What percentage range do you use with clients?

I’m *very* confused by the range of notions on what women who want a lean look ought to do. Just wondering if you’d echo the advice you gave Donald to women who *don’t* want to gain muscle mass. I only want to avoid significant LBM loss, and lose fat.

Maybe I’m missing something, but taking together what you’ve said here and in Weight Training for Fat Loss pt 1 and Exercise and Weight/Fat Loss Pt 2, it sounds like a woman who wants to get lean should look at 1) diet + metabolic circuits or 2) diet + cardio + low volume/low rep strength (since you say the metabolic advantage of having more muscle mass is negligible). Which seems to counter the increasingly common dictum that women should lift heavy, and reminds me more of the classic sort of advice we used to get. (Lots of cardio or metabolic workouts with light weights, and diet.)

So far I’ve lost 30 pounds by cutting out white food (except for yogurt, lol) and having a 300 cal deficit, doing C25K 3 x /week, and doing what I thought were metabolic workout DVDs (Jillian Michaels) with 3-5 lb weights 2x/week. I’m still at about 30% body fat, though, with a BMI of 21.

I know I’ve got muscle- under the (literal) handful of flab on my thigh, I can feel that my quads and hams are rock hard. I can actually see them when I pull on the flab, which is looser than it used to be, weirdly. Same for abs (though, less flab). My arms and shoulders are already as defined as I’d ever want them – I think I actually gain muscle pretty easily.

(If you think straight cardio would do it as good as or better than metabolic workouts, I’m now limited to swimming, walking, and rower or elliptical, due to multiple injuries from my C25K attempt… are these good enough, if done at a high intensity?)

Would really appreciate clarification, and I apologize if you’ve already addressed this elsewhere or if this constitutes a ‘hijack’. Am grateful for your informative articles – thank you for sharing your work!

Nell

Thank you for the great work and effort put in into educating those of us who are looking to enhance our physiques in a natural and healthy way, kudos to you!

With that being said and referring to this article, I am currently doing 3 meals as my calories are low and do not want to extend to 6 small meals, I just can’t take it especially when dieting down. Now as per working out, I do use Option 2. So this is how I work out:

Monday:
Shoulders and Quads (Superset), i.e; One set Squat followed by one set of Military Press – Heavy 5-6 reps, usually for legs I go max 7-8 reps. I do only 3 Heavy working sets, 3 diff exercises for each of the bodypart followed by 2 last Metabolic working sets which 15 reps just flushing my muscles out. I am totally SPENT by then… After that I may walk for another 15mins to flush out lactic acid…

Tuesday:
Chest and Back (Supersets as above)

Wednesday:
Cardio – Moderate Intensity for 45 mins

Thursday:
Arms and Hamstrings (Supersets as above)

Friday:
Cardio – Moderate Intensity for 45 mins

Now I do all this in a fasted state which means that my last meal is at 4 or 5pm and my first meal is after my morning training between 8-9am. My energy comes from taking VPX Meltdown, Glutamine and AAKG ( Arginine Alpha Ketogluterate)

Am I doing this the right? Should I cut out the AAKG? This is bloating me and giving me that fat look on my waist area. Does this insulin and spikes it so that it blunts the catechalomines?

Please help as I value your advice. It is so hard to gain such good knowledge out in this part of the world, so my only connection is the internet! So any help in my direction would be highly appreciated.

Many Thanks!

Roland
(Kuwait)

so the reason why we are doing this kind of training is obviously to deplete glycogen stores and hence promote fat oxidation.

what’s the effect of milk (with the whey powder) post workout? let me give a few more specifics. on a metabolic training day, i’m restricting total carbs to around 50g or lower. some of the carbs comes from skim milk powder (50g which has around 25g of carbs). and around half of that SMP (equivalent of 12g of lactose) will be right after my workout with whey.

what’s the effect of the milk carbs both post workout as well as during the rest of the day in relation to fat oxidation/glycogen?

Heavy Work
Dumbless press = 2sets
Incline Press = 2 sets
Shoulder Press = 2 sets
Lateral Raise = 2 sets
Tricep pulldowns = 3 sets

Metabolic Work
(the same exact exercises in the same order, only for higher reps and less weight?)

somebody plz help! thanks