Losing Body Fat without losing strength/power?

waterford1988

Is it possible to lose body fat, without losing strength and power? I started weights seriously in january and I was always on the light side. I think I was about 67kg. Now after almost a year of weights I am 80 kg's. In an effort to put on weight I was advised to take op the see food diet (if you see food eat it!).

Now I would like to continue getting stronger. My 1 rep max's are
Bench:80kg
Squat:105kg
Deadlift:130kg

However I have noticed my body fat % increase from 15% to 21%. It's mainly come on below my belly button. I have 2 relatively intensive cardio training sessions with my team per week and am in the gym normally 3 but sometimes 2 times a week.

Should I start adding cardio to my weights workouts? Should I be running a calorie deficit? I am fairly cardiovascularly fit, I presume some HIIT should be added? Like jog for 2 mins on treadmill at 13 km p/h then step it up for a min to 16-17 km p/h, then back down again and continue in that cycle for maybe 15-20 mins?

As usual any advice would be greatly appreciated...thanks!

corkcomp

you need to post up a typical days diet for starters... many people will tell you there will be strength loss if you run any sort of calorie deficit, which will be required for fat loss but imo its not as simple as that.. you need to reduce calories by a couple of hundred only for starters and ditch the eat all you see diet - keep the cals up but keep em clean

Transform

HIIT is NOT going at 13kph and then 17kph - thats a tempo session in my book.

More like 30-60secs sprint outside jog back and repeat 5-6 times. If you can do HIIT for more than even 10mins its NOT a HIIT session.

Longer interval sessions are NOT the same as HIIT.

If you have gained body fat all the cardio in the world isn't going to make a massive difference - a better diet will.

mrpink6789

Transform wrote: »

HIIT is NOT going at 13kph and then 17kph - thats a tempo session in my book.

More like 30-60secs sprint outside jog back and repeat 5-6 times. If you can do HIIT for more than even 10mins its NOT a HIIT session.

Longer interval sessions are NOT the same as HIIT.

If you have gained body fat all the cardio in the world isn't going to make a massive difference - a better diet will.

Sorry to hijack the thread but I was curious about this point.

I do what I considered HIIT but now you have me worried!

My HIIT would consist of 20 minutes in total, 1 minute on, 2 minutes off on the cross trainer.

During this time I would be going at roughly 100rpm for on, and 75 ish for off. Heart rate would get up to 175-178 in most cases and my maximum heart rate would be 192.

Now I'm quite bo**oxed after it and do kill myself but is it considered more long interval training?

waterford1988

Ok i think the fat has began to come on since September when college started again. I have some long days where I cant go home so I end up having 2 brown rolls spaced out between the day with ham, cheese, chicken, lettuce. maybe one at 12 and another at 4. I normally have porridge and a protein shake with skimmed milk for breakfast.
the long days in college studying are a killer because I find I need lucozade and or a chocolate bar to keep me going in the library.

Should I be looking at a calorie deficit? So the cardio won't make that much difference?

mrpink6789

I've dropped a lot of fat from lifting heavy (well heavy for me :P) using stronglifts 5X5, with a lot of cardio and a farily decent diet. diet wise i cut a lot of bad carbs and included protein in each meal. I have been operating at a calorie deficit but I want to change my diet now as I am stalling on a lot of the weights I'm doing.

Transform

waterford1988 wrote: »

Ok i think the fat has began to come on since September when college started again. I have some long days where I cant go home so I end up having 2 brown rolls spaced out between the day with ham, cheese, chicken, lettuce. maybe one at 12 and another at 4. I normally have porridge and a protein shake with skimmed milk for breakfast.
the long days in college studying are a killer because I find I need lucozade and or a chocolate bar to keep me going in the library.

Should I be looking at a calorie deficit? So the cardio won't make that much difference?

no you should start with cleaning up your food quality first and lots more cardio is NOT the answer

Transform

mrpink6789 wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread but I was curious about this point.

I do what I considered HIIT but now you have me worried!

My HIIT would consist of 20 minutes in total, 1 minute on, 2 minutes off on the cross trainer.

During this time I would be going at roughly 100rpm for on, and 75 ish for off. Heart rate would get up to 175-178 in most cases and my maximum heart rate would be 192.

Now I'm quite bo**oxed after it and do kill myself but is it considered more long interval training?

HIIT is ALL out efforts, interval training has its place as does slow steady cardio but if you are doing HIIT even just 20-30secs done with say 60secs recovery x 5-6 rounds is going to leave you toasted - just do not do this all the time as you will burn out if this is the only training you are doing i.e. need weights, metcons etc

yizorselves

Drink more water. Do more sprints uphill

Tigger

only eat good real food don't eat so much carbs that you aren't needing them
stop drinking (so much)
lift compound and well (bench overhead press, deadlift and squat <lots of squats>)
do dips press ups and pullups
in three months you wont know yourself

Mellor

mrpink6789 wrote: »

During this time I would be going at roughly 100rpm for on, and 75 ish for off. Heart rate would get up to 175-178 in most cases and my maximum heart rate would be 192.

Those easy and hard sections are far too close in difficultly, its closer to steady state then HIIT.
If your efforts are close like that, it means you aren't going hard enough, and you don't need to recover that much.

The hard part should be balls to the wall, if doing 1min easy, 30s hard, then you shule be barely able to get past 30 seconds (ditto if doing 2min/1min which is prob the max end). You should literally crumble back to a crawl just so you recover in time for the next one.

Transform

Mellor wrote: »

Those easy and hard sections are far too close in difficultly, its closer to steady state then HIIT.
If your efforts are close like that, it means you aren't going hard enough, and you don't need to recover that much.

The hard part should be balls to the wall, if doing 1min easy, 30s hard, then you shule be barely able to get past 30 seconds (ditto if doing 2min/1min which is prob the max end). You should literally crumble back to a crawl just so you recover in time for the next one.

totally agree

Lantus

You NEED to know how much fuel goes into your body in a day. You also need to know what your daily calorific needs are based on your body weight, height, age and daily requirements.

e.g. If you need say 2500kcal (inc exercise) and your eating 3000kcal then your body will store the excess as fat, simples.

Losing fat requires a 'slight' calories defeceit of around 15-20% of you dailt calorie needs. You should still maintain your existing muscle while achieving this.

shg101

mrpink6789 wrote: »

Sorry to hijack the thread but I was curious about this point.

I do what I considered HIIT but now you have me worried!

My HIIT would consist of 20 minutes in total, 1 minute on, 2 minutes off on the cross trainer.

During this time I would be going at roughly 100rpm for on, and 75 ish for off. Heart rate would get up to 175-178 in most cases and my maximum heart rate would be 192.

Now I'm quite bo**oxed after it and do kill myself but is it considered more long interval training?

My HIIT training is old-style Tabata:

- 5 mins warm-up on treadmill
- Treadmill up to max speed and max incline
- 20 secs on, 10 secs rest
- Repeat 8 times
- 5 mins slow walk to cool down (because I am utterly spent/almost dead on my feet)

Total time including WU and CD = 14 mins.

These are absolutely all-out efforts: a huge load on the heart, lungs and legs. What you are doing is long intervals. Not wrong or bad, but not HIIT IMO. Much less intense than the max intensity for 20 secs.

I have started the wife on exercise bike intervals: 30 secs max effort, 2 mins active recovery, repeat 6-8 times. Recovery time is longer (4x) the work time, which is against the Tabata principles, but I don't want to kill her. Or do I........

metamorphosis

i think some people need to realise that HIIT is 'high intensity interval training' and not 'high intensity machine calibrated to a certain resistance training'

It doesnt matter what level resistance etc the machine is set to, once you are going flat out for a short period of time til you cannot go on and then recover and repeat. Really shouldn't last too long.