Should I ditch weight training for a month?

S

sophienaz

New member
Hi,

I have a question, hope someone can help me.

I have some stubborn fat still that I want to lose around the saddle bag area of my hips, bit of abdominal fat, and love handles. Nothing too major but enough to piss me off.

I'm 5'6 and weight 130lbs and my training and nutrition is all good, but despite everything, these stubborn areas are just not going away. I do a lot of weight trainign as well as yoga and cardio and I'm just thinking......should I totally ditch the weights for a month, as an experiment and just up my cardio big time to shift the lard?

It seems like I eat a lot more to help with the weight training, is it possible that if I ditch the weights for a month and just do loads of cardio and yoga, that possibly, I might burn this lard away?

Could I possibly increase my calorie deficit (as I wont' be doing weights and therefore will not need to eat more to put on muscle) and use this in combination with this new training to sort out these stubborn areas? Just for one month....see what happens, type thing?

My muscles that I've worked so hard to put on wont' atrophy, will they? In just one month? I was thinking if I shift the stubborn lard, then in one month's time when my body fat has gone down, I can go back to doing the weight training...

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

THanks.
 
sophienaz said:
Hi,

I have a question, hope someone can help me.

I have some stubborn fat still that I want to lose around the saddle bag area of my hips, bit of abdominal fat, and love handles. Nothing too major but enough to piss me off.

I'm 5'6 and weight 130lbs and my training and nutrition is all good, but despite everything, these stubborn areas are just not going away. I do a lot of weight trainign as well as yoga and cardio and I'm just thinking......should I totally ditch the weights for a month, as an experiment and just up my cardio big time to shift the lard?

It seems like I eat a lot more to help with the weight training, is it possible that if I ditch the weights for a month and just do loads of cardio and yoga, that possibly, I might burn this lard away?

Could I possibly increase my calorie deficit (as I wont' be doing weights and therefore will not need to eat more to put on muscle) and use this in combination with this new training to sort out these stubborn areas? Just for one month....see what happens, type thing?

My muscles that I've worked so hard to put on wont' atrophy, will they? In just one month? I was thinking if I shift the stubborn lard, then in one month's time when my body fat has gone down, I can go back to doing the weight training...

Any thoughts would be much appreciated.

THanks.
Click to expand...

I would up the cardio, decrease calories, and keep weight training to prevent muscle loss. But at 5'6" and 130, how much fat can you possibly have anyway? Are you sure that you're not being unreasonable in your expectations, because women are supposed to have some fat to make estrogen and otherwise function. I saw a documentary once about a very skinny model getting liposuction to remove the fat from her love handles. What's your body fat percentage?
 
Those last few are tough. Its also the most important time to make sure your protein intake and resistance training is in line. At this stage your body thinks it needs that lil bit of fat more than it does the muscle. You have to beat it into submission by keeping protein high, cals and carbs low, and the weights heavy.


I'm not saying you may not want to mix things up a lil. I just wouldnt cut the weights.
 
I also wouldn't recommend cutting out the weight lifting - it wouldn't do much good to cut muscle and be left with the stubborn fat you hate :(

I'm too far away from the low bf, nothing but stubborn fat left to actually have purchased and benefited from the book, but I've heard good things about Lyle McDonald's "Stubborn Fat Solution" for people in your situation. Might be worth taking a look at, and I think the PDF version of the book isn't too pricey.
 
biggestloser105 said:
I would up the cardio, decrease calories, and keep weight training to prevent muscle loss. But at 5'6" and 130, how much fat can you possibly have anyway? Are you sure that you're not being unreasonable in your expectations, because women are supposed to have some fat to make estrogen and otherwise function. I saw a documentary once about a very skinny model getting liposuction to remove the fat from her love handles. What's your body fat percentage?
Click to expand...

Thanks for the reply. Well, according to the Tanita scales I have, I am 27% body fat. I would like to bring this down to 24%, ideally. But my arms/legs/back/shoulders are very lean and muscular, with almost no fat, it just seems like the fat left over from my weight loss just likes to live in these 3 stupid places, i.e. love handles, lower abs, upper thighs. Its so annoying. It looks odd.

I want my body mass to not change, but the fat to god down, this is just such a hard feat at the minute, but I hear you, I reckon you're right, keep up the weight training, I was being unrealistic earlier.

I don't want to go down the liposuction route, would like to do it naturally, am quite scared of surgery actually.

But I agree, body fat has to be reasonable for women otherwise it does compromise our hormones.
 
Jeanette401 said:
I also wouldn't recommend cutting out the weight lifting - it wouldn't do much good to cut muscle and be left with the stubborn fat you hate :(

I'm too far away from the low bf, nothing but stubborn fat left to actually have purchased and benefited from the book, but I've heard good things about Lyle McDonald's "Stubborn Fat Solution" for people in your situation. Might be worth taking a look at, and I think the PDF version of the book isn't too pricey.
Click to expand...

Oh thanks for that tip, will check out Lyle's book online on Amazon or something. THe stubborn fat is extremely annoying, because once you reach your body mass/body size target, you want to beleive all is well but actually these left over bits are so freakin annoying and make me look weird and disproportionate.

Thanks again!
 
Virtus said:
Those last few are tough. Its also the most important time to make sure your protein intake and resistance training is in line. At this stage your body thinks it needs that lil bit of fat more than it does the muscle. You have to beat it into submission by keeping protein high, cals and carbs low, and the weights heavy.


I'm not saying you may not want to mix things up a lil. I just wouldnt cut the weights.
Click to expand...

Inspirational message, thank you, I really needed to hear that. So much for an "easy" month, LOL, I'll get cracking and work harder. Thanks again.
 
sophienaz said:
I don't want to go down the liposuction route, would like to do it naturally, am quite scared of surgery actually.

But I agree, body fat has to be reasonable for women otherwise it does compromise our hormones.
Click to expand...

I didn't bring it up to suggest you should have surgery! I was just saying that even insanely skinny women like models have love handles (we just don't see them in pictures because of the way photographs are taken and edited).
 
For unknown reasons, the only version of the book available through Amazon is like $80... however Lyle sells it through his site (I think maybe he's the publisher).

Here's a link to an excerpt from the book so you can get kind of a preview -
 
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