Hello there and a few questions about TKD & BFL!

[Esperantisto]

Am new to this board though I've been hanging out on a similar board in the Netherlands.
My background is not BB at all, but cycling. I've been struggling with obesity for a long time despite cycling lots.
Since about 4 weeks I'm following a ketogenic diet, which I changed into a cyclical ketogenic diet 2 weeks ago and which will be changed again next week into a targeted ketogenic diet to diminish carb cravings after carboloading.
I have started more or less a Body-for-Life program but due to logistics and availability I am doing 2 cardio exercises on the same day as I work out and one on the following day
in week 1
mon upper body am aquajogging pm
tues rest
wed lower body & abs & spinning lesson am
thurs rest
fri upper body am
sat spinning lesson & depletion work out (is it necessary for TKD??) ..
sun rest
week 2
mon lower body & abs am aquajogging pm
tues rest
wed upper body & spinning am
thurs rest
fri lower body & abs am perhaps spining pm
sat rowing or spinning am

I'm a bit puzzled what to do on Saturday after a lower body workout on Friday. I was so sore from 2 new exercise I included to improve my butt (squat lunge with dumbbells, step up and one additional set on the standing gluteus machine). The first 2 exercises I've done in the past with my fysiotherapist for healing a foot injury (fasciatis plantar(s?)is) after having tried to burn a lot of cals by skipping rope.. not a good idea.

My cycling background is both practical, leisure and sports.
Practical: don't have a car and simply do my shopping and visit the gym at 9 miles by bike.
Leisure: I've cycle-toured for 1 year in Northern America (2000-2001) and just came back from 3 months in Brazil.
Sports: took up long-distance cycling between 1996-1999 and discovered it was a great way to lose weight even when you keep eating junkfood.. once I quit, I gained a lot of weight again.. next year I hope to complete a 750 mile nonstop cycling event with 10 000 m of climbing (33 K feet?) in 90 hours.. so want to get FIT, LEAN AND MEAN! That's a lot when you start at 36% BF...

So girls I could need your help! It's more fun to be in a group with more women as well...

[Esperantisto]

So, why is nobody responding?

[TrishB]

Sorry, sometimes it takes us all a few days to get caught up on the new threads.
Alot of what you told is what you used to do and what you hope to do. Hopefully we can help you with what you are doing right now.

1. Keto diets....you can find alot of info here regarding them. Personally I find them too restrictive to stick with for very long. I prefer a sensible diet....eat 6-7 small low fat meals a day consisting of protein and complex carbs.

2. Cardio.....if you can, do it on days when you are not doing weights. So that would give you 3-4x week of cardio. Do what you enjoy, but really give your heart a workout.

3. Weightlifting.....If you are lifting heavy give each body part 5-7 days to recover. If you are not lifting heavy, start doing it. Building muscle will increase the metabolism and help with BF loss.

And example of my latest routine...

Mon...cardio, 20 min HIT -- abs
Tues....chest/back
Wed... cardio, 20 min HIT
Thurs....legs
Fri ...cardio, 20 min HIT---abs
Sat...shoulders/ tricep/biceps
Sunday ...rest

You will different ideas here.....just read alot of the threads and find what works best for you.
Good Luck
Trish

[Esperantisto]

Originally posted by TrishB
2. Cardio.....if you can, do it on days when you are not doing weights. So that would give you 3-4x week of cardio. Do what you enjoy, but really give your heart a workout.

3. Weightlifting.....If you are lifting heavy give each body part 5-7 days to recover. If you are not lifting heavy, start doing it. Building muscle will increase the metabolism and help with BF loss.

And example of my latest routine...

Mon...cardio, 20 min HIT -- abs
Tues....chest/back
Wed... cardio, 20 min HIT
Thurs....legs
Fri ...cardio, 20 min HIT---abs
Sat...shoulders/ tricep/biceps
Sunday ...rest

Trish

Thank you Trish..
I am following the Body for Life program and have a problem with combining the two.. it asks for upper body & lower body plus abs WOs. in an alternating cycle of mon-wed-fri-mon-wed-fri. They describe the efforts in a scale of 5 to 10 (all out).. so though I just started lifting, I try to do my best.. (have RSI and weak wrists/ankle as well, so I include some rehab exercises and a wrist curl). Trouble is then being sore.. eg. I am now still sore from Monday's UBWO and Monday's cardio.
I thought it would be beneficial to give my muscles a rest for 36 hrs rather than just 24 hrs since both aquajogging and spinning aren't just cardio exercises, but include some quite taxing resistance WOs for the legs (and in the case of aquajogging arms too).
I can try to accommodate the cardio by switching the WOs around to Tues-Thurs-Sat.
BTW, I was reading some threads, among which topic of the week with regrets.. they said to start with compound exercises and wait with isolated exercises until later on.. so it seems OK to stick with upper & lower rather than devote more time to each body part (e.g. your schedule or a friend's schedule who after 10 years takes a slightly different body part every day).
Or am I wrong? a newbie's schedule shouldn't be like an oldhand's schedule right?

[tcs1366]

One thing with BFL - they don't want you to do cardio on weight days. The training days should be so intense that you wont be able to do cardio afterwards....

on some, you show doing lower body and spinning in that evening.

i do see that you have 3 days off per week, BFL is usually 6 days per week with one rest

here is a great BFL web site - it goes into a lot of detail

http://www.hussman.org/fitness

[Esperantisto]

Currently I only do 2 spinning sessions..one on wednesday AFTER the workout and one on Saturday when the BFL has no workout.
Limitations: only 2 morning spinning lessons available: it takes me 2x1 hr to arrive at the gym by bicycle (no public transport) and only 2 aquajogging lessons on either mon or wed evening..

Last week was my second BFL week and the LBWO had been so intense that I felt too sore to do a spinning lesson on Sat mornin. Hence my thought was to switch around the spinning lesson once every 2 weeks to Friday evening as DOMS will not have set in the same evening..

I always thought that resting your muscles was a good idea..

The previous 2 weeks I was doing a cyclical ketogenic diet, but I had 2 problems with that:
- lack of energy for the sometimes very intense 45 min spinning lessons
- a crazy carb craving on the 2-3 days after carboloading

I've heard from others that you EITHER do a full-out CKD diet with the workouts & cardio planned for them OR a TKD diet which is more feasible for BFL. I am much more at ease with a diet revolving around my workout & cardio schedule than the other way round.. it's the first time (after one Herbalife diet where I just replaced a junkfood diet with their products) I'm really watching what I eat so closely. But having your workouts revolve around the diet is a bridge too far for me..

The TKD is working wonders... i was crazily energetic this morning and went overboard during the spinning lesson (doing more and faster jumps than usual).

However, in case I really must do some cardio on the other days I've made yet another plan

Monday am: UBWO or LBWO, aquajogging in the evening
Tuesday am: (on empty stomach) race to the local swimming pool, sedate laps
Wednesday am : LBWO or UBWO, spinning lesson
Thursday am: 20 min local bike ride to a small hill which I will climb repeatedly 5-10 times.
Friday am: UBWO or LBWO
Saturday am: spinning lesson and some additional weight training to get into mild depletion as I will do a minor carboload (just 1 meal)

I've heard that my gym has plans for Friday morning spinning lessons, hence this would enable a Tues-Thurs-Sat weight training and Mon-Wed-Friday cardio..

[TrishB]

I did BFL for about 8 months...totally by the book. I did not deviate at all from the program. For me, as well as quite a few others, it worked great. I dropped from 26% to 13.5%BF, and went from a tight size 10 to a size 2. The only thing that I found lacking was that really good muscle definition.
I still follow the principles of the diet pretty well, but I do the workout program now differently to increase the muscle. For that, I get tons of advice on this site.

It sounds like you are all over the place with the diet and workouts....not really following BFL at all. Why not follow the BFL...diet and exercise program to the letter. Do it for a month and see how it works for you.

[Esperantisto]

Sorry Trish, I'm a carb addict and have to wean off my addiction first.. hence why I stick to the ketodiet.
The Body for Life I do because I heard a lot about it...
I was doing 3 spinning lessons /week last winter until I hurt my left foot by skipping rope this February, which is still there and makes other types of cardio a bit difficult. Actually my BFL isn't very BFL as my cardio is too long.. but who cares. And because of CKD I was supposed to do a 4th depletion WO.. once I'm done with this, I'll take a more traditional split but for now upper-lower works fine..

Eating a ketogenic diet is simply the best proven way to lose body fat without losing too much muscle.. it has become the most effective cutting diet for bb-ers.. if it works for them, it should work for me.. with the adaptation towards the more intense cardio by adding maltodextrin to the whey shakes I prepare for the pre- and postworkout meals (I cycle to the gym in 45 mins in a slow pace to get the fats burning and then get my first breakfast, just before the WO).

I'm afraid that when I go back to a BFL-style diet i'd start craving carbs too much.. this already happened when I carbo-loaded on Saturday.. that's another reason for switching to TKD, less or no carboloading on Saturday, so no uncontrollable cravings.

Eventually I will add back more carbs to the diet by adding legumes and fruit.. I miss these more than the bread, rice or pasta.. but that will be AFTER the end of BFL..

[Amanda]

I can't comment on the BFL, other than saying that I know people who have had great results on it.

However something with the cardio. I don't own a car either, & I walk everywhere. Some time back, I was moaning to a trainer about the fact that I get on a treadmill & walk & walk, but can't lose any weight. He said that my body is used to walking, & knows how to do it economically, & that for weight loss, I would need to do another sort of cardio e.g. cycling, or elliptical. When I thought about it, it makes sense.

Maybe you need to do something other that cycling for your cardio?

[Esperantisto]

Originally posted by Amanda
I can't comment on the BFL, other than saying that I know people who have had great results on it.

However something with the cardio. I don't own a car either, & I walk everywhere. Some time back, I was moaning to a trainer about the fact that I get on a treadmill & walk & walk, but can't lose any weight. He said that my body is used to walking, & knows how to do it economically, & that for weight loss, I would need to do another sort of cardio e.g. cycling, or elliptical. When I thought about it, it makes sense.

Maybe you need to do something other that cycling for your cardio?

Regular cycling doesn't make me break a sweat but believe me.. spinning does.. it's very intense! Even I have to wipe down the bike afterwards and the towel gets pretty soaked as well. That's the beauty of cycling, you can make it as hard as you want while the impact on joints is not very heavy, unless you use the highest resistance..

[Esperantisto]

Besides.. the whole point of my diet and BFL is to get lean for next year's non-stop bike ride from PARIS to Brest and back (1200 km/750 miles in 90 hrs). It's 10 000 m (33 000ft) of climbing so being slim(mer) and strong(er) than I am now makes sense..
I habitually cycle about 10 000K/year, but would almost stop cycling altogether in winter until I could finally, finally find a gym where they ban smoking (the only gym I knew with spinning facilities allowed smoking) at a distance of 14K/ 9 miles.. I sometimes even went 4 times a week and joined a marathon of 4 spinning lessons this January.. give up spinning NEVER!