Trying to lose fat, I am cutting calories and seem to be stagnating.
Just wondered if I need to cut more or I’m cutting too far.
If I give my caloric details, or any others, it may influence your answer, so just wanted to know if anyone has experienced going too low or holding on to fat despite cutting.
1123 calories/day is the absolute cutoff
[quote]jskrabac wrote:
1123 calories/day is the absolute cutoff[/quote]
Thank you - so I should still be losing if I stay above that? Like 1124 is Ok?
If you have to ask how many cals is too low to cut to, chances are you’re already there (if not pretty soon). You can’t just keep dropping your intake as progress stalls. It will create much more of a problem than you realize in terms of improving your body composition.
Most people cut, cut, cut #s until their metabolism basically ‘crashes’, and they’re eating next to nothing. They’re not losing weight because their body has adapted to the lower intake but getting rid of ‘costly muscle’ so it doesn’t have to feed all that extra tissue. Less muscle means a lower metabolic rate, see the problem here? This is why every decent write up on how to design a diet stresses muscle retention as your main goal. It gives your body a reason to actually make use of the nutrients you’re ingesting.
You’re holding onto fat because your body is trying to preserve energy substrate stores because you’re made it think you’re trying to starve it to death.
S
Stu is correct.
However, instead of just dropping cals, which can be dangerous depending on what you’re eating (too much of a good thing…) try changing your diet around and find what works best for you. I’m in no way a professional, but for example you could remove wheat products from your diet (beard, pasta etc…) and see decent results.
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
If you have to ask how many cals is too low to cut to, chances are you’re already there (if not pretty soon). You can’t just keep dropping your intake as progress stalls. It will create much more of a problem than you realize in terms of improving your body composition.
Most people cut, cut, cut #s until their metabolism basically ‘crashes’, and they’re eating next to nothing. They’re not losing weight because their body has adapted to the lower intake but getting rid of ‘costly muscle’ so it doesn’t have to feed all that extra tissue. Less muscle means a lower metabolic rate, see the problem here? This is why every decent write up on how to design a diet stresses muscle retention as your main goal. It gives your body a reason to actually make use of the nutrients you’re ingesting.
You’re holding onto fat because your body is trying to preserve energy substrate stores because you’re made it think you’re trying to starve it to death.
S[/quote]
Thank you - so let’s say I’m at that stage (and maybe I am?) however, when I ADD calories I also get slightly fatter/or stay the same. Is this possibly because I am not adding enough? Is there a danger of that?
[quote]alin wrote:
Trying to lose fat, I am cutting calories and seem to be stagnating.
Just wondered if I need to cut more or I’m cutting too far.
If I give my caloric details, or any others, it may influence your answer, so just wanted to know if anyone has experienced going too low or holding on to fat despite cutting.[/quote]
I’m not a bodybuilder, so I would listen to those guys before me, as a powerlifter I don’t worry about being lean quite so much. I can tell you though, that I have been in your position back when I first started. I dropped quite a bit of weight before stalling out, then I couldn’t lose weight at all for quite some time, eventually I started feeling really awful, had low testosterone levels as confirmed by blood tests, and pretty much just hated life.
What worked for me? For a little bit I had to just give up on losing weight. I bulked for a little bit, and really worked HARD to get my lifts moving up. Then after gaining for awhile, I slowly tapered off some of the food until the scale started moving down. I maintained this, and lost 20lbs rather effortlessly. I think that cheat days are incredibly important to keep weight loss going. Cheat days aren’t a licence to eat like complete crap though, just to keep the metabolism up by eating more.
[quote]EveryLastingScar wrote:
[quote]alin wrote:
Trying to lose fat, I am cutting calories and seem to be stagnating.
Just wondered if I need to cut more or I’m cutting too far.
If I give my caloric details, or any others, it may influence your answer, so just wanted to know if anyone has experienced going too low or holding on to fat despite cutting.[/quote]
I’m not a bodybuilder, so I would listen to those guys before me, as a powerlifter I don’t worry about being lean quite so much. I can tell you though, that I have been in your position back when I first started. I dropped quite a bit of weight before stalling out, then I couldn’t lose weight at all for quite some time, eventually I started feeling really awful, had low testosterone levels as confirmed by blood tests, and pretty much just hated life.
What worked for me? For a little bit I had to just give up on losing weight. I bulked for a little bit, and really worked HARD to get my lifts moving up. Then after gaining for awhile, I slowly tapered off some of the food until the scale started moving down. I maintained this, and lost 20lbs rather effortlessly. I think that cheat days are incredibly important to keep weight loss going. Cheat days aren’t a licence to eat like complete crap though, just to keep the metabolism up by eating more.[/quote]
Thank you - that’s quite inspiring too! I guess the ‘fun’ has gone for me as well.
thank you again
[quote]alin wrote:
[quote]The Mighty Stu wrote:
If you have to ask how many cals is too low to cut to, chances are you’re already there (if not pretty soon). You can’t just keep dropping your intake as progress stalls. It will create much more of a problem than you realize in terms of improving your body composition.
Most people cut, cut, cut #s until their metabolism basically ‘crashes’, and they’re eating next to nothing. They’re not losing weight because their body has adapted to the lower intake but getting rid of ‘costly muscle’ so it doesn’t have to feed all that extra tissue. Less muscle means a lower metabolic rate, see the problem here? This is why every decent write up on how to design a diet stresses muscle retention as your main goal. It gives your body a reason to actually make use of the nutrients you’re ingesting.
You’re holding onto fat because your body is trying to preserve energy substrate stores because you’re made it think you’re trying to starve it to death.
S[/quote]
Thank you - so let’s say I’m at that stage (and maybe I am?) however, when I ADD calories I also get slightly fatter/or stay the same. Is this possibly because I am not adding enough? Is there a danger of that?[/quote]
What types of macros are you adding? in what amounts? where in your daily intake in relation to your training? For that matter, what does your weekly training even look like?
You can’t just “add” or “subtract” calories and expect everything to magically relate to your body composition (muscle and fat) as you’d like it to.
S