You’ve been cutting dramatically, so even a slight bump in calories should feel like a big change and give you more energy. And during the deficit you’ve trained yourself to use fewer calories, so “maintenance” calories should still be pretty low You might even find that magical spot where you can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.
From there, maybe use the “Diet Break” strategy you were considering. Eat at maintenance, but have a slightly higher calorie meal or day every so often to provide a little Pep and energy for strong training. That way you can (hopefully) avoid that feeling of spinning your wheels and not making progress. Without the bodyweight climbing back up fast.
You are looking brilliant mate and what a transformation, you should be proud. I still don’t understand the weights you manage to lift and the frequency, its incredible.
Man i’m not sure how you function on those cals let alone WO.
When i was dieting for a show I was around 1600cals with really low carbs and felt like shit. Last couple weeks could barely train.
please tell me what you would set the daily step goal, daily cardio goal in minutes, and daily macros goals at for 51 year old male, sedentary, 240lbs, obese.
Not sure I’d be classifying oneself as ‘obese’ mate, I’m hoping there’s plenty of self love, belief and positive reinforcement that you deserve great things! As you’ve transformed yourself immensely in the recent years up to now.
But I will be interested to see the response/discussion on this.
Is is now more of that ‘maintenance’ period then ‘miniblocks’ of cuts to continue to lean out over time?
As far as steps, i don’t use this as a tool because my steps can vary greatly and i don’t have the time in the day to add 5,000 if needed.
For cardio i do 15min on training days year round. When dieting i will start by bumping up to 20min. Then I will add 15min AM and do 2 cardios a day. I will keep bumping up as needed but i don’t go crazy right of the bat or you will be spending way too much time daily doing cardio. The main this is being consistent. This is def not an issue for you as seen in your training logs. You are a creature of habit that gets it done.
The way I typically set up my macros is this:
Protien 1.25g per lb of lean body mass. I do this because lean body mas does not change that much unless you are building/losing muscle so it is consistent.
Fats I would set around .35 to .45g per pound of lean body mass. This would be my minimum fat intake to keep the body/hormones running properly.
Then you would fill in the rest of your caloric needs with carbs.
This is my current macros at 220lbs.
LBM 180lbs x 1.25g/lb= 225 protien 900cals
LBM 180lbs x .4g/lb= 72g fat 648cals
2530 cals=daily goal= 250 carb 982cals
When i reduce my cals it will be in 200cal increments and it will come from carbs until I get down to around 200g carbs and then the fats start coming down. Protien will remain the same.
This is where I see you are going to have an issue. Your cals are way too low right now.
You have no where to make any reductions when your fat loss plateaus. For very short term, maybe 3-4 weeks what you are doing is fine but right now you have virtually no hormonal support and your metabolism is going to find homeostasis where you are and that’s not good for fat loss. With the low protien intake you will also start to lose muscle. My suggestion here would be to slowly bring cals up starting with protien. Work your way up to the 2500+/- cals and stay there to let your body stabilize. You may put on a couple lbs but your body will stabilize and you will still be in an energy deficit. For you i would keep protien high and carbs on the lower side.
Let’s assume 25%BF for you. So 250lbs x .75=188lbm
Protien 1.5g x188= 282g 1128cals
Fats .35g x 188= 65g 585cals
Carbs to fill up to +/-2500cals 196g 784cals
There is no doubt you should be able to lose fat and keep lifting heavy with these macros. You may find you want to tweek this but it’s a great baseline. This will also allow you to reverse diet back up to maintenance a lot easier.
As far as the training goes, for me 6 days a week is too much. I prefer 5 days. When I did PPL it looked like this:
Push/pull/legs1/push/pull
Push/pull/legs2/push/pull
I did it in a 2 week rotation and my legs1 would be super heavy and legs2 would be lighter. I found doing this rotation would allow me to train legs super hard on legs1 and then legs2 would be more recovery and let me hit it hard again the following week. I made great improvements that way.
If i were in your shoes right now i would do a 5 day split and then have a big cardio day on day 6 and resty on day 7.
At the end of the day you have 6 more months to achieve your goals. I think that is a great runway. But at the same time don’t limit yourself to a deadline if your getting close and not quite there. Don’t do anything drastic. Thats when shit goes wrong and it becomes unsustainable.
Two items that will be key for you=Sustainability and consistancy. I think you have the consistancy down but the sustainability needs work to make sure you end up where you want to and maintain your health.
Edit: This is the healthy way that i currently operate in. If you want the less healthy way you can follow my prep log that I did for my contest prep last year.
This for me is what not to do. Really low carbs for me does not work. You can see in this log my strength going way down pretty quickly but the weight came off and it was def a mix of fat and muscle. Keep in mind that i am also enhanced. Had i not been i prob would have lost way more muscle.
You’ll see my diet and training leading into the show and then my rebound post show for a couple months.
