Hello everyone,

New member to the forums but not to the site. I have been avidly following John's progress for nearly a year now, while being on my transformation, and would like to congratulate him on an amazing success!!!

I have been on a fat loss plan since July 2003 where I started at 252lbs with a goal of reaching 210 by my birthday in Feb 2004. I smashed that, reaching 209 on Oct 24th 2003, and set a second goal of 175 by May 2004, in time for my wedding in Florida. :)

Well I hit 177 on March 1st and it took me until March 27th to loose the final 2 pounds to hit 175. I probably need to loose about another 7-14lbs to be exactly where I want to be bf% wise and have been trying to shift the final few pounds but they just wont go.

I have changed my weights and cardio routines and my calorie intake both up and down and nothing seems to make any difference, I remain solidly at 175/176. :confused:

Does anyone have any idea how I can kick start the fat loss again??? I dont mind if the weight stays the same I would just like to loose the little belly that left ;).

Sorry to go on but its been driving me a little crazy.

Thanks in advance,

Jon.

I have nothing magic but from reading many other's posts etc. it seems that once you get down there close to your final bf% it can take a long time to drop the final few.

Maintain your exercise program and keep going for better / harder workout goals.

As far as diet goes, and here is where I'll get controversial, upping your calories in many respects is poop. You only lose weight by having a defecit which you know because that's how you lost all that weight. If you have a surplus you will gain weight. That's how we all got fat in the first place.

Eating too few will of course make you tired and lead to your body dumping that hard earned muscle. Which is what you don't want. Obviously with your great work so far you know to eat the right defecit with the right macro breakdown to maintain lean mass as much as possible while dropping fat.

Some think "I'll eat craploads, lift and lose lots of weight." I don't agree. Least not for me. Doing a bulk in order to achieve a cut effect doesn't make sense to me.

Since you are still cutting and not bulking I would advise you to double check your caloric intake based on your new weight and BF%. Your BMR has undoubtedly changed.

Another suggestion I have seen is take a week off and don't work out and eat about 500 more cals a day than you had been to reload your body and then jump back in the following week. That doesn't seem like a half bad suggestion and I have seen a lot of others say something like that has allowed them to come back stronger.

Good Luck and as always everyone is entitled to their take on things. This is just mine. Thanks. :D

Hey, why don't you give us an example of what you eat daily and do for lifting and cardio each week? Also, how tall and old are you?

HunkOLove,
yep thats about the conclusions I havce come to. I havent been pigging out, just upped my cals to around 1800 per day making sure I dont go over 2000.

karatetricker,
Info you requested:

Age : 29
Height : 5' 11''

Diet :

Throughout my fat loss I have been sticking to 1500 - 1700 calories per day with a 60/20/20 carb/prot/fat split. Every Friday (and sometimes Saturday) I have a cheat meal (Chinese or similar take away) where my calories for the day usually hit around 2500. This has worked incredibly well. The only problem I have is hitting right the protein ammount as I dont eat dairy food.

Currently maintaining 1700-1800 cals per day with 60/20/20 split.

Weights/Cardio :

Monday/Friday, 45mins Full body lifting focusing on Upper body using mainly compound exersies followed by 45mins swimming.

Wednesday, 45mins Full Body lifting focusing mainly on Lower body using only compound exercies.

I also chop and change the routine every few weeks to prevent my body becoming used to it. Mixing low weight/high reps with high weight/low reps and changing the actual exercises I perform.

This weekend I decided to change my routine to the following and see what happens.

Monday/Friday, 45min swimming and small routine of press ups, crunches and back extensions.

Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday, 15mins HIIT on gravity walker followed by 45mins Full body lifting.

Hope that covers everything,

Jon

Why don't you try and mix up you diet a little changing the 60/20/20 principle to 40/40/20 (p/c/f). This could be the key after all diet is the main ingedient to losing bf. Good Luck

The first thing that stands out for me is the carb intake as a % of your daily total, you might want to think about dropping that a bit and trying to get a bit more protein... since you say you don't eat dairy (lactose intolerance?), maybe you should look into a soy protein source to help with that.

A change in exercise routine that helped me immensely was seperating my weight sessions from my cardio sessions; something else worth considering is changing the type of cardio you're doing, while swimming is probably more bearable than jogging on a treadmill for 45 mins, you may find you're working that bit harder and therefore using up a good few more calories. Either that or maybe you could try substituting the HIIT for a longer low-intensity cardio session (again, about 45 mins).

Hope that's of some use.

Thanks for the replies,

Think I'll try mixing up the macro balance a little as you suggest and see what happens.

Jon