Hello nutritional experts.
I am looking to get as lean as possible in the next three weeks and need some serious advice.
At the moment, I weigh 77 kg, am 187 cm tall and a bodyfat guesstimate would be around 14% (skinnyfat bitch).
Currently, my diet consists of 70g carbs, ca. 200g protein and the rest fat, for a total of 2000 Cal/day. I’ve seen some progress in the past few weeks but I would really like it if this could go any faster.
-Here is an example of my daily diet-:
Breakfast: Protein shake and oats
Lunch: Eggs/tuna and skyr/almonds
Meal 3: Meat/fish and veggies
Meal 4: Protein shake and some carbs
Meal 5: Uhmm… something with protein if I’m hungry
If you are really lifting 4 times a week and only consuming 2000 Cal then you should be seeing results. If you are looking to spped this up add cardio (especially if you are not concerned with retaining/increasing muscle mass).
Also eating more often will increase your metabolism, try eating something every 2-3 hours during the course of the day (not full meals but small snacks, protein bars…) Another oprion is to add a weight loss supplement, like HOT-ROX.
Yeah, unfortunately here is the problem. When you go from 20% body fat to 10% body fat, the only thing you really notice is that you sort of shrink all around. After you get below 10% body fat that’s when your abs start coming out and every 1/2 lb you lose makes a dramatic difference (face gets more chiseled, veins start popping, etc.). But, I don’t think there is any way you can get down to 10% in three weeks, it takes a much longer time.
If you start dieting any harder than you are doing right now you are going to start chewing away your muscle. Diets need a long period of time. However, the only thing I could suggest is that you throw in some HIT cardio a few times a week. Try it in the morning, it’s difficult because your exhausted and not properly fueled for exercise, but it’ll amp up your metabolism for the rest of the day.
Eating more often sounds like a good idea, but there’s not a chance I’m doing cardio in the morning. I start work at 7 am and have to wake up before six
However, I’m thinking about adding a some DB step-ups to the end of some workouts. Any ideas on how often I should do this and perhaps a rep-scheme? I just came back from the gym where I worked up to a set of 10x22kg each leg and that was hard but not excruciating…
[quote]Grubes09 wrote:
Also eating more often will increase your metabolism, try eating something every 2-3 hours during the course of the day (not full meals but small snacks, protein bars…) [/quote]
Then I suggest you use that approach. In fact, try an intermittent fasting approach. There are two major approaches to it, but the one that Im doing is 16 hours fasting and 8 hours of eating (not 8 straight hours, but an eating window). I average 2-3 meals during that eating window. I don’t worry about low carb, or fat etc. I just make sure of three things:
Not eating too much, or too little (I want to maintain my weight but get stronger).
Eat protein with each meal (at least 50g per meal)
Eat high quality food, with the occasional junk food
You can manipulate it any way to suit your needs. Since I like to fast during the morning hours, I start my eating window at roughly (it doesn’t have to be 100% spot on every day) 3pm, and have my last meal at 11pm. Then I fast until 3pm the next day. Surprisingly, Im not hungry (much) during my fast, and when i eat I eat till Im satisfied. No feeling deprived.
[quote]forbes wrote:
Then I suggest you use that approach. In fact, try an intermittent fasting approach. There are two major approaches to it, but the one that Im doing is 16 hours fasting and 8 hours of eating (not 8 straight hours, but an eating window). I average 2-3 meals during that eating window. I don’t worry about low carb, or fat etc. I just make sure of three things:
Not eating too much, or too little (I want to maintain my weight but get stronger).
Eat protein with each meal (at least 50g per meal)
Eat high quality food, with the occasional junk food
You can manipulate it any way to suit your needs. Since I like to fast during the morning hours, I start my eating window at roughly (it doesn’t have to be 100% spot on every day) 3pm, and have my last meal at 11pm. Then I fast until 3pm the next day. Surprisingly, Im not hungry (much) during my fast, and when i eat I eat till Im satisfied. No feeling deprived. [/quote]
Unless the OP is fairly knowledgeable on nutrition, I suggest he NOT try anything as advanced as intermittent fasting.
It makes far more sense for him to get a better handle on basic nutrition before resorting to more extreme approaches.
If I’m not mistaken, even CT said that while he might use such an approach, he wouldn’t recommend it to others for this reason.
[quote]forbes wrote:
Then I suggest you use that approach. In fact, try an intermittent fasting approach. There are two major approaches to it, but the one that Im doing is 16 hours fasting and 8 hours of eating (not 8 straight hours, but an eating window). I average 2-3 meals during that eating window. I don’t worry about low carb, or fat etc. I just make sure of three things:
Not eating too much, or too little (I want to maintain my weight but get stronger).
Eat protein with each meal (at least 50g per meal)
Eat high quality food, with the occasional junk food
You can manipulate it any way to suit your needs. Since I like to fast during the morning hours, I start my eating window at roughly (it doesn’t have to be 100% spot on every day) 3pm, and have my last meal at 11pm. Then I fast until 3pm the next day. Surprisingly, Im not hungry (much) during my fast, and when i eat I eat till Im satisfied. No feeling deprived. [/quote]
Unless the OP is fairly knowledgeable on nutrition, I suggest he NOT try anything as advanced as intermittent fasting.
It makes far more sense for him to get a better handle on basic nutrition before resorting to more extreme approaches.
If I’m not mistaken, even CT said that while he might use such an approach, he wouldn’t recommend it to others for this reason.
[/quote]
Hmmm, on second thought you’re right. But my major point was that he doesn’t have to eat every 2-3 hours.
2-3 hours is just a suggestion. the overall idea is that you spread out your calories over the day. Eating 3 large meals encourages your body to store energy (we store excess energy in the form of fat). If you spread the calories out over the day, eating 6-8 small meals your body becomes accustomed to getting nutrients every couple hours and therefore doesn’t store the unused energy from each meal.
[quote]Grubes09 wrote:
2-3 hours is just a suggestion. the overall idea is that you spread out your calories over the day. Eating 3 large meals encourages your body to store energy (we store excess energy in the form of fat). If you spread the calories out over the day, eating 6-8 small meals your body becomes accustomed to getting nutrients every couple hours and therefore doesn’t store the unused energy from each meal.[/quote]
But you see, thats not true either. Your body doesn’t enter starvation mode when eating 3 meals a day. Heck, it doesn’t even enter it even if you’re eating one.
There is simply no evidence for it. Its just dogma spewed out by people who have no clue how the body works.
I know you were just trying to help, and Im not personally attacking you, just the dogma that gets tossed around with no solid evidence.
[quote]bkmacky9288 wrote:
I see we have a Martin Berkhan fan. I follow the same approach Forbes[/quote]
Ha! Ya, I’ve become a fan of IF. Now that I know there’s another “fan”, I’d like to know more about your thoughts on supplements, macros, fasted workouts etc. You seem to know what you’re doing. Though I like Berkhan’s work, I don’t follow everything he says to a T.
The idea of eating every few hrs is to ease the hunger pains, and I find that it works. I think there is some psychological relief in knowing that you will eat soon after your current meal.
VKing, you should definitely check out Martin Berkhan’s Leangains site for info on this. I’ve gotten as low as 5.5% the standard way (6 meals, evenly spaced, high protein + fibrous carbs and fish oil) and gotten almost as low (6-7%) using IF/Leangains – without even really trying to lean out.
To be sure, it’s definitely the case that you can get really lean with the former approach, but it is pretty mentally and physically demanding and requires some serious self-discipline (assuming you’re not some kind of genetic freak). With the leangains/IF approach, which I stumbled upon a few months ago, you can eat much more reasonably over the course of two-three meals and not feel like you’re hungry all the time. I’m not kidding when I say that I got lean in about 3 weeks with what seemed like relatively minimal effort, when compared with my previous cut. And maintenance of the lean state is a breeze.
Also, there are some good studies that pretty well debunk the notion that “starvation mode” or “metabolic slowdown” occurs if you don’t eat every three hours. It’s more like 30-40 hours, if I recall. Same goes with breakfast eaten first thing in the morning as some kind of requirement to stave off catabolism. I assume that the original reason for multiple meals (more than three) was that bodybuilders with “assistance” needed so many calories that it was virtually impossible to consume them in only three meals. When you’re eating 6K calories per day, six 1000 cal meals is a lot more doable than three 2K plus calorie meals. However, when you’re working on 2K per day to create a 500 cal. deficit, three 600-700 cal. meals work a lot better than 6 meals of 300-250 cals. for both satiety and sanity.
One more thought – if I am reading right, you are about 5’11 and 170 lbs. If you are 14% bf, you will likely be disappointed with what you look like at 5% bf (roughly 155 lbs). You’ll be ripped, but probably look a bit anorexic. (I know this because I am 6 feet and went from 195 at 12-14% or thereabouts down to 173 lbs at 5.5% and was ripped to the bone, but you would hardly know I worked out if I was wearing a t-shirt. So you might consider a more “recomp” protocol as opposed to a straight cut. But then again, it might be worth getting that lean just to see what’s there . . .
Thanks for the tip, will check it out. Regarding the way I will look, I don’t plan on getting ripped, just getting rid of most of the flab since after three weeks I’m going on a beach holiday
