No BF% Changes!

[Neal Winkler]

How did you have your BF measured? I'm pretty good at eye-ball estimations if you want to post a pic.

If you're truly at 9%, it's very hard to maintain much lower than that. You have to go about it very very slow. The faster you try to lose the more your body will fight against you tooth and nail to maintain your current bf%. 9% is very low, personally, I would be content at that.

[Alvaro Antolinez]

How did you have your BF measured? I'm pretty good at eye-ball estimations if you want to post a pic.

If you're truly at 9%, it's very hard to maintain much lower than that. You have to go about it very very slow. The faster you try to lose the more your body will fight against you tooth and nail to maintain your current bf%. 9% is very low, personally, I would be content at that.

very good point, IMHO this the very first point we should be adressing when analizing People's diet online. Surely is not flexi's case but there is people around who the last think they need recomended is a calorie restriction diet, and we don't have actual figures from flexi ( unless I missed a post) to prescribe diets like that without further information. Just my thoughts...

[John Sapinoso]

"2 cups skim milk(or)rice dream"

^^^cut this crap out

[=

You are already fairly lean what is your goal percentage? Also what kind of cooking oil do you use?

[Joshua Naterman]

Slizz, I don't think the whole eat every 2-3 hrs is the only way to go. I've known a lot of people who had very good success with IF. In terms of both muscle gain and fat loss. And as Triangle posted, it seems very unlikely that body goes into "starvation mode" after only few hours of not eating. Especially when you consider that if you believe in the paleo stuff, that man likely went days without eat very often. Certainly they did not eat many small meals a day.

Check out Lean Gains. It may work for you to lose some of that stubborn fat while still maintaining, or even gaining strength.

Guys, I am definitely DEFINITELY not saying more meals is the only way to go. What I am saying is that for some this approach helps. In my opinion, this approach makes it easy to maximize the amount of your food intake that you metabolize for energy before storage occurs, but it is very impractical for a number of people. Of course, that opinion has a major flaw: I have no experience whatsoever with long-term IF usage. It looks interesting, and I may very well give it a go for 2-3 months and see how that goes. I think that it will be exceptionally hard to make rapid muscle gains with a diet like this, but again I do not know. That isn't my goal anyways, I'm nearly big enough.

I certainly do a fair amount of intermittent fasting on a monthly basis for a few days to a week, though that is due to my financial situation more than anything else. Sometimes even when I have money I find myself eating very little for 1-2 days. It's weird, but sometimes it feels like the right thing to do. I am not sure what actual IF protocols are as I have not yet looked at the link, but I have not ever suffered any strength loss during these periods or after.

Ok, I just started reading the lean gains site and I like how the author thinks. Without getting too nitty-gritty I think he has a good protocol. This certainly won't work for people with tremendously high caloric intake requirements for the simple reason that I don't think you can actually choke down 6-8000+ calories in that amount of time (8 hours on average) and have the calories be healthy, but for bodybuilding (apparently, though I still think that this would work better after someone has gotten close to their target lean mass or at least after the first 3-6 months of training is passed), fat loss and regular fitness it's looking pretty good. Thank you for that link!

The author is in fantastic shape. It is good to see someone practicing what they preach and putting quality information out there.

[Joshua Naterman]

You could also be seeing something as simple as not eating often enough. When you're on a low calorie diet it is very important that your body be getting food every 2-3 hours. That helps keep you from going into a temporary starvation mode where your body attempts to preserve and replenish the fat. if you're already at 9% that may be part of the issue. Do you have any idea what your daily fructose intake is and when you are consuming it? You may want to only have the grapes AFTER the workout and just have white or sweet potato before if getting lower than 9% is your goal. 9% is pretty lean.

Hey slizzardman, it's trianglechoke, your most favoritest and annoying debate partner.

"Starvarvation mode" is something that takes a really long time to kick in. One of my finals in schools this semester was a presentation on meal frequency and weight control. I looked at this issue of "starvation" in the literature and found something very interesting - studies on starvation are mixed in their results in that some show decreases in metabolism over the first few days of starvation and others show increases in metabolism. I highlighted two studies in my presentation as examples of these mixed results. One study starved people for 3 days straight and only seen an 8% decrease in metabolism. That's a significant amount but consider these people ate 0 calories for three days. What do you think is going to happen over only a few hours? An example of starvation causing an increase in metabolism can be seen here:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/71/6/1511.long

In this study the authors saw a sustained increase in metabolic rate over 84 hours of eating nothing.

That is awesome. I read through the study and I did notice that proteins were being utilized for energy, especially in the beginning, so it makes me think that intermittent fasts might be a really bad idea for someone who is trying to rapidly gain 20-30 lbs of muscle but as long as the diet is focused around proper PWO nutrition there really shouldn't be any problems. Again, excellent post! Thank you!

[Bryce Warren]

I already went over this, I just made the protein shake with those ingredients to try it out lol. I've had this issue way longer than just the last 2 weeks. Trianglechoke7 figures I have around 11-12% bf, and that doesn't sound very far off to me. I would like to stick around 7-8%, I'm not positive on what's healthy and where it's just too far. Some places I see anywhere below 7% is too low, some places I see 5% and still healthy, I'm not sure on what's true or not but Ido posted up that he was read at about 5% bf at one point. Doesn't sound like that would be a lie either, he's in insanely good shape. So hard to figure out what is true in the whole nutrition topic and what isn't for me anyways.

[Blairbob]

Would IF be appropriate for an athlete? I personally am not convinced in that regard.

[John Sapinoso]

I'm somewhat lean myself (those handheld readers give me an error reading everytime though i'd estimate myself a little less than 10%), and I didn't see any fat reduction for a long time, especially in abdominal area, despite a fairly clean diet...untill i started consuming large amounts of virgin coconut oil and being very vigilant on correcting my omega 3 ratios with liquid fish oil.

[Joshua Naterman]

Would IF be appropriate for an athlete? I personally am not convinced in that regard.

I doubt it, but I really couldn't say. It would depend, to a large extent, on what kind of athlete we are talking about. For track and field it would probably work fine, with the possible exception of decathlon though even there it might be ok. For a gymnast? Probably if all you had to do in your life was be a gymnast, but you'd have to have pre-workout meals and a LOT of PWO nutrition. Also, that wouldn't work terribly well with a school schedule. Realistically, people who are as active as gymnasts are tend to be very lean regardless of diet. They would almost certainly be LEANER on an IF diet but I don't know if that would compromise performance. I don't think it would, gymnastics is a strength sport with very short events. Even a 4 hour training session could easily be accommodated, as long as you were eating throughout the session. I am tempted to think that this kind of a training session would be pretty close to the limit of what you could do with IF, but I have absolutely no experience with it and just can't say.

If anyone here eats like that and has any experiences to share regarding GB performance or performance in other sports I would love to hear about it.

[Neal Winkler]

You could also be seeing something as simple as not eating often enough. When you're on a low calorie diet it is very important that your body be getting food every 2-3 hours. That helps keep you from going into a temporary starvation mode where your body attempts to preserve and replenish the fat. if you're already at 9% that may be part of the issue. Do you have any idea what your daily fructose intake is and when you are consuming it? You may want to only have the grapes AFTER the workout and just have white or sweet potato before if getting lower than 9% is your goal. 9% is pretty lean.

Hey slizzardman, it's trianglechoke, your most favoritest and annoying debate partner.

"Starvarvation mode" is something that takes a really long time to kick in. One of my finals in schools this semester was a presentation on meal frequency and weight control. I looked at this issue of "starvation" in the literature and found something very interesting - studies on starvation are mixed in their results in that some show decreases in metabolism over the first few days of starvation and others show increases in metabolism. I highlighted two studies in my presentation as examples of these mixed results. One study starved people for 3 days straight and only seen an 8% decrease in metabolism. That's a significant amount but consider these people ate 0 calories for three days. What do you think is going to happen over only a few hours? An example of starvation causing an increase in metabolism can be seen here:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/71/6/1511.long

In this study the authors saw a sustained increase in metabolic rate over 84 hours of eating nothing.

That is awesome. I read through the study and I did notice that proteins were being utilized for energy, especially in the beginning, so it makes me think that intermittent fasts might be a really bad idea for someone who is trying to rapidly gain 20-30 lbs of muscle but as long as the diet is focused around proper PWO nutrition there really shouldn't be any problems. Again, excellent post! Thank you!

Well intermittent fasting doesn't have you not eating for days on end. That obviously isn't the best for hypertrophy. The only point I was making was about metabolic rate.

The leangains approach is only a 16 hour fast.

[Neal Winkler]

Would IF be appropriate for an athlete? I personally am not convinced in that regard.

Depends on the amount and scheduling of training. For people that work out one hour per day, most definitely.

[Joshua Naterman]

Triangle: I know, and I really appreciate it. This is a great tool for obese people and those who simply want aesthetic results. I also agree with you that for an athlete who's training for an hour a day, even up to two hours a day (with a protein and carb snack halfway through at the very least), IF should not pose any problems.

[pogo69]

For me, the biggest attraction to IF, is the simultaneous positive contribution to healthy/longevity and preservation of muscle mass. Caloric restriction has been long known to contribute to longevity, but IF appears to be (long term studies have only been done with rats as far as I know, but is believed to be transferable to humans) a compromise wherein one can enjoy the health benefits of caloric restriction without the muscle wastage of low calorie diets.

I think that you (slizz and blairbob) are probably correct; that for optimal athletic performance one would not choose IF. But personally, I care a whole lot less about extracting every last little bit out of my body's athletic potential and more about living a long and healthy life!

[Jonas Jonzen]

If anyone here eats like that and has any experiences to share regarding GB performance or performance in other sports I would love to hear about it.

I have been doing a modified IF for some months now. I have had my last meal around 9pm and next meal around 12am next day. So not a complete 16 hour fast. Im not an gymnastic athlete, but I do some basic gymnastic exercises and train with weights and do some grip training 3-4 times a week.

For ME this approach have worked very well so far. I have become more lean than I was before when I ate my breakfast, especially reducing fat around my belly. My training have also been going well, nothing to complain about there. Everyone is different, for some this work well and for others it's not suited. I like to try new things and see how it works for myself and Im happy that I tried this approach.

I recommend reading Martins articles. He always tries to back up with science and taking time to answer comments posted.

He's like another form of the great Slizzardman

[Joshua Naterman]

He is in fact very good. The only thing he is wrong about is alcohol not being stored as body fat directly. That is technically true, as it ends up getting broken down into excess NADH. Excess NADH may be used as a reducing agent in two pathways--one to synthesize glycerol (from a glycolysis intermediate) and the other to synthesis fatty acids. The accumulation of NADH slows the TCA(Citric Acid Cycle, AKA Krebs Cycle) cycle, resulting in a build up of pyruvate and acetyl CoA. Excess acetyl CoA results in fatty acid synthesis and fat begins to clog the liver. Apparently an accumulation of fat in the liver can be observed after only a single night of heavy drinking.

Regardless, that is not a HUGE deal as it will only matter for alcoholics and heavy habitual drinkers, who have other issues to deal with anyways.

[Nicholas Sortino]

I am really thinking of giving this IF thing a go. It seems more like something I can maintain (I hate waking up early enough to make breakfast anyway).

Since I do often have to do a workout in the morning for work, but it is never a real strength workout, I think a little bit of BCAA's will work then. He seems to think they have a negligible effect on the fast, but help with the workouts. Then during my 8hr window, I will eat based on my workout. Some slow carb and fats before. Some fast carbs and fats during, and some mixed ones after. Of course every meal will be high protein. Probably also try for VLC on non training day, and moderate carbs on training days.

I wonder if this is feasible for me to try starting in jump school...