190 days of hardwork (pics)

Awesome job bro! How long have you been doing IF? What's your workout routine looking like? I'm a believer in IF too, I've lost 10+ lbs during the course of a month and half and it seems to be mostly fat melting away.

Hi I've been on it for more than 3 months now.. and I use a 4 day training split. I just mix everything up or making small changes to my workout every time. The changes could be the number of sets/reps, exercise or the order of exercise of the same routine.. nothing complicated. Nutrition is the key here.. I stay away from junk most of the time. I limit myself to only 1 time big time cheat meal every month. I usually get a box of large pizza from papa john's.. 2k+ calories in just one meal. lol. I mean if you're gonna eat junk, you might as well do it right and enjoy every bit of it so you won't crave for more because you're not satisfied. So yeah that's basically it.. You should be seeing great results too.. Just keep at it, and believe that it would work.

Can you explain the IF? I have never heard of it before...

Hmm well I'll try to explain it the best that I can. Bear with me.

IF (Intermittent Fasting) is one of the many diet approach that man invented. The basic concept is that a person is taking in his calories within a set eating window and then stop eating until the next day. For example, I do the 16:8 schedule, meaning if there's 24 hours a day, I set my eating window to 8 hours, and the other 16 hours is spent not eating anything (fasted state). At first look you'd probably say "damn I'd be starving if I don't eat that long." Well guess what, you won't starve if you do it right.

So here's how I did it. Let's say on a Monday, which is my non training day, I'd be up by 6am preparing for work at 7am. I won't be eating first meal 'til 2pm. I chose 2pm because I'm doing the 16:8 schedule, and by that, my eating window will be from 2pm-10pm.. That works for me because I get off from work at 7pm, and workout around 8pm. And within that 8 hours, meal frequency is irrelevant, if you wanna eat every hour it's up to you, as long as it fits your daily macros, then you'll be fine. For me my approach is, on a "non training" day, my first meal is the biggest, around 60% of my total calories. So let's say my calorie goal is 2000, I'll eat around 1200 on the first meal, the remaining 40% would be around dinner time. But on a "training" day, it's the opposite, my biggest meal would be my last meal which is post-workout/dinner. I consume majority of the calories after working out for optimal recovery. You can check out my diary to see what I'm talking about.

So you might ask, do I really have to follow 16:8 schedule? No, you can modify it depending on preference. It could be 17:7, 18:6, 19:5, 20:4 etc. 16:8 is a good starting point then as you get used to it, you can make your eating window smaller.. But me, I did 16:8 most of the time.. It worked best for me and my schedule. Some people also do the 5:2 schedule, meaning they pick 2 days in a week wherein they fast for 24 hours, and then they eat normally on the other 5 days. It's really a matter of preference, nothing is set on stone here. At the end of the day, it's still you that will decide if this is for you or not, but all I can say is, this thing really works.

Well that's pretty much it. I hope I gave you the basic idea of the concept. For more info you can check out leangains.com, all the things you need to know is there.

This is amazing. You are ripped and you look fabulous, amazing work!! I've hit a plateau in my weight loss, do you think doing IF might help?

I guess it would.. I've had the hardest time losing the fat around the lower belly too, and that stubborn back fat.. IF helped me to melt them away. This was the best thing I've ever did since I'm used to the traditional 5-6 meals a day approach. Try it and it might work for you too. But also try to workout heavy and get some cardio too.. But great reaults mainly comes from the diet.. If you screw your diet, nothing will happen even if you train heavy and do cardio. And also try changing up your routines, and maybe you can cycle your calories.. Like go on low (not too low) for several days, then have refeeds once a week, something like that. But for me I just always see that I hit my daily protein requirements, then adjust on carbs and fat accordingly depending if I'm training that day or not. If It's a training day, i get higher carbs, low fat (40:40:20).. On rest days, low carbs and a bit higher on fats. (45:30:25).. Yeah something like that.

Well done zeck, great transformation... so whats your plan from here?

Lose 5 more pounds then try to slowly gain some lean mass. I'll try to weigh in around 150 by the end of 2013.