My thoughts on RPE/Borg scale is that it is better suited for aerobic work, where it can be useful (and repeatedly estimated during work). I use it this way professionally in my job.
Short, anaerobic work (lifting weights) is another question. Personally, during rehab of an injury, I used estimated percentage of max effort, in order not overdoing it and progressing slowly. My own simplified version of RPE.
This is close to derailing this log, why I leave it here.
Week 1 - Jeff Nippard’s Hypertrophy Fundamentals, Body Part split routine
6 November 2021 - General Stuff:
Rest day today, week 2 will start Monday. Still keeping nutrition at 2080 calories (220g protein, 80g fat, 120g carbs).
Weight has been dropping for sure, but I need to make sure it doesn’t drop too fast since that will induce muscle loss for sure.
Good job!
I promise for those of us not getting on stage, this is a very minimal concern (unless we do something crazy like don’t eat for three weeks, but most of us don’t have the stones to do that anyway).
It’s more something that gets in our head and keeps us from actually hitting our goals.
To reiterate on this, stories of “muscle loss” from natural lifters are REALLY stories of being fatter than one realizes. Muscle loss is a big deal for dudes that use anabolics because they can put on a crazy amount of muscle with the right drugs and, once they come off of them, lose the same crazy amount of muscle. A natural trainee simply can’t put on as much muscle in a muscle gaining phase and, in turn, can’t lose that much. But what DOES happen is a dude gets fluffy and enters that “bodyfat dead zone” Thibs talks about here
And so that trainee says “It’s time to cut: I bet I need to lose 15lbs and then I’ll be ripped”.
And 15lbs later, they still look like a melted candle. They end up needing to lose 30+lbs to get to where they thought they needed to be. And once they get there, they are quite a bit smaller than they anticipated, because a lot of their “size” was really just well positioned fat along with glycogen and water. So they convince themselves they must have lost a TON of muscle along the way, never once believing that they simply weren’t that muscular to begin with.
Last year, I lost about 35lbs to get to my profile picture. I was the lightest I had been since my freshman year of college in 2003. Just going by scale weight, I was “tiny”, but compared to how I looked at the start of the fat loss process, I was significantly bigger. But, in turn, it took me 2 decades to build that much muscle. Cutting after your first big attempt at muscular gain is pretty much always going to be disappointing, haha.
All the more reason for me to not fear eating a lot of food. I’ll cut when I reach a 800 lb deadlift lol.
I unfortunately never had a ton of muscle (or a proper mass gaining phase), but now that I am following Jeff’s program, I’m sticking with the deficit for 4-6 weeks as he describes and then go from there. Hopefully I can clean bulk at that point (I’ll post pics here around that mark).
I’ll put up some pics maybe tomorrow or next weekend. I’m a bit camera-shy and also kind of depressed when I see the pics so I lose motivation temporarily but I will put it up one day or another soon.
See, I get confused, because you keep talking about LOSING a ton of muscle when you lose fat, but also that you never had a ton of muscle to lose in the first place. One cannot lose what they did not have.
I think sticking with any ONE person’s approach is a great idea. Things go south when we try to play sources against themselves.
Maybe yeah, I guess maybe when I dropped all the fat it looked like I dropped muscle I never had lol and then when i dirty-bulked gained a lot of fat so thought I gained a lot of muscle too when it was just fat and water possibly.
I’m sticking with Jeff’s approach. 4-6 week small deficit (300-500 calories) with the workout program (and hopefully I can progressively overload) and then maintenance and then hopefully clean bulk (where I can be in an extended period of time finally…).
This new meal prep diet is quite good, clean food, fiber, protein, much better than my Pizza Hut attempt (at cutting and bulking lol ).
You should definitely check out my aforementioned books by Dr Darden - AFTER you are done with your current program. All in line with first priorities.
Week 1 - Jeff Nippard’s Hypertrophy Fundamentals, Body Part split routine
7 November 2021 - General Stuff:
Rest day today, week 2 will start tomorrow. Still keeping nutrition at 2080 calories (220g protein, 80g fat, 120g carbs).
Chest tomorrow!!
Since I am following the recomp guide, I’ll evaluate on 5th December whether I can start with maintenance/clean-bulking as that is what Jeff suggests (that point would be right around 5 weeks, since the deficit began). This time I am really focused hard on diet, which I really hope will help me with this recomp!! No junk food, no cheat meals for the next 5 weeks!
It seems the majority of your posts are about what needs to happen 5 weeks from now, next month, etc. You were already itching to switch up a program in the first week because there wasn’t enough sets for arms! I promise this will only work if it’s taken one day at a time, one meal, one exercise, one rep at a time. All you can control is making the right decision in the present moment. String together a million right decisions and you’ll have some results to be proud of. I 100% in my heart genuinely believe that 99% of what you need is a simple mental shift, and the rest will fall into place. You have all the tools: set meal plan, set program, and a good support network here to hold you accountable.
I think you may have misunderstood…
The 5 weeks thing is more about caloric deficit vs maintenance/surplus.
This program lasts 8 weeks, rest assured I will follow it for 8 weeks.
The 4-5 week check-in is about whether I have “leaned-out” enough to stop caloric deficit since it isn’t possible to build muscle on it for extended period of time.
His own guide suggests 4-6 weeks deficit (for high bf% like me) and then re-evaluate.
Last week weight average (80.9+80.6+80.2+80.1+79.6+79.3)/6 = 80.1kg
Week 2 - Jeff Nippard’s Hypertrophy Fundamentals, Body Part split routine
8 November 2021 - General Stuff:
Preface: Very Interesting workout today…
8 November 2021 - Ches/Tris
So, interesting workout. I can’t believe I’m already gassed out on the 2nd week, maybe it is the caloric deficit, but I need to survive this for 4 more weeks and hopefully not lose strength (even if I don’t gain any). 2 notes:
Nutrition at 2080 calories (220g protein, 80g fat, 120g carbs).
Just to manage your expectations after 5 weeks more of dieting with high body fat levels you won’t be amazingly lean. 5 weeks of dieting should give you enough to see a visible difference both in the mirror and on the scales but not for a complete physique overhaul. That’s a goal which requires a longer term commitment to dieting at a deficit.
I know, I am kind of skinny fat actually. I have a low muscle mass and medium-high absolute bodyfat which drives my body fat percentage very high.
My waist (around belly button) is only 32.5 inches at 6’0", but due to low muscle, very flabby look.
waist is a poor indicator, at least in men. I have seen guys with a 34 inch waist with a gut hanging over their belt. We just don’t store a lot of fat there. Measure your belly at the navel if you want a good indicator.
By waist I meant “navel.” Here we call “Waist” as belly button.
Thats why its kind of a shitshow, I don’t know maybe if my genetics or fucked or what. I’m not super fat, you really cant tell I’m fat at all in a shirt probably, its just this horrible skinny-fat but more fat than skinny phase I have been stuck in for a while.
I’ll for sure upload pics this Sunday and you can see what I mean.
I’m also definitely having trouble with weights as you can see, I’m maxing out bench at 145 lbs, which seems abnormal.
Do you guys think I should get any sort of bloodwork/checkup done just in case? Not using it as an excuse but jus tin case something has been off for a while?
I feel like, when someone is selecting whether to go in a deficit, maintenance, or surplus, “low muscle” trumps “high fat” in the order of importance.
Truly fat people can (not always, obviously) pretty much just focus on keeping muscle and shedding fat and can end up with an awesome physique. Skinnyfat/low muscle people are just disappointed as they shed away the fat to reveal nothing.
You should, at the very least, be eating maintenance calories. Otherwise this is going to be a very disappointing reveal. Use a hypertrophy program for hypertrophy.
This is my current physique:
I’m thinking just 3 more weeks where i can maximize some more fat loss then switch over. Kind of really look like sh!t right now. Thats what Jeff suggests too (at least as long as I can gain/maintain strength).
What do you guys think? Scans showed around 30% body fat, which doesn’t seem unbelievable looking at these pics (and the terrible diet I have been having).
