Thank you for your reply! I was in a calorie deficit for a while and I lost as much as I could, but once my weight stabalized, I picked up the calories to build muscle. It has taken me a while of trial and error to understand how my body responds, but I'm thinking by adding more muscle and keeping my calories up (clean eating of course), the muscle will naturally burn off the excess fat.
For the last 2 weeks I've upped my calories and am pretty much following the keto diet. I have to tell you I don't exactly understand how carb cycling works and how to do it. How do I go about talking to 3J?
I understand where your at,, been there with my wife a few times. Being on the fence sort a speak and having two goals at the same time, I.e., wanting to loose body fat and a bit of weight, yet wanting to build muscle which will increase your metabolism and burn calories.
Learned from some trial and error--
Let me just say it is very difficult, even for a fit trained man who has 30 times the amount of muscle building testosterone in his body, to put on actual muscle tissue (if he's lucky,, maybe 5 lbs in one year),, it's even more difficult for women,, the women you see in the magazines have built that muscle over many many years of weight training. Patience and consistency is key.
You should definitely keep weight training, but keep it in perspective, your not going to in a few months put on enough new muscle to significantly increase your energy demands and speed up your metabolism.. And when my wife had the mindset that she could do that, she ate a surplus of calories, trained hard in the gym for months, her lifts and strength went way up,, but at the end of the day so did the weight scale,, she was not all that happy with results.
Now she is cutting and will go into calorie deficits on some days,, she still lifts hard, but she's going to let the weight training be part of her calorie burning training and simply let the muscle building take its time and course over years,, she'll slowly add a little more muscle every year,, but cutting and weight loss can be done much more quickly.
I guess what I'm saying is you gotta pick one goal and stick to it and concentrate on it (while the other goal is still in the back of your mind).. If you want to loose a little bit of weight and bf%,, then stick with the cut as your goal (but still weight train cause you still wanna build muscle over the long run)..
My advice (my opinion only)-- plan a cutting diet (with carb cycling and metabolism manipulation)-
As for training, being you don't just wanna be skinny and lose muscle and prefer to build muscle:
- cardio - 4 days per week - at a completely different time of day then your weight training (ex. Cardio in AM and weights in PM)**
- weight training - 4 days per week,, 45 min session is all u need..
A) IF your wanting to build actual new muscle fibers and cells which will add strength and require more energy demands and thus burn more calories and a faster metabolism (like u said, more muscle will do this),, then you should lift on the heavier side to accomplish this, 4-7 intense reps.
B) IF your wanting to increase the volume and size of your current muscle cells,, what some might call "toning" (for example,, you want to see your 'triceps bumps' show through) then lifting lighter weights for higher reps with the muscles having more time under tension is needed..12-15 reps and multiple hi volume sets
If you go with either A or B-- you should try the other once in awhile.. So if you go with B,, you should still lift heavy 3-4 times a month with diff muscle groups, or vice versa if you go with A.. This keeps your body guessing
- if your lifting four days a week a routine like this May work
-- chest/triceps, back/biceps, shoulders/abs, legs -- u can also add more ab work at any point or add abs to cardio sessions too
If you can get the diet dialed in, carb cycling dialed in.. Then with the above ideas, I believe you can be on your way to loosing weight BF and slowly tone and build quality muscle over time..
if you go to the diet section and post in 3j's free diet advice section then he can help you out-- and better explain then I can about carb cycling and how to keep your metabolism from slowing down on a calorie deficit for a cut
** the reason for separate cardio and weight sessions is that if you combine it all together for a long workout then you'll become catabolic (your body will use muscle for energy,, loosing muscle is bad)
Note: at this point I do not recommend you take VAR,, you need to figure out your calorie requirements and get that all dialed in for awhile first.. Or you'll just waste your money and tax your liver.
- maybe Albeutorol
