Those last few pounds! help!

[radioheadhead]

ARRGGH!

cliff's notes:
6 feet tall, 32 years old.
started at 145lbs skinnyfat 4 years ago, finally bulked up to 220 last year, and have been cutting since late October. I am down to 196 lbs and I can just see my abs in the morning in the mirror, I figure maybe 5-6 more pounds and I should be in the 10% range. I still have love handles which are apparently the very last place my extra fat will come off, along with what is still covering my abs. Any tips to mobilize this reservoir, aka the last few pounds?

My training is currently a push/ pull/ legs type split, 3 heavy days a week with 2 other days of cardio (jumprope and elliptical). I'm currently eating about 2k a day with a heavy emphasis on protein, fairly low carb almost every day. I think I should consider carb cycling, i.e. adding in a high carb day or two during the week to tweak the hormones as suggested in the current article on the front page. Any advice is appreciated!

The numbers in my sig aren't current, my lifts have suffered a bit but those were my best numbers at the top of my last bulk.

[SoulOfKoRea]

Basically you can either:

A) Create a caloric deficit by eating ~500 less calories a day (takes -~3500 calories to lose a pound/week) until you hit your ideal body fat %, then maintain at that caloric level until you decide to bulk again

or

B) Add more cardio

Have you tried HIIT (high intensity interval training) before? I think if you added just 1-2 days of ~15 minutes of HIIT (not including warm up/cool down) then you could get below 10% faster without losing more muscle than cutting calories would. If you're doing it right then you probably only want to start with like 12 minutes and gradually work your way up to 15-16 minutes of it because it really kicks your ass when you're going 90%+ intensity for short intervals.

[Yeti Sandwich]

Definitely try some HIIT.

[given'er]

Your stats are somewhat similar to mine. Last fall when I cut I started out at about 210lbs, I didn't really notice my abs until I hit around 180-185. I finished cutting at 175lbs. Now, everyone is different, but generally you won't start seeing abs untill you go below 10%bf. Carb cycling worked well for me. Check out the new article,lots of great info in there.