Workout and Diet Plan Suggestions

Training
1

Currently weight 182 pounds, ~20% body fat. I’ve been tracking calories in MyFitnessTracker (again) for the 5 week period and working out 5-6 days a week, once a day. I have my daily goal dialed in at 3035kcal, 300g CAR (40%), 290g PRO (38%), 75g FAT (22%). At the end of each day I typically either hit my goal, or fall about 150kcal short. The last 2 weeks my diet has become more regimented by using prepared meals for lunches/dinner, the breakfast portion has been constant for the 5 week period. Here’s an example day:

Wakeup (4:50am)
2 Tbsp Apple Cider Vinegar in 8oz of water
500ml Plazma (pre/intra workout)
500ml Mag-10 + 4g creatine (post workout)

Breakfast #1 (6:30am)
1/2 cup Red Mill gluten free rolled oats
1/2 cup blueberries
25g Micellar Casein

Breakfast #2 (8:00am)
2 slices of Ezekiel bread
56g of roasted pine nut hummus
3 organic free range eggs
1 vanilla/blueberry/strawberry skyr

Snack (10:00am)
1 Blueberry RX Bar
16oz 2% Milk
25g Micellar Casein

Lunch #1 (12:00)
4oz Boneless skinless chicken (baked)
1-1/2 cups of cooked Basmati Rice

Lunch #2 (2:00pm)
4oz Boneless skinless chicken (baked)
1 cup of baked sweet potato

Dinner (6:00pm)
7 oz cooked tri-tip (grilled)
2 cups of broccoli florets

Before Bed (8:30pm)
500ml Mag-10

Bed (9:00pm)

Workout regime is Warmup + Push/Pull

Warmup:
3x8 Kettlebell Halos
3x8 Kettlebell Prying Goblet Squats
10x10 Kettlebell Swing
10 Turkish Getup (5 each side)

Pull:
3x8 Lat Pulldown Machine, Pronated Grip
3x8 One Arm Dumbell Row
3x8 Dumbbell Curl
2x12 Lat Pulldown Machine, Neutral Grip
2x12 Dumbbell Hammer Curl
3x12 Cable Machine Face Pull
3x8 Hanging knee raises (explosive)

Push:
3x8 Dumbbell Flat Chest Press
3x8 Dumbell Chest Flyes
3x8 Incline Dumbbell Overhead Press
3x8 Dumbbell Lateral Raises
3x8 Tricep Pushdown
2x12 Arnold Press

I’m definitely getting stronger, weights are going up across all of my lifts. I typically do a 30s rest period between sets. I feel good, plenty of energy for workouts. The only sticking point is the scale isn’t budging. I track my weight daily with a bodyweight composition scale first thing in the morning after urinating. Bodyweight and fat percentage hasn’t budged much, but then again these scales are not the most accurate things in the world (in terms of body fat %). If I plot a linear trend line for my weight over the 8 week period, I may have gained maybe 1lb over 8 weeks. I feel like I’m eating an immense amount of clean food.

I’m not sure if I should just keep at it, try to scale down to 2700kcal and try to bring down my body fat, or scale it up to 3500kcal and try to gain mass. I’ve also considered changing up my strength programming, but I’m reluctant since I’m seeing progress in that department. What do ya’ll think?

2

Diet is fine, your workout plan leaves a lot to be desired. Nothing for legs? I’d try to lose some bodyfat if I were you.

1 Like
3

First thing you need to do is figure out WHAT you are trying to accomplish here. You have NO goal.

Are you wanting the scale to go up or down?

4

By April 2017 I had dropped 25lbs from my heaviest (195 lbs in August of 2016) to 170 lbs through intermittent fasting, cutting out processed foods, and lots of low intensity steady state cardio. At that point I plateaued and couldn’t seem to lose body fat. I tried tinkering with food selection, timing, cardio, and further caloric restriction for months, but the fat wouldn’t burn. I started strength training at the beginning of this year. Through this I discovered that I had a few desk job inflicted muscle imbalances that needed to be worked out with some physical therapy which are now mostly resolved.

Around that time I tried moving to a LeanGains style IF diet and began tracking my macros. The problem for me with that program was that I always felt wiped out during workouts. Stopped for a month because of life stuff, and during that lull I came to the conclusion I wasn’t eating enough, and that I needed to reset and try something other than IF for a while. If I couldn’t shed anymore fat, maybe I need to try to gain muscle mass over the winter?

In mid September I started eating breakfast and bringing up my daily carbs. I went up from my low of ~171-172 lbs to 180 lbs, which I’m guessing can mostly be attributed to a combination of refilling my glycogen stores, the reintroduction of creatine supplementation, and more food in my digestive system (fat mass remained fairly stable).

I worked up the above diet and workout regime and have stuck with it for 5 weeks so far (fixed typo above where I said 8). I feel like I should be gaining more weight, given how much food I’m consuming, but it’s just not happening. Ultimately, I’d like to get my body fat down to 15%, but to do that I need to break out of this multi-year plateau.

So that’s why I’m waffling back and forth, it’s not so much that I don’t have a goal, it’s that I’m not sure what’s the best path to get there. I thought that I needed to gain some mass before I attempted to lose again, and I designed this program towards those ends. I’m not getting those results, or I’m getting them really slowly.

With regards to legs, I’m working on getting a trap bar and some weights so I can mix in some trap bar deadlifts and farmers carries. Until then what should I add to supplement the goblet squats and swings?

5

Gaining muscle weight takes plenty of time, 5 weeks is not really giving it any.

6

No legs at all? you can do Db split squats, sissy squats, db RDL, step ups, lunges, kb squats in rack position.
You have 3 sets of goblet squats and 15 sets upper body. You do this routing only or its an example?
You have a cable station but no barbel? maybe you can rig up some cable belt squats.

7

Thanks everyone.

I do the “warmup” portion every day I workout, and alternate the push/pull sections. Sounds like the general consensus is I need to add some more leg work. Should I adjust it so it’s more of a push/pull/legs rotation, or add some a couple sets of different leg work each day?