF%.

As you can see I gained fat rather quickly. So at the end of it I decided to lean down back to 12%.

Filed under: Uncategorized, body fat, calories, food, skinny