Prolonged Dieting.

Diet and Nutrition
1

I’ve had a few threads recently, so bare bones whats been going on. June last year was 336lbs, am now 239, about 26-27% body fat. Been dieting down since June last year, properly understanding nutrition stuff since about October time.

Since then I have had a few cheats, namely my mid Nov birthday (burgers, nachos, beer), Xmas (Dinner, some fried prawn stuff in the eve, beers on Xmas eve).

Then I fucked up a bit last weekend, with white rice and 2 white rolls and some roast potatoes in a 24h period. Cost me no fat gain, but from Sat morning (rice on sat eve) to Tue my weight had gone up and down by 3lbs (water weight I assume).

Having just read some of the Keto threads and the issues they raise about prolonged dieting and screwing with leptin/hormone levels, I just wanted to make sure that however accidently, the ‘cheats’ have been enough to combat this.

Perhaps there is no effect as my body fat levels are still pretty high. My diet is moderate carbs, with 1 slice of bread a day, 12g in a protein shake and the rest amounts to <10g from veggies. Just want to make sure I can continue dropping the fat safely, with a view to getting sub 200/10% by June.

Supps wise i’m using HRX, Flameout and BCAA’s.

2

So you have been dieting for about nine months now and have lost 100ish lbs.

Can I ask how you lost the weight before going low carb? Or have you always been low carb?

As for the refeeds, from what I have learned, as you lose weight you can gradually decrease the time between refeeds, but this is talking like 12% bf and lower.

What are your goals with regards to your body composition? Are you just trying to be lean, or are you trying to get huge?

3

At first it was just getting down the gym and fapping away like a man possessed with lifts as heavy as I could muster on a stupid split. As for poundages, i’m always a little hazy, i’m from the UK so do things in Stones or in KG’s.

I was 150kgs and am now 108.6 (in fact probably as i’m 5 days since last weigh in) - There is a thread I did a few days ago with a different focus here - http://www.T-Nation.com/free_online_forum/sports_body_training_performance_bodybuilding_beginner/what_are_my_chances - it has some pictures as well.

Food wise, i’ve cut out things as I went along. Mainly hit the fish (cod/haddock/tuna/plaice) and salad/steamed veg pretty hard, with a jacket (baked) potato. No dressings or anything. Sandwiches at lunch, plenty of chicken and salad in them though.

I had a rough idea of what was good/bad for me (note, 2l’s of soda and a whole pizza+sides+bags of Maltesers are bad!!!). Just tried to cut out the bad stuff in the beginning.

Did a few stupid things along the way, (MRP shakes, cheat meals to regular, drinking still) but my diet is 95% clean now, with any bad foods being pretty good really, as in a bit of rice/extra bread, rather than candy, soda and processed crap. As I said, it’s been far from perfect, but it’s worked as i’ve gone along.

Low carb has been recent, since just before Xmas really, had a couple of weeks verging on Ketosis, but I decided that it wasnt worth it yet, as I plan just to add activity/drop carbs when I stall. If you go balls to the wall straight away, what else is there left to give when it stalls?

I’m lucky in as much as my job pretty much allows me to eat what I need to when I need to. Also pretty lucky that I found this site pretty early on, so am ironing out the mistakes that I was making. I work at a school as a ‘cover supervisor’ basically I go in and supervise the kids if their teacher is away, leaves me a lot of time to research stuff online, i;m trawling back through old articles at a rate of knots each day.

Sorry I forgot to add, goal wise for now its to be lean. Based on some assumption on LBM, i’m 26.5% now, with 177lb LBM. This is assuming that because of the stupidness since September when I last had a test done, i’ve lost 5kgs LBM. Putting me now around the 80kg LBM mark.

I’ve never been lean, never had abs (even as a 13-14 yr old boy who did nothing but play sports and screw girls). So they would be a nice touch. Then its get fucking huge! Will be looking over the next 3-4 years to gain an extra 40-50lbs of lean mass. If my assumptions on BF% were right, i’ll be 7.5% when I hit 197lbs @ 5’11"

4

I recall Berardi talking about the 90% adherence approach. If you’re eating on task 90% of the time, you’ll bemoving in the right direction. I know there’s a lot of info tossed around on here, but if you’ve been making steady progress, then don’t tamper with your approach.

S

5

Congrats on your good progress so far. Keep it going.

6

Excellent, thanks for the advice Stu, apprieciate it. As you say, there is a lot of info chucked around the place, some of it contradictory, so its easy to suffer a bit of information paralysis.

In regards 90% compliance, i’m aiming for more like 95-100%, with the knowledge that if I do ‘slip’ then it can fall within decent boundaries. The goal is still ‘shirts off for the summer’. Basically I now plan to ‘cut’ (man I hate that term) until mid April (hopefully around 210 by then). Have a rest week, eating at maintainence and getting some surgery that I need done. Then from there, drop the last 15lbs or so to get under 10% by the summer.

Maintainence through the summer. The a nice slow FFB style mass phase through. Obviously stripping back to bare bones will leave me with a pretty unbalanced physique, namely delts, traps and core. So I can work on those through the fall/winter.

No doubt i’ll be back here getting a mass diet critique!