A weight lifting puzzler, lol
 

Hi there, it's me again, the insatiable body building questioner. :D Here's the stumper this time:

So I'm cutting, right? Eating at a caloric deficit, doing a good deal of cardio, hoping to lose body fat.

Since this is the case, what benefit can I expect to see from the heavy weight lifting I'm doing? I'm not a newbie to it, so I can't be building muscle, right, 'cause I'm not eating an excess of calories?

So--basic question--why weight train during cutting?

Thank you. You may choose to hit me upside the head now. :D

so that you retain your muscle - otherwise, your body could choose to catabolize muscle and not just fat when operating hypocaloric.

be careful of all the cardio while cutting. how much are you currently doing?

20 minutes of high intensity interval training 2 or 3 times a week, followed by 10 minutes of moderate cardio

40 or so minutes of moderate cardio once or twice a week

Is that too much cardio? What do you recommend instead? I lift heavy 3 times a week, in addition. I have a very stubborn 5 pounds of fat that NEEDS to go! :D

Sounds ok to me, just wouldn't recommend doing the HIIT on same day as weights.

What chip said

Thank you guys. :)

I'm sure I'll be back with more questions. :)

resistance training
 

I feel that resistance training should be the main form of excersize that you do. Since you are restricting calories you will lose fat. Maybe cardio can accelerate the process, but retaining your muscle and improving your general health should be the goals of excersize... These things can be achieved by resistance training.
I generaly work one bodypart per day... about 8 sets. Taking one or two days off per week. (these workouts rarely take more than 30 mins.)
Cardio sessions are always seperate from resistance, about 4 times per week for 20 min. HIIT

MPS - no doubt about it - you know your stuff.

:)

OK, here's exactly what I do. BFL style lifting 3 times a week. Sets of 12, 10, 8, 6 with increasing weight. Then another set of 12 at a slightly decreased weight, and a different exercise for same body part, 12 reps. I try to work to failure on the heaviest set. The 3 sessions alternate upper and lower body.

Sometimes I'll do a moderate cardio on the same day. But on different days, I'll do 20 minutes of HIIT, working very hard.

I'm eating 15-20% caloric deficit (calculated on BMR times 1.5). It's 40-40-20 protein/carb (low glycemic only)/fat.

The scale hasn't moved in 3 weeks. I'm not overweight but am at least 5 pounds overfat. Menopausal (54 years old). Had been lifting light for 9 months. At the beginning of April, started lifting heavy.

I'm getting a little frustrated trying to lose these 5 pounds. My BF is just barely in the normal range for my age, but isn't healthy.

Any miracle workers out there?

Thanks, folks!

Wow... your workout sounds good. Perhaps the scale is not moving because you are building muscle?? You could still be buring fat. Anyway, I don't think your workout is a problem.
You could drop calories lower, but I'm not sure that is the answer. Your overall body composition may be improving so you would not want to mess with that. It might just take time.
If you need a change, you could do an Atkins induction for a couple weeks at the same calorie level... this would certainly affect your weight. It would involve replacing carb. calories with fat calories. This can easily be accomplished with addition of oils such as olive oil.
But if this is not the type of thing your willing to do, I would just give it a couple more weeks and that might allow you to see that you are improving.

Given that you have a bf of 6%, MPS, I'll gladly take any advice of yours. :D

Thanks, I did do Atkins at one point, and it worked great. I stopped, though, 'cause my cholesterol went too high. If I can get my LDL under control, I'll try it or Protein Power, which I liked better, again. :)

Atkins usually DROPS cholesterol - it dropped mine, a LOT: from 204 to 186 in the first year, and down again to 158 in the second year. HDL went up (74 to 86), and LDL went down (111 to 64), improving the ratio. Triglycerides went from 43 to 15 (all units in mg/dL). Oh, and I dropped over 30 pounds, but you don't care about that... ;)

Weightlifting also tends to drop triglyceride and raise HDL, so you might find that it would do the trick this time. I understand that cholesterol CAN go up initially, but then goes down and stays down. Mine simply went down and STAYED down. And I eat a LOT of animal fat. Just no trans.

Make sure you keep the fats at 65% (minimum), carbs at <5%, the rest from protein (ie about 30%)

Note: your lifts may go down - my personal suggestion is to try to keep the amounts the same, but drop the reps. This should protect the muscle.

MPS - you concur?

(Not suprisingly) I agree with you... but you might be interested to know that my strength has been going up.
I think you know what I'm doing... 2 weeks low cal. 2 week higher cal. all low carb (like 10-35 grams/day) I'm 10 days into the higher cal. phase and my strength is great. I am suprised... This is the first time I've done the higher cal. phase with low carbs., but I'm happy with it so far. I don't notice any decrease in strength, I get a great pump, and my muscles seem filled out.
This is my personal experiment... I'll wait a couple months before I recommend it to others, but so far, so good.
Some possible factors allowing me to maintain (or gain strength):
I keep reps low (8 ish)
I rest a minute or 2 between sets
I take creatine (but this is not new... I've been taking it for about a year)
I've been LCing long enough for my body to adapt to it.
I'm eating slightly more calories than I'm burning. (This might allow my body to convert the excess to glycogen)

I will keep you informed on my progress... if in a couple months my overall compostition has improved.... I tell you... then write my own book and sell it
:rolleyes:
hmmmm..... what should I call it?? <slips into deep thought>

Dunno WHAT to call it! MPS maybe? ;)

I'll add a couple of possible reasons, though:

high fat diets tend to promote extra testosterone in the body,

plus

Well, you're a boy!

I got very strong on low-carb too, even without extra carbs pre-lifting. But when I alternate between higher and lower carb periods, my lifts DO drop. I bulked last fall, and I STILL can't lift as heavy on some of my lifts as I could on higher carbs. VERY close, though.

I'll DEFINITELY be following your progress.

- Built