I want to cut it up…
I’ve been feeling extremely bloated lately due to eating around 4000 calories a day. The high amount of carbs and fiber, especially from whole wheat, has me more gassy than fart factory (I don’t know what that is, don’t ask.) Anyway, I’ve been noticing a little extra fat around my waist; the ab definition sucks and love handles are forming quite well. I need to remedy this situation. I thought about reducing calories or trying "carb-cycling," but after consulting my personal-trainer friend I decided that doing that would be counterproductive as it would just confuse my body. What works best for me is consistency, so I will continue to just eat like a horse because if I limit myself then I have no energy.
So instead of cutting carbs I’m going to just throw in some more cardio sessions, as well as a "fun day." I’m going to jog to the park about a half mile away from home and do about a half hour or so of constant movement: pushups, pullups, dips, situps, leg raises, sprints, jump squats, whatever… I’ll keep moving while I’m resting so I can really keep a high heart rate the entire time, that should get some good fat burning going.
One day a week I’ll do just 20 minutes of cardio after a workout. I’ll probably just warm up, stretch, then time myself for one mile. That will give me a good goal to work on while I’m burning fat: improve my mile time. That will make it a lot more fun than just running to burn fat.
I’m going to keep this up for about 2 or 3 weeks and see how I feel as far as recovery and energy goes. I’m somewhat skeptical towards the whole thing right now because I could quickly see my overall recovery rate going down and energy sources being depleted as a result of increased cardio. But on the other hand I think that if I just continue to eat enough food (especially carbs,) I should be alright. In fact the extra cardio/calisthenics could even improve recovery, which would be great. If not that then it could at least help break up the monotony and shock my system into new growth.
Constructive criticism is always welcome, but I’ll probably go through with this plan even if you tell me it’s a bad idea… I know, learn from your mistakes, well I learn from MY mistakes, it helps me develop a program that’s specifically catered to ME.
March 19, 2008 at 6:01 pm
Hey mikschu! I am doing the carb cycdling thing right now myself and I have been dropping a couple of lbs a week from my high of 210 and have plenty of energy. My understanding is it is the protein in one’s diet that can make you sluggish, not the carbs. It takes a lot of energy to digest protein. It is like throwing a wet log on a fire.
I cut my protein intake dramatically for the time being [I was up over 300g a day!], but I do intend to bump it back up slightly in a few weeks by 30-40g.
If you want to see what I am doing, shoot me a PM with your e-mail [I have the diet - my design - in a Word file] and I’ll send you a copy. At least then you’ll know what you are deciding not to do. The diet I am doing is a work in progress and there are some things I need to fix to bring down methane issues [maybe swap out the oats for rice], but the touch of methane problems at current are nothing like that kind I had when I was taking in eggs in quanity - WOW - that was a flat out horror!
Extra cardio will be a big help too, but think about keeping it very intense, but brief so you don’t short curcuit your capacity to recover from the intense weight workouts you’ll no doubt continue to do.
I had a run with "bulking" a few weeks back and the progress pics show what basically your comments are lamenting: Loss of abs definition, spare tire, etc. Yeah … I know right were you are bro, but things are turing for me at current and I am going to keep at it and see where this goes.
So don’t turn your nose up at it quite yet, eh?