Hey Naxis.

My first question is, who are you and what do you do? I've read a lot of your posts and I'm just intrigued.

My next question:

You may or may not a recall a post I put up a few days ago about slim fast. You gave me a speech about proper diet (which is what I expected people to say), and didn't really give me your opinion on the over all efficency it would have on acheiving my goals. So, here is my question. Everyone is so gung-ho on proper diet. The right amount of calories taken at the proper intervals through out the day, blah blah blah. However, people obviously can lose fat by cutting calories. People do it all the time. Hence anorexia. I'm certaining not preaching for anorexia, but it obviously does work. So, while calorie cutting isn't the best or healthiest way of going about it, it clearly works...eventually..or whatever. Anywho, I'm kind of trying my own variation of a "crash" diet for the next 6 weeks, then I plan to ease into a balanced and healthy diet. Also, before you start getting yourself all fired up to tell me about my metabolic rate, or how many calories I need to support my lean mass, or about protein and carbs, and no white food, and only good fats, let me just tell you that I already know that stuff. So, with out further ado (or something), here is my diet.

Breakfast: 1 slimfast, 230 calories. (lots of protein and fiber). A multivitamin, two green tea fat burner pills.

Snack 1: a protein bar, 250 calories.

lunch: A chicken spinach salad with brocoli. I use olive oil, vinegar, and homemade salsa for dressing (it's actually amazingly good, i'll give you the recipe if your interested). I'm going to guess that it is around 400 calories. I don't really know though. I don't pay attention to proportions because it's my only real meal of the day.

snack 2: 1 Slimfast, 230 calories.

Snack 3: 1 Protein bar, 250 calories.

At night I've been snacking a little extra. Last night I had a bowl of brocoli with red wine vinegar and that salsa. Tonight I had some yogurt, a few bites of my roommates pasta, and half of a turkey and ham sandwhich from starbucks. The whole sandwhich had 230 calories, But I only ate half, and I took of on of the pieces of bread. So in total it looks like I'm having around 1400-1700 calories a day. I am 6 ft and 195lbs, so I know this is very low, But I have around 16 percent bodyfat.

My weekly exercise routine is:

Day one: light chest and back work out, 45mins of cardio.

Day two: Rest

Day three: Light bi and tri workout, 45 mins of cardio

Day four: Legs, 45 mins of cardio

Day five: Rest

Day six: Rest (I rest for two days after legs, on account of I have trouble moving)

Day seven: Light chest and back workout, 45 mins of cardio.

I also do abs, but I just sort of throw them in when I feel like it.

So Naxis, in your holiest of holy opinion, being the guru of fitness that you are, what do you think of my diet and routine? Keep in mind, I only want to burn fat, I'm willing to sacrafice a little muscle mass.

Thank you very much, Naxis. I look forward to hearing from you.


PS.
I really admire how much you help people on here.

I have to say I don't agree with the "crash diet" idea. In most cases it simply doesn't work - yes, you may lose lots of weight in the short term, but as soon as you start eating "properly" again, most of it comes back.

The best approach to dieting (I think) is to make gradual changes, this allows your body and mind to adjust and makes it more likely that you will succeed in keeping a better diet in the long term. Reducing calories is the right way to lose weight, but do it gently - work out you typical daily calorie intake (say 2500, for example), then gradually change your diet to reduce it by perhaps 150 calories a week. This, I believe, is more likely to lead to long term change in your diet.

Eating small meals throughout the day will help too, as it keeps your metabolism quite high and tells your body that it doesn't need to store fat because it will always have a steady supply of food. Your food plan looks good in this respect.

With regard to your exercises, why do you put "light" for chest/back etc? It's generally better to make the weight work relatively intense as this will give you better benefits (it will increase your metabolism for longer after you stop exercising). I'm not suggesting you bust your gut with the weights, if you don't wanna build too much muscle, but in some respects there isn't much to be gained by "light" weight training. It should be reasonably intense as a minimum.

Ps - Sorry I'm not Naxis ;), hopefully my advice is worthwhile too! (Unless Naxis contradicts it all...)

Edit: forgot to say that I don't think 16% bodyfat is bad at all. :)

Listen. The reason that I am so against crash dieting and being "okay" with muscle loss is that when you lose muscle it lowers your metabolism, and if you are on too low a calorie deficit, your body will go into a 'starvation response' where it will actually HOLD ONTO FAT and burn muscle preferentially, as well as slowing metabolism, kill your immune function, fatigue you, and can easily throw you into yo-yo dieting because going back to eating "normally" will gain it all back and then some. It is TRULY the least efficient way about getting to the goal you're looking for. It does not burn fat any faster than eating healthfully. Quite the opposite. Though, honestly, 1700 calories isn't "starvation response low" for you, I think getting a minimum of real food is going to be a huge detriment. In my earlier days, I never managed to get really lean until I cut bars out of my diet completely. I would never, ever recommend someone do a shake-and-bar diet and I think it's a horrible idea. You're starving your body of nutrients it needs and it will respond to you in kind. If you already know all this, I'm not sure why you're asking my opinion. Are you really that opposed to eggs, broccoli, cottage cheese, fish, chicken, fruit...?

Also, if you're interested in keeping the muscle you have at all (which I recommend you take into consideration if you intend to have steady fat loss) light weight workouts will not cut it. Lifting with moderate to heavy weight will stress the muscle sufficiently so that the body will maintain the tissues, and nothing burns fat like muscle.

As far as the schedule, your split looks fine, but you have an awful lot of rest days. While recovery is important, consistent activity is as well. I understand the sore-legs problem, but trust me, at *least* go for a walk. Getting blood back into the sore muscles speeds up repair and makes soreness go away a litle faster. Maybe some HIIT on one or two of the other off days you have - if you're eating a little more than you have planned.

In general, I'm really concerned that you're so set on going the extreme route. If you go ahead with it, it's going to be a lesson in trial-and-error for you, but I assure you, too-low cal and minimal nutrition is going to do nothing but disappoint you.

Perhaps I shouldn't have used the word, "light," it apparently implied that I do a quick workout with little weight. What I meant is that I'm not doing an intense weight training workout. Perhaps the word, "moderate," would be more apt. I weight train for about half an hour, doing a lot of reps with a lighter load. For example, 12 reps with 60lbs instead of like 4 reps with a hundred lbs.

The reason I'm so set on an "extreme" route, is because I work and go to school and I find it very difficult to MAKE 3 meals and 2 snacks a day. If I'm going to stick to a diet, I need something very simple.

I'm just giving you my opinion. There are tricks to MAKING good food on little time, such as pre cooking several meals and freezing/refrigerating them for the week, buying decent meals, cans of tuna and bagging broccoli, etc. Still, the answer to your basic question is that the bar/shake diet is not a very efficient way to lose fat. Good luck.

Yeah. I guess I was just looking for an easy answer....

I was also curious; I read that you prefer to do cardio before breakfast. Why is that? I thought that would be a bad idea. Because 1.) You're metabolism wouldn't be going and 2.) Wouldn't your body burn it's protein if you don't have any food in your stomach?

1) Cardio gets metabolism going. Metabolism is just the process of breaking down and building up of materials in the body, and that process is employed for any kind of activity. And 2) it will use fat preferentially before it works into muscle in the absence of glucose/carbohydrates. If you have carbohydrates shortly before cardio, your body will burn that first and then work into fat stores. HOWEVER, if you have a lot of muscle or have problems keeping lean muscle, I would not advise cardio before breakfast. The exception is HIIT. That form of cardio requires an intensity that s hard to get to if you don't have some kind of carbohydrate fuel, and most of the fat burning benefit comes after the session is over.
One way to protect muscle while doing cardio before having breakfast is to have 6 to 20g of straight protein (whey, egg, etc) before cardio and it has been shown to spare muscle under catabolic conditions. BCAAs and glutimine help too.