Hi, I’m a 24 y.o. male and I’ve been training naturally for 3 years now. I’m 104 kg’s (230 lbs) and 188 cm (6’2) with %23-24 percent body fat. Currently, I’m happy with my overall size and strength, but I’ve never looked good with my clothes off. I’ve had couple of attempts of getting leaner, all resulted in failure since the diet revealed way less muscle than I expected. I have to admit I prefer size over being lean, so the mass loss seems pretty scary to me.
Another issue is whenever I dedicate myself to a diet and set my macros, even a slightest off-track eating makes me overthink and it also pushes me off even though I’m aware that diets should be flexible and they should fit into social life.
So I’m in the infamous vicious circle, often feeling lost while trying to balance size, leanness and social life. Training-wise, I have no problem, I lift with good form, progressively overload, have good balance of intensity/volume and recovery and hypertrophy-wise I see sufficient results. But it seems like I mess things up when it comes to nutrition. I want to be in a healthier and better-looking body fat percentage and I need advice from you guys, thanks in advance.
Happy to help, but what’s your question? Sounds like you have trouble sticking to a diet. You gotta stick to your diet, which I recognize is easier said than done. I don’t say that to be a jerk, but it’s just reality; there’s no advice we can give that works without execution. What have you tried and where do you fail?
Keep it simple. One less than optimal meal doesn’t have a huge impact, just get back on track right away. Don’t overthink it. Don’t self-sabotage. And as @TrainForPain eluded to - your diet will only work if you do. Find what works for you and your life and roll with it.
If you have specific questions, let us know and we can address those.
This is unfortunately true for most of us. We can either be big but pretty soft, or we lose that layer and end up defined but on the small side.
What is your end game ? what are you training for ? Be specific with your goal (and try to pick only one). Once you have a clear idea of where you are going you can start to build a plan to get there.
It sounds to me like you want to stay the same size but end up at a lower percentage bodyfat. In other words build some muscle and lose some fat. Heck thats pretty much what everyone wants.
I think @TrainForPain is spot on. You just need to suck it up and stick to your plan. Don’t think about it like a diet but more the lifestyle you need to embrace to achieve your goals. This isn’t a 6 week shortcut. This is consistent hard work and eating like a grown up for years.
Where I fail is mostly consistency, I mean converting this all stuff into a long-term sustainable lifestyle (considering it’s not just a 6 week circuit as mentioned by someone else before me). I have friends and relatives that I’ve had a workout with, who are fairly lean, we lift about the same, but the fella could eat like a 6 year-old and not give a shit about about their nutrition, still getting compliments on their low bodyfat relatively “crispy” look (well aware this is their strong point). My only strong hand seems to be my size and my broad clavicles and whenever I diet I lose that upper hand, barely ever finding any reason to workout when I look in the mirror. So over time, I’ve convinced myself that I’m a bigger guy, but puffier and fatter. Naturally I like eating bigger portions than anyone else, easy gainer kinda like an endomorph. Dieting seems like going against my natural order every single time as my frame getting smaller, leaving me with the feeling that I’m not big enough (like most of the people in this forum I presume), and during a diet, I can never drop down to a nice bodyfat to make it all worth it. So I end the diet where I’m a couple pounds lighter, smaller, with a lower but not low enough body-fat. Even if I did miraculously dropped down to a good body fat, I’m not sure if I could maintain it, due to my eating habits as I’ve above.
I’ve tried to explain the situation as honest and thorough as possible, and this is it.
Have you considered “mini-cuts”? Periods of aggressive dieting where at your bodyfat you could lose 10lbs in a month, lose no muscle, and then get right back to putting on muscle for 3-4 months. It’s not a quick way to get lean, but in a 3:1 ratio of bulk to cut, each time you end a mini-cut you will be a few percent leaner than you were at the end of the last one. Losing weight is about finding something you can adhere to and stick the course, this is personal for everyone. I find it easier to go hard and commit for 3-4 weeks so I can get back to building muscle. It’s also extra motivating to see the scale drop so fast.
If you find it hard to stick to something long-term, consider hitting it HARD for just a few weeks then return to what you enjoy. You’d just need to accept it’s gonna take a longer time to get truly lean, and put up with the fact you will look flat, you will look smaller for those 3-4 weeks. Those weeks fly by fast though, and as soon as you up the calories again you’ll look better. A few cycles of this and you could get to 15-16% if you don’t muck up your bulks and do it slowly, 2lbs a month kind of stuff.
I’m not saying outright to do this. Just giving you an option. How do you WISH you could lose weight? What sounds easier for you, mentally and physically?
A smaller deficit of 300-600 calories would create a more sustainable lifestyle to keep the weight off if you think you’re likely to go on too many binges. Teaching you good habits to go into the future with and making it easier to manage your weight long-term.
Some people prefer dropping the fats lower, some people prefer dropping the carbs down lower, some a combination of both. You need to figure this out for yourself. Maybe posting your average daily diet could get you some better answers.
There are pros and cons to all methods. Ultimately what’s important is which one motivates you to stick to the course more.
If it fits your mentality, that’s great. A few other posters here and I have found success in limiting the calories drastically in the day (just high-protein shakes and small snacks) and then eating pretty freely in the evening. It’s nice to know you have the evening to look forward to where you can eat whatever you want (within reason).
8-14lbs (scale may actually say more than that due to water weight) in 4 weeks is doable. If it’s easy and performance is still good you could even stretch it a little further (I feel that 5 weeks is my limit). Return to bulk for 3months, gain 5-8lbs. Repeat the cut. Get leaner each and every time you cut. Alternatively you could do bursts of 3 weeks large deficit, a couple weeks of maintenance/very slight surplus. You’ll get to a leaner goal faster, but spend less time of the year putting on muscle. I find the first option easier - get in the cut, take as much as you can, and then get out of it and not think about it for a while.
Start a log here, let us know how you get on. It may really help you stick it out.
I wasn’t going to answer, because I don’t think it’s for someone else to tell you your goals. The more I think about it, though, I think you know your goal and you’re struggling to give yourself “permission” to get after it.
I think your goal is to be lean; you need to give yourself permission to go through the “small” phase.
If I were you, I’d take before pictures of myself and give myself a deadline for after pictures. I’d also take a weekly update photo. I’d throw all that in your log here, so other people can see it. I would give myself no wiggle room until I could see complete abs even in poorly lit iPhone selfies.
I did this myself for a T-ransformation years ago. It hurt my feelings to start, but was exactly what I needed. I haven’t been able to recreate that drive since, because I haven’t again hit a “decision” point that I have to do this.
You will feel small as you lose weight. You’ll even go through a period where you look worse, because you don’t fill your shirts out the same but you don’t look lean with them off. It doesn’t matter, though, because you’ve decided to hit the end goal - the journey between here and there is a foregone conclusion.
The diet advice @cdep89 gave is a great way to get there, but there’s not an easy button. Especially the first weeks, you will be unsatisfied at every meal, go to bed a little hungry, and feel smaller and weaker. If you can embrace those as good things, because they are clear mile markers on the path to your goal destination, you’ll crush this.
It’s kind of whatever helps you. Sometimes I write down every set of my workouts, sometimes it’s some arbitrary musings, etc.
I see you using it for accountability right now, so I’d just set yourself a progress deadline and stick to that. Like every Friday morning before work you post your pic and weight, something along those lines.
As you get comfortable there, it will be helpful to post some days’ exact eating. Just writing it down tends to change our behaviors for the better. If nothing else, you’ll see cause and effect right there in black and white.
It becomes a great place for community. Smart folks will drop in and notice patterns you may be missing yourself. There’s no downside!
Tell us a little more about how you eat during a regular day. Do you get all your grams of protein? Are you doing anything dumb like skipping meals all day and binging at night? You might just need something really simple, like more protein at breakfast to get you on the right track.
What about your lifting? You mentioned not looking great with your clothes off, but do you lift for “looks?” If you’re spending all week trying to get your deadlift up, you might just need some curls and a little time on the treadmill to look better.
I usually start the day with a late breakfast which includes some eggs, some low-fat ham and protein oatmeal. That’s pretty much a staple. After that I hit the gym, and after that due to several reasons if it takes me so long to get home, I start slacking. Since I’m so hungry, I might say things like “fahk it, imma get a burrito”. If I have my meals ready, then there’s no problem. I tend to stick with it. But even if I have my meals ready, social life interferes and I either keep myself hungry until I get home to eat my prepped meal, or just eat outside with friends in usually places with no healthier option.
Training-wise what you’re saying is right. Just so you know I don’t really train for strength only purposes anymore like I did at the beginning. I train with hypertrophy principles and I make every set and rep count with high intensity.
The “small” phase is temporary. Every time I cut, I’ll look depleted and like I’m almost regressing for several weeks only to hit the magic week where suddenly enough definition breaks through and I start looking more jacked than at the start of the cut.
And worst case scenario, you are super lean and realize you want more muscle. Then you can slowly work on that and be super primed for growth. At least that’s been my experience.
I vote cut and go all the way. I wish more lifters would take the time to get to like 6-8% bf at least once in their lifting careers. It really changes the game for you moving forward mentally and physiologically.
I vote cut too. But perhaps before you try that with a restrictive diet, focus just on being disciplined about eating real, whole foods for at least 80% of your meals. Including ones you eat out. If you can do that – focusing on lean proteins, vegetables, good carb sources and healthy fats – you will probably accomplish a lot just by doing that. And if you don’t have the discipline to do this, then an even more restrictive diet or cut is probably going to fail.