Q&A for: 30-Apr-06
1532. Q:
In response to 1529 Thanks Mike.2 last questions.
After the cardio should i eat a meal?I mean complete after it.
Also i have heard that one day a week i should eat full meals all day.This prevent the body for becoming weaker in lifting heavy weights like before cause it is supposed to be like this due to the carb reduction.Once i recude the calories i should be able to lift lighter weights than before,right?What do u think of this?
A:
You're welcome! I recommend eating a meal before and after all training sessions. After cardio an appropriate meal would be mainly protein with some fat and light carbs (like veggies).
As far as your second question, it depends... Yes, you will get slightly weaker as you cut, but it should not be very significant and I would not advise dropping the weights -- instead you'll just reach failure or near-failure in fewer reps. If you lose a lot of weight in your cut (15+ pounds), then you may get significantly weaker as time goes on and really may have to drop the weights -- that's when it would be appropriate time to go on this mini-bulk of sorts and eat big meals for a week.
1533. Q:
hi mike today this is what i did , firstly i cycled around hills up and down ( can this be considered HIIT as i go up and down hills , sprinting sometimes and carrying my bike over bridges and stuff ), played street soccer for 1 hour and went down to the gym for 30 mins doing light workout focusing on my whole body including legs and finally to top it off i did some abs workout is this a good exercise schedule
A:
Yes, that's certainly a ton of exercise -- good job! If I remember correctly, you're a teenager, right? If so, you can certainly afford to do this much exercise -- just make sure you eat generously and healthy (with lots of veggies and fruits) so your body has the energy and nutrition for all this activity and the recovery. For most adults doing this much daily while trying to lose fat is actually too much, but as a teenager you can afford to do this with no problems.
And yes, biking up and down the hill actually may be quite close to HIIT, especially if the hills aren't very long but are relatively steep, so it takes you a very intense though short burst to climb one.
If you want, you can focus on upper body exercises more in the gym since biking and soccer already give your legs a heavy workout. But if you like working your legs in gym, then there's certainly nothing wrong with that. Overall very impressive, good job! Remember to eat well and healthy too.
1534. Q:
Mike i have calculated that in order to mainten my current weight i need about 2750 calories daily.Till now i was eating about 3100 cause i was doing bulk up.I want to do some cutting now.I have dropped my daily calories to 2700 the last 2 weeks so my body will get used to this reduction.But in order to lose some fat i need to to eat less than that(250 calories less).
So if i need 3100 calories to gain muscles,2750 to mainten my current weight i need 2500?to lose some fat right?For these calories is it the same if i do some cardio to lose them or just eat less?Should i combine both cardio and less eating for better results?If i do both should i count the calories from cardio and reduce them from total calories?
For example the day i do cardio(losing this way 300 calories)i could eat more or not doing cardio and eat less 300 calories.
Could u tell me what should i do exactly and how much i should eat in order to lose fat slowly and safely without any muscles?
A:
Good job paying such careful attention to your diet! They way I would approach figuring how much to eat to lose fat is to shift your focus a little bit, so you track your weight even more than the exact number of calories. Pick your training and cardio programs, start your diet at somewhere between 2500 and 2700 calories and from this point on just monitor your weight. Your goal is to lose weight very slowly in order to preserve muscle. Definitely no faster than 1 pound/week and slower would be even better. Your weight may go up and down a pound or two day-to-day (weigh yourself in the morning after using the bathroom and on empty stomach for most accurate weight measure), but over long term there should emerge a clear trend. If after three weeks you notice that you're basically still at the same weight as before you started, then reduce the calories by 200-300. If, on the other hand, you noticed that you've lost more than 4 pounds in 3 weeks, then it's time to add 200-300 calories back in.
This way you don't need to worry about daily cardio-vs-calories decisions. Just monitor your weight and look for a long-term trend and make diet adjustments every 3-4 weeks to keep yourself on pace to lose 1 pound or less per week. Hope that helps.
1535. Q:
Mike, I recently went on vacation for 2 weeks and very quickly gave up the good fight and ate well out of the diet I have been eating (you described my diet as 'excellent' in a past question). During my vacation, I went to the gym 3 times and although I continued eating my veggies, oatmeal, and lean chicken, I also indulged in pastries, chocolate, ice cream, pizza, lasagna, schnitzel, and things such as this. After weighing myself upon returning to my gym, I gained approximately 8 pounds (I hit 193) and, a week later, took off 3 of those pounds. I expect to lose a significant bit more by next Friday. I have returned to my regular diet and workout schedule. My question (which may be unanswerable) is how much of my 8 lbs. is likely fat that has been added to my body and how much is just food sitting inside my system? My clothes still fit. I had a great vacation, BTW but am glad to be eating right again and going back to the gym.
A:
While as you said there's no way to know exactly, I would guess that at least 3-4 pounds was just water gain which is also evidenced by how fast you were able to lose it back. In order to gain 4 pounds in 2 weeks, you'd need to overeat by about 1000 calories every single day which is quite a bit. I would be surprised if you overate that much and even supposing you did, not all of these 4 new pounds would be fat, especially since you continued to work out. So in the end I'd guess you gained around 2-3 pounds of fat, maybe 1 pound of muscle and the rest just water weight.
Sounds like you had a great vacation and now doing exactly the right thing by just getting back to your regular routine.
1536. Q:
hi mike can you give me some tips on how i can stop myself from feeling hungry as i eat alot
A:
For most people getting hugry while eating a lot means you're eating mostly unhealthy foods. Things like chips, cookies, ice cream, cakes, other sweets, and even white bread are especially notorious for only satisfying you for a short while and then leaving you hungry again soon after.
Instead you should make sure a good part of your every meal consists of whole grains, veggies, and/or legumes in addition to some source of protein and some healthy fats. Meals like that are not only good for you but they also keep you satisfied for much longer.
Check out my Nutrition article and especially the section titled 'Create Your Own Healthy Meals' (it's towards the end of the article). There I list healthy foods and good meal combinations for filling meals. They are not actual recipes, but rather information for you how to put together complete meals. For example, you'll see there that Legumes + Healthy Fats makes for a good meal and then you can go to your favorite cookbook or websites to look for recipes that fit such as this three-bean salad!
There may be other reasons, besides unhealthy meals. You might actually not be eating as much as you think -- some people think they're eating a lot when they actually don't. If you are a growing teenager, especially, skimping on (healthy) food is usually a bad idea. You may also be not getting enough physical activity or you might just need to find things to occupy your time so food is not on your mind so much. Finally you may have a genuine medical condition and should talk to your doctor. But what I said first, about not eating healthy, is certainly the most common reason why people feel hungry despite eating a lot.
1537. Q:
Hey, I was wondering that now, since summer is basically here in Eastern Ontario, if I did a 5km (2.5km one direction, 2.5km back approx.) every morning would that be adequate exercise to lose weight? Currently I am doing you're weightlifting program, so biking would be something else to do as well. The route I would be taking would have a lot of hills to climb (and also, obviously, to go down so I may lose exercise there) so I figure it should be alright. Any tips for getting more benefit out of biking on this rural terrain. Last year, I found if I peddled too hard for too long then my legs felt like jelly after only about 5 minutes, anything about this?
A:
Sure, since you're already weight training, you can add biking in as some additional cardio and 5km biking daily should be fine. I would actually consider a hilly terrain as beneficial -- the uphill climbs will stress your anaerobic system more, in addition to the aerobic stress of the 'regular' biking.
To make sure your legs last more than five minutes you simply need to start and stay at slower pace. It's just like running -- everyone has a pace at which they can go long distance (that pace might be plain walking for some) but if you try to exceed that pace you'll run out of steam after just a few minutes. So start slower and save your energy for those uphill climbs. So your bike ride may be relatively relaxing periods interspersed with intense hill-climbing periods.
Also, if you find your biking sessions very intense and especially if you do a lot of these hills, you may reduce the amount of lower-body weight training you do in the gym. That may mean only doing one leg exercise instead of two or three (depending on which you program you follow) or doing only 1 set instead of 2 or 3. If your legs are sore from biking, then skip leg weight training altogether and only do upper body. As your body gets used to biking in coming weeks, you'll likely find yourself getting sore less and less and then you can add some of lower-body weight training back in. Good luck!
1538. Q:
hi mike is oats and honey bread good ?
A:
Honey and oats are just a small part of the ingredients -- the bread's healthiness or not comes down to the flour used. If the bread is made of whole wheat flour, then it's good, but most likely this bread has 'enriched wheat flour' which is not all that great. It's not the worst thing for you but if you can, try to stick to eat whole grains like oatmeal or brown rice, fruits, veggies, and legumes more than bread.
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