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GENERAL
What about day 85 and on?
by Russ Gregory Oct 14, 2008
Brian Deeds asked me to provide some insight to those that complete a challenge as to what to expect once the challenge is over. Here’s how I answered him:
When you complete a challenge and get your six-pack by driving your body down to 8-10% body fat, you take this little pill every day that you find in a fitness magazine or on a late night TV ad and then you manage to stay that way the rest of your life … NOT.
The way to keep your fit body is to keep doing what you did to get that body in the first place.
The truth is, though, that your body NEEDS some fat and if you try to keep it at 8-10% body fat your body will rebel with HUGE cravings for carbohydrates – something tantamount to the shakes alcoholics gets when they go without a drink for too long.
A comfortable body fat for males is 12-15% and a comfortable range for females is 15-18% body fat. All body builders and figure competition champions know that they shouldn’t maintain their competition figures 24/7/365. When they aren’t preparing for a competition they eat one way. When they are preparing for a competition, they eat another way. The biggest difference is carbohydrates – more being consumed during the off season.
When I was in the 2005 competition I ultimately worked myself down to 9% body fat. For me, the competition lasted five months. From July 4th 2005 until January 5th 2006 I was in competition mode. I adhered strictly to the eating, weights and cardio portions of the Body-for-LIFE program. I also blogged daily on the BFL web site for almost 18 months (the Law of Reciprocation). After the 5th of January in 2006 I kept up the workouts but ventured off the diet ever so slightly. I settled at around 15% body fat and felt undeprived.
When I started this recent competition I was at around 15% body fat. I will drive that down to 8 or 9% again in the next 9 weeks. But I understand that I will not hold that BF for the rest of my life – unless a drastic change occurs in my body metabolism … naturally.
Look. If you were ever fat or obese you have the disadvantage of a proliferation of fat cells that will not ever go away. The only thing you can do is shrink them. Each of them is a cell that needs to be fed. Cells that are not fed die and become gangrene and threaten your life, so you want these cells to live – you just don’t want them to get bigger. You want to feed them ONLY what they need to survive when you are in competition mode. To keep them from complaining too loudly about being starved to death, you want to feed them just enough to keep the complaints to a minimum when the competition is over. If you eat like you are in competition 80% of the time and like you feel like eating 20% of the time, you will settle into a comfortable body fat and still remain relatively fit. So out of a 168 hour week, you will eat healthy meals for about 135 of those hours and go off plan for only 33 of those hours. This is a realistic approach.
All of the above applies ONLY if you keep working out six days a week with the same energy that you worked out with during the challenge period.
As soon as you stop the HIIT cardio for more than three days, your anaerobic threshold will start to go down and your body metabolism will slow down. This means your body will use up less energy during the day than it did before and burn less fat in a sedentary state.
As soon as you stop lifting weights, your muscles begin to shrink and the furnace you used to use to burn fat in a sedentary state becomes smaller – again, burning less fat when you are in a sedentary state.
This is along way of saying: After you complete the challenge, keep hitting the weights and cardio like you did during the challenge, but feel free to have a free day and a third. Here’s another way to look at it. Out of 42 meals in a 7 day week, 8 of them can be free meals.
My experience is that if you venture too far from the above plan, you will gradually grow back to the size you were when you started your first challenge. I know. It happened to me between my 2000 challenge and my 2005 challenge. Since then I’ve used the 80/20 rule for my meal plan and have managed to stay within 10 to 15 pounds of my competition weight.
Ultimately YOU decide what YOU want to look like. The above plan tells you HOW get to the point where you look and feel the best you can.
I hope this helps someone.
Russ |
