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

Strong Lifts 5×5 log

I started strongs lifts on Februry 23, 2009 and ended it about 3 months later on May 13, 2009. Here are the logs of my workouts by day and weight lifted.

 

All the weights are in lbs. The cells marked with a blue background indicate that I could not do 5×5 and so I had to repeat those weights. As you can see I had some good progress overall. I never did squats and now I know what those are and how much I can squat. Bench press has always been my weakest workout. I could not go over the 100 lb weight (even today). For push-ups I used a weighing scale below my hands and checked how much weight gets exerted on it when I try to do a push-up. The scales showed 70 lb (I weight 120 lb). So I am not lifting my full body weight when I am doing push-ups. I was able to do 3 sets of 5 reps each. Then for my next push-up day I kept a 5 lb plate on my back and did my push-ups. If I was able to do 3×5 then for the next time I added another 5 lb plate and so on. That is how I got those numbers for my push-ups.

More logs here

For chin-ups and pull-ups it is the same thing again. If I could do 3×5 with my body weight then I would hang a 5 lb to my waist and do them. Did not go too far with my pull-ups before I gave up.

That’s it for now. Fat and weight numbers in my next blog.

Filed under: Uncategorized, muscle, strength gain, strength training, strong lifts

Body Weight and Body Fat stats from Jan 2009

It was sometime in early January of 2009. It suddenly hit me. While I was getting stronger doing P90X, I was also feeling that I was gaining weight. All the exercises are making me more hungry and since I was still eating junk, I basically ate more junk. I could see my gut project out ever so slightly for the first time. I did not like what I saw. That is when I decided to invest in some body fat measuring device. After a thorough search on the internet and reading about pros and cons of various devices I decided to buy 2 of them.

I initially bought a body fat calipers that was recommended by many experts from body building forums. It was easy to use, but I am not sure if I am taking the readings properly or not but when I measured at the location mentioned in the booklet I always got less body fat. Something like 12%. I was sure I was not at that body fat percentage.

So I went ahead and brought myself a body weight and body fat measuring scale. This was very easy to use. In addition to displaying body weight and body fat percent measurements, it also displays muscle percentage, visceral fat, BMI and resting calories. I don’t really care about BMI because it is a number that does not make any sense and is not related to good health or strength. I used the resting calories as my base for how much I can consume per day. I don’t routinely look at that measurement. Just once in a month or two. Muscle percentage is also something I rarely look at. I don’t see it increasing by much anyway. Finally the measurement I am most interested (after body fat percent) is visceral fat. I could clearly relate to it and how I look in the mirror. More about it in some other blog post.

Anyway all the details aside the important thing is, it is very easy to use. However it was not consistent across days and not even across various times of a day. I don’t mean it is throwing random numbers. If you take 10 reading consecutively you will see consistent results. But if you take 10 reading evenly spread out throughout the day then there will be a lot of variance. As much as 4% difference between the min and max. The measurement depends on the state of you body at the time of measurements. Basically the device sends electric signals from the base and reads the signal strength from the hand held. Basing on the fact that water conducts more electricity and because muscle stores more water than fat, the device uses some algorithm to calculate body fat percent. So depending on whether you have more or less water or more or less food the reading will be different. Not only that. The reading is effected by what you eat too. I found that if I have a pizza for dinner the previous day then the fat percentage on the following morning is usually low! Not sure how or why that is the case.

Be what the readings may be I decided to take my measurements every saturday morning right after I woke up. This is what I got on January 24, 2009

Body weight: 122.0
Body fat percentage: 14.0%
Visceral fat: 3
Muscle percentage: 43.5%
Resting calories: 1423 calories
  

Filed under: Uncategorized, body fat, muscle, visceral fat, weight