Rapid Fat Loss

[PowerBuilder]

I"m wondering How is it possible to lose more than 1kg (2lb) of fat a week with minimal muscle gains. A lot of us have seen the guys & girls on the biggest loser lose a good couple of kg's in a single week.

For an athlete between 10 & 20% body fat, would it be the same process as the biggest loser participants? Ramp up the metabolisim with a appropriate ammount of cardio, having a right diet in check & getting in 8-10 hours sleep a day?

This is somethin' i've thought about for a long time now, I just haven't felt like posting it up.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

Do not use The Biggest Loser as a guide to anything except fcking yourself royally.

They lose weight so rapidly because they lose fluids and muscle and bone tissue, too.

For a healthy adult in the normal ranges of bodyfat, 0.5kg loss of fat a week is the right amount. You can lose that much fat while maintaining your muscle. More than that, and the muscle goes with it.

 

[PowerBuilder]

please dont read this as if i'm picking a fight or anything....

what if you were to do cardio at a steady rate to keep your heart rate between 90 & 120 bpm for, say, 2 hours a day, while possibly drinking 10ml of WPI in 500ml & a few almonds?

 

[kingpin]

There is an extremely effective way, its called fasting. The methods are described in a book called Eat-Stop-Eat. The principle is that you put your body in an unfed (fasting) state for 24hrs 2x per week, with cycling fibrous carbs and starchy carbs and combining with lotsa protein.

There is a less extreme method which is called a Protein Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF) this method is outlined in a book called The Rapid Fat Loss Handbook by Lyle McDonald. The basic principle here is you eat a very low carb and high protein diet, with refeed days to top up your carbs and breaks to ensure you don't drive yourself 6 feet under. These periods are determined by your BMR, BF % and other factors which the book walks you through.

I don't want to get into any specifics here as you really need to read the books in order to understand the risks associated with the diets, they make a good fast read, I read them both in an afternoon.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

what if you were to do cardio at a steady rate to keep your heart rate between 90 & 120 bpm for, say, 2 hours a day, while possibly drinking 10ml of WPI in 500ml & a few almonds?

It wouldn't kill you, except perhaps from boredom.

A single hour of heavy weights would burn more calories, though. Something like my own five exercise, 5 sets of 5 reps workout. That's because calories are burned in the 24 hours after any workout, too - and more after heavy weights than after cardio.

But if you want fat loss and improved cardiovascular fitness, do the cardio.

No need to get fancy about it. Eat good food and exercise. Lose 0.5kg fat a week - why do you need to do it faster than that? Last minute decision to enter a bodybuilding competition, or what?

 

[Jas0n]

There is an extremely effective way, its called fasting. The methods are described in a book called Eat-Stop-Eat. The principle is that you put your body in an unfed (fasting) state for 24hrs 2x per week, with cycling fibrous carbs and starchy carbs and combining with lotsa protein.

kingpin, have you tried the fasting method yourself? It is recommended over @ stronglifts, but it just sounded a little too exotic for me.

Cheers.

 

[kingpin]

Yes I have and you do drop kilos, gotta stick to the recommendations though as Lyle outlines you can do yourself some real damage if you exert yourself. You need to identify the profile that suits your body profile and break the diet as recommended. I've included a couple of tables below which shouldn't infringe on any copyright laws, the headings dont align but if you chuck them on an excel spreadsheet they should. Table 1 tells you how often to break by categories, how many free meals, and refeeds (all book terms). Table 2 tells you how to determine the category you're in based on BF % and sex (not offering anything)

Table 1. Frequency and duration of free meals, refeeds and full diet breaks
Category Full diet break Free meals Refeeds
1 Every 11-12 days No 2-3 full days at the end
2 Every 2-6 weeks 1 per week 5 hours once/week
3 Every 6-12 weeks 2 per week None

Table 2. Determining diet category based on bodyfat percentage
Category Male BF% Female BF%
1 15% and lower 24% and lower
2 16-25% 25-34%
3 26%+ 35%+

 

[Jas0n]

Yes I have and you do drop kilos, gotta stick to the recommendations though as Lyle outlines you can do yourself some real damage if you exert yourself. You need to identify the profile that suits your body profile and break the diet as recommended. I've included a couple of tables below which shouldn't infringe on any copyright laws, the headings dont align but if you chuck them on an excel spreadsheet they should. Table 1 tells you how often to break by categories, how many free meals, and refeeds (all book terms). Table 2 tells you how to determine the category you're in based on BF % and sex (not offering anything)

Table 1. Frequency and duration of free meals, refeeds and full diet breaks
Category Full diet break Free meals Refeeds
1 Every 11-12 days No 2-3 full days at the end
2 Every 2-6 weeks 1 per week 5 hours once/week
3 Every 6-12 weeks 2 per week None

Table 2. Determining diet category based on bodyfat percentage
Category Male BF% Female BF%
1 15% and lower 24% and lower
2 16-25% 25-34%
3 26%+ 35%+

Thank you for the informative reply mate.

I am familiar with PSMF, though. I meant the 'Eat-Stop-Eat' fasting method. Sorry for the confusion mate!

 

[kingpin]

Oh I kinda used them interchangably.

I timed my first fast after the weekend where I would load up on my starchy carbs for two 24 hour periods starting 7pm Friday (pizza night) and ending 7pm Sunday night and fast until 7pm Monday. Next fast starts Thursday 7pm and ends 7pm Friday just in time for Pizza night. The rest of the week I stick to the PSMF and eat fribrous carbs until my gut cant take anymore.

Hope that answers your question, happy to elaborate further if required.

 

[kingpin]

Here's an extract of the book Eat-Stop-Eat that would help explain the logic behind it. I can only buy into stuff when you can quantify benefits.

Insulin is one of the most important hormones in your body. Every nutrition, medicine and physiology textbook has at least one chapter devoted entirely to the effects that insulin has on your body. When you eat, the insulin levels in your body increase. The role of insulin is the storage of nutrients. In other words, insulin is the primary signal that tells your body to store the energy from your food as body fat and glycogen. When insulin levels are high, you are in storage mode, plain and simple. What’s more, when insulin is elevated, you are unable to release fat from your fat stores – In other words, when your insulin is high, your fat isn’t going anywhere.

Many popular diets, such as The Zone and The South Beach diet, are based around the idea of controlling your insulin levels. These diets apparently accomplish this by eating small frequent meals that have a low effect on your blood sugar levels. While eating frequent small meals, or meals with a low ‘glycemic index’ (a measure of the meal’s effect on blood sugar) may help you ‘control’ or ‘even out’ your insulin levels, fasting for as little as 24 hours has been shown to drastically reduce your insulin levels!
In research conducted on people who fasted for 72 hours, plasma insulin dropped dramatically, reaching a level that was less than half of the their initial levels. What’s even more impressive is that 70% of this reduction happened during the first 24 hours of fasting.

Fat burning is the goal of every diet. You should never lose weight without losing fat. In “Protein Power”, Dr. Michael Eades goes so far as to recommend that we should “Divorce ourselves from the notion that you want to lose weight” and concentrate on losing fat. Luckily, a 24-hour period of fasting shifts your body from the fed state to the fasted state, which causes large increases in both lipolysis (fat release) and fat oxidation (burning). Simply put, fasting allows your body to take a break from storing fat, and start burning it!

After only 24 hours of fasting, the amount of fat being released from people’s fat stores (lipolysis) and the amount being burnt for fuel (oxidation) had been significantly increased by over 50%.

 

[Kyle Aaron]

What twelve different kinds of bicep curls are to someone in their first week of weight training, all this stuff is to someone wanting to lose fat.

Needless complication, likely to confuse you into inaction rather than actually achieve anything.

Eat good food and exercise.

Do I have to say again what good food is? Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegies, lots of nuts and beans, some meat, fish and dairy; to lose weight, less starchy stuff (rice, pasta, bread, spuds), to gain weight, more starchy stuff.

 

[katie]

And don't forget to get good sleep so that the muscles can grow!

 

[kingpin]

I thought the primary objective of this thread was to outline a method for Rapid fat loss. Eating well and getting sleep go without saying but yeh.... I'll leave you to sort out the direction of the thread from here Kyle.

Oh can I add breathe often and don't walk in front of moving vehicles.

 

[katie]

kingpin is absolutely right, have gone off topic, that's what happens when I read the end of the thread, having read the beginning this morning...

I have read heaps on the strongliftsforum about Eat Stop Eat and wanted to try it, so I bumped up a thread here on Intermittent Fasting a while back. But I was worried by the prospect of dropping muscle when I didn't even have that much to start with.

http://ausbb.com/nutrition-diet/8209-intermittent-fasting.html

Some more food for thought...

 

[Josh_GTiR]

This stuff sure doesn't sound beneficial for someone that is weight training.

 

[CaT_SPeW]

yeah fasting scares me

 

[katie]

me too, particularly when I calculated that I have 45kg -48kg of lean body mass...

 

[BoyFromAus]

What twelve different kinds of bicep curls are to someone in their first week of weight training, all this stuff is to someone wanting to lose fat.

Needless complication, likely to confuse you into inaction rather than actually achieve anything.

Eat good food and exercise.

Do I have to say again what good food is? Eat lots of fresh fruit and vegies, lots of nuts and beans, some meat, fish and dairy; to lose weight, less starchy stuff (rice, pasta, bread, spuds), to gain weight, more starchy stuff.

very good analogy.