I have been strength training for about 3 months now and I have been happy with my strength gains so far. Bench 165 to 200, Squat 185 to 275, and deadlift 200 to 285. I have been keeping my protein intake high but my eating has not been the cleanest. My primary goal is to build strength and lose some weight. I don’t care if I look bigger but I want to keep gaining strength. Here is my problem, I’m fat, 5" 9’ and 260 lbs. I feel good about what I have accomplished but I want to be down to about 200 lb. I feel like everyone is telling me to give up the weights and lose the 60 lbs before weightlifting again. I really don’t want to lose progress but I guess that’s the way it will have to be if I want to lose the weight. What would you guys recommend diet, lifestyle, and workout wise ? I apologize for the really long post but I hate feeling accomplished yet failing at the same time. I need some advice and I trust you guys.
Thanks.
For diet I’ve found this to be gold
For training, whatever sensible program or system you like. Personally I like 5/3/1, but it can be moderately fiddly to set up and needs you to be able to shelve your ego and work. A lot of people seem to like Chad Waterbury’s stuff and also Christian Thibaudeau’s work. Paul Carter’s base building looks excellent, but you need to have a decent understanding of training to get the most out of it and like with 5/3/1, you’ll need to shelve your ego and work your butt off.
For lifestyle, I honestly don’t know what you mean. Don’t be stupid? That usually works out pretty well. If you want to achieve a particular goal, do everything necessary to achieve it. Goals don’t care whether you like what they need you to do, they just need to you to do it. There’s no compromise - do what’s necessary or fail to achieve.
If people told you to do something because they think that it will be better for you, say them to get the fuck off.
If you feel to fat and want to lose weight but don’t want to lose progress, here is what you do:
Keep the program, but don’t expect as fast progress on the numbers, they will go up, but slower.
Keep the 1g/pound protein intake
Make an program for you died, there is a lot of things here on the forum. If you want to get lean fast, you probably will cut a lot of your meals and yes, it will have a difference on your lifts.
But if you want to just slowly lose fat while keeping the gains, just a small deficit on the calories will do the job for you.
Think about the died as you think about the workouts. You need to have a plan, you need to acomplish it every day. You don’t need to like what you eat as you don’t need to like the exercise, the important is the result. To have real results with you died just start taking a few calories off every week.
Start cutting the snacks, them sodas, them fried food.
Than just keep looking to your weight, if you stop losing weight, eat less carbs. (repeat this until achieve desired weight)
The people who tell you to lose the weight before lifting, are the same ones who make fun of fat people doing cardio. It’s not gonna matter what you do, they’re going to have an opinion on it, and it’s not going to be constructive.
That being said, from experience, losing fat while not losing strength is a slower process than just cutting weight. I find though that the ability for a person to maintain their strength actually encourages more fat loss. Strength work for most people is an encouraging thing seeing small pr’s and moving heavy sh!$ keeps you motivated. I find I eat cleaner, show up more often, and put in more work when there is that positive reinforcement from seeing plates add up.
Keep doing you and best of luck!
Thank you guys for the help and motivation. I have since been eating really
clean, a lot of brown rice, veggies, chicken, ezekiel bread, cottage cheese
stuff like that. I completely cut out all junk food and soda. I’m really
glad you guys told me to just ignore the other people and follow my own
goals. I hate being the big guy in the gym when trying to lift, it’s
unmotivating when people laugh. I just want to be stronger then them and
slowly but surely get down to a healthy weight. One day they won’t be
laughing anymore. Anyways, I have been using myfitnesspal to track my
calories and macros. It helps keep track of calories so I can burn 1lb a
week. Like you guys have mentioned, I don’t want to go to too fast. It took
me years to put on the weight and I know it will take a while to take it
off. I have kept my protien intake to around 180g per day. So far I haven’t
noticed any strength loss on the 3 main lifts. I seem to be only getting
around 150g of carbs a day when trying to eat clean. Should that be higher?
That 150 is almost all whole wheat items. I make all natural peanut
butter/oats/whey bars for breakfast but I think I need more carbs? What
would be a healthy way to get more carbs? I have dropped 5 lbs so far in
about a week but I know most of that is water weight from avoiding salt and
eating clean.
Thanks guys,
I’m not a nutritionist so I can only tell you what I’ve seen. The best macro ratio I have seen for fat loss is based off a keto diet where you keep your carbs below 15% of your caloric intake. 45% fat 40% protein. This can be 7 days a week, 5/2, 1 day carb refeed, lots of options out there. In an earlier reply, it was mentioned to keep cutting carbs slowly until you start seeing the results. With that in mind, I would personally replace the calories with healthy fats thus getting to the higher fat ratio.
As far as which carbs, leafy green vegetables and low glycemic fruit have been my go to for a couple years now. Everyone’s body reacts to the macros differently due to insulin sensitivity, genetics, and a host of factors I couldn’t explain if I knew them, lol.
why?
If aiming to to lose 60lbs you need to get used to controlling carbs. If feeling flat up your good fats and green veg