I started out a little less than a year ago at around 25% bodyfat. I cut out the carbs, kept up the lifting, and I’ve gotten down to around 16-17% at a weight of 200 pounds.
My problem is that I’ve brought my calories down too low. On my off days, I’m consuming around 1900 calories, and on my lift days I’m eating around 2200-2300. I’m taking around 50 g waxy and 25 g whey isolate pre-workout. My fatloss has stalled (visually), and clearly I cant drop my calories any lower.
What’s the best option for me? Steadily increase the calories on both my low and high days, and then start lowering them again? Start a thermogenic? Stop losing weight for a while and try to put on some mass?
Carb cycle it up, homie! Do you have any “high carb” days? Talking healthy carbs, clean good food, just a good amount of it to recharge your batteries, increase thyroid and anabolic hormones, and increase the effectiveness of the rest of the weeks dieting.
Also try 40-80g carbs before 1pm, no carbs rest of the day. (except workouts)
Stuff like that has kept me at a consistent 1-2lbs/week of fat loss, eating ~2500cals daily, and ~4000 once a week on my high days.
Skohcl: I’m lifting in the morning, so would some morning oats in addition to the waxy in my pre-workout shake suffice? Or should I count the 40-80 separate from the pre-workout shake? Essentially, I’ll be dividing the day into protein/carb for the first half and protein/fat for the second half, correct?
And do you lower your cals/carbs on your off days?
The only difference between a workout day and a non-workout day is I don’t have my peri-workout nutrition, and that generally replaces a meal, so I have ~300 more cals on a workout day, extra carbs mainly.
So if you lift before having an actual meal, then your next 2 meals can have some carbs. Generally I eat breakfast, lift, then eat my second carb meal. But I’d assume either way would work.
And yeah, protein/fat or protein/carb. And Protein/Fat + Green Veggies is ok, even though technically a veggie is a carb, yadda yadda. Just make sure when you’re eating these morning carbs your replacing fat you might have been consuming in a zero carb meal.
For a while I was eating Dave’s Killer bread for breakfast and a sandwich 3 hours later, switched to Ezekiel bread recently and it lowers cals/carbs and is a better grain, so 2 slices of that is like 30g for 2 slices, with 6g of that being fiber.
skohcl: Alright, that sounds good. I’ll do some more research, but the idea of taking away calories solely from the absence of pre-workout nutrition makes sense to me.
One question though: do you remove all carbs from your off days or do you still keep that one carb meal in earlier in the day?
MAF: Here it is
Workout Days:
Breakfast (Pre-workout shake)–50g waxy maize, 35g whey
Post Workout–35g whey
Meal 1: 4 whole eggs, 2 fish oil
Meal 2: 2 starkist tuna pouches, small salad with one tbsp caesar dressing
Meal 3: 1/2 pound ground beef, lots of broccoli, 2 fish oil
Meal 4: 3 servings of deli ham, 3 string cheese, 2 fish oil
That’s it for my workout days. On non-workout days, I really only drop the waxy maize.
Workout Schedule: I follow a DC template. Chest/Shoulders/Tri/Quad/Calf on A-day, Back Width/Back Thickness/Bicep/Forearm/Ham on B-day. Like I said earlier, I only started this about 3 weeks ago, but I’ve been keeping thorough logs and trying to beat the book each time. Cardio for 30 min, fasted, on off days.
WHAT KIND of cardio do you do? (Exercise bike, walking, jogging, swimming, hunting wabbits, etc.) You mentioned DC, do you just do low intensity stuff?
MAF: Well, traditionally it’s 3 days a week, but I recover well enough to do it just every other day (if I find that I’m not recovered well enough, I’ll take a day or two off, but I will train on the weekends unlike a traditional DC setup).
I would definately take the advice of adding a HIGH/Cheat meal or day into the diet once a week or so.
As for training, gear it toward fat loss more…rather than DC, carry out a routine that will induce alot of lactic acid and GH. I don’t think DC is enough total volume for a fat loss program(give that you are not progressing). It may be for some ppl…
Look up Melt Down Training for fat loss or a German Body Comp program…this type of training will kick your ass, retain/build muscle and you won’t have to do any cardio…IF you have to add ESW in later, carry out HIIT 2 times a week and thats it.
ok to be honest i think you should “reset” your routine/schedule…
in most cases that’s the last thing i would recommend (changing your lifting style during a cut) but since you are a beginner and havent been trying DC for that long you could probably get away with it without having much muscle loss.
regarding the DC (not trying to be a dick), stop training that way. really, only advanced lifters need to go over to DC. judging by the fact that you said you can lift like that every other day i think its pretty safe to say your intensity just isnt there yet.
it seems like you like higher frequency training so i would say start with lifting 5 days a week and do cardio on your two off days.
also, you could take two weeks off of ‘dieting’ and up the calories to say 3000, then go back to cutting again. starting with dropping cals, and making sure you dont make the same mistake twice.
[quote]MAF14 wrote:
regarding the DC (not trying to be a dick), stop training that way. really, only advanced lifters need to go over to DC. judging by the fact that you said you can lift like that every other day i think its pretty safe to say your intensity just isnt there yet.
[/quote]
Well, I’m not really tweaking the DC schedule in a detrimental way…at most I’m adding one extra training day a week (rarely, to be honest). I’m still getting plenty of rest and my numbers are increasing from session to session.
As for the calorie increase–I’m eating around 1900 calories on my low days, so I’m going to increase that to around 2200. And I’m upping my workout days to around 2500, as well as adding in a high day every two weeks or so depending on how I feel. I’ve experimented with cheat days in the past, and it’s only left me bloated and slowed progress on the scale.
[quote]Dan333 wrote:
Kakno: Yeah, it’s all steady state (usually the elliptical or stairmaster)[/quote]
You’ve been given some diet advice, and that’s great. If you still feel that you’re stalled, you might want to try some cardio with a higher intensity. (HIIT, /hill/sprints, a game of basketball with some friends or something)
Your stalled cause your calories are too low,your metabolism is probably shot, you need a refeed, and stop being afraid of carbs, at only 2300 calories a day the fear of carbs making you fat should be the last thing on your mind.
[quote]Rocky101 wrote:
Your stalled cause your calories are too low,your metabolism is probably shot, you need a refeed, and stop being afraid of carbs, at only 2300 calories a day the fear of carbs making you fat should be the last thing on your mind.[/quote]
Thanks Rocky. The general consensus seems to be that I should increase my calories and work from there. I’ll increase them to what I mentioned in my previous post, and then slowly work up from there so as to prevent fat gain. And I’ll start incorporating low glycemic carbs during the first half of my day.
