My understanding is that it lets you keep performing while losing weight. A 275er is generally going to be obese by BMI but not necessarily particularly fat. Sloppy, but not fat.
So you keep calories and carbs as high as possible in a small deficit over a longer period. Eventually you’re leaner, while still performing as well as you did before.
In the context of powerlifting, there is no benefit to being leaner if your strength drops
I think the article stated this is inevitable.
As for the other points made, I understand the logic of it but stand by the observation that for a 275lbs overweight person, regardless of how much they can bench or squat, most likely with insulin sensitivity and chronic inflammation issues, prescribing a high calorie/high carb diet is not great advice.
Second, slow deficits over time sound great but real world experience shows a disproportionately high dietary failure rate, i.e. around 95% of diets fail (or folks fail the diet, depending on how you view it). It stands to reason, that, the longer you diet the more likely you are to run into compliance issues. And, while I alluded to it in an earlier post, these type of slower cuts can also bring associated health issues (physical and mental).
I think if I asked you to write a framework that’d work for both me, 175 lbs, and Tyson Fury, 28 stone, you’d be within your rights to tell me to sod off. It’s easier to publish something that’ll work for the middle of the bell-curve and then tailor-make approaches for the outliers.
If one were to write such a framework, I’d imagine it would have to be multi-column similar to,
| Bodyfat | 8-12% | 13-17% | 18%+ |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starting Calories | higher | lower | lowest |
| Protein | 1gr/lbs | more | even more |
| Fat | some | more | even more |
| Carbs | the rest | the rest | the rest |
but inherently more complex. It’d presumably have to have weight brackets, activity level brackets, and several other parameters.
Maybe meal frequency, carb timing, etcetera too. There’d be so many axises of concern going on that it wouldn’t present well I think in a linear text. And it’d be hard to balance everything.
I googled quickly, Tyson lost 140 pounds. And it took 2 years. So, he wasn’t losing a “modest” 2lbs per week, he was losing less.
You’ll become smaller and possibly less strong. Another way of reaching 8% is maintaining your bodyweight while forcing your body to trade fat for muscle. Recomping is possible.
I expect you are right. In the last month I have gone from 178 to 171. I barely look any different from my own perspective. I have a pair of fat calipers and my oblique area measures 2-3 mm smaller (down from around 9 to 6). It’s hard to measure absolute strength loss because until last week I didn’t have a barbell. I think 5 weeks without doing back squats is going to hurt my numbers regardless. So I am working back into barbell lifts this week and will see where I am at. No matter where I’m at, at the end of the week I am going to raise calories to a surplus and start a new strength program.
You’ve jumped the Google gun there. Fury lost almost seven stones between November 2017 and his comeback fight in June 2018.
Okay, found the wrong weight loss I guess!
This is a pretty interesting string. I like @Voxel’s point about articles are for the middle of the bell curve - I think that’s probably at the heart of this.
I also think definitions matter here: “performance” is incredibly relative to your sport/ activity.
I am really starting to come to mind that there are absolute values in the nutrition game more than just the relative numbers we tend to use. The relative numbers matter, obviously, because a 120lbs. woman simply is not going to get the same results from the same calorie/ macro breakdown as a 275lbs. powerlifting man. I think, however, maybe some of the reasons we see such variances in studies that look at the anabolic effects of protein grams per unit of bodyweight is because these differences don’t scale linearly with bodyweight.
We already know, for example, that our maintenance calorie intake has a (sometimes pretty wide) range. Further, we take for granted there are base thresholds for acute leucine intakes to maximize muscle protein synthesis, that ~30g carbs will disrupt ketosis, that <40g of fat may impact hormone production, that the brain (keeping it simple on purpose, don’t school me on gluconeogenis, please, although I could stand to learn) uses a bit over 100g of carbs per day, etc.
I propose that our actual needs arise from a baseline minimum (calories and macros), plus a relative number that may or may not scale linearly with bodyweight, to some soft maximum threshold.
We’d set that up with minimums - easy enough to say 130g carbs for our brain, 40g fat for our hormones, and 130g protein (~30g yields 3g leucine, in 4 MPS opportunities per day). You’d then scale each of those up based on preference, training (more glycogen-depleting = more carbs or heavy weight/ low rep = more fat; poor weight training recovery = more protein) and adjust based on caloric need. I don’t think there is anything wrong with bodyweight x 15 as a starting point, but (to the point of outliers as well), I have really done better myself by just tracking what I eat for a week with no changes (because you always have a base case - you’re already eating!), and adjusting from there.
Anyway, sorry for the novel, and I really know nothing nor have I trained anyone, so this is worth as much as the virtual ink I used to type it. Just thoughts rolling around.
In any case, @JamesBrawn007, I’ve always liked your posts on nutrition and I hate long diets, so I am very curious: how would you approach a diet for a powerlifter that needs to drop something realistic, let’s say 20lbs.?
Because you can “coach” him forever and keep a client. Same reason “coaches” now want the clients to go on long “reverse diets”.
At risk of providing one of those ‘how long is a piece of string’ replies, it would be contingent on so many factors. But I will start from the assumption that he wants to drop 20lbs but with no impact on strength/performance. In that case, the plan outlined in Paul Carter’s article is a good fit although I suspect calories could be trimmed more. The only modification then would come with duration: if he wants it tomorrow (or pretty quickly, e.g. does not have the attention span to maintain a slow cut), then he is going to have to slash energy intake. The optimum method here is some form of IF, or even time restricted eating. I would argue this has many addtional health benefits, i.e. down regulation of inflammation, which could in turn lead to performance enhancement. While he is still capable of consuming enough around workouts to ensure he maintains intensity.
Some folks respond well to aggressive tactics, e.g. keto diets, fasting, etc. While others want a nice steady ‘sensible’ longer term approach. I personally believe the high dietary failure rate (+90%) suggests the traditional slow ‘sensible’ approach is pretty redundant but continues to be prescribed by the mainstream.
I find this idea intriguing, and it seems befitting to quote this in the context,
I don’t want to ask @EyeDentist to follow up with anything more than what he feels comfortable, and feels would be suitable, as this online trainer obviously makes at least part of their living through these means.
And certainly this is the crux of the issue. The approach that will fit you the best is highly dependent on that input variable “you”. The article will work for “some folks” and won’t for others.
That’s presumably why keto diets, fasting approaches, etcetera all have their own following.
For others, it’ll be most appealing to alternate/cycle carbs in a traditional way (high carb intake on priority training days, <100g on off-days, some on other training days). I’d envision this is a good fit for people that “worry” more about performance, i.e. people that put their training first and view their eating as something that supports their training.
For those that are more affected by their eating, i.e. by sheer virtue of not feeling as if they’ve had enough food that has a direct impact on performance and cognitive state it might be more prudent to cycle carbs by alotting 40-50% of their calories for protein and then tater-toter their fat and carb intake
| Day | Fat | Carbs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 40% | 10% |
| 2 | 30% | 20% |
| 3 | 20% | 30% |
| 4 | 40% | 10% |
| 5 | 30% | 20% |
| … | … | … |
And others can suffer through a few days of a harsh deficit if they get to refeed (Scott Abel’s cycle diet comes to mind)
From memory (if already somewhat lean),
| Day | Fat | Carbs |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 40% | 10% |
| 2 | 40% | 10% |
| 3 | 10-20% | 30-40% |
| 4 | 40% | 10% |
| 5 | 40% | 10% |
| 6 | 10-20% | 40-50% |
| … | … | … |
I’m an impatient sort myself, and I have had some success with time-restricted eating. I lift in the morning and, it may all be in my head, I find I prefer to have some calories around that; so, when I do this, I end up eating on both sides of the clock (5am and 6pm). I’m sure I’m missing benefits, but it does make it easier to stick to a caloric deficit when I can have a couple bigger meals.
It’s sometimes hard to skip lunch for social reasons (not a problem right now!) because that’s an opportunity to meet customers, so when I’m in that world I have to actually exercise some discipline… ugh.
Anyway, thanks for the thoughts! Compliance above all is definitely the sound approach.
I actually believe that type of TRE is not a bad system. Satch Panda has conducted research showing health/weight improvements where subjects eat within a 12-hour window, which is also aligned with their circadian rhythm, e.g. 6am to 6pm. You may not get the full affect from +12 hour fasting, e.g. increased autophagy, but the decrease in insulin and mTOR, not to mention practical ease of creating a lower daily energy intake, means it is a good system.
Leaving fasting aside, you are preferable to a harder/shorter blitz type diet than something more drawn out?
@TrainForPain obviously, you seemingly have TRE down, but I saw an approach that was quite neat where you start off with a low carb phase (1-3 weeks), then for the next phase you increase your carbs (1-3 weeks) as you’ve leaned out somewhat, and finally in the third phase you implement intermittent fasting. In the first phase you have a fasting window of 12 hours, and then increase that as the phases go on making the final step to IF “easier” and you keep yourself occupied mentally by changing macro-splits in the earlier two phases so it “sneaks up” on you.
My own personal circumstances meant, some years ago, I went from a 224lbs tub of lard to 162lbs of athletic looking muscle. However, at one point I was at 168lbs but still had no visible abs (but I did have plenty of folks telling me how ill I looked). This issue was caused by long-term low calorie daily intake, which was made up of about 50% CHO (a so-called balanced diet).
Without writing my autobiography here, a voyage of self-discovery using different macro combinations (carb cycling, keto, etc) reversed this horrid situation and I started making gym gains at last and still losing some fat.
With wonderful hindsight, I am sure I could have achieved this in around 9 months instead of 4 years.
So, to eventually answer your question, I would say yes - shorter blitz without doubt. But this has got to be balanced with your activity levels. I cannot tell you how many times I have messed up here, trying to do too much with too little in the tank.
I’ll take it!
I like it. Dieting is absolutely a mental game, so these little tricks, I think, are as valuable as the actual physiological effects.
Can relate, did 211->152lbs, no abs (I’m not that light now). 152 isn’t going to look athletic on a 6"1’ frame… Have left to figure out “gaining” without gaining too much excess. Those adipocytes are quick to fill up.
I don’t know how best to categorise this, but I’d imagine that if a person was such that they could in the morning or after a workout see a hint of their top two abdominals when flexing (uhm, 12-15%? at most I guess 18%) did 6-8 cycles of this,
they’d vastly improve their body composition and not see their performance tank or lose much muscle if they keep protein high and carbs around their workout.
One thing the article doesn’t go into, but I cannot envision would be anything but an improvement, would be to borrow some calories from off-days to training days. I just quickly sketched some out in a sheet for a hypothetical 185lbs individual,
| Maintenance | Maintenance | Maintenance | Deficit | Deficit | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Off-day | Training Day | Off-day | Training Day | ||||
| Weight in # | Weight*13 | Weight*14 | Weight*15 | 35% Reduction (14) | 20% Reduction (15) | Start here | |
| 185 | 2405 | 2590 | 2775 | 1683.5 | 2220 | ||
| 30% Reduction (13) | 30% Reduction (15) | Once fat loss stalls go here | |||||
| 1683.5 | 1942.5 | ||||||
| Caloric Floor (x9) | Caloric Floor (x11) | ||||||
| 1665 | 2035 | ||||||
This was me almost 3 years ago. At 181lbs and 17.8% BF (DEXA). I am currently 178lbs in similar condition but have gained some LBM in that time.
Looks good. And that makes me realise I’m fatter than I think I am 
I was a bit surprised too but honest enough to know that I was carb depleted and the light was flattering. I re-tested 18 months later and had dropped to 14.3% BF and gained 2lbs LBM (I don’t have immediate access to any pix from that time).
My goal currently is trying to drop another 10lbs to 168lbs.