Bodybuilding Forums

Hello all.
First a short presentation.
I'm starting the MANS, THT program on monday and I have a few questions about it.
I started working out (again) alltogether somewhat 2 months ago without any particular strategy or program to follow, just 4 times per week as a complement to a very strict Low Carb/High Fat diet (appr 5% carbs, 20% proteins and 75% fat/day) I've been on since june 2009. I've been losing appr 15 kilos up until christmas, really just sitting on my ass. The diet has not been cyclic in the sense that MANS is, but since I'm diabetic I need some sugar sometimes when my blood sugar is too low. That maybe happens 2-6 times a month and when it does I need very little sugar, I don't believe that I've been over 15% carbs on a single day (Well, christmas was an exception).

Anyway, I was wondering about my fat percentage, now I weigh about 93kg (sorry, I'm from Sweden so kilos is all I know... I think it's somewhere around 190-200lbs, but I'm not sure ) and have about 17% body fat. I want to drop to around 10%, which I believe will get me the muscle definition I'm after. Now, the questions:

1. I don't know how much cardio I should do. So far I've been doing ca 10 minutes on the crosstrainer as warmup (quite high intense, 13-15 out of 20 resistance, and 165-180 pulse) before training and none up to 30 minutes after.
2. I've not been losing any weight since january when I started working out, but I might have lost a few centimetres around my waist. Do you think that the MANS diet, with 1-2 days a week with carbs, will increase my fat loss? Or should I stay on the diet I'm on, with no "carb days"?

Sorry if the text was unnecessarily long, but I thought I should introduce my issue clearly.
Thanks in advance, and good luck to everyone!

Hey,

I can share with you in this situation. I used to have around the same bodyfat percentage as you. I now am at 7% body fat. No lie. The real big fat loss was this year. I probably lost around 15 pounds in 3 months, which is pretty good.
Here's what I literally SWEAR will work: fast twice a week. This is and of course eating smaller portions of food per day (below normal). Now I do not know whether you should do this because you are diabetic so I would suggest asking your doctor before. So what you do is stop all eating for 24 hours i.e. from 2pm Monday through 2pm Tuesday. You can drink water and fruit juice in between these times, but nothing else. Now for the cardio part of the fat loss I would suggest just jogging for 15mins/day or so if you want. The one thing you should know is that the best exercise does not make up for a bad diet. You could really just cut cardio out of your routine if you have a good diet. Here's a fat loss formula I heard and stick to: FAT LOSS= CALORIES IN VS CALORIES OUT (Johnbarban.com)

Once again, make sure it does not interfere with your diabetes. I do not think it will, but I am not sure.

I really hope you succeed in your fat loss!

P.S. The faster you want to lose fat, the less you eat. It's that simple. Let me know how your results go!
P.P.S. You can even fast on a day that you workout. Fasting does not cause you to lose muscle so no worries!

Thanks for the reply! And sorry mine is so late..

Umm.. I could, from a diabetic point of view, fast two days a week since I'm "allowed" to drink the fruit juice which is probably full of sugar. I don't really see though why a ketos diet isn't better, or at least the same? The principle is the same as when fasting since what's happening is that my body will start burning fat instead of sugar. When in ketos(is?) my body will "starve" since there's no glucose in my system, and start burning fat, hence ketos. Right? Did you try a ketos diet before this?

And even if i should try, which days do you think would be the best? When training (5days/week) or when not training?

Thanks!

Whatever you decide, I strongly urge against a diabetic fasting on fruit juice. Unless you are tired and want to spend a few days in the hospital in a diabetic coma. Diabetics have a hard enough time getting energy in their systems as is, thanks to their screwed up insulin production/response. It probably depends also on whether you are a type I or type II diabetic. My experience is with my best friend who was type I diabetic since he was 7, and he died 18 months ago at age 34.

MWHbb wrote:Here's a fat loss formula I heard and stick to: FAT LOSS= CALORIES IN VS CALORIES OUT (Johnbarban.com)

Mark has a couple of videos that he posted recently that explain why this is bullshit. http://www.musclehack.com/the-science-of-fat-loss/ And it is particularly bullshit in the case of a diabetic, whose endocrine system is out of whack to begin with. Hormones are dominatingly important. And if you're stable with your blood sugar management, it's NOT worth the risk of becoming unstable to try to eke out slightly more results in the fat loss department.

I think controlled-carb eating is excellent for diabetics (it does not work for me at all, but we're all different). Having said that, MANS is not a fat loss diet. It is intended as a means to fuel workouts that help you gain muscle while minimizing fat gain. If you want a fat loss diet, you could try Mark's Total Six-pack Abs program. He also details the cardio that will help you achieve maximum fat loss. It's not free, so I can't share the details here, but it does have an 8 week a money-back guarantee.

Do your cardio after your weight workout. If you do it before, the hormonal state your body is in will not be right for building muscle. So the weights would kind of be wasted at that point. If you do the weights first, that hormone state for building muscle will kick in and then taper off over time. So it'll still be doing its thing even after you start doing cardio.

Hope this helps!

Personally I believe (no scientific proof though) that just as theres only so much muscle our body can build per day, theres a limit to how much fat our body can burn per day too. Plus I always find that the fat loss from sudden drastic cut of calorie bounce back onto the body very easily (if it was even fat loss in the first place @@). I would lower the calorie to a limit, not completely avoiding food for 24hr, but that's just my opinion.