Feeling Beat Up When Dieting?

Training Beginners
1

I’ve been trying to cut some fat for awhile now. I started in January, doing circuit type workouts in my apartment when I found this site and started doing research. My diet has evolved, my training has evolved, and I’ve been losing fat putting on muscle.

I started at 166 @ 19.5% and now I’m about 170 @ 14.5%. This is all according to Tanita, but I’m noticeably more muscular now and leaner.

I’d like to do 5 workouts a week, 2 total body strength training, 3 metcon or monostructural cardio workouts. I’m trying to do 2 days of crossfit/gym jones type metabolic conditioning type training.

This involves bodyweight exercises/kettlebell/sandbag exercises all thrown into a circuit. I’ll make em up usually. Then one day just plain jump rope, usually 2 min + 1 min rest x 12 rounds and 2 total body lifting days.

The lifting was 10x3, but I’ve moved onto an EDT style:

  1. Front Squat/Back Squat + Pull Ups (15 min @ ~75% 1rm / BW)
    (Sometimes I’ll do towel pull ups)

  2. Barbell Complex usually 10x3 w/ 45 sec rest
    Hang Power Snatch to OH Squat
    BB Row to Hang Power Clean to Push Press

  3. Supplementary/Prehab Work usually 2 exercises 3x10-12

  4. Posterior Chain+Walking Lunge+Upper Body for 15 min
    Like Back Extension+DB Walking OH Lunge+DB Press
    Dips+Walking OH Lunge+1 Leg DL

    (2 days = 2 sets of lifts/week)

I’m eating between 1800-2200 calories a day w/ a carb cycling approach. I’ll eat a little more on the weekends, but it has been relatively clean. The carbs are usually < 30g rest days (2/week), <90 (3/week), <150 (2/week).

I’m taking usually 1/2 to full serving Surge peri/post workout, zma, Flameout, creatine, and added HOT-ROX back in a last week. I’m getting ~7-8 hrs of sleep a night.

The last 3 days though, I’ve felt extremely beat up. Usually, I’ll be good for the week, eat a little more on the weekend, and be revamped ready to go on Monday. Come Friday, I’ll have to push myself a bit to get going, but today it just wasn’t happening. I went to bed at like 9:00 on Thursday and still struggled to get through the workday.

I’m eating pizza and drinking beer right now(1st beer I’ve had in months), pondering my options. I wanted to see what other people think.

Cut back on lifting and let the diet do the work? Add some calories and keep up the training intensity? I was losing about 1 lb/week, which seems reasonably. I would tell myself to suck it up, but something isn’t right.

Right now I’m thinking about upping carbs, and doing a higher carb cycling approach more out of the Carb Cycling Codex. I did that before and cut the carbs pretty drastically from what the article suggested. I’m going to redo my whole diet tomorrow, and start planning menus out 7 days in advance instead of ~2-3. I might even go back to maintenance for a couple weeks.

I’ve done three stints at maintenance/maintenance+ since I started, and haven’t been dieting for 6 months straight. I’m thinking I might be due for another one.

If you read this thanks, and I would appreciate some opinions/unconsidered options/ideas.

2

I was (… am, really) working a manual labor job while lifting 3x/week and sprinting 3x/week on 2000kcal. I did this for 5 weeks (it was the bitter end of my cut). I would feel dead walking around the job site. It was very difficult. So I think I know what you’re talking about.

Two things helped: I would limit the quality, but not quantity of foods on Sundays. Looking back, Sundays made me feel good, and willing to continue the diet, and I don’t think they significantly affected my progress. Second, I made sure to record my progress, so that if I was feeling beat up, I at least knew why.

Are you still seeing results? And are those results worth the suffering?

3

[quote]

Two things helped: I would limit the quality, but not quantity of foods on Sundays. Looking back, Sundays made me feel good, and willing to continue the diet, and I don’t think they significantly affected my progress. Second, I made sure to record my progress, so that if I was feeling beat up, I at least knew why.

Are you still seeing results? And are those results worth the suffering?[/quote]

When you say limiting quality but not quantity, is that just eating more junk/semi junk type foods, but still counting overall kcals.

I have a calendar on my wall, and I weigh myself every morning/night and record what kind of training I did that day and if I followed my diet. I think I’m going to start charting sleep time/quality, perceived stress from work/life, and overall fatigue for the day to get a better idea of how I am responding physically, mentally, emotionally to my routine. I have the data, but I haven’t really reviewed it on a weekly basis to get some feedback about what needs to change.

The results are still there, although I kind of lost some momentum yesterday, but I’m feeling pretty refreshed and ready to get back to it.

4

You could try changing up your work outs a bit, and moving to a different type of progression. Try reducing rest periods over the course of a few weeks (eg. week 1, 60 sec, week 2, 55 or 50 sec. etc.)

The other possibility would be to do as you mentioned and do a short stint of upped calories. You might also consider doing a deload that week. The deload could be a reduction in weight, but what might work better would be just reducing the training you do during that week. So maybe just hit up a few days of TBT and call it good for the week–let you’re body recover.

Then again, if you’re still getting results, you might just want to grind it out.

5

[quote]theuofh wrote:
When you say limiting quality but not quantity, is that just eating more junk/semi junk type foods, but still counting overall kcals.
[/quote]

A quality floor, not ceiling. Unlimited amounts of eggs, bacon, oatmeal, WW pasta w/sauce peanuts, and some honey (not too much though). So quality was high, and calories were not watched. I swear to God, I never felt so great as the mornings after I got in a couple thousand calories of eggs, cheese, bacon, cream and coffee. Testosterone is the greatest drug, I swear to God.

6

What I find works best for me, is after 3-4-5 weeks, when I start to feel worn down AND my fat loss has stopped, I eat “normally” for 4-5-6 days, then I can begin again. One cheat meal or cheat day a week aint enough to set the fat burning mode back to normal IMO.

7

SwD I’m going to give that a go. My shoulder is messed up now and I think I’ll take a week to eat more, do some upper body rehab work, and hopefully feel strong again.

Otep, thats a great idea as well. It feels good following a strict diet for a couple weeks and getting constant results, but after awhile you just need to eat until you are full and satisfied and refreshed. The quality is important, and eating regular healthy foods won’t set you back too much.

Boyscout, I need a little bit of a deload, but I am just going to sub my upper body work with rehab type exercises. I’ll keep my lower body work intensity rather high. I think I just need some more calories for a bit.

Thanks for the replies guys.