I’ll make a long story short, I was a FFB and had enough. I cut calories (not knowing what I was doing) and I achieved my dream. I’m lean, semi muscular and generally feel great.
So what’s the problem? Well, I cut my calories pretty drastically, for too long and now I fear my body is pissed at me. I don’t know exactly how low my caloric intake got, but I’ve been keeping a food journal and by consuming 1,500/1,600/1,700 calories I’ve gained fat. My training has stayed the same, I began eating real clean, sticking as close to JB’s rules as I can.
My theory, I screwed my metabolism and now I’m paying the price. I can accept this, but I wanted some advice on how to get my body back on the fat burning track. My idea to help fix this has been to get a solid meal plan established since I do really well if I have it all laid out for me instead of ‘winging it’. I looked into Meal Plans 101 and it looks like it would be a great tool. Does anyone have any hands on experience with this software?
My real problem lies in that I don’t know how many calories I need to work up to and in what increments to bump them by. I’m a endo/meso so as far as macronutrient ratios I was thinking something like 40% protein 35% fat 25% carb. Opinions?
Stats, training and supplement info:
26, male, 6’2" 175ish 8% BF (7 point caliper measurement).
Jiu Jitsu 5 days a week, weight training 2 days, 4 mile run one or 2 days.
Daily green multi, Flameout (4 caps daily), 60g Surge replica PWO, MM shakes here and there as meal replacement and/or pre workout (I hate training on a stomach full of food.)
Before i began wrestling i was a really skinny kid, then i cut weight for the first time. After that my body stored a lot more fat for a long time. since then i have packed on some size.
Now after gaining muscle that fat has vanished. (the whole more muscle more calories/fat burned) So if i were to add advice to this i would say go through a bulking phase (if it doesn’t interrupt other areas - jiu jitsu) and then cut again afterwards and hopefully you will have better luck next time.
well, first of all, caloric expenditure follows caloric intake. So when you were eating around 1500-1700, your body adjusted its metabolism to maintaining your weight at that level. I don’t know how long you’ve been on this calorie restricted diet, but your leptin levels are probably low right now.
You may want to try carb/calorie cycling in order to improve your metabolism. Check out JB’s “Getting Unshredded”. The first few times you do your carbups, which shouldn’t be as often since you just got off your cut, your metabolism will SLOWLY improve and it will be more obvious after a few weeks.
So for example, you could eat 1500 calories for 3 days followed by a high carb/calorie day where you add more carbs in and get around 2000. Try to keep the carbs clean such as oatmeal, and eat the extra carbs for breakfast and postworkout in order to make sure that most of it doesn’t turn to fat.
Your higher calorie day will improve leptin levels, and by the time your body downregulates to 1500 again over the next 3 days, you give it another carbup on the 4th to keep it guessing.