Lost 100lbs. Point Me in Another Direction

Bigger Stronger Leaner Beginners
1

Hi all!
I’ve lost around 45kg/100lbs in about 15 months (started at 128kg/~282lbs, now at 82.5kg/~181.9lbs) and feel fitter than I’ve ever felt before in my whole life. I think that my diet is about average, helping me lose a couple of pounds every week, and I lift weights 6 days a week, excluding Sundays.

The problem is that I still have some fat around my lower-abs which I’m trying to lose, and also increase my muscle mass/bulk. I’m an ovo-lacto-vegetarian (eggs+dairy+vegetables, no meat) and here’s my current diet:

Breakfast:
1 cup of coffee with low-fat milk
1 apple + 1 pear
2 slices of brown bread + 1 slice of cheese.

Lunch:
2 whole-wheat breads + veggies
1 cup of boiled beans ( Chickpea - Wikipedia )

Post-workout (workouts from 6.30 pm to 8.30):
1 bar of chocolate
1 Protein shake (Optimum Nutrition Whey Protein + Water and Ice)

Dinner:
2 slices of bread
1 slice of cheese
Scrambled egg white from 2 eggs.

Miscellaneous:
One apple anytime throughout the day.
Drink lots of water, about 3 litres a day.

Yes, there are things in my diet which can be improved. And I’d love to read criticism about it. There’s way too much information just on this site which confuses me as to which diet plan I can/should follow. There ain’t a magic bullet diet which I also know, but I’d appreciate a few recommendations of your own…

Now moving on to my workouts, here’s my schedule:
Monday - Chest
Tuesday - Back
Wednesday - Shoulder
Thursday - Biceps
Friday - Legs/Lower Body
Saturday - Abs, Forearms, Triceps

About the exercises, I do 4 sets with 12-10-8-6 reps of an exercise for each muscle group.
Chest: Bench presses, incline dumbell presses, decline bench press, machine fly, pulley cablecross.
Back: Bent over barbell rowing, Single dumbell rowing, Lat pulldown, machine rowing and pulley rowing.
Shoulder: Overhead press, Seated overhead dumbell press, lateral and front raises with dumbells, lateral and front raise on the pulley, barbell shrugs with the bar behind me.
Biceps: Barbell curls, Alternate dumbell curls, Alternate hammer curls, Preacher/Concentration curls (alternate between the two), Pulley curling
Lower Body: Barbell squats, Leg Extension, Leg curling, Standing & seated calf press

I’m looking to reduce my fat % and increase muscle mass/bulk. I’d appreciate everyone’s suggestions on my diet and workouts. Also appreciated are diet and workout plans. Thanks for reading, and apologies for asking such a broad question! :slight_smile:

2

Fat loss, or muscle gain. Pick one. If you’ve been training for over a year, you’re going to start having a hard time doing both pretty soon.
One thing I would recommend if you’re trying to loss fat is to replace some of your bread with a protein source, especially in your dinner. Maybe add an extra egg and some veggies instead of the bread. You might like the Anabolic Diet
http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=460968
, or the T-dawg diet http://www.T-Nation.com/readArticle.do?id=473067

For your workout, I highly recommend CT’s Destroying Fat workout instead of a body part split if you’re trying to go for fat loss. Otherwise, read the beginners stickies for a bunch of good diet and exercise advice for bulking.
Good luck, and congrats on the fat loss!

3

If you can’t eat meat, hit the eggs. I’m talking at least a dozen a day. Don’t buy into the hype that they are bad for your cholestoral and stop wasting time with egg whites (and skim milk for that matter). You are sucking all the nutritional value out of the egg when you throw those yolks down the drain.

As Ninja said, trying to bulk and lose fat at the same time makes zero sense. I would suggest cleaning up the diet, upping the calories fairly conservatively, and adjust as you see fit in the coming weeks and months. Oh, and where are the veggies and fruits? You better get on that.

Good luck and safe training

4

Damn. That’s not a lot of protein. Or food in general.

5

What was your diet before?

6

Wheres the protein.

7

OK, so I will increase my protein intake, eat more veggies and fruits.

About my goal, I guess I’ll first go for losing all the fat around my lower abs area, after which I can go for bulking up without worrying about eating less at the same time.

As for the diet before, it wasn’t very healthy as you can imagine. Fuckloads of carbs, and no working out at all.

Another small question I’d like to ask is about my incline dumbbell presses. Just yesterday, while working out, I seemed to lose all power in my upper body and a 50lb dumbbell nearly fell on my face even when I was holding it. I had just benched around 150lbs and went on to do more reps of incline dumbbell presses at the same weight (50lbs each) after this incident. Is that my CNS asking for a rest? Perhaps because of me lifting moderately-heavy (for me atleast) weights 6 days a week?

And as suggested, I will be following CT’s Destroying Fat workout and following the T-Dawg diet with a few small modifications as I require.

Thanks for your answers and encouragement :slight_smile:

8

Whether you are keeping your split or not, it makes no sense anyways.

Firstly the chest day: there are only two parts to your pec, upper and lower. You have yourself doing both, then upper, then lower, then both, then both again. Besides the fact that you dont want other muscles worked, the only reason you do isolation is to finish something off, or to pre-exhaust the muscle. So, why do you have that selection of excercises?

You need to pick a selection suitable to your body. e.g.
Underdeveloped chest: Couple chest with triceps day. Warm up on chest isolation (decline flies?), followed by heavy rep compound (decline bench), followed by something compound parallel (incline bench), then finish off your chest, then finish off your triceps. You should be looking at about 9 sets for your chest and triceps per week.

Large lower pecs, small upper chest: Couple chest and shoulders day. Isolate warm up chest, followed by isolate upper pecs high reps, then give a break by doing isolate lower pecs, then do compound shoulders (incline bench), and another compound shoulders (anything overhead).

Large torso, small arms: couple triceps and chest day. Warm up triceps, heavy compound (close grip bench), compound parallel higher rep(close grip incline), then finish off chest.

Think physiologically about your work selection.