been working out on and off and recently working out more from aug when i reweigh myself. slack off one month plus and regain about 5 kgs during that period. my bf is fairly high at about 38%. I use to weight 80kgs and throughout the year i tried all kinds of weight lost methods (cardio, diet pills) weight always flactuate throughout the yearsā¦ starting eating more healthily and learning about nutrition recently as wellā¦ my diet use to be mostly carbs i think that causes my weight gain.
hereās a photo of my starting and current progress and workout routine
upper body
lower body
Cardio - cycle, abs, jump rope, walking
Upper body
Lower body
Cardio - cycle, abs, jump rope, walking
i need some advice hereā¦ as i mention my body fat is still high so in order to lose body fat should i continue to carry on cutting? i believe my body fat hasnāt been dropping much because i wasnāt controlling myself well (i have a sweet tooth) i love those protein bars and protein cookies since it can kill my craving for sweet stuffs. I shouldnāt be taking alot of these during my cut right?
I am also currently eating at 1200 calories, my macros as follows
50% - protein
30% carbs
20% fat
any advice or help here would be much appreciated!
1200 calories is a very low amount of calories, the only people (especially people who do a fair bit of exercise) who are reccomended to eat that little are extremely obese people (like some of those folks who you see featured on āmy 600lb lifeā etc).
I would say:
A: You donāt really have that much fat, you are not lean by athlete standards sure, but you are not in what I think the vast majority of people would regard as being in anything like ābad shapeā.
B: Itās quite possible youāve crashed your metabolism. You might actually find it easier to keep losing body fat if you slightly increase your carbs and protein intake and also intensify your work-outs in some way.
-Iām at between 61kg to 63kg now.
my diet is on and off. not the most discipline person here though but iām trying.
-i try to hit my macros by eating real food but if i really canāt then iāll take protein bars/protein shake. trying to cut protein bar for awhile now.
-I do feel that Iām much leaner now when I compared I was at my lowest of 58kg. I used to only do cardio but im more on strength training now.
-Im not losing weight anymore, the weight just canā't go down. maybe because iām buidling muscles? but my fat is still the same which is annoying.
i actually went to tdee to check my calories. it mentioned my cutting calories should be 1360cal if i am working out 3 to 5 days a week. i am just scaling down because i am afraid i might not work hit my workout days.
There are quite a few coaches that have pretty good thoughts on this. Youāll have to pick, in the short-term, though: do you want to grind out a little more weight loss now or do you want to hit pause and set yourself up for future success? I think we could give advice toward either
set up for future success definitely, although i really wanted to lose that stubborn fats but i think being stronger and healthy is definitely my priority now.
As Iāve learned more about metabolism, weight- and fat loss, and the impacts calorie restriction has on our bodies Iāve come to be apprehensive of the ācrashā-analogy with regards to our metabolism.
I rather view it as āadaptableā or āelasticā. The metabolism has some leeway to account for hypo- and hypercaloric diets alike.
One thing one would find mentioned in T-nation articles is how the thyroid hormones triiodothyronine (T3) and thyroxine (T4) affect fat loss. The key take-away from these articles would be that if a deficit is sustained for long enough T4 to T3 conversion decreases which in effect lowers your āmetabolismā (i.e., your energy expenditure goes down). To combat this, the occassional cheat day might be warranted as macronutrient and energy intake sustain the conversion (protein + carbs).
Further, it has been observed that our āmetabolismā (our ability to extract energy from food) becomes more efficient as when in a deficit our stool becomes less energy dense meaning weāve extracted more out of it before excreting it.
Given your most recent reply,
it might behove you to enter a maintenance phase for a while, and then have another go at losing fat after you can maintain your bodyweight at a higher caloric intake than your current one.
Here would be my advice (if you get better advice, it doesnāt hurt my feelings):
Iām assuming you are comfortable maintaining your current activity level? If not, reply to this and letās adjust the below. What I mean by that is, if youāre doing 6 hours of cardio a week right now and donāt want to continue, letās deal with that before we deal with the below.
I would take one of two routes on your calories, since you may not have been perfectly consistent. I do want to clarify - when I say consistent, I mean did you hit your caloric targets. Whether or not you had to use a protein shake to get there really doesnāt matter.
Your first option is to immediately bump your calories up and track it. Iād probably set your first floor at bodyweight (in lbs.) x 12 = kcal. That takes you to about 1630kcal daily. You need to hit that every day.
Since we may not have been consistent, you could just keep eating what youāve been eating and track it, and weāll see where weāre at in a couple weeks. I donāt think this would be my first recommendation for you, though, because itās going to be mentally tough for you to do it (youāre likely to purposefully restrict right now).
Whatever option you go with above, weād expect to see you gain a kg or two in the first week or so. Donāt stress out.
After a week or two, your weight should stabilize. Once you hold that weight on those calories, slowly titrate up - maybe 100kcal every two weeks as long as you arenāt gaining weight.
Once you start gaining weight, the week before was maintenance. Letās stay at that maintenance for some time period while we get your activity level to the lowest reasonable starting point: by that I mean the minimal amount of cardio you need for health and as much lifting as you can enjoy - letās use this period to build some muscle.
Iām well aware everyone here will tell me you should go into a surplus at this point to build that muscle. I respectfully disagree because I both donāt believe itās necessary (none of us has our metabolic process and intake dialed into the exact calorie) and I donāt believe it matches your goals.
Once we start stagnating on our muscle-building/ recomp - basically you stop seeing positive changes in the mirror and your motivation is lit up like youāre ready to kick some butt - youāre ready to start lowering calories again. Instead of dropping back to something low immediately, weāll go in reverse order from the above: each week drop 100 calories OR add some cardio (alternate the two if you can stay disciplined enough).
Hopefully that was somewhat useful and you can throw it into practice.
This I donāt necessarily agree with but if OP can make it work, then it works. As far as sensible approaches go, I prefer something slightly more āaggressiveā (not very much more but slightly). Iām preferential to a 5% calorie reduction and 5% calorie expenditure increase through LISS.
Totally fair! Definitely more than one way to skin a cat. Iām much more aggressive myself, but I think Iād err toward caution if I thought I was metabolically slowed.
Definitely smart. Hereās what Iād do, as a male, if I believe I were metabolically slowed.
Titrate calories up,
1.1. and titrate activity level up (to 10k steps per day)
1.2. Repeat until I can maintain weight and sustain 10k steps per day at 15 x (bw in lbs)
Set calories at 16 x (bw in lbs)
2.1. Stick with 2 until weight stops increasing, still keeping 10k steps per day.
Start cutting back on calories, remove one factor when weight loss has stalled for two weeks
3.1. Here Iād track my weekly average weight to see if weight has actually stopped moving. Itās really hard to perceive when measuring kilos like I do.
3.2. Repeat 3 as necessary. Stop when calories are at 10-12 x lbs (floor) depending on mirror/goals.
That Item. 2. is how I know Iām no longer slowed.
For a woman, I donāt know, maybe replace x15 with x13 and x16 with x14. Still the same caloric floor though.
With all due respect to the knowledgeable posters in here so far, I must say I think the most crucial piece of information being overlooked is that youāve followed a diet āon and off.ā
We can get into the science of ācollapsing a metabolism,ā OR we could acknowledge a more obvious culprit: youāre eating too much.
What does āoffā look like? I can easily picture a world where youāre yo-yoing days, weeks, or months between 1200 cals/day and then 3000 cals/day. Itās going to be close to impossible to recommend effective adjustments for you until you follow a set diet without deviating for at least a couple weeks.
Yeah I do hit calorie target and macros daily if you are referring to my currently calorie intake which is 1200 Cals.
Okay let me try to increase the calories intake. How about the macros? To focus more on protein?
Also can I clarify on your post. To increase my cal to what youāve mentioned, I should see my weight increase. then up 100 cal every two weeks, focus on strength training as much as I like. Then once I see the muscle growth stop I will decrease on my calories intake?
Thank you. what you said actuall make sense and the reason why i got to 80kg in the first place was because of my bad dieting habits. Right now being discipline is all i needed
off means i sometimes do not track my calories at all when im eating out.
yea i use to do yoyo diets and its so bad for me. over the years I tried all sorts of diets and I finally came to understand about macronutrients and strength training and this got me all started. been about 2 month from now that I have been tracking. I do have my cheat food now and then (fries, pizza, fried chicken) but in moderation
