Ask Rocco: Put the Hammer Down

Question: I'm hoping you may help please?! Here's my story:
I put on around 30lbs in order to have a breast enlargement this year as I was underweight. I have had surgery in March and since the 6 weeks after managed to loose around 12lbs and 12 and a half inches all over plus 5 percent body fat, but I still feel fat and am desperate to get rid of this fatty look.

Please don't confuse this. I am not and don't look fat. I am slim but how can I tone up more and keep on loosing these inches and body fat percent? I work my whole body and do cardio five times a week and eat healthy. I was wondering if I should focus on core training for my middle area a few weights for the rest and hammering the cardio?

Thanks a lot!
Tracey

Answer: You have several issues happening here and most of them aren't good. If you needed to gain weight in the first place, it should have been muscle and not fat. I'm assuming from what you told me that you didn't gain much muscle and if that's the case, you still need to build muscle and not hammer cardio.

If you started out thin and gained fat too quickly, you basically threw a big slab of fat onto a really small fire with no way to burn it. In order to burn fat you need to build much more muscle than you have. Your body is keeping the fat where it is because you are supposed to be a certain "weight," but your body has kept the fat which looks flabby because that's the only thing it has to work with at the moment. Do not hammer "cardio" because cardio will actually cause your body to breakdown muscle for energy. Cardio or aerobic training is only good when you have sufficient muscle mass on your body.

Your question about working your core is a question I get all the time that also relates to muscle deficiency. Working the core itself will not eliminate that fatty look; you need to workout the whole body so that it is balanced. For example, if you work your back and chest muscles and build muscle in those areas, that muscle will fill the saggy skin that gravity has helped to make look flabby. Go to askrocco.com and click on FREE FOOD JOURNAL and you will receive with that a full body Boot Camp workout on me.