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Instead of just talking about it, I’d like to put a training and diet program to the test. Below is a structured, 8-week fat loss program that includes specific diet, cardio, weight-training, and supplementation protocols. Let’s take a look at this!

Goals

I want to lean out as much as possible. But given time and the fact that I don’t want to lose ANY muscle, my fat loss program will need to be extremely strategic and allow no room for error in order to maximize fat loss during my 8 week endeavor.

So, here are my current stats:

Age: 23
Weight: 176 lbs
Lean Muscle Mass: 152 lbs
Total Body Fat: 25 lbs
Body Fat: 14.2%

8 Week Ending Goal

Weight: 168 lbs
Lean Muscle Mass: 152 lbs
Total Body Fat: 16 lbs
Body Fat: 9.5%

Expected total weight loss: 10 pounds

You might think, “You need a complete fat loss strategy to lose only 10 pounds?” The short answer is yes. But remember, anyone can lose 10 pounds and fat, muscle, and water. I want to lose 10 pounds of pure body fat while maintaing all my muscle mass.

This is more difficult, hence my goal of only 10 pounds.

How Will I Do It?
Proper diet and training of course But let’s get into some detail.

Diet

This may surprise some people, but I will not be eating progressively less food through my 8 week shred-a-thon. I will consistently be eating 2500 (-/+ 100) calories everyday, every week. This will be my “control” during my little experiment. Here is my diet precisely:

Meal #1: 6 eggs scrambled (3 whole, 3 whites), 1 cup oatmeal with blueberries
Meal #2: 6 eggs scrambled (3 whole, 3 whites), 1 cup oatmeal
Meal #3: 8 oz chicken breast, 8 oz yams
Meal #4: Post Work Out Shake - ABB Mass Recovery
Meal #5: 8 oz chicken, steamed broccoli
Meal #6: 8 oz ground beef 93% lean

Total Calories: 2520 calories
Carbohydrates: 220 grams
Protein: 260 grams
Fat: 60 grams

Calorie Break Down:
45% Protein / 35% Carbs / 20% Fat

Meal #1 will be around 6 a.m. and meal #6 will be around 9 p.m. I will not be making any changes to this diet during the next 8 weeks.

Training

I will be following a strict 4-day split. The split looks like the following:

Day 1: Chest / Biceps
Day 2: Legs
Day 3: Back / Triceps
Day 4: Shoulders

I’ll use an A/B setup with this split. That means the following:

Workout A: All Barbel training
Workout B: All Dumbbell training

Here is an example of chest for workout A:

Flat barbell bench press
Incline barbell bench press
Pec Deck
Cable Flies

Here is an example of chest for workout B:

Flat Dumbbell press
Include Dumbbell press
Pec Deck
Cable Flies

I’ll be alternating A/B week by week. Example:

Week 1: A
Week 2: B
Week 3: A
Week 4: B

Pretty simple right? Ok let’s move onto cardio, where things get a little crazier.

Cardio

This is where I will place the vast majority of my fat loss strategy. Consider it a war on fat loss, and I must position my soldiers in the right position and strike at the exact right moment in order to maximize damage. And I plan on making some serious damage.

Here’s the schedule:
PWO = Post Work Out;
MC = Morning Cardio;
All cardio is at 140 bpm

Week 1: PWO 30 minutes Elliptical
Week 2: PWO 30 minutes Bike
Week 3: PWO 30 minutes Treadmill
Week 4: MC 20 minutes Elliptical + PWO 30 minutes Elliptical
Week 5: MC 20 minutes Bike + PWO 30 minutes Bike
Week 6: MC 20 minutes Treadmill + PWO Up Hill 30 minutes Treadmill
Week 7: MC 30 minutes Elliptical + PWO 30 minutes Elliptical
Week 8: MC 30 minutes Bike + PWO Bike 30 minutes

Morning Cardio (or MC) is done in the morning, on a completely empty stomach - I only drink water before hand.

Post Workout Cardio (or PWO) is done immediately after my weight training (and for good reason).

All cardio is done on my workout days only, meaning I do cardio 4x a week, no more.

Notice the progressiveness of my cardio strategy. Lots of structured “tricks” my body will have to deal with and react to, ultimately leading to fat loss - but we’ll let my results be the judge of that.

Supplementation

This section will be short. I will be using only the staples here plus a few extra goodies.

• Higher Power Whey Protein Powder, Vanilla (1.5 Scoops a day)
• SciVation Xtend, Watermelon (2 scoops pre-workout)
• NOW Fish Oil (1 cap 3x a day)
• NOW EcoGreen Men’s Multivitamin (2 grams 3x a day)
• Higher Power Glutamine (2 teaspoons post-workout)
• Ephedra + Caffeine*

*I may incorporate Ephedra and Caffeine into my schedule from week 3 - 8, but mainly it’s going to be my primary backup weapon incase things don’t go as planned. My secondary backup weapon will be diet manipulation, but I’d really like to not change my diet at all.

Putting it all together

This may look complicated, but it’s simple when you look at the basic trend of things. My diet and supplementation stay extremely stable, while my cardio slowly increases with various tricks to shock my body.
Take a look at the following graph to see the simplicity.

As you can see, the only item that changes is my cardio. Pretty simple, right?

I only work out 4 days a week, cardio included as well. I will not be doing cardio on days I don’t weight train, so that means I’ll have 3 days a week of complete rest.

Updates

I will post around 3 updates in the next 8-weeks, I don’t want to flood my blog with personal posts - I like to keep it to mainly interesting, helpful articles. You can always contact me if you have any questions about my program or have any comments.

Let the 8-week program begin!