Fat loss, muscle, and nutrition
I am 48 years old. Important fact to keep in mind.
Who comes to your mind when you think of all three together?
A body builder. Or a celebrity, or a model. Right?
Most of you also must have read about their diets and how regimental they are about everything. Right?
Ques: But why do we have get that far with diet when it is just a matter of eating optimal amount of food?
Ques: Why to be so regimental about a meal where one has to leave a party/marriage/delicious food? Just one meal!!
I am, what I would say, is at 85%. Perhaps I am carrying 12/13 % fat right now which I have to bring down to say 7/8% to squeeze out my anatomy. All the remaining fat is over my transverse abdominus and my abdomen. No fat anywhere in my body as you can make out from the pictures. So its my idea that I should be at 12% or about. May be more….
Ques: How difficult could that be?
It could be when I tell you that my diet also includes sucrose/fructose (tea or a small desert), a bit of junk – wafers & a beer, fat, carbs, and protein. A highly mixed diet high on protein. But am I regimental about this? No.
But should it stop me to get a build to minimal fat with higher lean muscle mass?
Well, it didn’t until now! Look at me. How do you think I got here? No starving. Never. Trains an hour/day and this too was reduced to 3 days a week for 2 weeks recently.
How can I achieve my minimal fat with hypertrophy with regular food?
This is my latest study and I would continue to post results unbiased.
So here is what I will do whenever I get the urge to wind up extra fat quickly:
Either I leave sweets & junk completely and my existing burn would be enough to cut it down to 8% over a period of time.
Or
I add another training (evening) to my regime where I burn extra that I need to burn more fat.
OrMay be I cut out on junk and add an evening session?
Not sure what I will end up doing…but I will keep posting the results
Why so much diet hype then?
1) Do not forget that I am a training scientist and therefore, my training would be a lot higher in quality than my students – understanding when to relax, how much to push, taking care of entire musculoskeletal system, and how to break the muscle with my comfortable weight. If anybody understands this then by default you will achieve the result a lot quicker. But I doubt because general sense that prevails is not this.
2) Also from nutrition perspective, I have a very deep understanding on the subject. It is unending and the more I am diving deeper, the simpler I am finding it.
Therefore, unless you have these proficiencies, you have to resort to a diet that restrict your calories either by changing your food substrate or by dropping fat and sucrose completely from your meals.
General advise is pay attention to:
Ques: How frequently are you munching? how many cups of tea? Any snack even a tiny bit? How many hours you keep without eating anything? Or whatever else you may be eating in the name of health?
Count everything that goes inside your mouth.
I have never counted calories in my life and yet, I can lose or gain weight at will and taste. I am never surprised by my weight. 99 out of 100 times, I would accurately judge my weight even though I may not have measured it in months. The reason? Because I just don’t eat food. I feel it. We haven’t understood human potential yet and even though we do seem to have understood nutrition; I think there is much more. We are yet to mind the power of mind.
Point to prove – One can stop the ageing process without eating any pills, or intermittent fasting, or while eating sugar, or while eating a mixed diet. I will do the biological testing early next year even though I do not have an iota of doubt that I am improving on health.
Simple rules I am following:
a) Eat ad libitum
b) Eat as per what my body requires which further depends on my training or lifestyle. Example: When am off training intermittently, I turn into a pure vegetarian when I visit parents – be it for a day or 4 weeks and I eat wheat chapati’s way too much than I would eat otherwise.
3) I do my analysis and cut out food that bloats me. Honestly, I am not able to do this 100% and I still end up over feeding myself on days. However, in the broader spectrum, you can call me a good healthy eater.
4) I increase or decrease protein in my diet depending on if I have to lose weight, build muscle, or both
5) I eat or leave fruits out completely again depending on what am doing with my body
6) I keep little bit of desert inadvertently all through regardless of my training. I do cut down on it when I have to lose weight
7) Eat a mixed diet without schedule. If some foods taste good with ghee, I put ghee on top. If some foods are good with olive oil, I do eat that. If some foods like mutton taste good in mustard oil, I eat that as well.
8) Never took any supplements but for whey protein. Been recently experimenting on ‘creatine’ for lean muscle mass. Will continue it for few more weeks and then drop it once my study is over.
9) My blood markers, fasting glucose, physical stamina, muscle strength…all keep improving simultaneously as tested on different occasions. I would like all again may be at the time of checking biological age.
10) No fixed number of meals. At times I would train in fasted state and skip breakfast. Other times I would have breakfast. I don’t stop eating after 4.30 pm until 8pm no matter whether I have had breakfast or not. I gauge on calories during this period. Never skip lunch and never ever could skip dinner.
11) Train well obviously else how do you squeeze out nutrition from so called junk food
And no…am not a phenotype. If I stop training then I will gain fat as easy as anybody in the world. I generally keep that window between 4 to 5 kilos meaning I gain that much when I go off training eating everything and with minimal training. Then I get down to burning it when I train.
Will submit my results in few weeks after bringing down my fat say to 7% possibly with everything that am eating today and by improving the burn. And looking forward to get tested in few months for my biological age.
Until then…enjoy your meals. Make exercise a part of who are you. Its more important than work in the long run. Trust me.
Umesh Chhikara 