5' 11" 187lbs - Should I skip fat loss and go to strength tr

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enginerd81
enginerd81 Posts: 50
in Fitness and Exercise
Hello,

Kinda new to the boards, been using MFP for a month now and love the way it is so easy to track calories. I was really surprised by the calorie count and serving sizes of some items.... pasta anyone?!

A little background:

I'm 5' 11" and started at 194lbs - After a month I've lost 7 pounds and my belt is 1 notch tighter. So progress... but there's still some squishy areas.
I've got MFP set to 1.5 lb/week loss. I figure this is a good goal and if I go over it once a week I'll still be at a decent calorie deficit for the week.

I've made it to the gym 6 days a week. I've been doing 6-8 strength excersizes followed by 300 calories of cardio.

I don't really have a goal weight but I would like my abs to be visible and the small love handles to take a hike. Ideally I'd like to transition to a more strength training routine to put on a few more pounds of muscle.

My food diary should be public and I'm just getting into trying a 40/30/30 or 40/40/20. Meal planning is a bit of a challenge as I'm used to eating what sounds good and is available.

I'm confused if I should just jump to the strength training and bring my calories up to at least BMR, or focus on getting rid of the fat, get down to 175ish (this would put me at a not overweight BMI) maybe sacrifice some lean body mass and then bump the calories up and focus on strength training?


Any thoughts/opinions/comments are appreciated.

thanks
Bryan

Replies

  • jhardenbergh
    jhardenbergh Posts: 1,035 Member
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    I am 5'7" 189 lbs, I am planning on dropping about 5 more lbs then building muscle, my suggestion is getting your bodyfat measured and go from there, I am at about 18% body fat, wanna drop a couple more lbs and then build some muscle. I have about 15-20 lbs of loose skin, I wanna try to fill it out some before opting for the surgery. Actually I have been trying to do both, which is difficult to do. I do about 5 days of strength training and one day of cardio a week. My workouts are usually 60-70 minutes. I will do about 2 muscle groups a day on strength days. My days are (chest/biceps), (legs/core), (shoulders/triceps), (back/core), (cardio), add a rest day in the middle and repeat. When I started lifting I was doing higher reps and lower weights to elongate the muscle and now I do heavier weights and lower reps to help build them. I workout with a trainer 2 days a week and that's what he set up for me for my goals.
  • rayleansout
    rayleansout Posts: 234
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    I would put as much intensity as possible into strength training 4 days per week - no cvardio - hard intense training with some supersets, etc. Then 3 days do cardio burns of 400-500 and set you loss per week to be one pound, I think you will build muscle and Lean out nicely doing this.
  • soulofmyshoe
    soulofmyshoe Posts: 10 Member
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    My understanding about getting your abs to show is that it is mostly a factor of your body fat percentage. It sounds like you were never that heavy, so you shouldn't have the excess skin issues in that region that many of us face. I have heard that something in the 12-15% BF range is when you begin to see that sort of definition.

    Putting on more muscle is probably a good idea, since it will aid in upping your base metabolic rate. However, unless you are following a bodybuilder-style bulking/cutting alternating phase diet, I would probably just keep your net calories a bit below maintenance. If you carry a deficit of 200-300 calories (including your exercise), you should still be able to put on muscle while cutting your body fat down. I used to carry a larger deficit than that (500-800) and I still managed to bulk up a good bit as long as I focused on good nutrition and got sufficient rest.

    I find doing some brief cardio at the beginning of a weight session as a warmup is more effective for me, as it elevates my heart rate and tends to make me work more intensely with the weights. Then again, I am one of those people who burns almost as much from an hour in the weight room as I do with moderate intensity cardio (according to my heart rate monitor).

    Your current routine sounds pretty decent. If you want to cut BF a bit faster, maybe add some pure cardio days. They are good for improving your heart and lungs anyway, which will help with overall health and may improve your performance in the weight room. You also may want to lower your frequency a bit, or at least make sure that you are working on alternate body parts on subsequent days. Muscles need time to recover if they are going to grow and become stronger, so overworking them can actually slow your progress.

    Good luck!
  • enginerd81
    enginerd81 Posts: 50
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    Thanks for the quick responses - I do vary muscles used and have been leaning towards pure cardio days when I feel my body needs it.

    I'd like to avoid anything as detailed as bulk/cut for now, maybe in the future.

    The consensus so far seems to point towards getting started on building muscle vs pure fat loss and upping the calories a bit.
  • thefuzz1290
    thefuzz1290 Posts: 777 Member
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    Always work on building muscle, it'll make you lose fat quicker.

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