Well down to 196 lbs 12% Body Fat. What do I do now?

[88keys]

Began at 230 lbs 19% body fat in April.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2428393


My personal goal was to at or below 10% body fat. As it stands right now I'm pretty close. I've been focusing on upper body workouts and I've been doing well with those. I mostly use dumb bells and smith machines. I had a lot of muscle in my legs (from being really heavy at one point) and it was disproportionate so I decided to not do legs for awhile. Which wasn't a bad idea because I can now comfortably wear regular pants instead of relaxed fit now.

My waist is 32" inches now and I really don't see getting any smaller than that.

My guess is that I should be reach 10% body fat at around 190lbs if I continue to lose weight.


My diet and exercise routine is mostly the same as it was when I started except that I'm now eating around 2200 calories per day (instead of 2500) because weight loss at this stage takes ALOT more patience.

As it stands right now I go to the gym 5 times per week.

4 of those days I do 30 mins of high intensity cardio and 30 mins of weights.

The 5th day is a 10 minute session of high intensity cardio followed by 30 mins of weights, a 10 minute break then I go back and do 10 minutes of low intensity cardio and finish up with about 30 minutes of weights.

Once I reach my body fat goals should I just cut out the cardio all together or just reduce my sessions (either by frequency or session length)?

Or should I just keep the same routine and just increase my caloric intake?

And if that's the case, about how many calories should I consume per day at this stage?

 

[bradley]

How are you measuring body fat? Probably the best way is a properly calibrated dexa for men. I see lots of people at the gym say they are hovering around 10% and aren't anywhere close. If you are at 12% congrats; you are part of an exclusive club in the US. At 14% you should start seeing veins below the belly button.

Getting below 10% is tough... personally, I would look into intermittent fasting and all it entails. Get yourself into ketosis and you'd be surprised how much fat you are still holding. Your body will start burning fat while doing absolutely nothing. Ketosis will also greatly increase brown fat and overall mitochondrial density.

 

[Zivic]

How are you measuring body fat? Probably the best way is a properly calibrated dexa for men. I see lots of people at the gym say they are hovering around 10% and aren't anywhere close.
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I completely agre

If you are at 12% congrats; you are part of an exclusive club in the US. At 14% you should start seeing veins below the belly button.

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if you have vascularity below your belly button you are well below 14... at 14 you should have fairly visible abs, but vascy abs>>>?? not quite

 

[88keys]

I kinda have visible upper abs but I have excess skin in that area so how I'm going to look vs someone who has never been extremely obese (387 lbs in my case) is a bit different. To be honest I'm not sure if I'll ever have a true six pack without surgery.
Body fat was measured with calipers by a golds gym trainer.

 

[Carson Dyle]

How tall?

Just stay with it. That last six pounds is relatively meaningless, except in meeting a goal. Make exercise and sensible eating a routine part of your lifestyle for as long as you live. At some point you shouldn't feel like you're sacrificing or working toward an end point.

It's good that you're thinking about what happens once you meet your goal, but why do you feel you'd want to cut out cardio, or anything else? Get healthy, then get healthier.

I'm of the opinion that, except in extreme cases, you can't be too thin. If you're 6 ft tall, 180 is better than 190 and 170 is better than 180. Less stress on joints, easier to move, more sports and hobbies that you can do for fun.

 

[88keys]

I'm 6'0" and pretty broadly framed. My waist measures 32" now and I really don't want to get too much smaller. Maybe one more inch so pants will fit better but I don't want to end up looking like Johnny Bravo lol.

Looks like I'm on another slide and I hit 195 today. I might lose one more pound and then I'll be stuck at this weight for about 2-3 weeks.

Ive also noticed that weight loss at this stage is more sporatic and not steady like it used to be. I'll plateau for about 2 weeks and then I'll suddenly lose 2 or 3 lbs and then plateau again.

As for the cardio... well I'm sick of it and I'd like to focus more on lifting.
I'll probably go for 190 or so and see where I'm at on body fat.

 

[Zivic]

I'm 6'0" and pretty broadly framed. My waist measures 32" now and I really don't want to get too much smaller. Maybe one more inch so pants will fit better but I don't want to end up looking like Johnny Bravo lol.

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You could be so lucky. there are tons of guys that would kill for a taper any where near that.

Not sure what I am now as I haven't really worn anything but sweats in a decade, but back in my younger years I had a near 20 drop.. 50 jacket, 30 pant and I didn't look anything like johnny bravo. Then again, I trained legs

 

[88keys]

The thing is that I have about 43" chest and with a 32 inch waist right now and it's getting hard to find clothes that fit me well. Button down and polo shirts that fit my shoulders and chest rarely fit my waist and vice versa. I suspect that most men's clothing is designed to accommodate a certain amount of abdominal fat and when you are big on top and you wear anything that's baggy in the middle it will make you look much heftier than you actually are.


However I did find that those high dollar designer brands (i.e. A&F, A87, etc.) fit me very nicely. It's just that I really hate being a trendy douche. Though, I'll admit that I have a few items from their line but they don't have "ABERCROMBIE AND FITCH" in huge capital letters on them and they look nice and were purchased on sale which makes it acceptable.

But yeah and more of a taper is gonna cause more problems when it comes to clothes.

 

[Koing]

You won't be able to down size your chest or width at the top easily. You will have to pretty much not weight train and lose a lot of weight to drop size.

Good job on the fat loss.

Visible abs will easily be had at around 12% for most people.

The % number is pretty much pointless. As long as you are healthy, feel good about yourself then that is all that matters. My original goal was to hit sub 10% and get to single digits. I got down to 10.3% at 83.5kg in a bodpod machine. The error is like -/+ 2-3%. I'm not paying £250 for a dexa. My bro was shredded down to 6.7% or thereabouts on the same day. My other mate was 16.5% and was SHOCKED. He isn't fat by any means. He was just shocked to see the reading. He isn't anywhere near as muscular as myself or my bro though.

Cut down on the cardio a bit. I'm beginning to do 10mins on the stair machine after my weight sessions but I end up cycling 15minutes anyway for work each day. Bodyweight is down to 94.4kg from 96kg and trimming up a tad. It's taken ages to bulk back up from 84kg up to 97kg. Probably the best part of 10-11months. Granted I wasn't bulking like mad and I wanted to take it easy. I use to weigh 99kg in 2012 with a 38inch waist LOL.

Koing