Workout v4.0 (HIIT) and Diet v5.0

In the Spring of 2013 I decided to focus solely on workouts and diets to promote additional fat loss until I reached a body fat percent that I was happy with. Over the last couple years I had been playing around with my diet enough to realize that for me there are two modes of dieting. One I can eat in manner to maintain strength and build muscle but I will not lose any body fat on this eating regiment. The other is to eat at a caloric deficit to lose body fat, however when I sustain this type of diet over an extended period of time I begin to lose some of my strength. If I had an outstanding genetic makeup like some people (Arnold Schwarzenegger for example) I could use my maintain diet to build muscle and lose fat simultaneously, however that isn't my body type so I have to use different eating methods to accomplish my goals.

At this point I had first decided to change my diet up. Ever since I had got back on track and had converted over to Intermittent Fasting (IF) I had been getting decent results and was steadily losing weight each week. I decided to add one more element to my diet, Low Carb. My goal was to keep my daily intake of carbs at around 50 grams or less and then on Saturday I could eat my fill of carbs to refill my muscles with glycogen. Glycogen is how carbs are stored as energy in your muscles. Glycogen is where your body pulls from first to burn energy, after you run out of glycogen it has to pull from other sources such as fat. This is why Low Carb is effective, because once you run out of glycogen you have to burn fat. However when doing exercise on a consistent basis it is important to have one or maybe even two days with carbs (preferably on a workout day) so that you aren't constantly exercising without glycogen stores in your muscles. Low Carb is an absolutely excellent way to lose fat but it can also cause muscle loss. If I was working out with depleted glycogen all the time due to the Low Carb it will hasten strength and muscle loss. This muscle loss occurs because of burning additional calories from the workouts and constantly eating at a caloric deficit and having no glycogen stores in your muscles causing your energy production from burning fat cells not to be able to keep up. When you get to this state of being energy starved from your fat not producing enough energy your body will start to "burn" muscle. This effect is the same as what happens to starving people and why their muscles are so atrophied. So to avoid my body losing muscle I made sure to have at least one day to refill my glycogen with carbs.

Along with this additional change up I decided to give HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) workouts a try. I had been doing long 30min - 45min cardio sessions, these were the first exercises I changed over to HIIT style. Instead of running on the treadmill, or whatever machine I was on, for those extended durations I would run fast for 1 minute and then do a slow jog for 1 minute to catch my breath. I would repeat this process until I had done 8 sets of running with jogging at the start and finish for warm up and cooldown. This lowered my cardio routines down to 17 minutes. Not only does it save you a bunch of time, but I still got a superb workout because of how much energy I exerted while doing the fast running. If you want to try this make sure you build up your stamina first before just trying to jump straight into HIIT style cardio. Either do steady slow running or begin with shorter run intervals like 30 seconds running and 90 seconds jogging. I also went to a HIIT style of weight lifting called Hundreds. In hundreds You do 10 sets of 10 reps in quick succession with low weight (enough though that it is still a bit difficult to complete 100 reps) then you follow up with like 3 sets of 5 with a heavier weight.

With these combined efforts of low carb and HIIT workouts I felt that this was a good combination for me in being successful at burning fat. I lost quite a bit of additional fat and lowered my weight even more. With this combination of diet and exercise I got down to as low as 191 lbs. Just remember though if you want to plan out a  similar diet and exercise regiment make sure it will be something that is designed for you. You will want to make sure that it will be something catered to your nutritional needs and that the exercise routine will be something your current level of fitness can handle.