The Long, Hard Road to Fat Loss Part 4: Losing Fat and Keeping Muscle

February-June 1999: 

My Goal and Why: This time my goal was to get as lean as possible according to skinfold measurements. I was working and training at a pretty good gym in Fargo ND called The Sports Center. It had lots of knowledgeable people. One person in particular was the general manager Doug Duran. He was very knowledgeable in nutrition and was very skilled at measuring body fat using a skin fold calipers. Since past weight loss attempts resulted in losing muscle, I wanted to make sure that I was losing body fat and keeping muscle. That year I was getting interested in getting into physique competitions but wasn’t quite ready. However, two of my classmates were getting married early that summer so I figured I would try to look as good as possible since I had not seen many of the people who were going to be there. Also, I had plenty of summer trips planned so I wanted to look good for those as well. 

What I Did to Achieve the Goal: For nutrition I took my body weight multiplied by ten which was 2,000 calories. I then broke it down into the Zone Diet by Barry Sears which was a pretty popular book then. The Zone is 40% carbs, 30% protein and 30% fat so it equaled 200 grams of carbs, 150 grams of protein and 65 grams of fat. Regarding resistance training, I did a 4-day training split that consisted of Chest/Triceps on Monday, Back on Tuesday, Legs on Thursday and Shoulders/Biceps on Friday. I did cardio first thing in the morning for 45 minutes five days/week at a low intensity. I got my body fat measured every 14-days and if the number went down I had a cheat meal that day. 

What Were the Results: I got to my leanest body comp at that point in my life and it was the best I ever looked. I went from about 200 lbs to 184 lbs in that 16-week time period and my body fat went from 11.4-5.8% according to Doug’s measurements. I got lots of compliments at the wedding and I had the most fun summer of my life. 

Knowing What I Now Know, What Would I do Different: As far as cardio, I would have added 1-2 days of HIIT cardio with sprint type workouts. As far as resistance training I would have periodized it much better. With the nutrition it was simple as I never had to drop the calories, however, I could have got leaner by going lower on the carbs as I got closer to the goal weight.