Fastest/Most efficient way to lose BF whilst maintaining muscle?

msmoke44

New member
Any tips would be appreciated. I'm 180lbs 12% bf and would like to cut down to 8% ASAP. Whats the maximum cardio I can do without having all my muscles demolished? I'm running 100mg/ day of anavar.
 
I'm not familiar with Anavar, but consider the following:

180lbs @ 12%
158.4lbs @ "0%" (more like ~3%)
Which means you have at most 21.6lbs to lose to get to a theoretical 0% non-lean body mass. Divide the poundage in two, and that is how many weeks you can expect it to take without crash dieting. That is, 10.8 weeks, or 75.6 days. Of course, there are many considerations to make. Some of that weight is probably water, which will make it harder. You have to consider metabolic slowdown, too.

Best thing you can do is either be patient or bite a really big bullet and do some kind of crazy crash diet that will probably leave you a bit of a mess.

glhf
 
Not sure what "ASAP" means to you, but usually dropping weight ASAP runs contrary to preserving muscle. Anyway, it's just simple math really, 1 pound = 3,500 calories. Let's say ASAP means losing one pound a week, using Venomancer's 21 pound number, it'd take 21 weeks of cutting (or burning) 500 calories a day. This would certainly preserve high percentage of muscle mass. On the other hand, let's say ASAP means means losing 5 pounds a week, half fat/half muscle ( although I have no idea what YOUR exact fat/muscle ratio would be) which means cutting (or burning) 2,500 calories a day for 4 weeks, or so.

You just have to pick a desired weight loss per week, figure out how many calories you need to either cut from your diet or burn doing cardio, and away you go. I tend to think you could lose 1-2 pounds a week without hurting your muscle mass too much, but I doubt that's the speed at which you're hoping to lose

Of course the math is swayed by supplement use but someone else will have to speak to that.

Best of luck.
 
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Not sure what "ASAP" means to you, but usually dropping weight ASAP runs contrary to preserving muscle. Anyway, it's just simple math really, 1 pound = 3,500 calories. Let's say ASAP means losing one pound a week, using Venomancer's 21 pound number, it'd take 21 weeks of cutting (or burning) 500 calories a day. This would certainly preserve high percentage of muscle mass. On the other hand, let's say ASAP means means losing 5 pounds a week, half fat/half muscle ( although I have no idea what YOUR exact fat/muscle ratio would be) which means cutting (or burning) 2,500 calories a day for 4 weeks, or so.

You just have to pick a desired weight loss per week, figure out how many calories you need to either cut from your diet or burn doing cardio, and away you go. I tend to think you could lose 1-2 pounds a week without hurting your muscle mass too much, but I doubt that's the speed at which you're hoping to lose

Of course the math is swayed by supplement use but someone else will have to speak to that.

Best of luck.

The 500kcal deficit mentioned by airon is more reliable in terms of preserving muscle, but it's not "ASAP." Personally, I'm okay with losing a pound or two of muscle if that means I can lose a couple dozen pounds of fat that much faster. That's why I chose the 1000kcal/day deficit in my situation (which is basically as low as you can get without it being considered a "crash" diet on all accounts.) This amounts to roughly 2lbs/week in loss.

Cyclic Keto diet.

All of the keto diets I've tried have been painful and unpredictable. While I've had some success, my opinion now is that calorie counting is superior almost exclusively because of its predictability.
 
Is there a reason you need to cut down ASAP? I have mixed feelings towards full keto but I definitely think that (for most people) lowering carbs/carb cycling is the best way to cut BF. In fact I think carb cycling is a pretty good and versatile approach no matter what your goals are.
 
I'm cutting at the moment and its really simple maths. Your 12%bf at 180, so 1% = 1.8 pounds, you want to get to 8% you need to lose just over 7 pounds of fat. This can easily be achieved in 7 weeks, but if your really in a rush, it can be done in less than a month. But i warn you, this means sacrificing alot of things to lose the fat and being very consistent.
Your body will be very reluctant to burn muscle, plus your on var, so don't worry about this. Unless you plan on running a few marathons a week, your muscles will be fine.
Now if you plan on achieving it in 4 weeks, I would go keto deit with one high carb day per week (still within calorie limits) with a 1000 calorie deficit. In terms of cardio, anything will do as long as you don't go over an hour (less effective after this time). Your aim should be find the best way of burning the most calories - this is running, no other cardio activity comes close to it. You can up the cardio as much as you like, I've done it twice a day six days a week for some cuts, just don't exceed the 60min time limit.

As you lose the fat, your metabolism will slow down, and you'll think your hitting a "plateau". If this happens, just increase the cardio days, do not go lower on your calories. If you follow this rule, muscle loss should never be a problem.

Good luck bro.
 
All of the keto diets I've tried have been painful and unpredictable. While I've had some success, my opinion now is that calorie counting is superior almost exclusively because of its predictability.

Why are you not counting your calories on a CKD? Are you saying you just eat 30 brats and drink a gallon of olive oil, thus making it "keto" because it's a lot of fat?
 
i agree with mrrippedzilla! keto is awesome but you have to stay strict....maybe crossfit could help in dropping pure body fat.
 
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