Hi everyone, i'd like to know how can i get at low body fat just like chris, becouse my abs are not that visible, and my objetive is to have a nice six pack while gaing muscle mass working out with the workout program.
I dont count calories but i eat mostly healthy meals so this shouldnt be a problem.. shall i do cardio on rest day to lose fat and make my abs visible or it can result in loosing muscle mass ?? please ask what should i do im really confused
Thank you!!
Hey lucasuezen,
Nutriton:
in general to gain muscle mass you need a calorie surplus. if you want to lose fat, you have to eat less calories than your daily intake requires. as a result it looks quite impossible gaining muscle mass and loosing fat at the same time. i would recommend you gaining muscle mass, eat a lot, build that gains and than you can focus on a diet to make your abs visible.
Cardio: Cardio just helps you burning calories, if you still eat more calories at the end of the day, you will not lose any fat at all. the nutrition is the key and i would recommend you doing cardio one time per week, not on any restday because how should your body regenerate if there is no rest day to chill and relax..
intermitted fasting: it is possible to lose fat and gaining muscle mass at the same time, however it requires a lot of discipline. google after intermitted fasting, watch some youtube videos, i am pretty sure you will find good ones. it would take to long to explain and my english is not the best :-)
I agree with Josef on everything. I have lost around 16KG throughout half a year, and I'm looking to lose my last few KG's. I still have tons of muscle so if you do it correct you shouldn't have any problem with muscle loss.
Nutrition: Exactly like Josef said, calorie deficit is the KEY to lose fat, it's not eating this, eating that, you can literally eat anything and still lose fat but if you want to be healthy and preserve as much muscle mass (and potentially gain some), you want 80% to 90% of your daily intake to be healthy homemade foods or non-processed foods. Try to drink more than 2 liters of water, possibly 3 if you can. Don't worry too much about protein, carbs and fat intake and all that because you will end up NOT in a calorie deficit - the main ingredient of fat loss. Just try to eat all these healthy foods as much as you can, you know: meats, fish, eggs, milk, vegetables, fruits, etc. Eat till you're full and no more, I know it's tempting to finish the whole plate but if you're already full just give it to your parents if they want to eat or something, don't worry about it too much. Green tea also helps a lot. One thing that will make you lose a lot of muscle is: crash diets - you don't want to eat only 300-1000 calories a day, that's especially bad for a growing teenager. Just stop eating junk foods and all that bad things, you can eat it maybe once a week at first but try to eat it less and less.
Training: You want to have consistent and continuous workouts, both cardio and calisthenics/strength. I slacked off in the past with training but something hit me and I made myself a plan that I've been following for a month and will continue following it. I basically have Full body workouts every second day, and cardio every second rest day if that makes sense:
Monday: Full Body Workout
Tuesday: Rest day
Wednesday: Full Body Workout
Thursday: Cardio
Friday: Full Body Workout
And I also sometimes have cardio after my full body workouts if I feel like it, but full body workouts burn a lot of calories as well.
And I will say a few words combining Nutrition and Workout. You might have Chris' nutrition program or calculated your TDEE or DIM (Total Daily Energy Expenditure or Daily Intake Maintenance, which is you BMR multiplied by activity multiplication, which for moderately active is 1.55). Don't make the same mistake I did. I found out my mistake why I wasn't losing fat. Like I said I slacked off with my workouts, and my DIM/TDEE was 2912 calories, but that was if I workout 3-5 times a week, and I was working out like maybe twice a week, sometimes even once a week, so the DIM lowers a lot, and I thought I was eating in a deficit because of the DIM being 2912, I was eating like 2500 calories (I didn't count them though), but my BMR is 1878 calories, and if I workout twice a week, it's gonna be like 2300 or something, so I was maybe eating in a calorie surplus. I found that out and started working out consistently ever since. So don't make the same mistake I did.
Intermittent Fasting: This is the tool that helped me lose over 15KG in half a year, which might not seem like a lot, but knowing my past activity levels and everything, I am proud where I am now. Intermittent fasting is a way of eating, you eat for 8 hours and fast the other 16 hours. It might not be good for ectomorphs, but since you're looking to lose fat, you can try this if you can do it consistently. Remember: IT DOES NOT WORK UNLESS YOU HAVE A CALORIE DEFICIT - Eat less calories than your daily intake or DIM or TDEE (same thing). As far for building muscle, intermittent fasting supposedly raises Growth Hormone when fasting so it might preserve muscle but I don't know if I built muscle with intermittent fasting or if it was from the amazing program by Chris, or both combined.
Anything you have to ask, feel free, I'm willing to talk about this topic. Salute!
Thank you man, you help me a lot!! Im really glad. In fact I already have the muscle mass that i want, i mean of course i'd like to increase it, but i dont think thats my priority now.. my goals is to have a 8 - 9% body fat, but without loosing that much muscle mass, i hope you understand what i mean.. I will just not eat junk food, no alcohol and try to eat less... cardio helped me a lot, a used to do sessions of jumping rope and they really made me sweat a lot, the problem is that if i do so much cardio, i wont be able to give my best in strenght workouts...
Do you think I should cardio on rest days anyway and eat less just to keep my muscle mass ? Thank you man and i'll be wating for you to answer
I'm actually on the same route as you. Well I don't think you should worry about losing muscle mass, I don't know, I've lost over 15kg and I still have more muscle mass than people that workout for 2 years or even more. If you lose any muscle when losing fat you will gain it back anyway so you shouldn't worry about it too much. Your main priority should be losing the fat, with of course preserving as much muscle mass as you can, for that you should only make like a 300-500 calorie deficit, no more. The thing with cardio, you should use it as a tool to burn calories once you get to a point where you substituted every bad food for healthy food and your nutrition is on point healthy and good, and you don't really want to eat less of healthy food you know, then you should start doing more cardio. I mean it's fine, you can do cardio right now depending on your body fat %, I just think you can probably go down to like 15% body fat without any cardio. For preserving muscle mass, the few things you can do is eat at least 1 g of protein per kg of bodyweight - supposedly a bit more, if I had to guess I'm eating somewhere around 1.2-1.8g / kg of bodyweight, which I think is enough (many people say 1 g of protein per lb of bodyweight, but for me it's kinda hard to get that much and 1.2-1.8 g/ kg is still not a bad number), and also keep doing strength training (calisthenics), it's going to be harder to progress through exercises on a deficit but also easier since your overall bodyweight is going down, but you want to use as many muscles as you can in order to preserve your muscle mass.
And, you will have to make a plan yourself about the 7 days of the week. I tried a few suggestions here but I couldn't keep up with my current lifestyle and school and timing, so I decided to make one my own. I do calisthenics Monday through Friday (depending on time, I do splits or full body workout), and then on Saturday and Sunday I have 2 cardio workouts with calisthenics 1 day (because one day will be a rest day). And if 2 cardio workouts don't do it, I will add another one where it's suitable. So it's better to look at your current lifestyle, time, everything, and make a plan for it yourself. Although if you're waiting for an answer, yes cardio on rest days is more than great and about eating less, you will be eating less calories if you substitute foods anyway, for instance instead of eating a 25g chocolate bar - 130 calories, 4g unhealthy fats that lower testosterone instead of raising it and other bad things, 9g unhealthy sugar + 12g other carbs that make you want to eat more, you can eat an apple (100g or something) - 90 calories, like no fat, 22g healthy sugar including fiber that keeps you full. That's just an example. Of course you can have some cheat meals every once in a while, no one's perfect. And of course 130 - 90 calories is 40 calories which might not seem like a lot but it adds up. I can keep talking about nutrition & workouts, just ask if you're unsure of something, like I said I'm really busy out of nowhere but I'll try my best. Salute!
You are a genius man, thank you for your time and all the explanation me all that, maybe I will try something like this:
monday - fullbody workout
tuesday - cardio
wednesday - fullbody workout
thursday - cardio
friday - fullbody workout
saturday - cardio
sunday - rest
What do you think about this ? with the goal to get at that % of bodyfat ? eating healthy and working out from monday to saturdays ?
I used to play soccer a lot, and my body fat used to be very low, but i stopped playing and now it has increased... so i think i can lose fat very quickly which is great, the problem is strenght workouts, maybe too much cardio can result in a negative perfomance for those workouts, not being able to give my best becouse doing cardio on rest days, but i dont know thats my primary doubt
Well one idea would be:
Have you been doing calisthenics in the past few weeks? If so, take your average sets & reps you were doing of the same levels from the workout or whatever workout you're doing. Now, take your plan you created and do it for like a week and see if the average sets & reps went down or stayed the same. Of course you can't exactly tell it like this but you get the idea.
If they went down you can decrease cardio from 3-4 days a week (on rest days) to like 2-3, that's also fine:
Monday: Full body workout
Tuesday: Rest
Wednesday: Full body workout
Thursday: Cardio
Friday: Full body workout
Saturday: Cardio
Sunday: Rest
You can do cardio after a full body workout if you feel like it, most of the times I don't though. But I don't think that cardio will have a negative roll on the full body workouts, of course unless you go and do 2 hours of ultra high intensity haha. A good take on it is 15-60 minutes per cardio session. Start with 15, gradually go up every 2-3 weeks or something because your body will get 'used' to it. About the intensity, I usually do moderate intensity (jump rope, running, sometimes boxing), but like I said, whatever suits you better. I wouldn't prefer one thing: HIIT from the Internet, like doing squats, push ups or exercises that use your muscles a lot, since it's a rest day after all (heck we shouldn't even be doing cardio), because that kind of HIIT will hinder the rest and potential muscle gains and leave you exhausted which really isn't needed. You can easily do HIIT with jump rope, running/sprints.
Okay now about that plan. That plan is great, honestly. If you end up not losing fat while exercising that much, then it's bad nutrition, I'm sure you've read website information so you probably know a lot already. But yes, that plan will indeed be great towards hitting that goal %.
Also, some days you will be more tired than other days, you won't be able to give your best, but that doesn't mean it's cardio's fault. It happens to everyone, I was doing a full body workout. I did Pull and I wanted to stop, just go upstairs eat and do whatever I was gonna do, but I thought about it (because I had given up like that before), and I ended up doing a hard Push, Legs & Core, it was like hell, after that I felt like I was gonna die - literally like I had no energy. I'm saying this just so you know it's not you losing strength or cardio's fault, it's just a process that happens naturally so to say.
Great answers by both Josef and Gligor. I would recommend Lean Bulking if you're an ectomorph, which by your picture I can see that you are. Some people have trouble believing that lean bulking is possible or that this process even works. Trust me, it does; but it's a long and hard process. You want your nutrition intake to be 40% carbs, 40% protein, 20% fat. You want to drink around 3 liters of water a day, and sleep around 8 hours a day. Now, the first time I read about lean bulking, I read about a different method of the one I'm using right now, but it does work though. You pretty much ate a lot(of healthy stuff of course) and did cardio at least 3 times a week(4 would be ideal). The diet consisted of fish, lean meats, eggs, chicken, turkey, fruits and vegetables, brown rice, oats, and many other foods. Now I noticed that the diet had a lot of foods(besides the ones I mentioned) that were known to burn fat, kind of like green tea, apple with cinnamon, different types of peppers. So you were eating in a calorie surplus of foods that burned fat, in addition to you doing cardio 4 times a week. So it's like cheating. You gain muscle because of the calorie surplus, but you lose fat thanks to some slight maneuvers. When I saw this I thought to myself, "There is really no way of proving that this method works unless I try it myself.". So I did, and BOILA! It does work! Now as I said, it's a long and hard process, but it works!!! And it's definitely worth it. I just shared one method of lean bulking, but there are several different kinds of lean bulking. You can try it out if you wish, specially since you're an ectomorph. At the end of the day, it's your choice. It's just my personal preference to do lean bulking instead of the whole bulk/cut cycle. Good luck Bro!!!
That's amazing, even too good to be true, I was just giving the general advice about fat loss and the mistake I did where I thought I was stuck but I just didn't calculate calories good by working out (when I slacked off a bit). In fact I prefer lean bulking too, if you don't have a lot of body fat to lose, I just went on a cut to lose the body fat because it was too much, I wouldn't prefer doing any bulk, neither lean bulk if you already have tons of body fat %, but since by the picture you don't look like you have fat more than like 13%, you might just need to up your muscle in your abs (or everywhere on your body) so they show more, while keeping the fat gain at minimum and even lowering it by lean bulking.
Exactly, thanks Gligor. How many kilos do you have to lose until you finally start lean bulking bro? You're almost there aren't you?
Well I don't know my body fat percentage right now but I started getting leaner again when I started being extremely consistent. I guess I'll start it next year, maybe February or something haha
That's great Bro! Keep it up!
Daniel, do you have any specific source to this way of nutrition you explained to us? i ask because i just want to read more, not because i do not believe you
Alright guys, I've literally been searching nonstop since I posted my last comment, hahahaha. I haven't been able to find the original site I talked about earlier. I found a lot of good sites talking about lean bulking and the process of losing fat while gaining muscle. But none were specific enough on what I had stated above. I did, however, find a site that seems to explain what I was talking about earlier. It has some differences and I'm not really sure where they got this information from, but I'll leave a link here so you guys can tell me what you think about it. It's the closest thing I've found to what I was stating earlier. Ok, here you go http://scoobysworkshop.com/gain-muscle-lose-fat/
Yea I've read that as well. I don't know what's actually happening, I never paid that much attention to how many calories or how much protein/carbs/fat I eat, because when I pay attention and start counting, I end up eating more. I just try to eat as much protein foods and healthy carbs & fat as I can. I've started to get leaner again but my weight is going up so I don't count on the scale too much, I count on the mirror & pictures a lot more though. Daily cardio might be too much in my opinion, not in therms of muscle loss but in therms of you could start off with less and gradually up the frequency or intensity of the cardio.
That's why I said I had some differences. I usually recommend 3 days of cardio per week. For more experienced guys, 4 days is ideal. I also never count calories.