OK, so I tried out my meal plan yesterday. It went pretty well, but you were correct, @carlbm, the quantity of food (and thus the calories) was slightly low. I added 200g chicken total, giving about 250 extra calories, and that brought it very much in line with what I normally eat, so I’m happy with where that’s at now. Unfortunately I didn’t have any lamb at home so I couldn’t add that yet - and I have now run out of chicken breast and eggs, lol. So I had to abandon my plan this afternoon - I need to go and get some to continue with the meal plan. At the moment I’m using an old analogue weighing scale I found, which does the job, but I really need a digital one. So that’s also on the shopping list.
Having actually tried the meal plan, I’ve decided I also need to make a few minor changes - I want to change out some of the potato for rice (I realised I don’t actually like potato that much haha) and I also want to reduce the number of eggs I’m having in the morning, because I’m getting some stick at home for that, and I am forced to agree that 5 eggs is slightly over the top. But apart from that, I’m quite happy with how things are looking right now with the meal plan.
In terms of the cut - I’m feeling pretty good about that. The end is in sight now; I want to go hard for the last few weeks of the year and really burn off the fat. I’m not looking pretty, or aesthetic, but I have definitely leaned out a bit, and I can foresee myself being in a good place for starting a (sensible) mass-gaining phase as the new year starts. I have a non-negotiable goal: I need to be squarely out of DYEL territory by the start of March 2021. At the moment, there is still some doubt about whether I do, indeed, lift - I don’t want any of that by the 1st of March.
If I want to achieve that, I need to set aside a minimum of 12 weeks for mass-gaining - enough time to run, say, BBB and BtM. That leaves me with a pretty tight window to be in a suitable state for a mass phase - come the first day of 2021, I must be ready, otherwise I will miss the 1st March deadline I’ve set for myself.
So long story short - I have about 4 weeks left to give it everything I’ve got and get ready for a bulk. No room for fluffing around now!
This is good news. I note that your fat loss is going well. But your PR sets are suffering. Try and eat a high energy snack 15mins before working out. It gives you the energy needed to power on through a work out.
I started doing this and it really helped. I unfortunately took it step too far and started to eat Nutela and peanut butter sandwich before each work out. Which is not a bad idea. But I was “loading up” for about 3h before eat work out… Not so good.
Caloric intake is usually low in a caloric deficit. Are you trying to suggest that your calories were too low? If so, what makes you say that? Are you monitoring how much weight you lose per week?
You only have about one month left. It sounds like you have to decide what to prioritize – maintaining absolute strength or shedding bodyfat. With what you have described and the amount of time you are giving yourself, you should probably err toward a touch less moderation. Muscle loss is extremely unlikely.
Regarding the protein, what I usually do is cook a bunch of meat and fish once every 2 weeks and freeze it down. That way I am not running out of protein on a busy weekday and don’t have to deal with cleaning cooking utensils as much. I think this is a great strategy regardless of gaining, losing, or maintaining weight.
Tinker has been debating his maintenance calorie level and thus his fat loss macros for a few days.
He was toying with 1900 calories a day. Which I though was too low. Comparing day to day food this looks to about right.
For sure that might be the case. We don’t really know what his daily caloric expenditure is. We only have a sense of how he feels about his body composition. But if he only wants to lose weight for only one more month, I personally feel it would be better to err on the side of being more aggressive. He even writes
Especially since it seemed like he was in limbo, not really in a deficit, for a bit there.
Yes, I remember you gave me this advice when I first started the cut, so I always try to avoid training without a meal. I’m having a small amount of chicken and rice along with some fruit juice just before I train and I’ve been avoiding training on an empty stomach, but alas it doesn’t seem to be helping much. It’d probably be worse without a pre-workout meal though so I will keep it up.
You have a point. The reason I said it was too low was that the amount of food was notably lower than what I was eating prior to that when I was in a deficit. In an ideal world I would probably watch the weight for a week while following the meal plan and then adjust from there…
…however, at this point I don’t have a week lying around to do that. So I have to make a call and given that this is the case –
– I will need to lean towards too low of a caloric intake rather than too high of a caloric intake as you say. In fact, I may simply jump to my Level 2 fat loss meal plan immediately - that would solve the problem of me not being able to eat 5 eggs every morning, and my quantity of food would still be very similar but with fewer calories. To try and minimise the effect on my workouts, I will be keeping carbs around the workout window, and I am keeping protein very high to mitigate the possibility of muscle loss, but at this point the most important thing is to lean out. If the PR sets suffer a bit then I’m ok with that as long as I’m ready by the end of the year.
Cutting update: ok I may have lied when I said that my meal plan didn’t provide enough food. Just been doing it again today and I think I will need to cut down some calories… maybe abandon the meal plan altogether to be honest. The first day I tried it it seemed like too little, it seemed a little better the second day, and today it seems like way too much. Might just use it as a template and adjust how much I decide to eat depending on how I feel… but I’ll need to be careful if I decide to do that. Dunno. Let’s see how tomorrow goes.
If you’re contemplating abandoning the plan and also contemplating dedicating the next 28 days to fat loss, ever consider running the velocity diet from BioTest? Would answer the mail.
It’s a tempting idea. I’ve actually recently been reading some Dan John stuff about the Velocity diet. Only thing is I don’t have the Velocity Diet book/supplement pack etc and probably won’t be able to buy them any time soon (but I think I have a pretty good idea of what it involves - it’s not exactly complicated lol). That, and living off protein shakes for a month might get me a telling-off at home, to say the least, so I’m not sure about the practicality. It’s certainly something I’m open to considering though.
It doesn’t require anything besides being willing to be hungry on non-exercise days.
I largely agree with T3hPwnisher’s eating nutrition philosophy, and I think doing fasting diets are an easy way to start out. You are fueling yourself only on the days when your body really needs it. You should be getting stronger while not putting on fat as long as you eat enough after eating days. Which, mind you, may be far more than what your stomach tells you.
You should be losing weight over a period of time just from adhering to this diet and not killing yourself with your training.
You can then add on calories bit by bit on non-training days to help make the bodyweight trend upwards over a long period of time if that is your goal changes.
@T3hPwnisher I’ve decided that at the moment unfortunately I’m not going to be able to run the V-diet. I don’t think it’s going to be practical for me, mainly due to my situation at home. But as always, I really appreciate the advice.
It sounds like a good plan, thanks for the recommendation. At the moment I might stick to my current approach - I don’t want to change anything too drastically, as long as the fat keeps coming off for the next month I’m ok. But, that being said, this looks like something I will want to run next time round (or if fat loss plateaus in the next few weeks), so I’ll file it away for future use.
No sweat dude: as a married guy with a kid I get it. It’s a bit on the “anti-social” side of the house. Something I’d try if I was ever away for a month, but a bit of a selfish move otherwise.
I’ve got a pair of romaleos that I don’t use much, I’d have sent them to you for the cost of shipping, but they’re far too big for you, haha. They’re really good shoes, I just got away from using them. Oh well.
Yesterday’s workout - the first of the deload week.
Had swimming in the morning - another pretty brutal session. Felt like I was lacking in endurance, similarly to Friday’s swim session - just couldn’t move the arms and legs as well as I’d have liked once the fatigue set in - but I had some good power and speed on the sprints.
Have scaled everything back weight training wise for the deload - see the notes section below.
30/11/20
Deadlift
Set 1: 50kgx5 (5 @~40%) (as RDLs)
Set 2: 60x5 (5 @~50%)
Set 3: 75x5 (5 @~70%)
Assistance -
Superset: Chins 9, 5, 4 with dips 10, 6, 6 (only pushing first sets on both movements)
BB rows 45x12, 12
Pullovers 2 sets
Circuit x3: Lateral raise – BW decline situps – neck work – BB curls
Notes:
So I eased up on pretty much everything - no supplemental BB work, and not pushing the assistance work hard either; only the first sets of dips and chins were to failure, volume/set count was decreased, and everything else was similarly easy, so light and not pushing too much.
Couldn’t really be bothered loading up the small plates today, so just rounded the weights a kilo or two up or down to the nearest round number, lol (hence the ‘~’ before the percentages above to denote that they are only approximate.)
Cardio this morning. Advance warning that this post contains some assorted musings, lol.
The workout itself, for the record: Didn’t use my scheduled plan of the tempo runs today. Instead did two longer runs at a fast pace (not sure how long they were - between 500-1000m I’d guess.) Then I finished up with 5 fast, short sprints (30-40 metres) on grass. Those felt great - really flew there.
The real story begins before the workout though, lol. First off, it took me about half an hour to work up the willpower to get out of bed, and to actually properly wake up. Was pretty tired. Then I forgot to take my protein shake before going out (didn’t realise that until quite a while after getting back lol). And when I got outside I realised that it was raining - but it was a sort of cool, vapour-like drizzle. So the streets were pretty much empty - usually there are more people out to run. When I saw that the streets were empty of runners, I knew I had made the right choice in getting out of bed to do the session. Personally I don’t mind the rain at all - that sort of drizzle is the best to do road work in, because it’s like someone’s constantly spraying you with cold water. Really feels good - and it definitely helped keep me cool during the session today.
I have a theory: a disproportionate amount of the workouts that you don’t really feel like going and doing tend to be really good. I find this to be especially true with conditioning and cardio work. It’s similar to what Arnold wrote in his Encyclopedia of Modern Bodybuilding:
"I showed up at the gym at seven o’clock one morning to work out and stepped out on the sundeck for a moment. Suddenly the sun came through the clouds. It was so beautiful I lost all my motivation to train. I thought maybe I would go to the beach instead. I came up with every excuse in the book - the most persuasive being that I had trained hard the day before with Jusup Wilkosz, so I could lay back today - but then I heard weights being clanged together inside the gym and I saw Wilkosz working his abs, Ken Waller doing shoulders, veins standing out all over his upper body, Franco Columbu blasting away, benching more than 400 pounds, Samir Bannout punishing his biceps with heavy Curls. Everywhere I looked there was some kind of hard, sweaty training going on, and I knew that I couldn’t afford not to train if I was going to compete against these champions. Their example sucked me in, and now I was looking forward to working, anticipating the pleasure of pitting my muscles against heavy iron. By the end of that session I had the best pump I could imagine, and an almost wasted morning had turned into one of the best workouts of my life."
@carlbm wanted to ask if you have suggestions for any more sprint workout templates that could work in place of the tempo runs? I’ve really been liking them, but they tend to take a little bit too long. I’m still doing this workout though -
Physique update: 75.1 kg this morning; waist is at just under 31 inches controlled and is at 32 inches relaxed. ‘Nuff said. Yes, part of it is probably water and salt etc - I was about a kilo heavier yesterday lol. But this is a good sign - the waist is slightly down too. Let’s keep this up.
Yesterday’s session - followed the same deloading principles that I did in my deadlift session, so nothing too exciting here.
02/12/20
Press
Set 1: 22.5kgx5 (5 @~40%)
Set 2: 27.5x5 (5 @~50%)
Set 3: 34x5 (5 @~60%)
Assistance –
Superset: Chins 10 (almost 11, dammit), 5, 4 with dips 12, 6, 5 (same as yesterday, only pushing first sets of these exercises)
BB rows 45x13, 10 (second set with narrow underhand grip - I quite liked that)
Pullovers 2 sets
Circuit x3: Lateral raise – hanging knee raise – neck work – BB curl. (Decided to throw in some lower ab work just to shake things up).