100% agree. It’s all about the runway when you diet. Everyone think I’ll just drop a ton of cals but you can only go so low before your body won’t tolerate it.
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Just using a calorie calculator and using my current weight and height. It’s saying I eat around 2600 a day to stay where I’m at. Would dropping it any help or do I just need to clean up the food I’m eating. If I should drop it some, how many calories should I go down to start and not crash? I’m cleaning up my diet either way.
The very most reasonable direction is this lifestyle decision.
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I will say, for someone that wants to exercise 5 times a week and employ fasting, this would be an excellent time to employ Dan John’s “Easy Strength for Fat Loss” protocol
He also has an outstanding book for it, at Dan John University’s bookstore.
If you’re looking for a way to set up training and cardio, that could give you an excellent roadmap. He also provides some great simple eating strategies.
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I’ll watch this as soon as I get home this evening from work. Thanks!
Start at 2400cals of clean foods that you can track. Start with 250protien/250carb/45fat if you’re going to train hard and do cardio.
If your training/cardio is less intense go to 300protien/200carb/45fat
Hold the macros for a couple weeks and see what your body does. If it gos up drop 200cals. If it goes down hold there until you stall.
I’ll say this again. The key is being consistent in what you are doing so you know what to change if something isn’t working.
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Seconded.
Can i also put a shout in for the (slightly paraphrased) Dan John diet:
Eat veggies and lean protein, drink water. Thats it
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I just want to say that reading this particular word sent me into a rabbit hole and I learned a good bit from it. Thanks for keeping the place classy.
Tons of great advice in here. I actually am a bit of a calorie counter myself, but for short periods. It’s certainly not necessary; it’s just which row would you rather hoe.
Anyway, one point I’d emphasize: I’d get as much mileage as possible out of just cleaning up your diet if you haven’t totally done that already. There’s this cliche that there are no “bad” foods, but that’s silly. If you just ate to contentment on proteins, fruits, vegetables (I’ll throw tubers in there), and even rice, I’d bet you could go many weeks of consistently losing weight before you had to get any stricter.
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To everyone claiming 1900 calories is too low to start, what are you basing this on? I’ve read over the posts a few times and may have missed some relevant details.
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I didn’t claim 1900 is too low to start, but my opinion is that it is.
I did this. many times actually. Stalled out every time. It’s worked well for recomping (in combination with AAS), but otherwise I have found that this amount of calories is simply too few for someone whose active at ~210lbs.
I’ll get poo-poohed for saying it, but metabolism absolutely does downregulate during a deficit, and going for long periods in such a deficit causes too much downregulation - in my opinion.
I’m testing out carb-cycling to counteract this, I will have a more fully formed opinion in a couple months. For now, I do agree that 1900 is too few, though.
Paraphrasing Dr. Todd Lee:
“When calorie intake is low or stress is high, T4 conversion doesn’t favor T3. Instead, it goes through the D3 pathway, resulting in reverse T3. This reverse T3 acts as an antagonist to the thyroid receptor. It binds to the receptor but doesn’t activate it, creating a neutral signal.”
I’ve also seen the better part of a dozen IFBB pros saying to dudes weighing 50lbs less than me, that 2,000cals daily is too few.
*just sharing my thoughts on the subject.
So it’s based on your personal experience and the advice of IFBB pros?
I could be wrong but OP sounds more gen pop, hasn’t been in the gym and is out of shape mid 40s. He hasn’t provided his routine but I’m guessing it’s a very light lap around the gym, hitting the easy machines with nothing you or I would consider intensity. Without seeing any pictures and reading between the lines I’m guessing around 30+% bodyfat too, so LBM ~160lb. If that’s all true then I don’t think 1900 is crazy at all. But if he just happens to be in the 15-20% bodyfat range and his hitting some intense weight training sessions I’m prone to agree with you.
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We’ll have to see what ends up working for OP. TDEE Calculator with Light activity levels say he should be at about 2800cals maintenance.
I bullshitted 30% bodyfat and the calculator dropped to 2700.
IDK, a lot of times these calculators hurt more than they help.
I’m more inclined to side with you on this, that 1900 isn’t that extreme of a deficit, but it’d be cool to see OP come back to keep us updated.
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Oh damn, 2800? Maybe I’m too biased in the other direction. I typically start my own cuts in the 2000-2200 range and happily maintain and even add a little muscle on 2500.
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feel free to put around
I’ve been on cuts where I should be dropping 3lbs per week and I lost 1lb or less, according to this calculator. Don’t get me wrong, I leaned out, but it certainly wasn’t 3lbs/wk. Pictures showed far more results than the scale did.
Ha! It has my maintenance at 3100. I’d be obese within 6 months.
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It’s based on this:
The male body needs a certain amount of cals daily to operate/function properly. This number has been shown to be around 1400-1500cal/day for a normal sized male. If you start at 1900cals you will initially drop some weight but within a few weeks, maybe a month you body will start to adapt to this new setpoint and weight loss will stall. Now it’s time to drop cals. Where do you go? Prob right to 1500-1600. You go amnother month and stall. Now you have nowhere to go without feeling like complete shit and possibly doing harm to yourself.
1900cals gives you no “runway” to see your long term fat loss plan out.
Sure if you wanna drop 10ibs quick, by all means start at 1900cals. If you are in need of a longer term solution you need to start higher even if it means gaining a couple lbs to get you body to a higher setpoint.
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I think I’m going to clean up my diet and start at 2500 calories a day and go from there. Around 200g of carbs, 230 of protein and 70g of fat. I have to meal prep and this will all be beef, chicken, brown rice, cottage cheese, boiled eggs, oats and a small amount of fruits. It has to be better than what I’ve been doing. I also included a picture of me now. Remember, I’m not trying to get huge and want over all good general health. Thoughts?
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Start a log in the training log section. Would be nice to follow along and see your progress.
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Ok I’ll try to do that. Like I said I’ll only have 30 minutes of lifting and 15 of light cardio. I’m going to try to hit each body part at least 4 different lifts each. One body part per day. I appreciate everyone’s advice and either way I have to start somewhere. Cleaning up my diet and getting in the gym is definitely not going to hurt.
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