Best Diet for Fat Loss at 20% Bodyfat?

[quote]jskrabac wrote:

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
Who uses clen to go from 20 to 15% - a simple task?

Save your money and learn how to design diets. [/quote]

Hey Brick, have you ever personally had to drop from 20 to 15%? Personally, that was the hardest part of cutting for me. It took me years to figure out how to do so in spite of eating a clean 40/40/20 diet. 15 to 10 was much easier, as I felt I had momentum going and finally dialed in to what my body needed. I don’t know if it’s always the most encouraging to tell a newb that their goal is “a simple task.” [/quote]

I sincerely apologize if I used the wrong words. Considering I’ve counseled obese and overweight people, I should know better about wording. But sometimes people confuse “simple” with “easy”. It’s not “easy” for EVERYONE to lose weight, regardless of how much they weigh.

But I DO believe that MOST (not all) people’s dietary solutions ARE simple if they do not have food-related mental illness or endocrine disorders or severe indiscipline.

You yourself are sayings it’s a mental issue for you by saying that it’s easier for you to get to 10% from 15% than from 20% to 15% because of (mental) momentum. You’re reinforced by the results you see (getting leaner and leaner) so you’re more likely to comply with the diet until you reach 10%.

About two years ago I was way too chubby for my liking (despite being happy with the muscle I carried and my strength levels); I did have to drop 20 pounds, and I did that with a protein sparing modified fast because I didn’t have the patience to lose the weight I wanted to. It was VERY simple! See my “RFL versus Velocity Diet” thread (the original RFL thread on this board that I started a long time ago).

Here’s how it was simple (if I correctly remember what the heck I ate because I’m too lazy to look up my original thread). (Also not going to use measurements but just show how friggin’ simple everything was.)

Meal 1
Veggies
Shitload of egg whites
ham

Meal 2
tuna or chicken
veggies or large salad

Meal 3
Same as meal 2

Meal 4
Same as meal 2 and 3

Meal 5
Cottage cheese

One cheat meal per week and one five hour carb up per week.

That was the damn diet. Plain and simple.

And a newbie SHOULD be keeping EVERYTHING simple - training and nutrition considering that changes in body composition or attaining 20 to 30 pounds of initial muscle mass and getting to the most mediocre strength levels (1.5 x BW bench press, 2 x BW squat, 2.5 x BW deadlift) don’t require Herculean or overly complicated methods.

There are noobs that want to tamper and toy with the most complicated or unneeded stuff - one day PSMFs, carb cycling, carb “back loading”, nutrient timing, “pulses” of all sorts, all kinds of supplements and drugs, diets that don’t fall in line with their lifestyles currently or yet - without having the slighest bit of nutrition education and before learning to design basic diets for themselves. Put it this way, if someone comes on here, with all of the hundreds of nutrition articles available, and asks, “What’s good to eat?”, then they better learn some stuff and keep things simple for the time being. If they can’t do a very simple thing like read a good book or article and apply the respective information, then how can they even handle more complicated approaches. And why would fat burning drugs be called for if they can’t burn fat through diet and exercise to begin with.

And come to think of it now, going from 20 to 15% shouldn’t be so difficult IF someoen knows what they’re doing. That’s a big IF though. Because you’re right, if someone doesn’t have the proper knowledge, then stuff will be difficult.

[quote]K-Man32 wrote:
This. Don’t use all the tricks from the get go… [/quote]

Exactly!

Other than the most fanatical and COMPETENT of people, most will never need tricks!

It’s also unwise to use tricks when someone is just starting as they don’t have a broader of understanding of how to make changes in any direction (maintenance, gaining, losing).

Here’s the thing. If someone asks, “But will it work?”, it shows they really need to take a step back, use some BASIC stuff, and then go forward from there.

And the answer to questions like “Will it?..” is always “It CAN work,” not, “YES, it will.” You can do everything you think is correct, and not be happy with the outcome. It’s those who are experienced who can make the best decisions and see what happens. And even they don’t succeed every time (eg, bodybuilders who though they definitely would have everythign dialed in but didn’t). As I wrote in my “What the Fuck is So Hard…” thread, there is NO ticket to this shit - or LIFE. People just n eed to educate themselves and make informed decisions.

[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
I sincerely apologize if I used the wrong words. Considering I’ve counseled obese and overweight people, I should know better about wording. But sometimes people confuse “simple” with “easy”. It’s not “easy” for EVERYONE to lose weight, regardless of how much they weigh.

But I DO believe that MOST (not all) people’s dietary solutions ARE simple if they do not have food-related mental illness or endocrine disorders or severe indiscipline.

You yourself are sayings it’s a mental issue for you by saying that it’s easier for you to get to 10% from 15% than from 20% to 15% because of (mental) momentum. You’re reinforced by the results you see (getting leaner and leaner) so you’re more likely to comply with the diet until you reach 10%.

About two years ago I was way too chubby for my liking (despite being happy with the muscle I carried and my strength levels); I did have to drop 20 pounds, and I did that with a protein sparing modified fast because I didn’t have the patience to lose the weight I wanted to. It was VERY simple! See my “RFL versus Velocity Diet” thread (the original RFL thread on this board that I started a long time ago).

Here’s how it was simple (if I correctly remember what the heck I ate because I’m too lazy to look up my original thread). (Also not going to use measurements but just show how friggin’ simple everything was.)

Meal 1
Veggies
Shitload of egg whites
ham

Meal 2
tuna or chicken
veggies or large salad

Meal 3
Same as meal 2

Meal 4
Same as meal 2 and 3

Meal 5
Cottage cheese

One cheat meal per week and one five hour carb up per week.

That was the damn diet. Plain and simple.

And a newbie SHOULD be keeping EVERYTHING simple - training and nutrition considering that changes in body composition or attaining 20 to 30 pounds of initial muscle mass and getting to the most mediocre strength levels (1.5 x BW bench press, 2 x BW squat, 2.5 x BW deadlift) don’t require Herculean or overly complicated methods.

There are noobs that want to tamper and toy with the most complicated or unneeded stuff - one day PSMFs, carb cycling, carb “back loading”, nutrient timing, “pulses” of all sorts, all kinds of supplements and drugs, diets that don’t fall in line with their lifestyles currently or yet - without having the slighest bit of nutrition education and before learning to design basic diets for themselves. Put it this way, if someone comes on here, with all of the hundreds of nutrition articles available, and asks, “What’s good to eat?”, then they better learn some stuff and keep things simple for the time being. If they can’t do a very simple thing like read a good book or article and apply the respective information, then how can they even handle more complicated approaches. And why would fat burning drugs be called for if they can’t burn fat through diet and exercise to begin with.

And come to think of it now, going from 20 to 15% shouldn’t be so difficult IF someoen knows what they’re doing. That’s a big IF though. Because you’re right, if someone doesn’t have the proper knowledge, then stuff will be difficult. [/quote]

Hey, thanks for such a thought out reply. I look forward to reading through your RFL thread. I see where you’re coming from. When I dropped the first 5%, it was after a friend advised me to increase fat intake (particularly the omega-3s) and restrict my carbs a bit by eating breads and pastas sparingly. I was successful with this, and the whole time I had no idea what the hell IF was and had never heard of carb cycling or ketosis. At the end of the day, in theory, it was pretty simple. The part that wasn’t easy was wrapping my mind around it and getting over my fat-phobia as well as the food-pyramid ingrained (no pun intended) on the back of my skull.