Well I do apologise, I scanned your post and didn't notice you started off admitting your post would be BS.
The woman in question wants to lose around 28lbs, so fat but not so obese she couldn't do HIIT (I always try to answer the actual thread questions, not just provide cliches).
I've been 28 lbs overweight. Hell, I've been FORTY pounds overweight lol!
I would NOT have an overweight, out of shape woman doing HIIT. I hate cardio so much I wrote an
entire article on it, including a protocol for easing INTO HIIT. You should read it.
It was also published on WBB, along with some of my other
stuff.
SOME cardio can be beneficial for health and conditioning - it just isn't an effective way to lean out.
It's a great addition to overall conditioning, don't get me wrong: I do sprint intervals, bicycle intervals and complexes each once a week - I know they're excellent as an adjunct to an overall fitness protocol. But flat out, diet is key here. She needs to get leaner and fitter before the HIGH intensity interval work will be of benefit.
I'd ease her into it with lower intensity interval work, things like hill repeats to bring up her heart stroke. Read my article, you'll see what I mean. If you go to the end, you'll see I have a sample month of lifting, cardio and diet all worked out.
Yep, like I said if you keep doing the same thing you get good at it as you adapt. I bet you could run for hours on a single muffin?
Hell! I ran for hours
on my own bodyfat. Thing is I just kept replacing it - cardio makes me hungry.
Does this to a lot of people, in fact.
Regarding the scales I stick with what I said, on their own they are worse than useless. A lot of trainers will actually tell you to hide them in the basement or somewhere to stop you jumping on them and getting discouraged.
Not me, not on MY board. And I've helped hundreds if not thousands of people - mostly women - lose weight. If you don't weigh you simply do not know. And with the misinformation surrounding what level of recomposition is possible, it's very easy to get bogged down without the facts.
You keep on about how fat has more calories than protein (just over twice) yet seem to ignore the fact that dense muscle is around 6 times heavier for the same volume?
I don't ignore this. Muscle is denser, to be sure.
6 times denser though? Got a source for that? Because my
sources tell me that the density of human muscle is about 1.06 grams per mililiter, as compared with human fat at about .9 grams per mililiter.
Using these figures, muscle is about 18% more dense than fat - which is awesome, but not the 600% you're suggesting.
But it's a moot point - she's not going to gain any appreciable amount of muscle. Not even if she bulks - and especially not while cutting.
Do you know how much muscle a woman CAN gain in a month, on a BULK?
Lyle McDonald suggests it's under a pound. In my own experience it's less than this: my last bulk I gained 12 lbs in 4 months.
I had a DEXA at the end of cut, October 30, 2005 at 14% bodyfat, and another at the end of bulk, March 1st, 2006 at 20% bodyfat.
Guess how many pounds of muscle I gained on my BULK?
Give up? For my 12 lb gain - from 130 lbs to 142 lbs, training hard, lifting heavy, eating over maintenance, lots of protein, healthy fat, careful weight gain of less than a pound a week, I gained a WHOPPING 2.5 lbs of muscle!
Women SUCK at gaining muscle, and that's even while BULKING.
Now, I'm the first to admit we ALL gain it better initially than once we're well-developed - provided we're not on sub-maintenance calories. Still, I'd be surprised if I have gained more than 12-15 lbs of muscle in the seven YEARS I've been training, I've BULKED several times, and my lifts are not light: I do weighted chinups with 15-25 lbs hanging off me, front squats I can triple 165 ass to floor, I can hang-clean 120 lbs, RDL 185, and I weigh 138 lbs as of this AM. I train hard with free weights and I confirm my results by x-ray.
I started at 170 lbs and 40% bodyfat.
I ended at 130 lbs and 14% bodyfat.
Translating:
At 170 lbs I had 102 lbs lean mass and 68 lbs fat mass
At 130 lbs I had 112 lbs lean mass and 18 lbs fat mass
In dropping from 170 lbs to 130 lbs I lost 50 lbs of fat and gained 10 lbs of muscle.
This took me four years.
Trust me, the scale told me what I needed to know.
If she is able to replace fat with muscle, while not losing any weight, all 28 lbs of it, well, I'll be delighted to see her gain 28 lbs of muscle while operating in a deficit.
I'll want confirmatory DEXAs, but really, I'll be just delighted!
You gain a square inch of muscle and lose an inch of fat and your weight will go up, not down.
Not in a deficit it won't. No way. (I think you mean "cubic inch", I'm sure that was a typo but just for clarification)
Weight is not the issue, body composition is what matters. A weight scale is a useful tool only if you can get in the habit of using it in conjunction with other methods. On its own it will discourage newbies.
Not at all. If I had not weighed myself every morning empty, unfed and naked I could NOT have stayed motivated through my journey from obese to lean. Tracking daily and understanding both fluctuation and trend kept me sane.
And I mod a whole board full of women who agree with me. Come visit if you like. I'll send you an invite by PM.
I've seen too many women spin their wheels training for months, not losing weight and figuring they've really gained 10 lbs of muscle and lost 10 lbs of fat. Worse yet, GAINING weight and thinking they've lost 10 lbs of fat and gained 15 lbs of muscle.
In a deficit? Muscle gain that outstrips fat loss? Net GAINS?
I'd love to see THAT theory of thermodynamics!
<sigh>
I'm sure none of this is news to you. But the simple fact of the matter is that for anyone with more than 10 lbs to lose, the scale keeps us honest. If you're cutting properly (not too great of a deficit, sufficient protein and fat, lifting heavy in short, intense workouts to maintain muscle mass, not doing excessive cardio), tracking the trendline and your caloric intake will tell you what you need to know. I learned this by having DEXAs done. I now know how little muscle a woman can gain once she's maxed out, and I know how much she can reasonably max out. It's not much. Cut the right way and the losses really are mostly fat. And you can't expect to gain any significant amount of muscle in a deficit. Especially not a woman, especially not without AAS.
I'm pleased for you that you discovered that weight training is a powerful means of fat loss,
Not at all. I discovered it's how to stay hard and maintain muscle while dieting off WEIGHT. Not ENTIRELY the same thing.
and I truly didn't notice that you were expressing a way to look at it rather than presenting facts. I mean no offence but when someone posts "cardio doesn't burn calories" I'd be doing the OP and everyone else a disservice to let that go.
You did everyone a disservice by not reading my post before mouthing off.
As a mindset, concentrating on more bodybuilderish techniques instead of Womens Weekly's advice of eat lettuce and cardio until you drop, then sure. We're on the same page.
Of course!
That doesn't mean to say the OPs wife should just ignore cardio though. It does work, IF you mix it up a bit. Dude.
B.
I do so little cardio it's noteworthy. The biggest deal by far is diet. Weight training and a good walk is plenty of cardio. It's really a disaster to consider the tiny bit of calories burned off by cardio as being anything but a very slight bonus. Quite honestly, I'd leave off anything but recreational walks for the cardio component, at lest in the beginning. Leave the higher intensity stuff to the end.
I wrote about this
here.
You bring up some interesting points, but you have a little reading to do if you wanna keep up with a former fat chick, babe.
Peace.
Weak. You obviously had enough energy to write about your experiments in the kitchen--you'd have been better served to go back and read what she wrote.
