Questions about losing love handels

Bascaily I want to know how to lose my "gutt". you see its really not a gutt. I wish I had a digital camera to take a picture of it but I dont. Currently I have almsot zero body fat. I use to weigh 217 pounds but lost fifty pounds in six months. I now weigh about 167 pounds and I'm 5'10". Bascaily I have small love handels, and a small layer of fat around my belly button that sits on my jeans. I can pinch an inch + some. Standing up my stomcah looks flat with slight curves on the sides. Its not like my love handels are pouring over my pants. From the side view my chest meets my stomach in a straight line but then falls off as my stomach meets my waist. I am a size 31 waist.

Currently I want to gain abdominal muscles, but to do this I must first remove this fat.

My stratgey is to eat one LARGE meal per day which will mainly consist of Chicken and Salad. The chicken will be grilled plain and covered and ketchup. I'll eat about 1.5 servings of this and have a very large salad which will be nothing but green leafs with oil and vinger (more vinger than oil). I wont use any salt either. My only other source of calories will come from gateorade. I will use this diet for about 3 weeks. The only time I will break it will be when I go out with friends to resturants, but I will still eat very healthy food. I will also break it when I drink, but I wont drink any beer, only cranberry vodka.

I also intend to run four miles a day and hopefully get my running back to six miles a day by early July.

What puzzels me is with all my running and with all my unhealthy starvation diets how the hell did I not lose the fat in my lower abdomen and love handels? O well... I'll get em this time =)


QUESTIONS
---------------------------------------------
1.) What are some other low carb, low fat, high protein foods I can make meals out of like Chicken and Tuna?
2.) Are there any forms of soy bread that would help me with my diet?
3.) Do any of you have a website that has a range of abdominal workouts that show some sort of short video clip?
4.) Should I buy some sort of pill or shake or anything from like a GMC store that would help me achieve this goal?



<<<BACKGROUND INFO>>>
Last time I posted here... Jan 04 I weighed 217 LBS
Six months later I weighed 167 pounds in July 04.

This is how I got there....

I used no pill or wonder drug I stuck with the basics diet and exercise. I was a football player so I was use to running, so I started running around the block and eating ALOT less. I ate a muffin/some tasty carb around 200 Cals when I woke up, I had a diet coke at the caff for lunch, and I ate chicken and salad for dinner. I used what is more or less a starvation diet inwhich both muscle and fat were burned. At night I actually could not sleep because my body went into "survial" mode. The cool part abotu this is I would go to "sleep" be up all night but be fine the next day because throughout the night my body used up its stored fat cell energy.

By april 2005 I was able to run 3 miles everyday. At this point I decided it would be best for me to stop my diet and start to adapt something more realistic. I made a few rules though.

1.) No drinks w/ cals meals should ainly soda
2.) Eat nothing with Potato
3.) All meals should start with a huge salad
4.) Skip Lunch, drink a diet coke
5.) Only snack if you didnt eat enough for dinner, that way you can sleep
6.) Eat only ONE big meal per day usallyly around 5-6pm
7.) Breakfast should be one thing, one muffin, toast, apple, and contain no butter
8.) Stay away from horrible things like tacos or anything thats almost all grease
9.) Only eat pizza if you are at a party or something where its the only thing being served

Sooner or later I got my running up to 6 miles and I could usually complete this in about 42 min.

The real test came at the begining of September when I would go off to college... My diet in college was horrible! I missed breakfast, and lunch every single day and had no food in my dorm. At dinner I would usually eat..

1 HUGE salad
2 Servings of Meat
1 Serving of Rice or some sort of carb
1 Apple/Banana
3 Cookies or icecream

The problem with this was I never got enough food. All my muscle mass was gone by novemeber. My calfs were huge from running all summer and now I had kankels because my calf just disapeared. My weight droped to about 159 at the worse.

Second semester I made friends with peanut butter and stocked my dorm with break and lots of plastic knives. My weighed stayed around 167-173. I ran about four times a week. I always aimed to do 6 miles but would always end up running four miles and walking home the last two because I could never get in a groove like I had the previous year running. I had lots of feet/knee/ankel problems from running in the snow all winter. I never took more than a week off and always iced them.

When I got home and put on my swim suit I was very please this past week. However I thought I could do better. I was suprised to see how much fat I had in my abdominal reigon given my near starvation diet.
 
Your near starvation diet is exactly what's keeping you from shedding those last few pounds of fat. I'm sorry to say this rather blunt, but your diet plan is terrible. Eating one large meal a day and then just gatorade is horrible. Why is it horrible?

1. Gatorade is just water loaded with sugar. Over 60g of sugar per bottle, and your going to have a couple bottles a day? Think about that one. Sugar turns to fat.

2. Eating one large meal, besides stretching ur stomach out, your throwing your body into starvation mode. Your body isn't getting enough food, so it holds onto all the fat it can. What else sucks about this? Your body goes for muscle as fuel first.

What you need to do is this:

1. NEVER MISS BREAKFAST EVER. Make it of either natural oatmeal with some fresh fruit and a glass of oj, or egg whites.

2. Eat 4-6 meals a day, spaced evenly throughout the day. Meal 1 at 8am, meal 2 at 11am, meal 3 at 2pm, etc etc.

3. Stay the hell away from anything labeled with "partially hydrogenated oils" in the ingredients. These are trans fats, and those alone can keep you from ever seeing your six pack.

4. Drink a ****load of water. You may feel like this is bloating you at first, but your body gets used to it and eventually you'll look even slimmer. I'm talking at LEAST half a gallon a day. With all the running you do, I'd aim for a gallon at least a day.

5. SLEEP. If there's one thing above all that your body needs is to rest and rebuild and repair. Get at least 8 hours of sleep a night.

6. To make your abs really come through, weighted exercises are the best way to go. Crunches are great, so are situps and twists and every other traditional exercise. What really hits your abs hard is doing them with weights. Think you can do 5000 crunches a day no problem? I bet you can. Put at 25lb dumbbell behind your head, and I guarentee you you'll struggle past 15. Believe me, I know. :p

As for your questions. I have no answers to those. The only one I can answer is number 4. And my answer to that is don't ever trust anything from GMC. And no you don't need pills or fat burners for a goal that seems to be easily attainable if your anywhere near the build you described. Good luck.
 
okay, so starving myself isnt a good idea... its weird I could honestly go the WHOLE day and not eat ANYTHING @ ALL, and consume 0 Calories until like 5-8PM at night and eat one HUGE meal. The only other area i'd recieve calories was in the form of gateorade which was only one 16 oz bottle a day. I figured this would work but I know NOTHING about nutirtion beyond the basics. This diet was soo good at losing my fifty orignal pounds, but I think I need a more long term diet that I can put into effect for the rest of my life. I dont want to lose all my muscle again. I cant even contemplate etaing 5 times a day. I ate a bowl of cerial and i'm full. I feel like everything else I eat is going to be foreced but I'll get use to it.
This is what i've decided to do...

5 MEAL PLAN
10:00 AM: Big Bowl of Corn Flakes 250 Cals 0 Fat
1:00 PM Two Eggs (Scrambled) Cooked in teaspoon of oil and I use LOTS of ketchup, also the eggs I use are ExtraLarge so 300 CALS sounds about right
4:00 PM : Huge Salad Vinger & Oil 200 cals? no ideaain on grill - 250 Cals 14 Grams of Fat
7:00 1/2 LB of Chicken cooked plain 400 CALS
10:00 PM Same as previous meal 400 CALS
2:00AM Bed Time

Total Cals: 1600-1900 (+300 if I eat more chicken)

Drink 1 Gallon of Water as well, two cans of diet coke, and one pint of gatorade



EXERCISE
1. Run everyday 4-6 AVG Run Burns 400 CALS
2. Gym 5 days a week, 1.5 hours each session
4. Free weights at home - 3 Hours a week
3. Abdominal exercises everyday 15 min each day
 
i agree with the advice above - toss the gatorade. drink a lot of water and if you want something sweet go for a low cal version of a sports drink like "propel" or some other version.
corn flakes are fine but bran cereal would be better as corn flakes have virtually no fiber. also use fat free milk.
why all the ketchup? that stuff is garbage - high in sugar and nothing else. figure out something else you can use like maybe salsa.

things to avoid on this plan: peanut butter, regular salad dressings (vs low fat), fast food of any type, sodas (drink diet if you must), most restaurant food, snacks like candy and cookies, any food item that says partially or hydrogenated oil on the ingredients label, "fat burner" pills, etc

things to embrace: whole grain products, fruit, vegetables, fish, water, fat free milk etc. in fact read the labels, easy to work out a plan that will work if you read the labels.
 
Back
Top