Once upon a time, a man named Farbod had just completed his bulk, weighing in at 84kg. He has a boxing background, which he coaches, gearing his training towards strength, endurance and explosiveness.
His goal was now to cut the fat while holding on to his strength. Propane took the challenge. Note Farbod had to stop the transformation early due to a boxing-related injury, yet still made phenomenal progress: Farbod is more explosive, added over 40kg to his total (squat + bench + deadlift), and even gained size in his delts and lats. Yes, the metabolic fire also singed his chest hair. Here are the results:
Jan 1st: 84kg @ 18%. March 12th: 76kg @ ~9-10%
httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y88910r2tl8
How have you benefitted?
What can i say? After losing over 7kgs in such a short space of time you definitely feel the benefits, even in day to day life. Just walking around town i feel so much lighter on my feet.
The weight loss had greatly improved my athletic ability, especially for boxing, i feel so much faster and more explosive. As for fitness i feel my endurance has greatly improved too, not surprised considering i don’t have to carry around all that extra weight with me anymore. At first i was expecting to lose some strength during the cut but I was surprised to find my strength improving consistently for all my lifts.
What did you learn?
I learned that much of the preconceived conceptions about weight training and diet are wrong.
I realised that the methods I was using were very out of date and “old school”.
I now understand that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Bodybuilding Encyclopaedia isn’t necessarily the best book to be following and using for training :P.
What would you say to anyone about to go through something similar?
It’s all about consistency and having a training plan you can easily follow. There is no point training like a madman and being super strict with your diet if you can’t keep that up for more than a week. My best advice would be to try and adapt to a new routine, you don’t have to completely cut unhealthy food like pizza, takeaway and alcohol, and it’s all about moderation.
One of Farbod’s Cheat Meals
For guys trying to put on muscle, having a protein shake or a meal every 2 hours isn’t going to help you put on muscle, what is important is following the correct training methods and eating 2-3 proper meals a day.
For girls, having a cereal bar and a piece of fruit for breakfast and doing only cardio at the gym is not the correct way to lose weight, don’t be dismissive of weights or weight machines. The correct way to lose weight is by having a correct mixture of lifts and cardio to boost your metabolism. It’s not about losing the weight while you are at the gym on your treadmill or cross trainer but by losing over the week through your boosted metabolism. Don’t starve yourself after the gym at night because you had a big meal before the gym, your body need refueling after a workout, not eating is only going to reduce your metabolism.
How did you find the transformation? Easy/difficult?
I tend to have good self control when it comes to training but I have always hated losing weight. In the past my methods for weight loss consisted of eating loads of small meals every couple of hours during the day, doing plenty of cardio and going to the gym almost every day.
The editors were very helpful and offered great advice, helping me to realise mistakes I was making and helped create an efficient program that worked around my needs. The knowledge from the editors and forums was incredible for diet advice helped shed some light on a few training myths. Simple things like not having to worry about eating 6 times a day, doing endless cardio and having a constant protein source ever couple of hours just made life so much easier.
It wasn’t easy adjusting at first but after a short period the training and diet became petty routine and things got much easier. Ideally i would have liked to continued for a few more weeks and lose a little more weight but because of a nagging injury I sustained from boxing and a busy exam schedule I decided to cut the transformation short.
Bod like food!
Just because you’re on a diet doesn’t mean you have to completely cut out all the unhealthy food you like. As long as its in moderation the occasional “cheat meal” can be good for you, will help keep you motivated. For example every Sunday night after the flats weekly shop we would go to McDonalds, I ate that every single Sunday during my cut.
It helps give you something to look forward to. If you try to cut out the foods you love completley the sooner or later your going to break down and pig out. Its better to keep things under control and have the occasional cheat meal.
If I didn’t drink diet coke I would probably be diabetic.
I dont cope too well with exam stress, lost count of the number times I have had to study through the night during my cut, fueled by nothing other than sugar and caffeine.
Again the occasional snack and sweets arnt going to ruin your weight loss goals.
During the diet, Farbod also devised this high-protein flapjack recipe and high-protein mocha/hot chocolate. Extraordinary fellow.
Finally, you can follow Farbod’s training log and many others on the forum.