(Un)Official 2024 T-ransformation Challenge

[OTay]

@barley1

Thanks for the link. If I understand this, researchers compared activity levels and energy expenditure across several populations. In terms of energy expenditure, they found a point of diminishing returns with increased activity.

Honest question: Would you expect the same results if the researchers controlled calories and used increased activity as a short-term intervention?

Yes, what they found was that “total energy expenditure was positively correlated with physical activity, but the relationship was markedly stronger over the lower range of physical activity.” (I believe there have been other studies where it was around 30 minutes of cardio)

In the short/long term cardio can aid in maintaining weight and losing fat but, the addition of cardio/calories burned does not linearly go up and you have to keep it up.

If I am eating 2500 calories a day/training 3 hours a week, 6 hours a week will not mean I can eat 5000 calories.

If I am eating 2500 calories a day/training 3 hours a week and burning 500 calories a day doubling the exercise will not mean I will burn 1000 calories a day.

Every time G-flux is talked about it is done using athletes as examples. However, their lives revolve around sport/training.

From the article:

“discuss the routines of 4 elite athletes”

“having a high G-Flux is 100%, without a doubt, absolutely critical to building your ultimate body – which I’m assuming includes strong, functional, well-adapted muscle, low body fat, and great health.”

“However, if you’re expecting to have a body like any of the individuals pictured above, your puny 45-min workouts and 3-hour a week efforts ain’t gonna cut it.”

“3 weight training sessions per week, 3 high intensity interval sessions per week, and 3 low intensity aerobic sessions per week”

"And the most important point of all of these is the following – while building the ultimate body will include a lot of exercise and eating, neither should be done without specific attention to your goals and without some sort of plan"

The idea is to have the body/health in muscle/cardio of an elite athlete without the competing.

Sure, it works but, can you sustain that level of activity, and do you want to?

I do cardio for all the benefits but, fat loss/weight management is at the end.

[EmilyQ]

@T3hPwnisher

a fantastic strategy would be to open up a workout with those swings and continue it with a walk immediately afterwards. Not a run: just a walk, at a brisk pace.

I’ve been squeezing in as much of each as I feel I can, though I’ve been doing lifts before either of the other things. I sometimes jump on the erg, too, just for a closer to the workout (instead of swings or TM). It’s snow season here, which means more effort with the dog and maintaining walks and the driveway. Husband is out of town a great deal, so. When he’s around and time allows (1-3 days a week) we’re out snowshoeing, or whatever the snow status warrants. I’ll lift on those days, but don’t need other cardio. It’s my LISS, though my heart rate does get up when we’re climbing. But generally 1-3 hours of LISS. And most weeks I try to get in a sprint workout. Though again, I’ve been reducing a bit to see what the diet can do without it. @Andrewgen_Receptors “you can always add it in later, when you stop losing.”

I feel that patience and just a little further fine-tuning is needed with the diet, while the workouts can stay pretty much where they are for the next couple of months. I’m pushing hard to make progress with the weights and deemphasizing my workweek cardio for now. Eventually I’ll probably have to get up earlier to add it back in, or again, move to evenings in the gym -maybe in April - but for now I think it’ll do. Thank you, and you as well, @antiquity! I am reading and thinking, and appreciate the feedback.

@antiquity

When I used to run and run, and then run some more, I was certainly fit and maintained a lower body weight, but I wasn’t nearly as lean and muscular as I am now.

Running allowed for total asshole eating, and I miss it. But alas, it is not to be.

@QuadQueen

For those trying to lose weight, I have them count it as a carb and limit it to two 1/2-3/4 cup servings per day.

Okay, perfect. I’m right there, though I’m adding them to dinner now after the big “snacking is for kids” discussion. And it’s delightful - much better than eating dinner and then having grapes an hour later, which was just a snacking trigger.

@QuadQueen

Veggies are lower in calories and most people can’t eat enough to do any real damage - fruit is whole other animal!

This is exactly what I’m finding. Thank you for the input.

I really appreciate this thread and the input. I’ve really never had to work at this level of specificity before. I’ve never had to think too much about it at all. Thanks for being people who like to think about it!

[QuadQueen]

@EmilyQ

I’m sorry, I assumed everyone would know, I was joking!

THANK GOODNESS!! I was like, wait what??? I thought she was one of the sane ones on this forum. LOL!

[FlatsFarmer]

The key to this seems to be to get more work done without spending more time training.

Like you need to trick your body to avoid Constrained Expenditure.

Apparently, your body doesn’t recognize walking as “training,” so add some of that before LISS. And think about adding weight before adding time spent.

[FlatsFarmer]

And for lifting try to reduce rest times and find other ways to get the Same work done in Less time. The idea seems to be to condense training to increase lactate and growth hormone release. While avoiding rapidly adding volume and increasing cortisol production.

Exciting stuff like Circuits, Intervals, Complexes and EMOMs seem to be useful too. But it seems like you already do lots of that stuff.

[barley1]

Everyone, thank you for all the replies. It sounds like most of you are skeptical that increasing activity while eating at maintenance would work well for fat loss.

Point taken.

I guess I’d just like to avoid what happened last year, which was cutting cals really low, increasing activity, and experiencing some pretty awful side effects while spending the last six weeks looking pretty much the same. I kept pushing on thinking a big drop would come, but reading through my log, it seemed like fat loss stagnated after eight-ten weeks or so.

Since, I’ve slowly bumped cals upwards almost 1000/day and only weigh a few more pounds than the end of the T-ransformation last year.

[FlatsFarmer]

I think its possible, and that we just need to think it through. A super linear process doesn’t work long in dieting or lifting, so of course it won’t work for long when it comes to adding activity.

If you restrict calories, your body slows down and burns fewer calories. So at regular intervals you add some calories to keep your metabolism “up.”

And if you add weight to the bar for weeks, gains stop. So you back track and let your body recover before ramping back up again.

If you add a bunch of work your body responds by burning fewer calories during work. So theoretically you should be able to periodically “deload” the work by doing less. And “reset” to a lower workload, to send the signal to your body that everything is cool, and to keep expenditure up.

[TrainForPain]

I’m a fan. Looking back, when I’ve been successful over time periods, it worked out that it was pretty much all diet first until I hit a caloric point I didn’t want to go below; then I started increasing cardio to make up the difference.

I did always have to start with some moderate amount of cardio/ conditioning to get anything moving to begin with. I think I’m one of the people that just absolutely stops moving when I eat a little less.

[antiquity]

Interesting to read these approaches. It seems most here have different diet strategies at different times, then adjust, pivot goals, etc… I personally like the “always the same” approach. Just eat healthy, train consistently, and I don’t have to worry about all this stuff that sounds, at least to me, tedious and would detract from living my best life. I just don’t want to think about calories, macros, cardio volume, and all that.

While this means I will likely when a physique competition or pack on 25 lbs of bulk over a few months, it also means I am always in shape and always fit.

[TrainForPain]

I don’t think it necessarily means it’s completely either/ or. I don’t live most of the time this way (or at all the last couple years), and I’d rather not devolve into a whale either. I think we’ve all learned some ways to tighten up when we need to, though.

Even for yourself, as an example, leaned into CrossFit and improving food quality and made some real changes in a relative short time period. I’d argue that’s similar.

[antiquity]

No doubt. And I think you give excellent advice on all aspects of training and nutrition so I don’t mean to sound negative. What I find with some looking to “get fit/bigger/stronger/less fat” is they develop a convoluted, unsustainable approach that they fall off from and return to their prior selves in a relatively short period of time.

For me, you’re right in that I need new things from time to time to keep me motivated and keep progressing. I think most of us on these boards that have stayed in the game that long do some version of this to keep things interesting and shift our focus.

[davemccright]

I like your thinking. My fat loss phase last year was very simple. I switched from 5/3/1 to Mountain Dog Bodybuilding style training and reduced my calorie intake but tried to consciously consume more protein, usually a protein shake before a meal to decrease appetite. This got me down to my goal level of leanness in the mirror and I didn’t lose any muscle or strength in the process.

I am not a fan of throwing in a ton of cardio so I can keep eating a lot, I’d rather deal with a little hunger. My lifting sessions are my priority so most of my calories were around my training window and did not eat as much the rest of the day. I also ate less on rest days. This was my cutting blueprint. If you’re a man in a similar situation to where I was, it’ll probably work for you as well. I also get 8-9 hours of sleep a night and I think that’s probably pretty darn helpful.

[anna_5588]

Whelp…. Cheat meal………

Caved and had cheese and ribs. Probably going to be at least 1k calories over allotment

[GAINSBYIG]

Quick update, I am starting sermorelin for a 3 or 4 months to see how it is. Hoping that bulking through can get me an extra 5-10lb of muscle over the next few months. I’ll report back on progress. Has only been 2 days so far so nothing much to report yet.

[TrainForPain]

I didn’t take it negative at all - that’s what the discussions are for! I totally agree with you on our tendency to over-complicate and lose the forest for the trees. At the end of the day there’s only a handful of principles, but countless techniques, and I’m with you that if we create a “this is the way or nothing matters” mindset, we’re looking at it wrong.

[OTay]

@FlatsFarmer

If you add a bunch of work your body responds by burning fewer calories during work. So theoretically you should be able to periodically “deload” the work by doing less. And “reset” to a lower workload, to send the signal to your body that everything is cool, and to keep expenditure up.

This is not really what is shown.

It is not that the body burns less the more work you add. What happens is that it plateaus after a certain time but, that is at a given intensity. The body adapts to the pace/intensity after about 30-40 minutes. However, there is some kind of intensity threshold. If after 30 minutes you go do HIT on an assault bike you will jack up the caloric burn again.

I think of it as a motor warming up, as it warms up the rate of output is faster but, once it is warmed up it levels out. If more power is required though there will be more burn.

The theory behind Constrained total energy expenditure is not really that you burn less during training (though it does happen) but that outside of training the body adapts to the increases in daily physical activity expenditure by reducing energy expenditure on other tasks (e. g., immune response, reproduction, somatic repair/maintenance, etc.)

[LoRez]

@antiquity

What I find with some looking to “get fit/bigger/stronger/less fat” is they develop a convoluted, unsustainable approach that they fall off from and return to their prior selves in a relatively short period of time.

Yeah I definitely see this. A lot of people seem to get early motivation from things building up to a breaking point, and then hype themselves into some comparably extreme approach, but can’t maintain that motivation after the first few days or weeks.

I’ve become a believer in making the smallest changes possible to move things along, and after you’ve proven that you can maintain it, make another set of small changes. Too much change at once is just unsustainable.

[FlatsFarmer]

So go faster before just going longer?

[barley1]

@OTay

outside of training the body adapts to the increases in daily physical activity expenditure by reducing energy expenditure on other tasks

Like maintaining a stable body temperature? Last spring I was freezing all the time. I’d shiver for ten minutes after a glass of water on 85-degreee days.

[davemccright]

That sounds like a little bitty snack to me dawg!