Hit goal weight but still have fatty areas

arsenal45
arsenal45 Posts: 211 Member
edited September 22 in Health and Weight Loss
Hi,
I've recently hit my goal of a healthy weight of 140. I am a 5'8" male who is 40 YOA. I have been consistently watching my diet and strengthh training for approx. a year and a half. My problem is that I still have a little fat to lose, specifically in my love handles and chest. I would continue to diet and do cardio until it is burned off, but at the same time my ribs are showing. Should I switch to a calorie maintenance plan and concentrate on muscle building or keep dieting until I've lost the fat and then build the muscle? Switching from fat loss to maintenance will add an additional 400-500 calories to my diet, but I don't want the fatty areas I still have to get worse. At the same time I don't want to look like a skeleton where my ribs are concerned. All my other areas are coming along just as I would like, I'm just a little fat in some areas and a little skinny in another and I'm trying to find a balance.

Any help is appreciated!

Replies

  • MisdemeanorM
    MisdemeanorM Posts: 3,493 Member
    If you switch to maintenance and stick to it you will not gain any weight (fat weight. you might build muscle weight). It's mathematic. (providing your maintenance level is set right.) I actually recently switched to maintenance and dropped 4 lbs! You actually might need to add in some extra cals as you build more muscle. I would go to maintenance and build up the muscle. Work on super toning those problem areas - as you do the fat will still come off as it's replaced with muscle, even at maintenance. Of course, you can't target that specific fat to burn, but it will. If you keep dieting you might be sacrificing some of that muscle build which is what is going to burn that extra little bit of fat for you.
  • seemichellerun
    seemichellerun Posts: 219
    Muscle burns fat. I vote for calorie maintenance (make sure your macros are correct for you too!) and work on building muscle.
  • kristinlough
    kristinlough Posts: 828 Member
    I'm with them. But don't forget to keep doing cardio while you're also building those muscles. And congratulations for making weight!!

    (You might actually want to look into female-focused cardio, too, there might be more focus on abs/lovehandles especially). Good luck :smile:
  • gymrat789
    gymrat789 Posts: 7 Member
    Maintain your weight. Keep up the work out. i suggest eating more protein and less carbs. also, increase your cardio workout, those are excellent fat burners specially in the morning before breakfast. Your body will have no choice but to burn off the remaining fat. If you have a fat body scale, it is a good tool to monitor the body fat %.
  • seemichellerun
    seemichellerun Posts: 219
    Don't overdo it on the cardio. Stick to about 30min of HIIT cardio about 2-3 days a week. HIIT is excellent for burning fat.
  • arsenal45
    arsenal45 Posts: 211 Member
    My usual routine is a short 20 min run before lifting weights on Mon, Wed, & Sat. and a 40 min run only on Tues and Thurs.
  • arsenal45
    arsenal45 Posts: 211 Member
    Sounds like the advice is unanimous. Thanks, all. I switched to maintenance today and am giving it a go.
  • jerzypeach
    jerzypeach Posts: 176 Member
    You may want to consider looking at your meal plan for each day and "bracketing" your workouts with your higher carb meals when your muscles are most in need of fuel. The rest of your meals for the day should be your lower carb meals. Gives you the best of both worlds......carb loading and low carb all in the same day! Keep strict watch on your BF% in combination with your scale weight. Good advice from other folks to stay at maintenance calorie levels......your body is trying to hold on to that last bit of fat......you don't want to put yourself into starvation mode.....otherwise you'll NEVER lose the love handles and may even start to gain more fat. Some people have even had success with "carb cycling" where you eat at maintenance or deficit calories for 3 days and then for 1 day to increase your calories (usually with healthy carbs) to 15-20% over your maintenance or deficit levels.....then go back to the 3 days.....then the 1 day.....and so on. This will require making a rather strict meal plan and sticking to it which is why it is considered to be an advanced technique, but it sounds like you are ready to tackle the problem.....you just need some good tools!

    Best wishes!!
  • TateFTW
    TateFTW Posts: 658 Member
    The first step is to figure out exactly what your goals are. If you want to build muscle and eventually get rid of those fatty areas without being to skinny, then you need to bulk. Forget maintanence. You won't build real muscle on maintanence. You need to eat OVER maintanence and hit the weights hard, focussing mostly on compound movements that employ as many muscles as possible, such as squat, deadlift, clean, clean and press, bench press, dips, pullups, chinups. While I was bulking I was eating 1000 extra calories a day (over 3500 calories most days). Yeah, you'll gain weight, but if you work hard in the weight room it will be mostly muscle. Yeah, you'll gain fat, but you CANNOT gain serious muscle while only giving your body the calories it needs. If you do that, there's nothing left for your body to use to build muscle.

    If you go to maintanence and lift hard, you'll get stronger, but the muscles won't grow the same way they will if you eat over maintanence.

    Once you've gained some weight and determined that you've gained enough muscle, go back to losing weight, or cutting as bodybuilders call it, to lose fat and reveal all the muscle you've gained. Instead of ribs, you'll see abs. Instead of bones, you'll see vascularity and strands of muscle.

    The choice is yours. Give up trying to be skinny for a little while and gain muscle, or keep trying to lose fat and next halloween you can go as skeletor, or go to maintanence and don't gain muscle OR lose fat.
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