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  1. #1
    RX MEMBER
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    Default Advice - Clen/Var Cycle,Workouts & Nutrition to Lower BF

    Hello, I’m looking for some insights on leaning out and if what I am doing and am experiencing is in line with other experiences out there.

    For the past 6 months I’ve been cleaning up my diet and am working out pretty intensely. I lift 3-4 days a week and on the non-lift days I’m usually on the treadmill for 45 minutes to an hour (low impact…usually walking at an incline etc). Lifting days, I start off with a 5 minute row, aerodyne or simply jump rope…. I’ve been going with high reps (12-15) increasing weight as needed. I usually throw a little jump rope in between sets to keep my heart rate up. Right now my week looks like:

    Sunday: Full Body Weight Training (high reps, jump rope)
    Monday: Cardio Tread Mill 45-50 minutes
    Tuesday: 700M Row, Weight training (deadlifts, pull-ups, step ups, hanging leg (knee to elbows)), end with a 1000M row
    Wednesday: Full Body Weight Training (high reps, jump rope)
    Thursday: Cardio - Cardio Tread Mill 45-60 minutes
    Friday: 700M Row, Weight training (walking lunges with 25lb dumbbells, explosive pushups, 3 rounds of - 1 minute air squats, L-sit 20seconds, Jump rope 1 minute)
    Saturday: Cardio - Cardio Tread Mill 45-60 minutes

    Some about me: I’m 41 y/o, 5’4” and 142lbs. I’ve not had a true BF measurement, however just got a BF scale and am at 24.6%. I know this is not correct and not so good, but it’s a measurement I can go by to see progress. Scales are my enemy, so tend to take it with a grain of salt.

    At this time my calorie count is at 1650…35% carbs, 35% Protein and 30% fats. Approximately 142g Protein, 145g Carb & 55g Fat. I track everything on myfitnesspal and have to say that I’m eating the cleanest I have in a very long time. I eat 5-6 small meals per day, every 2.5-3 hours. For years my calorie count was at 1300 and over the past month or two I’ve steadily increased it to the 1650 that I’m at now. I’ve been told I need more, however am confused because I want to lean out and would expect I would need to have a larger calorie deficit. But then, if I want to support my muscle, I think I should increase my calories beyond the 1650. I'm just not sure what to do here.

    I just started a Var cycle just over 2 weeks ago along with Clen (two weeks on two weeks off). I completed a var cycle a few years ago and was semi happy with the results however know a lot more now than I did back then. At two weeks in, I’m finding myself hungry….like all the time and my moods swing terribly to the point I can’t even stand myself! This is the part of Var that I do not like.

    I’m seeing changes and feel more cut now. My upper body is great (veins popping that never were there), legs are coming along, but midsection is where I struggle the most. For what I am doing, I feel I should be more cut! My weight has been holding at 140-142 for a real long time. Just can’t seem to get it to budge. Visually I see changes happening and can feel it in how my clothes fit. I know things take time, but the progress is slow considering I’ve been at this for just over 6 months now and with the recent addition of the Var/Clen cycle.

    I’m not sure if my calories are too low or my workouts are completely wrong for what I’m trying to accomplish….and that is to drop my BF! I love lifting and hate cardio, but change it good if that’s what I need to kick things into gear. I know the var/clen aren’t long term solutions for my goal……

    Does anybody have any thoughts where I can tweak things to get my BF to drop more? I feel I’m at a plateau, but busting my butt just to see minimal results.

    Any help would be appreciated! Thank you!

  2. #2
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    Interested in this too

  3. #3
    Super Moderator sassy69's Avatar
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    Hey amy & welcome to RX! Congrats on going after that goal!

    So a couple of things I can add from what you've said:

    1) You actually need to eat to lose bodyfat. It's not about caloric restriction as much as it is about feeding your body enough to get metabolism running optimally.

    If you've been eating at 1300 cals for a really long time, my guess is your body has adjusted it's metabolism to deal w/ near "starvation" levels - meaning your cal intake is below what your body wants to run efficiently, so your body is lowering your metabolic rate to preserve existing fat stores. What you want is to get your body humming w/ clean and sufficient nutrient intake to run, then an activity level that consumes those nutrients efficient and sets up a "burn rate" to continue that. The art of "fitness" is finding that perfect medium where everything runs. So if you've been running at subpar levels, your body has probably established a "set point" of bodyfat & weight that it can maintain.

    So w/ more cals you're probably seeing better results, but since you're posting, I assume you're not satisfied w/ where you are. How long have you been following the current diet / macronutrient breakdown - 1650 cals and sort of a "Zone Diet" balance. I think you're probably ok for total cals in the range of 1650-1850. For comparison I cut for competition on 1750 cals and I'm 5'7" and start cutting around 165 lb to stage weight of 148. But given that you've been doing it for a while, your body has adapted to it and no longer needs to respond to a change in what it is doing. I would suggest spiking your metabolism a bit by altering your macronutrient split. I'm a huge fan of carb cycling - there are a variety of ways to do a carb cycle, but one easy approach that I like is to keep the total cals constant - e.g. 1650. But over say a 3 day period, shift the carb / fat ratios. I'd consider upping the % of protein in your diet maybe up to 40%. And then over those 3 days start with a "high carb" day where most of your non-protein cals are coming from carbs, and none to a very small amount from fats. So an easy way to do this is to put 30-50 g of starchy carbs in say 4 of your meals. Put the remaining cals of your total cals into fats in the non-carb meals. The next day, remove 50 g of starchy carb from one of your meals, and replace it w/ the same cals in good quality fats. So your total cals remain the same, but you're shifting the total carb intake down. The next day remove another meal or two of carbs, replace w/ cals of fat. Continue for day 3 and day 4 you have zero to 1 meal w/ carbs and the rest of your non-protein cals come from good quality fats. Then on day 5, repeat day 1. Continue this cycle for 4-6 weeks.

    The point of this whole thing is to give your body a good high -carb day to get it humming and also help set it up for the expectation that there will sufficient carbs coming in to support your energy demands. The next day, you're feeding your body slightly less carbs - not enough that it would be noticed from an energy standpoint, and metabolism would continue burning carbs as it's preferred readily available energy source. By the time you get to day 4, you're supplying a pretty small amount of carb - e.g. 0-30 g - but your metabolism hasn't actually recognized the big drop in expected carbs and started slowing down metabolism. And by day 5, you respike your system w/ the high carb day again. The first couple times you hit the low carb day you may notice that you get flaky in the brain because the amount of both incoming carb and carb left in your body to burn has started diminishing. To that end, if you're not prepping for a competition, you are probably just fine keeping your "low carb" day to 30-50 g and not going down to zero starchy carbs. An example of what my low carb day might look like is just 1/2 c oatmeal w/ Meal 1. The rest of the day is protein, veggies and fats. Next "high carb" day might be 1/2 c oats w/ Meal 1, 4 oz sweet potato with Meal 3 & Meal 4 and 1/2 c rice w/ meal 5 or 6. And then each day of the cycle, remove one of those carb portions w/ equivalent fat cals - e.g. almonds or peanut butter, EVOO vinaigrette, avocado (I hate avocados so not an option for me).

    You can also fiddle w/ the total cals. You may find that your body wants up to 1800 cals instead of 1650. Especially if you are now running a cycle, you will have the energy and improved recovery to train harder / more, so I would consider upping the calories to a point where you aren't hungry all the time. And just simply, being hungry all the time can make you feel miserable, increase cortisol and then your body stalls out again. It is never supposed to be DIE w/ a T. It's supposed to be optimally fueling that amazing biochemical machine called "your body"!

    Cardio-wise - I see you're actually doing a lot of steady state cardio, but it looks like HIIT-style training? Mostly if you want to spike metabolism, throw in some interval-style training or cardio - just something that gets your heart rate going for a burst, and a short recovery time.

    I'd also make sure that you're getting sufficient recovery. Make sure you're sleeping well and enough. If you feel burnt out, you might want to take a couple of days off from everything to let your body recoup. A subtle issue can be CNS overload if you're not getting sufficient recovery time. I think you're ok but I wanted to call it out. People frequently forget about the importance of recovery if they are hell bent on being in the gym to burn cals. Just like the diet - your body runs brilliantly when you give it enough to continue running at a highly efficient rate. If you skimp on any of the 3 'pillars' of fitness - diet, training or recovery, the other two will suffer and your body will hit a point where it just stalls out or worse, may make you give it a break for a while by getting you sick or injured or just flat out burnt.

    RE: mood swings .. gonna guess this is hormonal in response to the var. To even out the estrogenic swings you might try one of the OTC approaches for managing PMS - DIM or evening primrose oil. If you're finding yourself w/ moods that are more "angry" or depressed, you can try loading Inositol. This is simply a B vitamin and is often used for treatment of depression or anxiety. (You can google "Inositol depression anxiety" for more details on that.) I recommend a powder form of Inositol (e.g. Swanson brand - costs about $10 online). The caps/pill form that I've seen are insanely expensive and always seem to be combined w/ some other thing that you probably wouldn't want to take in doses that you'd end up ingesting to get a "load" of the Inositol component. And I'd just say follow the recommended dosage of the powder inositol - mix it in w/ some juice or whatever drink. Tends to work pretty quickly to get rid of depression. Just for completeness, I would caveat this recommendation to probably check w/ your doctor if you are already taking any anti-depressant or anxiety medication.

    A comment on your response to the var - everyone responds differently to different compounds, and given that AAS is not a regulated product, who knows what purity you actually have in whatever product you have, or if it has been substituted w/ something else. Because you're talking about wild mood swings, I had this off-chance thought that you might have something else like dbols or something that has a higher aromitization rate than var does. However if it was dbol, I also think you'd be seeing a weight gain and increased water weight as well. Just a thought if you are very confident in your source and the product that you have.

    RE: Clen - read the section about clen in my article "Women & Drugs" stickied at the top of this forum (http://forums.rxmuscle.com/showthrea...before-posting) - I would highly recommend you include l-taurine in your supplement pile to help deal w/ cramping.

    And if you haven't read the Women & Drugs article, I'd suggest you read it just in general. Lots of useful info & references in it if you want to play on the dark side.

    In terms of your progress - I've had contest preps that started where I lost 8% bodyfat and 2 lbs by the scale. I would spend less time watching the scale and more time noting how your clothes fit and I would also take progress pictures. IMO you're probably making good progress but it's not being reflected in the scale. If you're hitting your training hard and never really did before, it is a great time for muscle growth - and we know that the same 1 lb of muscle is going to be much denser than fat so the scale may reflect a lack of weight loss even though you are dropping bodyfat % by volume.

    It is also important to note that everyone, especially women, tend to have different fat cell distributions. Some people tend to carry more fat cells in certain areas such that overall bodyfat % loss is proportional to the fat cells in each area of your body - meaning, for ex, women tend to have lower fat cell deposits in their upper bodies and more around the waist / hips / thighs (this is by design to help the female of the species better protect a fetus and store extra energy source .. aka bodyfat .. to help that w/ survival of both mother & fetus) - so if you lost 5% bodyfat, it will be more apparent in the upper body area and less apparent in the waist / hips / thighs area. So that just means keep doing what you are doing and understand that the areas w/ the higher fat cell concentration are dropping bodyfat, but will take a little longer.
    "The only way you can hurt the body is not use it. Inactivity is the killer and, remember, it's never too late."
    ~Jack Lalanne



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