Fat Burning

[holmeslaw]

I'm down from 170 to 155lbs in 6 months, and from 22% to 17% body fat. I'm now happy with my weight, but want to lose the extra inch or so of central lower belly fat and upper body fat.

I do ab & chest workouts x3 a week (Mon, Wed, Fri) in addition to my boxing training and cardio, but can't shift the remaining 5% or so of fat.

My diet is good, an has helped me drop the lbs, but any advice on how to rapidly burn that 5% or so of stubborn fat?

[josh-hill]

your body adjusts over time to not need as many calories. so you can either eat less, or work out more. OR you can go through a re-feed process where you give your body plenty of calories so that it forgets how to be on a diet. the problem is you might gain some fat back so a good idea would be to rty and focus on building muscle for a month. dont worry about getting 'bulky'. one month wont make much difference. it definatly wont slow your punches down. it will just speed up your metabolism again and make it easier to loose the rest of that fat. remember the more muscle you have the more calories you burn.

[holmeslaw]

Thanks for that. Do you suggest switching to more weight & less reps? I usually do light weights with a lot of reps. Also weights before or after cardio / boxing? I usually do my floorwork first, then light weights after my cardio.

[josh-hill]

well people say weights after boxing. this depends how tiered you are after though. it can be good because you are warmed up and i get quite pumped up and ready to work. apparently it is easy to injure yourself boxing after lifting too, but noone has offered me proof of this. i would do 8 reps, 4 sets.

in about 10 mins this thread will be flooded with people telling you weightlifting is bad for a boxer and that may be true in the long run but it takes a huge amount of time and training for bodybuilders to make any progress so you wont see any huge differences in that time. not enough to change your performance in boxing.

its just that you need to re-feed after dieting for 6 months by eating a bit more than you should, but why should you let those cals turn into fat?

also i would sugest looking at circuit training if you dont already do it. if done properly you should see the same endurance benefits as doing lots of reps + a cardio workout + more strength gains

[Klemman]

Keep doing what you're doing and be patient. You've lost 15 pounds over 6 months so that tells me that you are doing it slowly, which is the healthier way to do it. You're at 17% body fat which is still fairly high for an adult male. To really be "healthy or maybe more accurately, fit " you should be around 10% if you are in your 20's.

You probably are carrying some loose skin as well around your abdominal area. Basically, when you had a belly, your skin stretched out to accomodate the girth. Depending on howlong you had a belly and how old you are, it could take awhile and in some cases may never be a cover model.

Now if you are looking for a quick fix, cut out most of your carbs. Meat, nuts, leafy vegs will cut out that bit of fat you're talking about. You'll look great but unless you continue on that diet it's short term, and if you are working out really hard, it may affect that as well. So you have to decide if that is worth it.

Like I said originally, the best thing is to keep on doing what you are, those last few pounds are always the toughest.

Good luck and good job so far.

[chav]

tweeking when you eat carbs can help. when i used to drop into single digit body fat i would always curb my carbs and only eat complex ones pre & pwo. usually oats blended with protein and milk

you might need to tweak the calories...sometimes eat 500 over maintenance for a day or 2 then cut back to the normal calories, it helps the body as it confuses it and stops it sticking in "starvation mode"

try HIIt too...works a treat. without knowing exactly what you are trying to achieve other then weight loss, all the above will help

the biggest thing is diet and eating the food you need to eat when you need to eat it and being militant about doing it too.

[holmeslaw]

thanks everyone, good stuff. I currently don't eat carbs after 7pm and have been doing that for about a month now, I'm also going to increase the lbs on my weight training for a short time and focus purely on HIIT when on the treadmill, hopefully that'll bring the fat % down over the next few weeks. Thanks again.

[Boxfan12]

Didnt read the other replies but I can tell you diet is KEY and lots of CARDIO.