# Looking to shed some excess stomach fat



## 777 (Feb 9, 2010)

So im a fairly skinny dude, im 6'3 and was up til a few months ago 160lbs

Weighed myself today after noticing some excess fat on my stomach ,i usually cant grab fat anywhere on my abdominal area and or love handle area but i could now which was fucking annoying and noticable from a side profile

Im now 166lbs but that 6lbs seems to be all on my stomach.

So I was wondering what you guys might suggest to shed this crap

Cardio?
Cut down Carbs(what to avoid?)

Etc


Thanks in advance


----------



## AK DRAGON (Feb 9, 2010)

Welcome to your metabolism slowing down. 

Watch what you eat.. stay away from processed foods (this is a biggie)

More cardio probably couldn't hurt and exercises that work that region.


----------



## djpharoah (Feb 9, 2010)

AK DRAGON said:


> Welcome to your metabolism slowing down.
> 
> Watch what you eat.. stay away from processed foods (this is a biggie)
> 
> More cardio probably couldn't hurt and exercises that work that region.



Eat healthier, exercise, and drink a lot of water. Working out that region will only make the muscles (abs) underneath stronger but the fat is still on top. Working that region out will only strengthen your core not burn the fat sitting on top.


----------



## 777 (Feb 9, 2010)

AK DRAGON said:


> Welcome to your metabolism slowing down.



I was afraid of this, thought id atleast get to 22 not 19 =[[[[[[

No more processed shit for me


----------



## Scar Symmetry (Feb 9, 2010)

I imagine it's the beer Gary. I've noticed on facebook recently a lot of your statuses have been about beer. That belly? That's beer!

Wait, you're 6'3? What the fuck? That's mad tall!


----------



## s_k_mullins (Feb 9, 2010)

I've been wondering about this same topic recently.. I"m about 6'1, 165 lbs. I started working out and exercising, but its like i'm lean everywhere except my stomach. I just can't burn off that belly fat 




Scar Symmetry said:


> Wait, you're 6'3? What the fuck? That's mad tall!



It ain't that tall... unless you're just mad short 

I kid, I kid


----------



## Scar Symmetry (Feb 9, 2010)

Yeah I'm 6'0, I just always imagined Gary as a midget


----------



## s_k_mullins (Feb 9, 2010)

Scar Symmetry said:


> Yeah I'm 6'0, I just always imagined Gary as a midget



Yeah I often wonder about members on here, like how tall they are and shit.. I dunno why


----------



## MaxOfMetal (Feb 9, 2010)

Honestly, start building up a little bit of muscle. I'm not talking about becoming Mr. Olympia, just do some basic weight training. The added muscle will help dissolve that fat. 

I know everyone's body is different, but it's really helped me to shed some of that ever hard to get rid of "gut".


----------



## 777 (Feb 9, 2010)

Scar Symmetry said:


> Yeah I'm 6'0, I just always imagined Gary as a midget



Youre 6'0! I always imagined you as a small guy hahaha


Im actually 6'4 i think

Could be the beer indeed dave... probably should cut down


----------



## Arminius (Feb 9, 2010)

777 said:


> Im actually 6'4 i think



6'4" 160 lbs? You shouldn't have a problem loosing the grabability, just pretty much go with what you and the other guys said. I'm 6'3" 180 lbs, and I tend to go through stages of grabability when I eat to many carbs and "quick" foods. (of course having similar body sizes doesn't mean much, but you get the point.)


----------



## Tiger (Feb 9, 2010)

That area of fat is some of the last to go. You'll actually have to work extra hard to get it off.

Diet and regular exercise, preferably in the morning.


----------



## Troegenator (Feb 9, 2010)

Cardio is your friend.


----------



## Steve-Om (Feb 18, 2010)

you guys can recommend anything to me ?!?!

I'm 5'6"(I'm 21) and I went from 160lbs to a little bit over 200lbs in about 3 years 

And I have a big, fat belly I want to get rid off...

I'm kinda starting to feel depressed about my weight, and I'm too short to weight 200, I mean, I see some of my old pictures and I see myself in a really good condition, but not anymore...

Weird thing is, I dont eat all that sugar, at least when I'm home, and I'm cutting a lot on junk food and Coke, and I started doing some spinning and restarted doing skateboarding as is one of the few exercises I dont feel lazy about...

Any other recommendations ?!?


----------



## Ckackley (Feb 18, 2010)

I'm right there with everyone else. I'm 6'1" and at 210 lbs I'm thrilled with myself except for about 4 or 5 pounds RIGHT in the gut. If I diet I seem to start losing in other places first. Which makes the gut look even worse. lol Exercising , while it does burn fat just puts muscle under the gut as was said before. I've got a rock hard six pack. It's just shielded under a couple inches of fat.


----------



## Tiger (Feb 19, 2010)

Steve-Om said:


> you guys can recommend anything to me ?!?!
> 
> I'm 5'6"(I'm 21) and I went from 160lbs to a little bit over 200lbs in about 3 years
> 
> ...



Cut calories like you're doing and be very patient. A good, sustainable goal would be to lose two pounds a week. Resolve to look how you want in six months to a year, instead of thinking it will be here soon.


----------



## Uncle Remus (Feb 19, 2010)

This might sound like an obvious question but what does a 'diet' as Tiger suggests intail of?


----------



## Tiger (Feb 22, 2010)

A handful of lean protein and a handful of complex carbohydrate every three hours.

As in, a can of tuna and an apple. Or chicken breast and wheat pasta. Turkey jerky and oatmeal. 

Exercise alone is not enough, you simply dont burn enough calories unless you are going beyond typical 3 day a week routines. Eat this way and you will shed weight.


----------



## Uncle Remus (Feb 22, 2010)

Tiger said:


> A handful of lean protein and a handful of complex carbohydrate every three hours.
> 
> As in, a can of tuna and an apple. Or chicken breast and wheat pasta. Turkey jerky and oatmeal.
> 
> Exercise alone is not enough, you simply dont burn enough calories unless you are going beyond typical 3 day a week routines. Eat this way and you will shed weight.



Thanks a bunch tiger!  And I assume no breakfast, lunch or dinner? Just these light snacks every 3 hours? 

... so that's about 5 times a day?  clever me


----------



## Tiger (Feb 22, 2010)

Not really snacks. Meals are supposed to be that small. 4oz of meat and carb and a glass of milk, 400-500 calories a pop.


----------



## RenegadeDave (Feb 23, 2010)

I'm trying a fairly radical diet approach and I'm 4 weeks in and I love it now. Fair warning: it's incredibly restrictive but it also works phenomenally well. 

The book I read that I based it on is NeanderThin by Ray Audette (think that's how you spell his last name). 

A book currently in print that advocates the same lifestyle is The Primal Blueprint by Mark Session. 

The slang for the diet would either be primal or paleo diet. 

The benefits are more than just weight loss, my hair is healthier (I thought I had dry hair, and I do, but it's "normal" on this diet), my skin is healthier (especially on my hands, I have dishydrotic eczema and on this diet I haven't had to use hand lotion yet, in a brutally cold winter, which is when I usually go through it like water), less flatulence, and I've lost over 16 lbs in about 4 weeks, and it' a majority fat (I've always had good musculature but never bothered to shed the fat, muscles really starting to stand out on this diet), my focus is vastly improved (that happened about 3 days in, so it's not just being lighter), energy levels are way up, sleeping deeper, recovering from workouts way better (really high protein diet, go figure), urinating less, no huge pangs of hunger between meals (hunger becomes a mental thing where your head tells you you need to eat vs. stomach demanding you eat NOW, at least thats the way it was for me). 

So I've gone from about 263ish (I'm the better part of 6'-6") to 247 in 4 weeks. I don't even miss the foods I'm not allowed to have any more. I've always lifted 3 days a week and I continue to do so and my lifts have gotten bigger and I've gotten lighter. Aside from going heavier thanks to gains in my lifts, I've not altered my work out regime or done *any* cardio and I've lost a great deal of weight. My waist size has gone from a comfortable 38 nearly to a 36 in a month. I'm familiar with water retention, and there is no way that all of this is water retention. 

You don't restrict any calories you eat, you eat plenty of good fats, you never go hungry.

You can read a "nutshell" version of this here:
INTRODUCTION TO THE PALEOLITHIC DIET

for the TLDR crowd: You don't eat anything that is inedible raw which includes: Grains, Corn, Legumes (beans), Dairy (requires domestication, cow milk is for cows, essentially), starchy vegetables (potatoes, yellow squash). Try to get grass fed beef where possible and if you can't, use lean commercial beef. Eat Wild Caught fish. 

Your menu options at restaurants are incredibly slim and fast food becomes off limits pretty much in it's entirety. You will spend a lot more on groceries, but I'm happy doing so.

But fair warning, it's a life style change, not a "get to goal weight then go back to what you were doing but with moderation" type of deal. You might be too young to want to give up beer and I can't blame you, but this works.


----------



## Tiger (Feb 23, 2010)

Not to be overly dismissive, but I hang out with special forces and triathletes every day when I work out. We eat everything under the sun, and we are all in phenomenal shape. This includes a lot of things you have banned in that diet plan. I think you would lose your weight eating intelligently in any regard. Your weight training has probably improved because of smarter recovery meals and decreases in insulin from less carbohydrate intakes (making more HGH in the process) as well as a more positive mood.

To each his own, Im just not a fan of diets.


----------



## jymellis (Feb 23, 2010)

cardio is the only way to do it. try jogging. i personally look retarded running ( long hair, steel toe doc martens, long beard). i have an elliptical machine. it doesnt seem hard. but after 5 minutes of the uphill setting and your like "wtf".


----------



## RenegadeDave (Feb 23, 2010)

Tiger said:


> Not to be overly dismissive, but I hang out with special forces and triathletes every day when I work out. We eat everything under the sun, and we are all in phenomenal shape. This includes a lot of things you have banned in that diet plan. I think you would lose your weight eating intelligently in any regard. Your weight training has probably improved because of smarter recovery meals and decreases in insulin from less carbohydrate intakes (making more HGH in the process) as well as a more positive mood.
> 
> To each his own, Im just not a fan of diets.



With your level of activity, of course you all are. You're also potentially exposing yourself to a myriad of autoimmune diseases. THe logic is the earliest man was a hunter-gatherer (primarily a carnivore) this is the diet we were built for. If lactic acid build up is a problem I challenge you to go paleo for two weeks and see how your recovery/energy levels are. It's easy to be dismissive, but I think you really will be shocked at your performance on a diet like this. 

This type of diet is starting to be recommended by many CrossFit gyms (all 3 local gyms have a big promotion of it in march, not sure if it's a national thing yet), and there are scores of elite athletes that train that way that have gone paleo (and many are soldiers, no clue how many are spec ops).


----------



## Tiger (Feb 23, 2010)

Dont get me wrong, I eat a fuckload of meat. Mainly tuna, salmon and turkey. But there are health and more importantly performance benefits to including a lot of the banned items.


----------



## RenegadeDave (Feb 23, 2010)

if your body is using sugar as fuel, you're right. If your body is using fat as it's primary fuel source, you don't. 

This stuff is marvelous, a decent value for how energy dense it is (assuming you can make your own jerky)
Pemmican - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia


----------



## ElRay (Feb 23, 2010)

RenegadeDave said:


> With your level of activity, of course you all are. You're also potentially exposing yourself to a myriad of autoimmune diseases.


Care to cite references?


> THe logic is the earliest man was a hunter-gatherer (primarily a carnivore) this is the diet we were built for.


Providing you ignore 10,000+ of micro-evolution.


> This type of diet is starting to be recommended by many CrossFit gyms (all 3 local gyms have a big promotion of it in march, not sure if it's a national thing yet)


And there's not financial gain behind this promotion?


> and there are scores of elite athletes that train that way that have gone paleo (and many are soldiers, no clue how many are spec ops).


In the 15 months I spent in Afghanistan, I encountered NO ONE, from any branch of service from any country that runs on the paleo diet. In fact, the local population would literally die, if they had eliminate rice and bean from their diet.



http://www.earth360.com/diet_paleodiet_balzer.html said:


> There are races of people who are all slim, who are stronger and faster than us. They all have straight teeth and perfect eyesight. Arthritis, diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, stroke, depression, schizophrenia and cancer are absolute rarities for them. These people are the last 84 tribes of hunter-gatherers in the world.


First off, the claims are pure BS; second these problems exist, it's just that the afflicted DIE or are eliminated; third, both their lifespans and life expectancy are less, etc. This is one of the reasons human population stayed relatively tiny during the PALEOLITHIC era. 

Show me one peer-reveiwed article showing real health benefits of this fad diet.


Ray


----------



## RenegadeDave (Feb 24, 2010)

Bear with me Ray as I'm home on lunch break and have a very short amount of time to field your questions (can't log in from work, don't bother to afterward)



ElRay said:


> Care to cite references?Providing you ignore 10,000+ of micro-evolution.



There are several, you can google "arthritis and corn" and get lots of hits on diets that prescribe (arthritis is an autoimmune disease). 

There are lots of sources but here are two:

Cohen, Mark "Health and the Rise of Civilization" New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993.

His older work : Cohen, Mark and G.J. Armelagos, "Paleopahtology at the Origins of Agriculture" New York: Academic Press, 1984

and one dealing with diabetes :
Bernstein, Richard K., M.D., "Dr. Bernstein's Diabetes Solution" New York: Little Brown, 1997.

Of course, I assume you understand the nature of type 2 diabetes and know that eating low (no) carb is a fantastic way to mitigate the effects of the disease. 

An article:

Ames, B.N. "Carcinogenic Risk Estimation" Science 240 (May 20, 1988) 1043-47

Cancer I won't flat out call an autoimmune disease but there is evidence suggesting it can be correlated to diet. 





> And there's not financial gain behind this promotion?


I have no way of knowing, but I doubt it. It's a book that costs a whopping $15 on Amazon in a couple gyms around Atlanta that has probably 300ish members total. They prescribe it for the benefits of recovery after intense workouts. 



> In the 15 months I spent in Afghanistan, I encountered NO ONE, from any branch of service from any country that runs on the paleo diet.


 Didn't say they were in the military, said there is testimony from lots of soldiers on the CrossFit website. You can see that for yourself at crossfit.com. I expect it'd be near impossible being deployed and trying to eat paleo. 



> In fact, the local population would literally die, if they had eliminate rice and bean from their diet.



And in the absence of technology those people would have likely picked up and moved. Obviously this is less feasible these days as we're wildly overpopulated. 




> First off, the claims are pure BS; second these problems exist, it's just that the afflicted DIE or are eliminated; third, both their lifespans and life expectancy are less, etc. This is one of the reasons human population stayed relatively tiny during the PALEOLITHIC era.



So the ridiculously high occurrence of canine cancer in domesticated dogs vs. the wild does not point squarely at corn as most dog food is essentially cornmeal? You can go a step further and look at the gut ratio (ratio of large intestine to small intestine) of humans vs. other primates and even wild dogs (whom our gut ratio is more similar too). The reason plant fiber "cleans us out" is because we can't digest it because of our relatively small large intestine (relative to other primates). 

Further, paleo people had an average 30 year life span for lots of reasons, hunting big game, transient life style, and perils of child birth factoring in to the mortality rate. 



> Show me one peer-reveiwed article showing real health benefits of this fad diet.



I'll work on that, don't have one on hand. 

Wherever the "micro evolution" bit is in your retort is: Inuit are genetically identical to us and their diet their traditional diet prior to 1900 has been nothing but meat and fats.

As far as "Fad dieting" is concerned, the paleo diet is first brought up (without being labeled as such in :

Stefansson, Vilhjalmar "Hunters of the Great North" New York: Harcourt, Brace 1922

Stefansson, Vilhjalmar "The Fat of the Land" New York: McMillian, 1956. 

As far as paleo peer review is concerned, like I said, I don't have any, but I do have studies of Stefansson's eskimo (all-meat) diet, which is identical. I'll scan this biblio page and post it after work. 

Hell, I can scan you the whole bibliography and you can do your homework. I've had enough testimonials and the logic is sound enough in the book that I'm convinced of it. We'll see how I do at next year's annual check up. If my personal assessment of my health is worth anything, I'll bet it's improved. PM me your email address (I can read PM's at work via email) and I'll email you the whole bibliography.

If you're that critical of it you might go ahead and check it out of your library and give it a read. it's an easy read and relatively short as well as an interesting history/anthropology lesson. "NeanderThin" by Ray Audette with Troy Gilchrist.


----------



## Sang-Drax (Mar 11, 2010)

I guess the good thing about this paleodiet is that there's only healthy stuff in it, which suggests that it works. It doesn't mean that everything it banned wouldn't bring benefits if added to the diet as well.

At the thread starter: keep in mind that muscle tissue accelerates your metabolism, meaning it demands more calories to maintain. The more muscle mass you have, the more calories you'll burn.


----------



## jymellis (Mar 11, 2010)

well here i go with what i have been doing. for the last 15 years i have been around 150 lbs at 6 foot 3. i quit smoking about a year ago. i started working out alot and put on about 10 pounds of muscle in about 6 months. i started eating everything in sight, eating protein bars,blah,blah. well after about 6 months my wife had the twins. i couldnt work out very much and stopped but my new eating habbits stayed. after about 3 months i had put on another 20 pounds of fat lol. heres what i did to loose it. eat a small snack for breakfast(toast, or fruit). a small snack for lunch(toast or fruit). and a normal dinner( no fast food). i also either run up and down my stairs for about 15 minutes or use the elliptical machine we have for 20 minutes. i lost the 20 pounds in about a month and a half


----------



## Jeggs (Mar 23, 2010)

It really aint no magical to it, just kcal in vs kcal out.
So first of, you need to find out how much kcal your body needs just to function, and then from the number you come up with either cut the kcal, or start working out frequently. When you hit your desired weight or bodyfat percentage, you just got to stay at your maintenance kcal.

I'm 6'0 and 225 lbs...I can see my abs(or sixpack if you wanna call it that), but you skinny ppl make me feel fat


----------



## RenegadeDave (Apr 1, 2010)

Jeggs said:


> It really aint no magical to it, just kcal in vs kcal out.
> So first of, you need to find out how much kcal your body needs just to function, and then from the number you come up with either cut the kcal, or start working out frequently. When you hit your desired weight or bodyfat percentage, you just got to stay at your maintenance kcal.
> 
> I'm 6'0 and 225 lbs...I can see my abs(or sixpack if you wanna call it that), but you skinny ppl make me feel fat



Stirring the pot again:

My caloric intake has increased as I eat primarily animal fats and nuts for a majority of my calories. Obviously not eating what I don't, my body remains in ketosis most of the time.


----------

