Some questions on weight loss

MikeC101

Hi guys,

Just looking for a bit of advice, quick backstory:

I'm a 29 year old, 180 cm tall male. I weighed 105kg in November, probably the heaviest I've ever been - never been "skinny" but wasn't really overweight previously, and realised I needed to do something about it.

So I did a few sessions with a trainer starting in December, cleaned up my diet, and by April I weighed 75kg. I've kind of been hovering around there for the last few weeks, and I'm finding it hard to drop past it.

I'd like to put on some more muscle, particularly arms / chest (although I know to build muscle I can't neglect other groups). I'm still carrying a fair bit of fat, bit of a belly still there etc - My question is, should I try to keep dropping weight until my body fat is quite low, and then up the calories and build muscle? (And I assume have to cut again to lose the fat that will be gained along with the muscle).

I've been doing a fairly basic weights routine, along with cardio either in the form of cross trainer / treadmill or playing squash, while dropping weight.

I've experimented with a ketogenic diet, but I find it left me with very little energy for the gym (even with keeping hydrated, upping fat intake and so on - I never seemed to hit the breakthrough that people talk about), so my diet at the moment is fairly high protein, and lowish carb, depending.

Typical day

Breakfast: Two eggs, scrambled, with black pepper. (Sometimes I'll substitute a Quest protein bar if I'm stuck for time, and sometimes I'll make porridge with water and stevia sweetener)
Coffee, a dash of milk, sweetened with stevia.

Lunch: Have a canteen in work, so I usually just get whatever meat or fish they have, and vegetables / salad.

Dinner: Chicken breast, or Tuna, or Roast Chicken, usually with a load of broccoli.

On days I lift weights I'd generally have a scoop of ON whey protein, sometimes with milk, but if I'm watching carb intake it'd be with water.

Throughout the day I might have another cup of coffee, or green tea, or sometimes regular tea. Try to keep the milk to just a dash, and use a no carb stevia sweetener.

I try to avoid bread / pasta / rice as much as possible, and try to get in about 3 litres of water a day.

Does anything stand out there as not being the best way to go about losing weight? I'm concerned that my calorie intake might actually be a little low (for some reason myfitnesspal is convinced I should be taking in 1200 calories a day, which seems incredibly low - admittedly I do have it on the "drop 2lbs a week" setting - should I switch this back to 1lb a week?)

Hanley

MyFitnessPal seems to be way under for everyone.

At 75kg, assuming you're training 3-4x per week, 1,800kcal is a good starting point diet wise. It might "sound" high but when if you start tracking kcals diligently (and more importantly getting them right) you'll see some awesome results.

Your diet looks pretty good quality wise, so nailing down quantities to hit your kcal goal is probably the next logical step.

With regards building muscle and losing fat, the actual training won't vary too much so you should deffo keep pushing it hard in the gym, but be mindful that if you're in a kcal deficit you may struggle to recover as quickly as you'd hope.

MikeC101

Cheers Hanley, that actually makes a lot more sense - upping calories and working hard in the gym - trying to stick to such a low calorie intake was just leaving me wrecked and I ended up not going to the gym quite a bit over the last month, and was really struggling when I did.

Hanley

MikeC101 wrote: »

Cheers Hanley, that actually makes a lot more sense - upping calories and working hard in the gym - trying to stick to such a low calorie intake was just leaving me wrecked and I ended up not going to the gym quite a bit over the last month, and was really struggling when I did.

Yup, and it also means you're more susceptible to cheating and MASSIVE binges, which obviously screw things up pretty bloody badly.

meijin

Honestly, I don't know how you can survive on 1200kcal :eek:

You had great progress so far and your diet looks very clean (you could still drop stevia & milk during the day), but I think you need to eat more. And some carbs are fine especially after the training, together with your whey shake (though I would suggest unflavoured).

To give you some reference:
I'm 33yrs old, 180 cm as well, got from 88kg to 74 kg mainly through cleaning up the diet from junk (what remained was more or less paleo/primal), started running in June, then added some random body weight training since November, and more structured Convict Conditioning training since February.

Currently eating on average 3200 kcal daily, usually 50/30/20 (fat/protein/carbs)%. Carbs mostly after training. Zero carbs for breakfast (meat & nuts).

Doing body weight 5-6x a week, run 2-3x, play table tennis 2x3h. I increase carbs a bit on days I play tt, otherwise I'm out of steam. Staying lean and my weight has increased slowly and then was quite stable at 76.4 for two months. I know it's muscles - I can see them getting bigger and more dense You don't actually need to gain fat when building muscles. And having more muscles will burn more fat, even when your not doing anything.

To summarise my advice for you would be to focus on strength training, keep your diet clean, but eat more. Have some carbs after training.

MikeC101

Thanks for that meijin!

I upped my intake Friday, Sat, Sun and Mon and apart from playing a game of squash didn't do an awful lot, and it's seemed to have kick started my weight loss again - bit early to be expecting results probably, but gave me a nice little boost!

Is the milk that bad? I'd keep the milk pretty low, literally a small dash to coffee, and sometimes a bit more in porridge, but I'm not trying for a ketogenic diet anymore so I assumed a bit was ok?

The stevia I'm unsure of myself to be honest, but it seemed the best out of all the sweeteners there I looked at. It's the liquid form, and doesn't seem to have anything extra added to it.

meijin

That's great!

milk - it's extra calories/sugar; if you keep it only with meals it should be fine, but I think getting any calories between your defined meals is bad idea - I recommend plain water or tea/coffee without any extras between meals

stevia - well, it's a sweetener, no need for that really, but that's just my opinion