I’ve been running the neurotype 1B diet lately with somewhat good success. Started at 200 and down to 190 at 6’ with quite a bit of regained muscle after taking a few years off.
However, despite following the caloric reduction in the plan, my fat loss has stalled over the past month - even in the 7 kcal/lb weeks. I’m stuck at 190.
I’ve been in more or less of a caloric restriction since about February (got serious about dieting in April after buying your get lean program and the 1B diet). This is my first fat loss phase so it took some trial and error. I’m counting calories, eating clean, measuring food, and following the plan
running your BWP for natties since July.
Any suggestions on how to kickstart progress again? Do I need to get out of a deficit for 4-6 weeks to restart my metabolism? I’m at a bit of a loss but don’t want to abandon my leanness goal..
Just my 2 cents, it might has something to do with your leptin and T4 to T3 conversion.
As a fellow 1B, I know the diet calls for relatively low carbs. Although I don’t know if you have the previous or the new version of the diet, I have both but use the new one. If you have the new one you know all about thd 12 week set up with maintenance and all that. Since it’s paid product I’m trying to be az vague as I can but again if you have to new one you understand what I mean.
CT has free materials on his site, one being Thib’s Fatloss Approach, another the Fatloss Matrix. Basically, first 4 weeks of diet, Keto, get everything ready, insulin receptors ‘sharpened’, then 4 weeks targeted keto, meaning carbs post workout, then another phase with carbs post workout and before bed. All this while your baseline calories are decreasing, but your total calories from carbs increase while consecutively you are lowering your fat intake per phase. This way you prevent your body to overly reduce leptin, as well as maintain a healthy production of T4 to T3, aiding fat loss.
While it takes a bit of thinking, you can find ways to combine this with the newer version of the 1B Diet, putting in maintenance weeks and what not, but this approach after a maintenance or refeed week could be helpful.
Ps: this is just what seems relatively logical to me, I’m sure Coach could give you a more definite and clear answer on the topic.
Hey, I appreciate the input! I do have the newer version of the diet, and you’re right. It is relatively low carbs, particularly on the low calorie weeks.
I was wondering if there might be something like that going on. Just unsure how to diagnose it. I’ll take a look at those articles, but it sounds like I may either need to increase carbs consistently for a bit or even go up to maintenance level calories…
I can’t tell you whether you can measure it, but usually if a weight loss stalls and doesn’t move even on a drastic deficit, it is likely to do with leptin and T4->T3.
These aren’t articles they are short PDF files available for free on CTs website.
Well you have seen then how the new 1B Diet is set up, maintenance phases should be built into the program, and should help you avoid getting into these situations, although they can still happen. Go to maintenance calories with maybe more evened out carbs throughout the day for a week or 2, keep training as usual, then start another drop phase and see what it does.
Again, any advice I give is more logical than experience based, I never actually done a cutting phase in my 10+ years of training, I prefer strength, size and some athleticism, all of which need a surplus to maintain and attain. But I’m a sucker for knowledge so these bits of information I come up with come to my head from previous articles and materials from CT, as well as his responses to previous similar questions on the forum.
You mention that you have been in a caloric deficit since February. So you essentially have been in a deficit for 5-6 months. Even if the deficit is not huge, that is WAY too long to be in a deficit. I normally recommend 12 weeks AT THE MOST. Because even if the diet is smart and the deficit conservative, past that point metabolic adaptations will catch up to you, making it really hard to keep losing fat.
Bert already mentionned the reduced conversion of T4 into T3 due to the chronically elevated cortisol level that comes from being in a deficit.
But there are others like reduced testosterone, peripheral insulin resistance (your muscles become resistant to insulin, making it harder to send nutrients there… which affects both muscle gain and fat loss). Peripheral insulin resistance is a protective mechanism that occurs when blood sugar is low due to low calories and carbs. The body wants to do everything possible to maintain a stable blood sugar level, so it makes the muscles resistant to insulin so that less carbs will be taken out of the bloodstream to go to the muscles. But it also reduces the capacty of the muscle to pull in amino acids.
Leptin is also reduced when in a caloric restriction for a long time, which greatly affects your capacity to lose fat.
The point is, 12 weeks is the longest you should be in a caloric deficit (and I personally perfer 8 to 10 weeks) after which you need a diet brak where you eat slightly above maintenance to reverse the metabolic adaptations. How long? Well, it depends on the severity and duration of the deficit. For 12 weeks of dieting I normally recommend at least a 3 weeks diet break. You were in. deficit for twice that long so you will deficintly need more than 3 weeks.