First time poster here, bear with me but I’m looking for some help getting out of a mental slump.
History - 28 years old, 5 ft 11 and around 175 lbs (9-10% BF). My training revolves around sprinting (100m) and weights in a roughly 50:50 balance.
The issue I’ve realised I’m having is that I’m in limbo. As a former fatty (21 stone / 300 lbs around 10 years ago), my focus on/off for the last 2-3 years has been reaching real leanness. I’ve gotten down to 9-10% at 175lbs and am relatively happy with my level of leanness but can’t seem to break out of the mentality shift of cutting. I feel a bit like I’m treading water - I’m eating a slight deficit (around 2,500 cals daily), more or less treading water at 9-10% BF and not making any progress with my lifts or sprinting, understandably.
I want to improve my physique and sprint times - strength, power and speed, but I just can’t seem to get my head right with the approach I should be taking. I feel like I’m being pulled in two directions - half of me wants to get results from seeing the scale drop and those lower abs pop, but the other half craves the results of pushing more weight each workout and feeling the improvements.
Can anyone offer any words of wisdom, talk any sense into me or sympathise from having been in a similar situation?
Honestly your diet might be a little light, 2500 cals is a little on the small side. If you increase that a bit you might increase muscle mass while keeping bodyfat in check, especially if you have been dieting for so long. You could actually be in a prime position to really press ahead with your training.
[quote]Mad_Dog_Divine wrote:
Train hard, eat big and recover.
Honestly your diet might be a little light, 2500 cals is a little on the small side. If you increase that a bit you might increase muscle mass while keeping bodyfat in check, especially if you have been dieting for so long. You could actually be in a prime position to really press ahead with your training.
Where in our beautiful country are you from? [/quote]
Thanks for the reply MDD. 2,500 has been my “attempting to cut slowly” intake which I’ve just kind of settled at for a few months now. I think what I’ll try to do is bump up to around 2,750 for a week, adding the extra calories to peri/post-workout - this should be pretty close to maintenance for a 28 yo, 5 ft 10, 175 lb man training 4-5 x pwk? Hopefully the extra nutrients will result in some strength gains and this will be enough to stop my mind wandering back to “I should be cutting” mode!
I’m in London - Waterloo to be precise! Soho gym, bless it.
Still seems low on the calorie side. I was thinking more like 3300. It doesn’t have to be the same every day though. Eat big after a workout and keep it relatively light at other times. Things have a tendency to fall into place like that.
What is your training like? It may be that it has gotten stale from having low calories.