I’m a 29 year old male, 5’10", 197lb- about %27 body fat.
Recently lost 35lb thanks to living keto and intermittent fasting- 16/8. A hint of a 6 pack is even beginning to surface, but there’s plenty of chub left to melt. That’s why I’m here, for imput and ideas on breaking the plateau.
I workout daily, always on an empty stomach. It never really bothers me btw.
-Mon, wed, fri: kettlebell hiit. Usually 5 5min rounds.
-Tues: Shoulder & core
-Thurs: legs & back
-Sat: chest & arms
Typical daily diet:
-Breakfast:
2 sausage links, 4 eggs, keto coffee, 1 tbsp of peanut butter, maybe a handful of sunflower kernels as well.
-Lunch:
Salad drizzled with apple cider vinegar. No dressing. Broccoli, Brazil nuts.
-Dinner:
2 chicken breasts, cooked in olive oil, 1 tbsp of butter, 1 whole avocado.
And 2 or 3 tbsn of peanut butter before my eating window wraps up.
Definitely not a fitness expert, just looking for some ideas. Thanks.
It’s just based on my personal experience but I’m skeptical of how well keto works when you aren’t very fat (30+%). I mean, it works, kind of, but not as well as other approaches. Low carb seems to be more beneficial when you’re properly fat; when you get to just chubby, it just doesn’t seem so effective.
If you were to try this, you could start at 2700 cal/day, and every time you see a definite stall in loss (say a week without any net loss), drop 100 cal/day.
At a guess, you’re also training too much and/or sub-optimally. For starters, training on an empty stomach (fasted?) is generally a plain bad idea. You compromise your performance and you’re unlikely to be doing your recovery any favours either UNLESS your intra-workout nutrition game is A1.
Secondly, what you’re actually doing seems less than ideal too. For example, legs and back in one day means you’re highly unlikely to be able to do either of them justice because those are the two areas of your body which can absorb and therefore require pretty intense work. Then shoulders and abs in one day mean you’re pretty much doing no work, since abs almost never need a dedicated day and shoulders will almost never be a particularly hard day (painful, yes but hard not really). Chest and arms together is similar. The kettlebell HIIT three days a week is quite possibly overkill too.
Here’s the only thing tripping me up here, this author, Paul Carter also wrote an article on simple carb cycling and his suggestions were really not so dissimilar to what I’ve been doing: around 50 grams of carbs, pwo…
And for that matter, using his calculations my daily calorie intake is accurate at 2,058…
Or maybe I’m just still getting something wrong.
That article Mark posted suggests starting at BW x 15 for cals (~3000), so Mark’s suggestion of 2700cals is likely a good place to start for you (just under 14cals/lb BW) to get the fat loss moving again.
Or were you referring to this other article you mentioned? Care to link it?
I also agree that working out fasted is not a good idea. A little fasted LISS in the morning can help with fat loss, but I would make sure to get breakfast or at least a shake in before working out.
Again, I’d like to state I’m no expert, just an enthusiastic student if anything so I have to ask, why are fasted workouts bad? Tbh, I never feel very bad doing them.
Also, why does increasing calories promote weight loss?
Honest questions here…
I thought bcaas discourage those effects to some extent, knowing taking them before a workout isn’t 100% fasted but I hear ya…what would you recommend as a meal pre workout if you’re trying to reduce body fat?
The only ways to lose muscle mass are to either not lift frequently enough (read: stop “telling” the body it needs to hold onto that LBM) or just stop lifting altogether.
Otherwise, it will happily burn bodyfat fuel stores and retain the muscle mass that it needs to meet the demands that are consistently imposed upon it.
EDIT: Didn’t realise this thread was started months ago
I think both you & I are fairly similar stats wise (I’m 30, 6’2, 210lbs) so I figured I’d add some of my own comments - I’m far from an expert, these are really just to give you some alternative viewpoints to think about.
The keto / intermittent fasting approach can be a good starting point & it sounds like you’ve seen good results so far. I had done something similar to begin with (basically keto / low-carb) but eventually reached a sticking point, particularly as I changed my workout programme into something more intensive.
I found this article very informative;
I play quite a lot of sport & so found that switching from a keto / low-carb diet onto something that contained a lot more wholesome foods helped me immensely. It doesn’t even really require calorie or macro counting provided you eat from clean & nutritious sources & don’t overdo it completely.
In terms of your actual workout, I agree with MarkKO as it seems sub-optimal. Would need to know more about the actual routine & exercises used in each, but again, I found that I made great improvements by keeping things as simple as possible. I have 2 full body routines;
Pull Ups, Squats, Bench Press, T Bar Row, Overhead Press
Dips, Deadlifts, Incline Bench, Bent Over Row, Bi/Tri Superset
As an intermediate lifter myself I don’t want to overcomplicate things, so just pushing myself hard in each of these workouts & maintaining a diet of wholesome foods along with some supplements (whey, creatine, BCAA) has really helped me.
Hopefully there will be something there that you can take away & see if it benefits you.
