Thanks a lot! but one last question.. Would it be better to start off with a normal high protein shake or a muscle mass shake? I’ve just seen so many. That it’s hard to know which one to use.

I have the same problem as Sonya. I have really skinny legs and arms but I also have belly fat. I’ve never worked out before. would it be a bad idea to take a high proetein shake? I want to start weight trainning but I’m afraid of getting skinnier or fatter around my belly.

Aishazoe, when you talk about “tummy” fat, and describe it as being “on” your abdomen, I assume you’re talking about subcutaneous fat, as opposed to visceral fat, which is the more dangerous type surrounding your internal organs.

Visceral fat is fairly responsive to training, but subcutaneous fat always seems trickier. The other complication is that, based on the way you described yourself and your family history, it sounds like you’re pretty close to your genetic floor, in terms of body weight and BMI. I want to emphasize that a 25.2 BMI is only considered “overweight” because of an accounting trick. It’s an artificial distinction. I’ve seen research showing that people with BMIs in the high 20s — the overweight range — actually have lower all-cause mortality than people with lower BMIs.

Before indiscriminately cutting calories, I’d recommend one or more of these steps:

1. Change macronutrient ratios, with more protein and fewer carbs. I had lunch with a nutritionist a couple weeks ago, and when we got on the subject of stubborn weight loss, he said that cutting carbs while increasing protein is the closest thing we have to a magic bullet.

2. If you aren’t already doing it, consider calorie cycling — eating more on training days and less on non-training days. That’s what Cass recommends in our book, as I’m sure you know.

3. If you’ve already gone as far as you can with 1 and 2, consider carb cycling. More carbs and less fat on training days, more fat and fewer carbs on non-training days.