Indiblue - You should definitely try different things, especially if you have training goals. It seemed to me that you wanted to increase your calories on work-out days, which is why I suggested Eat Stop Eat. I'm not a "work-out" expert, nor do I "train" so I don't worry about pre-work out/ post work-out stuff. I also find that "programs" and schedules don't work for me, but that's just me. What I love about IF is the flexibility.
I'm trying to get thinner, and IF has worked beautifully for me in the past. My goal is to make it a permanent change, so I'm checking out what is sustainable for me.
Look into all the programs, and you will not only find one that works for your training goals, but one that you will be able to live with. Good luck! Let us know how you make out.
Leangains is what I'm doing now, and have been since April. My window is from 1 PM- 8PM. I'm lifting around 5 PM each day.
I'm really working to educate myself more on the fat/muscle processes. I misstated my goals earlier: it's to reduce body fat, so I'm eating at a deficit (though aiming for .8g protein/1lb bw). I'm *generally* hitting 1400 on NWO days and 1600 on WO days. Though I lifted again this evening and am not hungry at all tonight after 1300. If I'm very hungry tomorrow morning well before my window opens, I'll eat.
Honestly a lot of this is trial and error for me right now. NROLW may not get me where I want to be in terms of body recomp, we'll see. The health/strength rewards will be sufficient to make it worthwhile. I can reassess if I'm not meeting other goals.
Sorry I'm kind of hijacking this thread... hope this is somewhat worthwhile to others who are in similar positions. It definitely is helpful to me, so many thanks
I've been playing around with IF a bit the past few days, and it's going well so far. When I lift, I lift heavy, but I'm much more focused on distance running. Is this a recipe for badness or disaster?
I am a natural IF'er. Developed it in college when i was at my lowest weight ever in my adult life (130). I didn't know at that time the name of this, but it worked wonderfully.
Now i go and come from it cause sometimes i'm just too hungry in the morning, so i keep 2-3 weeks eating 6x/day. Normally my eating window is 4 hours, i eat from 4pm - 8pm. or 5pm - 9pm. I do eat all my calories in no more than 2 meals.
I lift weights, heavy ... but i don't want to build more mucle, i was doing so during the last 2 years, i was so worried about my lean mass .. but after my bf% check, i found that my lean mass is more than the total weight i want to have, so i try to preserve as much as i can, but not worried to lose like 15 or 20 pounds of muscle.
Leangains is what I'm doing now, and have been since April. My window is from 1 PM- 8PM. I'm lifting around 5 PM each day.
I'm really working to educate myself more on the fat/muscle processes. I misstated my goals earlier: it's to reduce body fat, so I'm eating at a deficit (though aiming for .8g protein/1lb bw). I'm *generally* hitting 1400 on NWO days and 1600 on WO days. Though I lifted again this evening and am not hungry at all tonight after 1300. If I'm very hungry tomorrow morning well before my window opens, I'll eat.
Honestly a lot of this is trial and error for me right now. NROLW may not get me where I want to be in terms of body recomp, we'll see. The health/strength rewards will be sufficient to make it worthwhile. I can reassess if I'm not meeting other goals.
Sorry I'm kind of hijacking this thread... hope this is somewhat worthwhile to others who are in similar positions. It definitely is helpful to me, so many thanks
I think it is extremely worthwhile to others.
What I meant was the leangains style of LIFTING. Here is the basic idea:
High intensity (heavy weights) and low volume is the best way to maintain your muscle and keep things in check diet wise.
If you just want to maintain your muscle and shed some fat than eating at a deficit every day is fine. If you want to add in a few more calories on a lifting day you can but it is not necessary. The key is to lose weight slowly and lift heavy (but with low volume). [EDIT] - I mean specifically for you - since you don't have a lot of fat to lose and you've been training for some time. For someone else reading this with a lot of weight to lose who is new to training things are totally different.
NROL is not high volume but it is not low volume either. Again I don't think it's a big deal for you at this point but the lower your body fat gets the more difficult it will be to keep up the intensity of the NROL workouts and the harder you push to maintain them the more you'll increase cortisol and ultimately you'll lose muscle along with fat.
I've been playing around with IF a bit the past few days, and it's going well so far. When I lift, I lift heavy, but I'm much more focused on distance running. Is this a recipe for badness or disaster?
I'm a distance runner, although my distances have been kinda short lately, but I have not had it negatively affect my running. I actually have my hardest runs in my most fasted state (the morning after my shortest window days) and have had no problem. I did have one longer run struggle, but I honestly dont know if it was related to IF or the fact that I decided to run 10 miles in an area where you pretty much are going up seriously steep hills over and over and over and over on legs that were pretty tired already. I'm pretty sure I would have burned out anyway and when I came out of the hills I was able to keep a reasonable pace home so I dont think it was a bonk, just DONE.
There has been some good stuff on fasted marathon training. Some of the benefits on training the body to transition to fat burning at higher efforts and with less noticeable transition (i.e. fatigue rather than BONK).
I havent decided what I will do on race day, probably I will fuel for the races and go back to IF the day after. I dont have any really long races for several months though.
MTA: Once I get back to really long runs I will probably carry emergency carbs just in case, but I normally dont fuel midrun before 16-18 miles anyway so it will be more a matter of what i eat the night before I think
Callahan What distances are you running? I'm not a distance runner like ennay... not at all I was able to run up to 45-55 minutes in a fasted state without any problem. When I got closer to 1 hour or more I always ate 150 calories (peanut butter and banana) before running. Not sure if it was psychological or not but I can tell a difference in my 10ks when I eat something small versus when I run in a fasted state.
John thanks for the article. If I understand Lyle correctly, he would advocate doing high volume days of NROL (which are usually the first few workouts of each "stage")-- what he would deem as metabolic weight training-- with 2 sets of lower volume/high intensity heavy sets preceding it. The lower volume/higher intensity NROL WOs (the later parts of each stage) could be done on their own. Is that the takeaway?
John thanks for the article. If I understand Lyle correctly, he would advocate doing high volume days of NROL (which are usually the first few workouts of each "stage")-- what he would deem as metabolic weight training-- with 2 sets of lower volume/high intensity heavy sets preceding it. The lower volume/higher intensity NROL WOs (the later parts of each stage) could be done on their own. Is that the takeaway?
Sort of. He would say that if you want to do metabolic workouts you also need to do heavy (intense) lifting.
The main benefit of metabolic workout is the higher calorie burn and burning off glycogen to promote fat oxidation.
Intermittent fasting essentially takes care of the glycogen burn off - so you could skip metabolic workouts all together if you want.
Most people need fuel to keep up the intensity of a higher volume workout thus why your hunger was predictible.
In my opinion you're better off using your diet to create the deficit and sticking with lower volume high intensity routines but some people enjoy the higher volume type of workouts - but I would suggest more calories on these days to prevent muscle catabolism.
The above is making it more complicated than it needs to be. The take away for me would simply be that if you don't want to lose muscle you need to keep the weights on the bar. If your lifts are going up or staying the same you're not losing muscle.
I just have to say I have never experienced significant muscle catabolism even when losing 60 lbs with only running and occasional yoga as my exercise. I actually ended up with 2-3 lbs more lean mass. I will grant that some of the increase I saw in lean body mass during that time may have been my muscles increasing blood and glycogen storage capacity and not tissue.
I just have to say I have never experienced significant muscle catabolism even when losing 60 lbs with only running and occasional yoga as my exercise. I actually ended up with 2-3 lbs more lean mass. I will grant that some of the increase I saw in lean body mass during that time may have been my muscles increasing blood and glycogen storage capacity and not tissue.
There are a myriad of factors but primaryly with adequate protein you're not going to have a lot of muscle loss (or any) if you don't have a lot of muscle in the first place, until you get quite lean. By lean I mean under 15% for men and under 20% for women is where you start fighting hormones.
In your case - if you didn't have muscle loss you must have dieted intelligently, plus you worked your leg muscles so you kept them. Your upper body didn't have a lot of muscle (I assume), so not a lot to lose. Then of course there is the question of how your body fat was measured. Short of a dexa scan every measurement method has a fairly large margin of error.
In the case of Indiblue she has been working out for a while as I understand it so she probably has more muscle to lose plus while I haven't seen any pictures of her naked I have to assume at her height and weight she is approaching the 20% BF mark at which point it becomes a bit more difficult to lose fat while retaining all your muscle.
The above is making it more complicated than it needs to be. The take away for me would simply be that if you don't want to lose muscle you need to keep the weights on the bar. If your lifts are going up or staying the same you're not losing muscle.
I have a fair bit of upper body mass..I am not built like a runner AT ALL. And it comes on fast when I train. If I had any desire for it I would be better off picking lifting as my target sport. But yeah I think I got down to maybe 19% bodyfat at the lowest point.
And - sorry - when you said something about longer sessions....there are a few people on 3FC who have repeatedly claimed proof that the very act of marathon training catabolizes muscle and I'm a bit sensitive to it.
Although protein is one of my concerns with IF. I am really having a harder time getting as much as I used to . There is just only so much meat I want to eat at one sitting and I cant eat eggs. I use protein shakes from time to time but I'm not really hungry enough to want to add calories right now.
Right now it isnt really an issue I dont think. I'm doing enough to maintain mass I think and frankly I could handle it if I lost a few lbs of muscle right now, although I dont see that happening. I wont be in a build phase until later in the year.
I started IF a couple of weeks ago with some nice results. I wasn't really following it with the holidays but today I started back. This week I'm going to try eat stop eat to see how it fits fo me. I just downloaded the ebook but haven't read it yet.
I'm just curious as to what type of workouts I should do? I am normally very active and an avide gym goer except for the last few months ( I basically stopped doing any typ of workouts since September ).
I don't have a gym membership just some hand weights. And I was going to get back into running. Any suggestions?
