I'd love to know, How long did it take you to get from flab to fab?

[polarpixie]

Don't know if it will work for you or not but it seems to be working for me and people that see me and have noticed the change are asking me what I am taking they always say "You mean that stuff you see in the commericals during Smackdown and RAW? What? You wanting to become a wrestler?"

I have started working out with weights and people have said that my arms are becoming more defined.

Good luck......

Hi Red, that is pretty funny about the wrestler part!
WOW! That is so great! You should be so proud of yourself!

 

[Temple]

By heavy I mean that you should always be in control of the weight but by rep 6 of the last set you should have to really squeeze for it and be done.
DOMS - delay onset muscle soreness, if you are hurting so bad two days later that you can't function then you need to back it off a notch and up your protein intake.

 

[Ceebs]

Can you give me an example of what you mean by intervals?

Intervals, aka HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), consist of doing cardio at a light to moderate pace for a specified period of time, then going all-out very high intensity for another specified period of time, then repeating the process for several cycles. For example, you would jog at 4 miles an hour at no incline for perhaps a minute and thirty seconds, then you'd kick up the pace to 6 miles an hour at a 10% grade for a minute, then you'd go back to jogging for another minute thirty, then you'd sprint, then you'd jog, et cetera, for fifteen to twenty minutes. For some of my clients who'd hit the wall in their weight loss, doing intervals twice a week when they'd normally be doing cardio is what carved those last few hard-to-lose pounds off of them.

 

[Gladiola]

Alright, I'm gonna chime in on the original thread topic here....

Yes, I have been flabby at times. When I was 18-19, freshman in college, I was moderately overweight & totally out of shape. I started working out more regularly towards senior year & became an aerobics instructor. Didn't get really serious about lifting till a year and a half out of college when I worked with a trainer for a few mos & gained some more LBM.

Then I took a course to learn to teach a yoga & pilates-based class. Then, all the time I wasn't teaching step classes or BodyPump (muscular endurance training) classes, I was working on that. A few mos went by were I only lifted on random occasions, but I was doing muscular endurance training - so I didn't have much atrophy.

Around July I decided to make a committment to lifting more regularly & gained more LBM. Then in November (thanks to my sister, VooDoo Lady, & fitday.com) I cleaned up my diet & upped the protein (although my diet wasn't that bad to start with - just too low on protein) & saw gains quickly - more lean AND more muscle. Now I'm focusing on mass building.

Long random answer... it depends where you're starting from, where you want to get to, how much effort you want to put into training & eating clean, & also genetics. For example - my biceps peak very easily & grow fairly easily too, but I have no 6-pack & am sure I won't till I get VERY lean genetics...

 

[polarpixie]

Intervals, aka HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training), consist of doing cardio at a light to moderate pace for a specified period of time, then going all-out very high intensity for another specified period of time, then repeating the process for several cycles. For example, you would jog at 4 miles an hour at no incline for perhaps a minute and thirty seconds, then you'd kick up the pace to 6 miles an hour at a 10% grade for a minute, then you'd go back to jogging for another minute thirty, then you'd sprint, then you'd jog, et cetera, for fifteen to twenty minutes. For some of my clients who'd hit the wall in their weight loss, doing intervals twice a week when they'd normally be doing cardio is what carved those last few hard-to-lose pounds off of them.

I think I could handle that twice a week. You do this for alternating intensity exercises only for 15-20 mins and that should be enough? I don't need to do 25 more mins. of moderate cardio after that? I will try that starting today.

The reason I ask is because I'm still under the notion that your body does not go into fat burning mode until 20 mins. into cardio. I also know that you'll burn more calories under high intenisty. So I always feel like, if I'm gonna go 20, then I might as well go 30mins for what I call fat-burning insurance.

 

[hookdup]

I do HIIT in the mornings for 20 mins then do another 20 of moderate.

This is what my first 20 mins looks like: I got it from the Body For Life program:

MINUTE INTENSITY
1 50%
2 50%
3 60%
4 70%
5 80%
6 60%
7 70%
8 80%
9 60%
10 70%
11 80%
12 60%
13 70%
15 80%
16 60%
17 70%
18 80%
19 90%
20 50%

Then I just do 20 minutes in my target fat burn zone.

You are sweating buckets at the end of the first 20 mins!

 

[polarpixie]

hookdup, i guess by intensity you mean percentage of max heart rate?


I saw your stats on another thread, I'm not much taller than you. Don't you find it so much harder to stay away from excess calories when you are petite?

 

[Ceebs]

The reason I ask is because I'm still under the notion that your body does not go into fat burning mode until 20 mins. into cardio. I also know that you'll burn more calories under high intenisty. So I always feel like, if I'm gonna go 20, then I might as well go 30mins for what I call fat-burning insurance.

Hey, if you want to burn fat, all you need is a match and some lighter fluid.

Sorry, had to make a joke there. I despise the term "fat burning" - unless you've just eaten a very high fat or very high carb meal, typically you'll be burning 50% glucose and 50% fat at rest. So the assumption that you need to do cardio for a specified period of time to begin lipolysis just isn't true. High intensity cardio doesn't use fat for fuel, in fact, because fat cannot be burned quickly enough to meet energy demands.

To get back to your question, you could do twenty minutes of intervals, then ten minutes of low intensity cardio if you're absolutely gung-ho about getting your thirty minutes in. The bottom line is, if what you're doing is working, keep doing it. When your weight loss slows down or ceases, is when you should start using dirty tricks like intervals, or varying your lifting poundages, tempos, and reps. Good luck, and keep us posted.

 

[hookdup]

hookdup, i guess by intensity you mean percentage of max heart rate?
I saw your stats on another thread, I'm not much taller than you. Don't you find it so much harder to stay away from excess calories when you are petite?

Yeah, I think it's maximum heart rate.
What I've done is chosen a number on the machine that I'm comfortable training at and used that as my 50%. Then, as time has gone on, I have tweaked the numbers based on how much more I can take.
It has worked really well for me.

As for the calories. It's crazy. I'm at about 1500 for maintenance but people are telling me that if I eat anything under that, my metabolism may slow down.
So I guess I gotta do more cardio.

But lets say I raise my calorie intake (food) and have my calorie deficit come mainly from cardio, won't my body react just the same, thinking I am starving it by not feeding it enough to maintain its activity level?

Does that make sense?

 

[Temple]

Could you give me your stats again - I think I am getting you and PolarPixie mixed up...

The answer lies within your lean mass. The women that you see that are rock hard - I don't mean huge, but hard and lean have first focused on developing lean mass . It is imperative that you eat in order to build the mass. Diet is 90% of your success or failure. This will restructure your metabolism. The only way to get lean mass is thru training and adequate caloric intake.
A reduction in lean mass means a reduction in the number of calories burned at rest. Excessive cardio will also reduce your lean mass as will calorie restriction. The key is within the balance and the manipulation of the three elements, diet, training and cardio. Failure comes from inadequate diet combined with too much cardio. You cannot build an exceptional physique without first building a good foundation. One of the biggest problems I had as a beginner was that I tried to apply advanced principals to a beginning body. IMO HIIT type cardio is an advanced tool.