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Old 09-13-2006, 08:17 AM
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D_M_S D_M_S is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Los Angeles, CA
Posts: 47
Default 10 Weeks to Single Digit Body Fat!

One year ago, on Sept. 17, I weighed 395 pounds and was in horrible shape! I now weight 228 pounds and have 15% body fat. While I'm ecstatic with this progress, I still have some work left to do and I'm starting a journal with my quest to get to 9% body fat and lose most of my belly fat in the process.

I've done quite a bit of research on how I'm going to lose my fat and it has confirmed what we all know: the key to losing fat is long & slow exercise. The intensity must be low in order to allow your body to burn fat as the primary source instead of glycogen and, ultimately, muscle. So, the majority of my plan will focus on exercising (mostly running) according to a heart rate monitor and making sure that I never leave my fat-burning zone. The main inspiration for this is an article by Mark Allen (the champion triathlete) on heart rate training and building the aerobic base.

So, here are the numbers that I have come up with and I'm posting them here for feedback. With my current numbers, I am carrying about 35 pounds of fat on my frame. In order to get to 9% BF, I need to drop that to about 20 pounds - so I have 15 pounds of fat to lose.

As for my heart rate, with the numbers in the article and other numbers I have seen, a HR of 150-151 still keeps me in the fat-burning zone. So, that's the highest HR that I should see during my runs.

I plan to use running as my main form of exercise and my current training has shown me that I can keep my heart rate at 150 while still running about 5MPH (12 minute miles). So, I can burn about 725 calories per hour with approximately 80% of those calories being fat calories. That means, each hour I will burn 580 fat calories. Since each gram of fat is 9 calories, I will be burning 64 grams of fat/hour or 0.14 pounds. So, putting it all together, I will need about 100 hours of low intensity exercise in order to reach my desired body fat.

My goal is to complete this in 10 weeks, so I will be doing my exercise for 2 hours each day, five days per week. I know that this sounds like a lot, but its really not - here's why: The low-intensity is the key to all of this. at 150 BPM, quite frankly, I'm barely breathing. Plus, keep in mind that I'm not starting this "cold". I've been exercising for the greater part of the last year and have really upped my running. I can currently run a mile in under 8 minutes, 3 miles in 25 minutes and I have completed a 10-mile run in 2 hours. So, while the daily time of 2 hours may eventually prove to be monotonous, I have no doubt that I'm in shape enough to try this.

The other component of this, of course, is my diet. I'm currently very disciplined when it comes to my diet. I eat very clean and don't have many holes in it. I don't eat fried foods, I don't eat candy bars and I haven't had fast-food in over a year. I mostly focus on proteins and my fiber intake is pretty good. Overall, I take in about 2300 calories/day which is right around what my BMR would recommend for maintenance. So, I actually plan to make very few changes to my current diet. Keeping somewhere near 2300 calories with small, frequent meals should keep my metabolism right where I want it.

This plan will all start, ironically, on Sept. 17 and I will run it for 10 weeks. I will be posting my "start" pics at that time. However, I've decided to post it right now in order to get some feedback from you guys. This plan makes sense to me and I've checked the numbers twice, but I'm not beyond thinking that there may be some gaping holes in this plan. Any comments on my numbers and plan are welcome.
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