My Cardio and Weight Training Process

I've written a bit about my training process and thought I would provide a few more details. Six months prior to the competition I had already begun a muscle building program with the goal of converting as much of the flab on my body to muscle. I weighed about 235 - the heaviest I've weighed, ever. Through the use of muscle training and light cardio, I was able to reduce my weight to 226.6 on the first day of the competition. I had to be talked into competing as I had already decided to undergo a rip-phase via dieting and upping my cardio. I basically wanted to accelerate my weight loss by "leaning out," for a period of a couple of months to counter-balance what I perceived was too much of a focus on strength and not enough on cardiovascular fitness. Regarding the competition, I found it helpful in that it kept me focused on my weight loss goals, so instead of stopping when I reached 205 (my initial goal), I reset the goal as I continued to lose weight. I'm currently, as of this writing, 193 lb and have reset my goal to 185 - not that I'll hit that in the next few days (the competition ends this coming Friday, about 4 days away), but I did want to have a definite goal in mind. I haven't weighed less than 195 since the early 90's, so my current weight is quite an accomplishment for me - even better, I'm now wearing jeans that are size 34 and not experiencing a "muffin top" as I had begun to experience at my starting weight in size 36 jeans. Actually as of today the size 34 jeans are loose - I may be ready for a size 32.

I've previously described both my strength routine and my starting circuit training routine in an early post:
http://strivingforfhealth.blogspot.com/2013/01/my-food-and-nutrition-changes.html

I noticed that I left out something that I think is important that should be stressed - stretching before and after workouts. Even before I get to the gym I start drinking water heavily - I try to do at least two liters of water before leaving work for the guy - this is over a period of 2 hours or so (note that I usually drink 4-5 liters of water while at work so my water intake is 1-2 gallons a day). The idea is to hydrate my tissues before the cardio workout so that I'm replenishing what's being exhausted as sweat. I also continue to drink several liters of water as I work out. When I arrive at the gym I first start stretching my calves, hamstrings and quads, using a variety of stretching forms that I learned while doing martial arts. I then work through the back and then extremities - I do this whether I'm doing a weight routine after the cardio or not as it's good practice and doesn't take an inordinate amount of time - usually 10-15 minutes. Afterward I do very low lunges (no weight) and approach a cardio machine, usually the treadmill. I like to start with the treadmill when I can because I think it allows for the most flexibility in doing intervals. Before leaving the gym I re-stretch everything similar to arriving, only in a more perfunctory manner so it's only for about half the time.

About half way through the competition I changed the nature of my cardio exercises - instead of doing a fairly consistent level with increases to the elevation (on the treadmill) to increase intensity, I've added an interval burst on the 10s and have increased my treadmill routine to an hour. I start at 3.7 (which seems to be about 3.7 mph) with an incline of 7.0. For example, when I've been doing this for 10 minutes, I crank up the speed to at least 6.0 and run for at least a minute. I then turn the speed back down, but increase the speed by 1/10th to 3.8. At the next 10 minute interval I do this again, but instead of increasing the speed I increase the elevation to 8.0 alternating between the two increases until I've finished my time (typically one hour). After cleaning up a bit I then hit the Stairmaster for at least 20 minutes at level 5, then the Stationary Bike for 20 minutes at level 12. I do the previous on full-cardio days and on weight training days, cut back the Treadmill to 30 minutes before doing the stairs and bike. Afterward I do the weight-training circuit but modified - instead of doing 80% of my weight, I'm doing 50% but repping to exhaustion and going immediately to the next machine on the circuit (no longer than 15 seconds to catch my breath if I need to). The idea here is to make the weight training as cardiovascular as possible (I liken it to cross-fit) - the routine goes by quick. I'm not trying to maintain strength at this point so much as to keep as much muscle mass as possible while maintaining a Catabolic state. I added the bike to start training for a ride (I mentioned this last week).

The second change I've made is to change the frequency of weight training. Previously I alternated weights with full-cardio days and in the beginning I would take Saturday off (I might do a neighborhood walk or hike to get some cardio in but was basically allowing my muscles a rest day - something I think is important - so the tissues can catch up and recover from the constant break-down). About two weeks ago I changed my routine to two-days of full-cardio to one day of weights/cardio and have skipped taking a day off. Now on the weekend instead of taking a day off from the gym, I've been going and then doing an additional cardio activity in the afternoons - this past weekend I went on a 30 minute bike ride (getting used to riding and also the new pedal/shoe setup I've recently gone to). Finally, this last week I'd doing full-cardio every day and working in some cross-fit exercises (calisthenics) to ramp up the intensity.

-- John

Week 7 - 5.6 Pounds Lost

Update for Week 7, ending 2013.02.22

Now that we're leading up to the final week things are getting a bit more interesting.  In week 7, my official weigh-in at work is 198.6 lb (starting weight of 235.0 so a loss of 15.59% - I'm the first to break the 15% weight loss milestone). As a group we've collectively lost over 300 pounds - quite a lot .

Name	Weigh In	One Pound	Age	Height	BMI In	Current BMI	22-Feb	%
John Eaton (me)	235.0	0.43%	50	70	33.7	28.5	198.6	15.49%
Carlos L	268.8	0.37%	36	77	31.9	27.2	229.0	14.81%
Kevin Lu	178.6	0.56%	27	71	24.9	21.8	156.2	12.54%
Mike J	263.2	0.38%	37	76	32.0	28.3	232.2	11.78%
Jeff B	282.2	0.35%	45	70	40.5	36.0	251.0	11.06%
Kevin Li	236.8	0.42%	40	72	32.1	28.6	211.2	10.81%
Verlin H	434.0	0.23%	37	75	54.2	49.3	394.6	9.08%
Stephen M	223.8	0.45%	56	70	32.1	29.6	206.4	7.77%
Steven T	272.6	0.37%		76	33.2	30.8	252.8	7.26%
Alex V	209.6	0.48%	32	72	28.4	26.6	196.0	6.49%
Chris D	224.6	0.45%	40	70	32.2	30.5	212.6	5.34%
Shane M	246.4	0.41%	41	72	33.4	32.3	238.0	3.41%
Patrick M	237.4	0.42%	40	73	31.3	30.5	231.4	2.53%
Stan Y	249.6	0.40%	45	69	36.9	36.3	245.6	1.60%
Jeff M	271.2	0.37%			N/A	N/A	271.2	0.00%
Mark F	269.6	0.37%		72	36.6	36.6	269.6	0.00%
Cary A	258.4	0.39%			N/A	N/A	258.4	0.00%
Mark M	243.0	0.41%		73	32.1	32.1	243.0	0.00%

Carlos is still creeping up towards my percentage (well, I guess they all are for that matter).

At home, my weight comes in on Friday at 194.8 lb for a total loss of 31.8 lb (226.6-194.8). I ended up hitting my 195 lb target and set a new target of 185 lb which I won't hit by next Friday, but it should end up with me somewhere on either side of 190 or so. The next couple of days will determine where I end up by the end of the competition.

My progress via graphs generated from MyFitnessPal:

The increase in my workout intensities seems to be working - I dropped quite a bit more than I expected and dropped another full pound today (Saturday) that's reflected on the graph. I'm still consuming around 1200 or so calories (even though the graphs make it look like I'm eating half of that, it's due to the reset of my goals for the third time). No adverse effects (nausea, light-headed-ness, etc). I've also increased my consumption of vitamin and mineral supplements to twice a day on the multi-vitamin.

-- John

Metabolism when Dieting

One of the things I've tried to maintain while dieting is a good balance of quality calories to exercise. Once again, I'm no expert and these are opinions I've concluded via research and experience while dieting and working out. There are a couple of things to consider when trying to lose weight: First, are you just trying to slim down and don't care about muscle loss; Second, what does your metabolism and chemical balance look like at the end of a diet cycle?

The Problem with Dieting Through Calorie Restriction

It's pretty much a given that you'll lose weight if you reduce calories - this has been studied and implemented time-and-again, both voluntarily and involuntarily. You should understand that when your body begins to starve for the lack of your usual supply of calories, it starts feeding on the tissues that are available - first you end up losing water weight, then muscle and finally fatty deposits. I don't think people understand this - it's easier for your body to process and utilize proteins stored in your body as muscle mass than it is to use fat. Your body is engineered genetically to keep as much stored energy as fat as possible, so it will always prefer to burn muscle before fat - the result is that yes you are thinner but the cost is severe - once muscle tissue is spent and you've reduced your weight, it's much harder to recover that muscle. When you start consuming calories again, your body naturally tries first to store the energy as fat before contributing to muscle regrowth, especially if you live a sedentary lifestyle. To offset this loss of muscle you can do two things: use weight training to balance out the loss; and secondly try to attain a state of Ketosis by carbohydrate reduction (as already described in my previous post regarding the Adkins Diet). While in Ketosis your body can utilize the lipids (fatty cells) as energy as they are able to cross the brain-barrier.

Spot Reduction

This brings us to spot reduction - I'd define this as "I'm trying to tighten up my stomach so it's flatter" and results in all those wacky machines and self-help aids that were all the rage on "As Seen on TV" ads (GutBuster, etc). Frankly, for the most part they don't work. When you lose weight, you lose it over all your body in a fairly consistent manner. There is no such thing as targeting weight reduction to a specific spot on your body. I say "for the most part" as the exercises itself can promote some muscle tightening, however when the muscles are covered in a layer of fat, who cares if they're tight or not?

Metabolism

The second thing to think about is what type of metabolism you end up with at the end of a diet cycle. You want your metabolism elevated and not depressed. If you restrict your calories too much your body rebels and slows down your metabolism - in effect, your weight loss becomes stalled (I've heard this called "Starvation Mode" often used as a warning when using Weight Loss apps to avoid liability). This is a survival thing ruled by millions of years of evolution and genetics.

Some Mistakes People Make that Screw Up Your Metabolism

Cleansing Fasts - this is basically when you go on some type of fruit-juice diet that causes you to take a quick dive in weight reduction. The issue here is that you end up losing an inordinate amount of muscle mass. Second, fructose (the sugars found in juices) are processed in the liver. It's possible to do some heavy damage to the liver when you do nothing but fruit juices - when eating high fiber fresh fruit, your body moderates the amount you can absorb - the fiber fills you up so you can't consume more than what can harm you - by drinking juices you bypass your body's natural defences and load up the liver. If you look at the 10 things that drinking ethanol (booze) does that are bad for your body and liver, fructose does around 7 of them. Second, energy processed by the liver can only be stored as fat since it isn't readily available for use. Unless you're in a state of Ketosis (which the fruit juices will prevent you from attaining), your taking big risks both to liver health and your loading up fat. All bad, no matter how you look at it.

Drinking Diet Soda - yeah it's zero calorie so it must be OK to consume while dieting, right? Wrong. It turns out that when you drink Diet Soda your brain thinks it's about to get sugar and triggers a chemical response. This causes a release of the hormone insulin which can lead to metabolic issues similar to diabetes - mood swings, sudden drops in energy, the list goes on and the results are all bad.

Not Eating Enough Protein - so many proteins carry a lot of calories, especially red meats as they also carry lots of fat. It becomes natural when you're counting calories to try not to eat those foods with the highest calorie count, so many eat less proteins. It's much better to adjust the type of protein you're consuming instead - an ounce of lean beef has about 71.3 calories (5.2 grams of protein and 5.4 grams of fat). The same in one ounce of chicken breast (boneless, skinless) has 35 calories (5.32 grams of protein and 1.38 grams of fat). This is due to the calorie cost of  protein vs fat: protein has 4 calories per gram and fat has 9 calories per gram. The number of calories in meat and poultry depends on the ratio of fat and protein. The leaner the meat is, the fewer the calories. The bottom line is to avoid high-fat proteins in preference to low fat proteins like white-meat chicken and fish, instead of forgoing proteins altogether to avoid the calories.

Not Taking Vitamin and Mineral Supplements - when you limit the amount of food that you intake, it tends to pass even faster through your system than normal. I believe this to be a result of an increased metabolism - in any case, combining a shortage of food AND the quickness of digestive flow, you should be taking vitamin and mineral supplements. In fact, if you think you're currently taking enough, you should probably double what you're taking. I tend to do a broad range multi-vitamin in the morning along with a light breakfast and some additional vitamins that I've found to be helpful. At minimum you should be taking  supplements (always with food) at least once a day and preferably twice a day (or more). Do be careful with those vitamins that are not water soluble (Vitamin A is an example) as it's possible to consume too much, which causes a detrimental effect. Research is your friend.

It's entirely possible to make yourself sick when dieting, especially extreme dieting. Make sure you select good quality foods and carefully adjust your diet and exercise if you don't feel well. Working out and dieting shouldn't feel bad (well, except for some stomach grumbling and a bit of soreness) - if you have any doubts, consult your physician.

-- John

Week 6 - 2.8 Pounds Lost Plus a Couple of Surprises

Update for Week 6, ending 2013.02.13

OK, the competition is starting to get fierce! In week 6, my official weigh-in at work is 204.2 lb (starting weight of 235.0 so a loss of 13.11% and I'm still in the lead). As a group we've collectively lost 94.1% of the weight we started with. The new individual member milestone is with Jeff B, who has dropped from the obese category (BMI 30.0).

Now for a couple of surprises:

1. Carlos L is creeping up to my weight loss percentage at 12.72% to my 13.11% and could overtake me next week. He's lost an incredible 32.4 lb for an average of 5.4 lb per week - very impressive.
2. Second, seems Kevin Lu has been in stealth mode this entire time (he hasn't weighed in until this week). Kevin started out as the lightest in the group and the only member who was within the "normal" BMI at 24.9. Friday he shoots up from last to 5th place. His advantage is that he only needs to lose a few pounds to make significant gains. It's also his disadvantage, as he doesn't have much in excess to lose.

Name	Weigh In	Age	Height	BMI In	Current BMI	15-Feb	%
John Eaton (me)	235.0	50	70	33.7	29.7	204.2	13.11%
Carlos L	268.8	36	77	31.9	28.4	234.6	12.72%
Mike J	263.2	37	76	32.0	28.7	235.8	10.41%
Jeff B	282.2	45	70	40.5	36.6	253.4	10.21%
Kevin Lu	178.6	27	71	24.9	24.9	161.2	9.74%
Kevin Li	236.8	40	72	32.1	29.0	214.0	9.63%
Stephen M	223.8	56	70	32.1	29.6	203.8	8.94%
Verlin H	434.0	37	75	54.2	49.9	401.2	7.56%
Steven T	272.6		76	33.2	30.9	254.0	6.82%
Alex V	209.6	32	72	28.4	27.3	197.0	6.01%
Chris D	224.6	40	70	32.2	31.0	214.6	4.45%
Shane M	246.4	41	72	33.4	32.3	238.0	3.41%
Patrick M	237.4	40	73	31.3	30.5	231.4	2.53%
Stan Y	249.6	45	69	36.9	36.3	245.6	1.60%
Jeff M	271.2			N/A	N/A	271.2	0.00%
Mark F	269.6		72	36.6	36.6	269.6	0.00%
Carey A	258.4			N/A	N/A	258.4	0.00%
Mark M	243.0		73	32.1	32.1	243.0	0.00%
Total	100%					94.1%

At home, my weight comes in at 200.4 lb for a total loss of 26.2 lb (226.6-200.4). I'm fairly certain I'll hit my 195 lb target (I dropped to 198.8 on Saturday) so I may need to set a new goal target, perhaps of 190 lb (which will change my work target to 17.45%). The next couple of days will determine where I end up by the end of the competition.

My progress via graphs generated from MyFitnessPal:

I've been slowly increasing the intensity and time of my cardio workouts - I started on the treadmill at incline 5.0 and speed of 3.5. I'm currently starting at incline 7.0 and speed of 3.7. This week I go to 8.0 and 3.8. I also started to work in some stationary bike - I've committed to a bike ride the first week of April: The Brag Spring Tune-Up: http://www.brag.org/stu2.html
The ride occurs around the town of Madison, GA which has fairly level paths and gentle hills. Sounds like a lot of fun. The last ride I did (on the Silver Comet), I came away fairly saddle sore - this time I hope to build up a bit for the soreness. I'll also be riding as often as I can locally to prepare.

-- John