Q&A for: 9-Nov-05
994. Q:
how to get rid of chest fat
A:
Please read this.
995. Q:
man boobs
A:
Please read this.
996. Q:
reply to 993, but as i go down my chest it gets less hard and more softer especially on the nipple and under it
A:
That's normal -- the lower part of your chest is always going to be the softest, with the most fat on it. Remember, now you're trying to take advantage of your age to bulk. While you're bulking up it won't be easy to lose fat at all. What you should shoot for is not gaining any new fat and just gaining muscle. Then, when you're older and bulked up to the point you like, you can worry about cutting whatever fat is left, including chest fat.
997. Q:
Hey mike, i was just readint through your responses to other people, in 969 you said 6'3 200 pounds was healthy, but thats what i am and i have man boobs
A:
6-3 200 pounds is perfectly healthy. Remember that man boobs are actually normal and natural. You may not like the way they look, but small man boobs are not an indication of being overweight, especially for a teenage male. Moreover, in Q&A #969 the assumption was that he'd GROW to be 6-3 200 from 5-9 200 in a couple of years of healthy eating and being active. During those couple of years of growth his body would use up much of the extra fat and build muscle and bone tissue in its place, so the body composition would change significantly even though the weight stays roughly the same. That's why I almost always advise those under 15-16 to NOT try to lose weight unless they're truly grossly overweight. Just by leading a healthy lifestyle they can lose much of their fat while keeping their weight the same simply by letting their bodies grow!
998. Q:
I am planning not to eat every other day for 4 days. Starting Friday, im am not gioing to eat, then Saturday normal eating, then Sunday no eating, then Monday normal eating :-) I know this will work because my friend did it and he lost 4 pounds.
A:
Sorry, it won't work, despite the apparent success of your friend. It's going to take me some time to explain, but it's well worth reading. Here's what's going to happen to you when you try this:
- You will in fact lose 4 or thereabouts pounds of weight. But that's just the beginning of the story. Read on...
- Much of those 4 pounds lost will be water weight. This is water that's retained inside your intestines by the food that's traveling through them. No food means no water. Of course once your normal diet resumes after these four days, the food will come back to the intestines and the water retained by it will come back as well. So this weight loss will be a wash.
- Much of those 4 pounds lost will be MUSCLE. This is probably not something you're thinking of now, but that's how your body works. Not feeding your body makes it 'think' that you're starving it. When the body thinks it's starving it's going to try to reduce its own metabolic demands, meaning it will look for a way to get by while using less energy. Muscle tissue, turns out, requires quite a bit of energy just to maintain itself. It also so happens that muscle tissue can actually burned to create energy. How convenient! By burning muscle your body BOTH gets some energy now AND reduces its energy requirements for later. So this is the natural course of action for your body during starvation -- burn muscle for energy!
- Some of those 4 pounds will actually be fat. But your body's instinct will be to burn quite a bit of muscle too, so you will likely lose only about half a pound of fat and certainly no more than 1 pound of fat.
And remember it's FAT that you are really trying to lose, not water or muscle. It's FAT that's giving your the flabby appearence and can add up to health problems. Now those 4 pounds lost don't look particularly impressive, do they? All you've accomplished is lose 0.5-1.0 pounds of fat. So what, you may be thinking, even half a pound of fat is still good. But it gets a lot worse! Read on...
Because you weren't eating for two full days you've knocked your metabolism down. Your metabolism can and does adjust very easily to a wide range of diets. The same person could keep the same weight at 2000 calories/day and at 3000 calories/day, depending on the diet and physical regimen in the previous weeks. In your case your metabolism will adjust way down because you haven't fed your body as you should.
Add to that the fact that you've lost some muscle, as explained above. Remember how I said that muscle requires energy just to maintain itself? Well, it normally gets that energy from fat or immediate glucose. By losing some muscle you've guaranteed that you burn less fat now on daily basis!
So between lower metabolism and less muscle mass your body uses quite a bit less energy now. That means that all the extra calories you eat are that much more likely to go into new fat on your body. So you can rest assured that you'll regain those 0.5-1.0 pounds of fat you lost pretty quickly and have a good chance of gaining even more NEW FAT!
This regaining of the lost fat because of lower metabolism and lost muscle is the most common consequence of all the 'diets' like yours and is BY FAR the #1 reason why all such diets fail. Ever saw the statistic about how 95% or so people who lose weight regain it within 2 years? Now you know why!
If you're serious about losing fat and keeping it off for good, I suggest you browse around on this site and especially read my weight loss article along with the other articles it references inside. What it describes is how to approach ANY weight loss (not just chest or stomach or whatever fat) if you want to succeed. I won't say it's the only way to lose weight successfull, but it's certainly the most effective way. Your starvation diet approach however is almost certain to fail. Please consider what I wrote here and approaching losing weight the right way. Good luck!
999. Q:
how many miles in a 10k
A:
6.2 miles
1000. Q:
Mike, my mom had a friend over the other day. She saw my creatine bottle on the top of my refrigerator and said that her son was on that (16 years old). She continued to say that her sons liver levels or soemthing like that went way high, and blamed it on creatine, although she had no proof of that being the problem. Now my parents are giving me a hard time about it and saying that im going to damage my liver and a bunch of BS like that. Now, before buying this creatine, my dad did his fair share of research on the stuff, and couldn't find anything bad about it, so he bought it, and for the last 2 months both me and HIM have been using it. and now all of a sudden that my mom says that he's raising his voice at me and stuff saying that he knew it was bad and all this stuff. so anyways, sorry for all that story.. you, being a man reccomending creatine on the top of your site, i figured you could put your 2 cents in and help me?
A:
In cases like these people will usually go with their feelings and your parents feelings are pretty clear. It may be best if you and they talk to your doctor about creatine use. But anyway, here are a couple of government websites with creatine info: here and here. You can find tons more info, mostly for creatine, on non-government sites, but those sites may potentially be biased or have ulterior motives, so I only included government sites.
The other thing you should always keep in mind is that creatine or other supplements are going to make a relatively small difference, compared to having a good diet and a good training program. If it comes to choosing between having a big fight with your parents or dropping creatine, it may just be easier to drop creatine :) I guarantee that if the other aspects of your training and diet are as they should be, you will make plenty of progress without creatine.
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