When will the fat burn??

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nutz46

New member
I have been back in the gym for about 10 weeks.

Heavy weight training 5x a week(100 lb Dumbbells for 3 or 4 on incline press) 45 minutes of cardio 3 days a week and pretty strict diet. Lift first and follow with the cardio.

But I stay at the same weight of 240 at 5'10.

My body has definitely changed and put my muscle mass back on and burned some fat. (clothes fit better, etc)

But, I know I'm not going to be a ripped 240. (without a ton of Steroids)

When will the fat begin to shed?

In your experience, how long does it take for the transition to get to a plateau with muscle gain and the fat really start to burn off?
 
Do you know how many calories you are getting in a day?
 
yea... its lower than 2000...

I may not be eating enough...

I have a protein drink for breakfast... gym mid day followed by another protein drink... then dinner...

I just went and grabbed some protein bars to snack on during the day..
 
nutz46 said:
yea... its lower than 2000...

I may not be eating enough...

I have a protein drink for breakfast... gym mid day followed by another protein drink... then dinner...

I just went and grabbed some protein bars to snack on during the day..
Click to expand...

Have you tried real food? Vegetables and Fruits and lean meats etc? (I'm not trying to be an ass, but there isn't a lot of info to work with)
 
Sounds like it is working....

However....

If you look at many of Steve's posts you will see one common theme. You really cant build massive muscles and lose fat at the same time. You can to a limited degree, but they require different things to truly be successful. Burning fat requires an energy (calorie) deficit. Building muscles requires energy surplus. You cant have both at the same time. But from the sounds of it, if your muscles are looking and feeling better and the clothes are getting looser, don't sweat it. Thats what is supposed to happen. While putting on all that muscle you like, of course you wont see huge drops in the scale. Simply put, muscle is heavier than fat. So while you may not want to be 240 pounds per say, for the moment your body is just sorting it out. Your food intake is likely your biggest problem. For the amount of activity you are doing daily and your size, you should be eating more, and as mentioned before, real food, not just powder and supplements. It does make a huge difference.

If getting your weight under control is your first priority, I would concentrate more on your eating habits and less on pumping iron. Eating is 80% of the weight loss equation. Get the weight under control first, then scuplt yourself to your hearts content. And don't worry too much about the scale. If the clothes are getting looser, its working. Scales can be terribly misleading at best.

Once you start working towards one specific goal or the other, you will see the results faster.

sirant
 
yea.. i need to eat more...

I actually eat a lot of vegetables with dinner. Steamed or Grilled.

I guess I am trying 2 different things at once.

I am a true Endomorph. I can put on weight, muscle or fat, pretty easily. So I have been going for the "muscle burns fat" theory. I figure that if I bulk up, my resting metabolism will increase.

I just get frustrated with the scale for some reason. I know that the true test is the "belt notch"... and I have definitely lost a couple of notches on my belt. And I am fitting into some jeans I haven't fit into in a while.

Do those electronic body fat testers really work? Handheld or scales? Maybe I should grab one of those to obsess over instead...

Thanks guys.... and girls...
 
Ouch!!! Avoid the body fat testers... especially in scales!

nutz46 said:
yea.. i need to eat more...

I actually eat a lot of vegetables with dinner. Steamed or Grilled.

I guess I am trying 2 different things at once.

I am a true Endomorph. I can put on weight, muscle or fat, pretty easily. So I have been going for the "muscle burns fat" theory. I figure that if I bulk up, my resting metabolism will increase.

I just get frustrated with the scale for some reason. I know that the true test is the "belt notch"... and I have definitely lost a couple of notches on my belt. And I am fitting into some jeans I haven't fit into in a while.

Do those electronic body fat testers really work? Handheld or scales? Maybe I should grab one of those to obsess over instead...

Thanks guys.... and girls...
Click to expand...

Everything I have heard says they are wildly innacurate and not worth the money. Heres something you might want to consider.....

Obsess over what you are seeing in the mirror. Stare at yourself in the mirror every day. If you are going to obsess over something thats a good place to start instead of numbers on a machine.

Why you may ask? Well, many many fitness and body building professionals, including the govenator of california himself, talk upside and sideways about the ultimate power of visualization and self realization. The idea is if you concentrate and visualize how you want your body to develop and look, this will in fact help to achieve those goals. Sounds silly I know, but Arnie and many others claims that was a big part of his success. So why not? I think it would be healthier looking regularly at the mirror to see where your body is changing than to take arbitrary numbers from a device that could be wildly innacruate and misleading.

Now that said, I do weigh myself 3 or so times a week. But I am less frustrated because I found my magic potion that is working for me, and even when the weekend is over and the scale has jumped, instead of panicking, I know that it is not telling the true tale. And low and behold, by thursday I have dropped the weight I wanted to again. My weight literally fluctuates as much as 5 pounds per week, but it always goes down by the next weekend, so I dont stress it. Scales and electronic doo-dads dont take water retention, illness, muscle mass and bad days into account.

From the sounds of it you are doing great already, but if you want to know what I consider the true secret to my success so far, other than joining WLF, (which you have already done), it is using fitday mon-fri to really take 100% control of my diet. Period. Since I started doing that I have lost close to 20 pounds in 2 months. My biggest and best success story to date. I do a few other things, like prepare all my meals on sundays in advance and I stop calorie counting on weekends, including a "free day" on saturday when I drink beer, eat icecream and sometimes even the dreaded deep fried goodies.

Once the eating is under control and you add a little healthy exercise you will see the difference big time.

sirant
 
www.fitday.com

nutz46 said:
fitday?

Do you mean the website? Or is it a supplement? Is that the "magic potion" you speak of?
Click to expand...

Many people here use it with great success. No pills or potions required. I use the free online version, because then I can update it throughout the day if I am not following my normal routine. Others prefer the $20 home PC version since it allows you more customization options.

But seriously, that is my magic pill. I weight less now that I have in probably at least 20 years. I worked out like a fiend and pushed myself much harder than I should have, I starved myself and tried every fad diet in the book. All with marginal, if any results. was reccomended to me by several people here and at first I thought it was of no real value....

I now see how wrong I was. I plan out all my meals on fitday during the week and it takes the "guess work" out of the equation. Its that guessing that has been killing me. To think I used to put 4-5 tablepoons of peanut butter on each piece of toast in the morning and wondered why I wasnt losing weight... Now with fitday I realize those 2 pieces of toast were 120-150 calories, which is fine, but the damn peanut butter was 1000-1200 in itself.... Oy.... I would have never guessed... I used to think peanut butter was a nice low cal treat... But I still do eat peanut butter, but I will put one tablespoon on my bread in the afternoon as a snack and thats working sooooo much better.

Knowing and planning what I was eating was the biggie for me. The exercise has always been easy to figure out, the eating was tougher, until I found fitday. Worth a shot anyways. It is free and has other nice features like activity meters that tell you how many calories you burn in your exericses and it can even make nice snazzy charts and graphs of your progress and break down the amounts of fat, protein, carbs etc you are eating each day. I pretty much only use to to plan my weekday meals, but it does do a lot more.

Check it out.


sirant
 
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