[quote]mertdawg wrote:
[quote]AccipiterQ wrote:
[quote]mertdawg wrote:
[quote]AccipiterQ wrote:
So usually I bulk at around 3800-5000 calories per day depending on the year. When I cut I drop the calories to 2800, which is also my maintenance level. Most days I’ll be at around 1300 cals from carbs (fruit/veg/brown rice, mostly brown rice), 475-525 from fat, 900 from protein. One or two days per week I swap around the carb & fat numbers for a high fat / low carb day. I do this for a couple months until I’m down to around 195-200 lbs, and around 10% or lower bf.
This year after reading a lot on the nutrition forum here I decided to do something different. First, I decided to actually go below where my maintenance will be, to speed up the results. Carbs are pegged around 210 (175 net), so 800 calories roughly, Protein around 700 cals (175g), and fat 600-700 cals per day. So around 2100-2200 calories per day. Carbs from veggies, fruits. Fats from evoo, coconut oil, red palm oil, avocados, etc. So the first six weeks I went from about 230-215. I did a mini refeed for a few days, then went back to what I was doing. Since then I’ve lost 0 lbs. I’ve been stuck at 215 for 3 weeks. My strength isn’t declining; all my lifts are holding steady. I’m using the exact same routine I did last year when I went from 218-195. I’m not tired, I’m sleeping fine, and I am completely stumped. Any ideas? I’ve checked my calorie #s 4 times and using multiple different sources so I know I’m not miscalculating there. All I can think is that the extra fat has slowed down my metabolism??[/quote]
The dietary numbers sound perfect to me.
- What are your protein sources?
- Do you eat whole eggs and red meat (if your not vegetarian, I would think you’d want to get about half your fat cals from animal sources to keep hormone levels optimal.
- What is your training rep range right now?
Anyway, I used basically that identical diet to get from 28% to 12%, but I have never gone below 12%. When I got down under about 15% I did find that refeeding on carbs seemed to speed things up, but I have to admit that I have not mastered what it takes to get from 12% to 8% or whatever. Some people say to double carbs every other day, some say one week out of every 3-4. I found that on refeed weeks my skinfolds dropped while my weight rose by 5-7 POUNDS so you may want to actually eat carbs until your weight has gone up 5 pounds and then return. I did get stretches of no weight loss, and they always were broken by eating enough carbs to actually gain back 5 pounds in a week. When I tried “safe” refeeds it didn’t really do anything.
In theory, after 9 weeks, your muscles and liver have slowly lost glycogen and your body has started to find other ways to refill it (but not fully “loaded”) and your body has gotten good at burning fat. You have basically an empty reservoir that can hold a few pounds of carbs. That’s where they are going to go.
[/quote]
- Primarily chicken, eggs, cottage cheese, protein powder (this is the same as last year)
- I have a whole egg every morning, I don’t eat red meat usually, maybe once per week.
- Training reps are almost all 1-5 rep sets; large compound movements, olympic lifts, and sprinting
I’m baffled, this is the same thing I’ve done every year, just with different macros, and it’s gone horrid. [/quote]
You HAVE gotten below 10% before though, so you may be pretty carb tolerant, but didn’t you cut carbs before? You may just not be losing as much muscle as in the past. 15 pounds of fat in 9 weeks is a lot. I mean it would be 6% bodyfat lost.
You started 12 pounds heavier this time. [/quote]
That is true, I’m just surprised the progress has slowed to a halt the last few weeks. I am pretty carb tolerant, I just wanted to add more healthy fats this time around, so the fat calories added needed to come out of the carb count. I have cut carbs sometimes in the past, last cut once or twice per week I would go low carb (like 30g net) and high fat for a day or two every week.