Strenghting & conditioning...

He said that my body fat needs to drop now before I start to weight lift, so not to really lift & if I do lift, make it maintenance lifting...high reps easy weight. Also he advised me to not run, but to do walking or cardio that going to keep me in my "target heart zone" so i can burn fat.
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Your trainer needs to go back to school and get his shit straight. (Sorry about the language, but when a so-called professional trainer gives this kind of advice, it really pisses me off.)

1 - There is no reason why you shouldn't lift weights, no matter what you're body fat level. In fact when you're eating at a calorie deficit to lose fat, you NEED to lift weight in order to maintain lean muscle. Otherwise, your diet will cause you to lose both fat and muscle.

2 - High reps/easy weight does jack. It sort of kind of builds muscle endurance, but it does diddly squat to maintain or build muscle. Again .. when you're eating at a calorie deficit to lose fat, you NEED to lift weight in order to maintain lean muscle. Otherwise, your diet will cause you to lose both fat and muscle.

3 - The whole target heart zone fat burning thing for weight loss has been debunked. The bottom line is that the higher you get your heart rate, the more calories you burn. The more calories you burn, the more fat you'll burn. You should exercise with as much intensity as you can manage and is safe for you. If you're in somewhat reasonable shape, then walking is not going to be nearly as productive as running or other medium high to high intensity cardio. If you can manage intervals or HIIT, even better.

Dewon told me my diet shold be like 1,000-1,200/day.
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Good god. The more I type out here the more I just want to walk up to your so-called "trainer" and smack him upside the head with a very large board.

The thing about going into a calorie deficit is that your metabolism will slow in reaction to a lowered calorie intake. It's inevitable and unavoidable. So the whole trick, if you will, to losing weight is to reduce your calories as much as necessary to lose the pounds while still eating enough to keep your metabolism up. If you drop to the rock bottom number of calories, your metabolism drops to rock bottom as well ... and then you have nowhere to go and no wiggle room when you stall out because of it. At your current weight (which I remember reading to be around 136, right?), you could easily get away with 1500-1600 calories a day and lose weight.

Any trainer who recommends a diet of 1000 calories a day for someone who is working out needs to be fired. That's criminally dangerous.

I'm just steaming. GRRRRRRRRR. I hope you don't follow this guys advice, and quite honestly, I hope you can take him some information and tell him he's full of it.
 
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lol

I much prefer Kara's abrasiveness. I'd post like that but people call me a bully and I get banned from the forum.
 
Aw shucks.

I just get away with it (sometimes) 'cause I can smile sweetly and turn on the Southern charm when I need to. ;)
 
steve & kara...

Thanks for the advise. It seems that you agee more so with my neighbor tony who is also a CPT & has been helpin me @ the gym we both go to. Dewon, the trainer I went to yesterday had explained to me that doing high intensity cardio starts to burn into muscle not just fat. He said that if I stay at my tarhet heart rate I should burn strictly fat & wont have to worry about burning calories thru muscle. When i first started off when i did drop the 15 lbs in june my plan consisted of walking 4 miles a day which was 1 hour & my caloric intake was 1200-1500. I started consuming more calories this week, but burniong about 500 each day at the gym which included running more & weightlifted twice. The second time wasnt as intense as the first workout. This was with my neighbor tony. I have gained like 3 lbs this week. Heres my body measurements from yesterday with dewon...

body fat= 30.2
BMI= 26.5
right arm- 11"
forearms-9"
neck-13"
chest-36"
waist-36" (when i got home i measured my waist & it was 38")
hips-39.5"
right thigh-21.5
calf-13.5


Dewon was i guess saying that if i do the cardio he explained staying in my target heart rate my body fat will go down. I coundnt understand some of the thing he was saying like the caloric intake thing especially if im working out....maybe he meant just dieting alone cause i agree with a lot of people...thats tooooo low. Im sorry I might not have quoted exactly what he has said, maybe even misunderstood/misinterpreted some of it. I noticed like i said the 3 lb gain & then when i got home & measured my own waist it was 2" bigger than when he measured it. Also if its a 38 now, i gained like another 1.5 inches since last thursday. & im back to where i started =(


good lord! sometimes it seems as if the more i know gets me into trouble. when i was doing my own thing i lost 15 lbs in 1 month consistantly. now that i read & have learned a lot more, it is making me plateau, gain etc?

hheeeelllp lol:willy_nilly::willy_nilly::willy_nilly:
 
NEEDLESTIX86 said:
steve & kara...

Thanks for the advise. It seems that you agee more so with my neighbor tony who is also a CPT & has been helpin me @ the gym we both go to. Dewon, the trainer I went to yesterday had explained to me that doing high intensity cardio starts to burn into muscle not just fat. He said that if I stay at my tarhet heart rate I should burn strictly fat & wont have to worry about burning calories thru muscle.
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Based on what I said above, I'm not going to go into details here, but the guy shouldn't be listened to. Muscle maintenance is going to be triggered by eating the right foods and lifting weights. It's that simple.

Dewon was i guess saying that if i do the cardio he explained staying in my target heart rate my body fat will go down. I coundnt understand some of the thing he was saying like the caloric intake thing especially if im working out....maybe he meant just dieting alone cause i agree with a lot of people...thats tooooo low. Im sorry I might not have quoted exactly what he has said, maybe even misunderstood/misinterpreted some of it.
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I doubt you misinterpreted, truthfully. It sounds exactly the same as 9/10 trainers I cross paths with. It's what they believe b/c it's common myth and they don't spend the time or money to educate themselves.

Mind you, there is no barrier to entry in this industry. You could be a PT within a few days.

I noticed like i said the 3 lb gain & then when i got home & measured my own waist it was 2" bigger than when he measured it. Also if its a 38 now, i gained like another 1.5 inches since last thursday. & im back to where i started =(
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3 lbs of fat is = to 10,500 calories.

So...

Unless you're really overeating... who gives a crap? Weight is not fat.
 
sorry for all my ranting & insecurities about all this. Im just trying to find the best advise out there & hope for the best results. I am very stressed...work,family & my jay being deployed does not help matters. Thats why i seem negative now.
 
As far as the waist measurement, it makes a difference WHERE you measure your waist - and the locations for the measurement are different for men and women. I believe for a man the location is 3" about the belly button. For a woman, you should measure at the narrowest part of your torso. Don't know if that would make a difference or not to your measurement.

Dewon, the trainer I went to yesterday had explained to me that doing high intensity cardio starts to burn into muscle not just fat.
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*cough* *cough* *bullshit* *cough* Ahem. Sorry. Got something stuck in my throat. :D I'll be nice and just say it's complete nonsense.

About the 3lb gain: When you lift weights, what you're doing is damaging/stressing the muscle fibers. Then during your recovery time between lifting, your muscles repair themselves and become stronger and bigger. That's the sorta very simplistic version of how weight lifting works. So as part of the process of repair, your body floods your muscles with blood and other fluids to aid in the restoration of the muscle fiber. That's part of what the "pump" is when you're lifting weights. It's possible for the fluid increase to remain for anywhere from 3-10 days after you lift.

I find that when I am really being serious about lifting and not just screwing around, I will at first gain 3-5 lbs after a weight lifting routine. It's perfectly normal. Eventually you'll lose enough fat and fluid and so forth that the 3-5 lb gain will balance out and you won't notice it - assuming you stay consistent with lifting weights.

Honestly what you said he told you is pretty much the "party line" I've heard from a lot of people. It's mixed up mess of myth, rumor, "conventional wisdom", etc. Some of it is stuff that was believed to be true 10 years ago and has since been overturned by better science. Some of it is magazine quality "quick fix" stuff. The reality of the whole process is really really really much simpler.

Eat fewer calories than you burn, but not so few you slow your metabolism.
Eat a balanced combination of healthy food: veggies and fruits, lean protein, complex carbs, and healthy fats.
Do some kind of resistance, weigh lifting, or body weight exercising to help you maintain/build lean muscle.
Add in cardio (if you want) to help increase the calorie burn and speed fat loss. The more intense the cardio, the higher the caloric burn.

That's really about it. Yeah, there's a lot of detail that you could add into that but 90% of the world is not trying to achieve the level of fitness or the body look that would require them to delve deeply into the science of it. There are reams of material on what to eat when, how often to exercise, what time of day to exercise ... and if you're talking about really cutting your body fat and building muscles to competition levels, yeah, it's stuff to take into consideration. Or if you're just geekily interested in that stuff (like I am). But the average person doesn't need to tweak their diet or exercise to that level unless they just want to. :)
 
I doubt you misinterpreted, truthfully. It sounds exactly the same as 9/10 trainers I cross paths with. It's what they believe b/c it's common myth and they don't spend the time or money to educate themselves.
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And again, Steve and I share a brain.
 
thanks kara...

i basically agree with you & steve cause this is stuff i have learned myself also...i guess when i went to him yesterday i started to doubt my own knowledge cause i was suprised with his advise. im sticking to my walking running combo with my origional 1200-1500 calorie diet like i had began with lol i kno this week has been a little helter-skelter. my caloric intake was higher,i didnt drink as much water as i was & should be drinking, & the lifting threw off my weight loss progress cause of the muscle recovery & water retention. If i see myself get back on track withing a week or so continuing where i left off with the weight loss, i will engage in weights for sure. i just have to tweak my own plan a bit to see what i was doing off track next last week i guess. ill accept failre inorder to continue to success. i hope IM at least making sense now. my head is spinning from all this ha ha
 
Look...

Sit back and relax a moment. It's very easy to get yourself overwhelmed with information since there's so much conflicting out there. Even when speaking with supposed 'professionals.'

Losing fat is all very simple, generally speaking.

If I could sum it up in one sentence for someone of your stats... I'd simply say eat 1400-1600 calories, do some moderate intensity cardio, and lift weights heavily relative to your strength.

Now to expand on each of these....

With the diet, calories are always priority number one. You can eat perfect foods but if your calories aren't in check things aren't going to go right for you. Some would leave you to believe calories don't matter but they don't understand simple physics. They do.

10-12 calories per pound is a good starting point in terms of intake. Remember, you're not signing any contracts here. Start at the high end of the range and if things aren't happening after a couple of weeks, adjust accordingly. Be systematic about this as it is and always will be a touch and feel process that requires tracking and fine tuning as your body changes.

What comprises the caloreis is also very important.

You have a caloric target of call it 1500.

I also mentioned a good idea might be 1 gram of protein per pound of goal weight. Let's assume your goal is 120 lbs, so you'd eat 120 grams of protein. Each gram of protein has approximately 4 calories in it.

With that in mind, your protein will "use up" 480 calories of your 1500, leaving you with approximately 1000 left to fill.

Next is fat. 50 grams of fat is about right for you and this should come primarily from the good stuff. If you don't know what good sources of fat are, speak up. Each gram of fat contains 9 calories... so 50 grams of fat would be the equivalent of 450 calories.

So we'd still have 550 calories left to work with from the original 1500.

What's left? Carbs. Well each gram of carb has approx. 4 calories. What you do at this point is entirely dependent on your tastes, body, etc. Some people handle carbs very well. Others operate poorly on a lot of carbs. As I said, it's a touch and feel process. A good ballpark might be to stick with 200 grams of carbs which puts you at 400 calories, leaving you with 150.

That 150 you can fill with some more fats and even a bit more protein. Once it gets down to this point, you're really splitting hairs.

I think I remember you saying you don't track anything but calories. Maybe you should start though. Like I said, or something similar can help you as well as a digital food scale.

In terms of cardio... shy away from the fat burning zone as your trainer suggested. That's just a bunch of bullshit. It's great to train in that low zone if you're very deconditioned and that's the best you can do. But if your conditioning allows, you should bump up the intensity.

How you structure your cardio doesn't really matter in my mind since fat loss is mostly about calories in vs. out. Some will argue that you have to do High Intensity Interval Trainging (HIIT) b/c it's best for calorie spending and body composition. I've worked with enough people to know that you can get equally similar results taking other avenues.

A mixture of modes is fine. You can do some steady state 2-3 days per week and the other 1-2 days per week do some tempo running, hiit, or something of that nature.

Even some weight lifting can be considered cardio. This is the high rep, low rest stuff (otherwise known as metabolic work). It's below the threshold required to maintain muscle but it can burn a decent amount of calories. This shouldn't be your sole form of weight training and it certainly isn't required. It's just another tool in the box for calorie wasting.

In truth, you wouldn't even *have to* do cardio but I do highly suggest it since it helps on multiple levels.

Then there's weight training or strength training. This is the big daddy that's required if you want to maintain muscle, which you do. Here you need to be doing 75-95% of your 1 rm to maintain muscle. Don't get all worried about determining your 1rm for each exercise. These %s translate into about 4-12 reps.

So an example might be training your entire body 2-3 times per week with a handful of big, compund lifts using 2-4 sets of 4-12 reps.

One way you could structure this is have an A program and a B program and simply alternate them.

If you haven't, you should probably read the stickies on my forum since they're much more geared towards structuring weight training routines.

I'm simply glossing over the major points here... we could delve into this much deeper but you need to wrap your head around the major points before doing so.
 
Meh, Kara beat me this time.

Stay tuned, next at 10: Steve and Kara fight to the death.

:p
 
p.s. i heard u measure at the navel for waist measurement...seems correct to me cause thats where the fat seems to store so just like any part of your body, you measure those biggest parts like the biggest oart of your leg,arm,etc
 
thanks steve for those links. i have started reading the link from alan aragon & have downloaded the food log. i will start now. thank you:cool:
 
p.s. i heard u measure at the navel for waist measurement...seems correct to me cause thats where the fat seems to store so just like any part of your body, you measure those biggest parts like the biggest oart of your leg,arm,etc
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Just cause it's the biggest part doesn't make it your waist. :)

The most common measurements include the circumference of your chest, biceps, waist, hips and thighs. Sometimes the neck, forearm and calf are also measured.

Chest: Measure around the largest part of your chest.

Biceps: Measure midway between the top of your shoulder and elbow.

Waist: Measure at the narrowest point, approximately one inch above your belly button. No cheating! Don't pull in your belly or stick it out.

Hips: Measure your hips around the largest part of your buttocks with your heels together.

Thigh: Thighs are measured separately. Stand with your legs slightly apart. Measure your upper leg where the circumference is largest.
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