Calories seem too low

Bencsis

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Hey, I'm having abit of trouble loosing weight (from belly and chest) no/very little fat any where else. My stats are :
33 years old
67kg
20% bf
I know I have low T which is prob making it harder to loose fat but I'm trying to fix this naturally.
Now if I work out my LBM 54kg (118pounds) x 15 = 1800 calories for maintenance. So to drop fat I should aim for 1500/1400 calories. Now I know before anyone says I'm to skinny to try and cut, I know and u are right, but 20% bf is unhealthy and I have a beer so to feel comfortable I'd like to get to 15% then try and do a clean bulk. I have 5 meals a day, protein with all, carbs with first 2 as I train first thing then protein and fats for other 3 meals. Anyone think those calories are too low or nah give it a shot? Guess I have nothing to loose I don't seem to be loosing fat doing what I'm doing now
Oh and I train 6 days a week
 
Driven2lift

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Training 6 days a week I think you are underestimating your TDEE here

I would try starting out at closer to 1800 and monitoring the rate of weight loss there for a few weeks

Have you started dieting? Tracking calories?

If so have you made any progress?

Low T is a poor starting point but it can still be done, I did. Thyroid looks good?
 

Bencsis

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Yep. I've actually been on 1800 and feel like I'm spinning my wheels. And I do track calories pretty well, read all labels, weigh my food, like avacado, banana, nuts, meat so I do hit the 1800 +- 100 calories.
My training is
Chest, tri
Back,bi
Legs,shoulders
Rep ranges from 5-8. When I hit 8 reps of 4 sets with a exercise I up the weight
Cardio, well hmmmm I try and get 4 in a week in the afternoon but to be realalistic I'd say it's more like twice a week
 

Bencsis

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Sorry mate just re read ur post and forgot to answer thyroid question
It is 1.5mu/l what ever that means but the range is .40-4.00 so I'm in it
And oestradiol is 85 pmol/l. Range is <150 so I'm in that as well
 
SWOLDIER_1

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Well your bmr is 1610 cals a day

Do to drop bf you need to be eating 1350 cals a day.
 

Bencsis

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Holy ****, 1350 calories a day. No wonder I'm not loosing fat. That seems low, would explain why at 1800 I don't feel hungry any time of the day
 
SWOLDIER_1

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Holy ****, 1350 calories a day. No wonder I'm not loosing fat. That seems low, would explain why at 1800 I don't feel hungry any time of the day
Yes your bmr is 1620 and if you are at 1800 you are in a surolus not a deficit
 

Bencsis

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Thanks for clarifying that for me. Well I'll readjust my diet tomorrow and see how I go. Sorry swoldier_1 but how did u find out my BMR?
 

Bencsis

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All good, I googled how to find out bmr. I'm guessing it's pretty rough estimate as it doesn't even take into account bf%. Anyways, still going with the 1400 calories for a few weeks to see what happens. Just need to get to 15% ish and can start a very clean, slow bulk
Going to throw 10 mins of hiit into the mix to get that metabolism cracking hard
 

Br1ck_Sh1thouse

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Your new calories sound better, it's also based on how physical your job is. I train for roughly an hour at a good clip 5 days a week but i have a sedentary job. I'm 5'10,same bf,38yrs and 242lb and my maintenance is 2000 anything more and I start to gain. But everyone is different so you'll have to experiment with the three numbers till you figure it out. Good luck and have fun!
 
SWOLDIER_1

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All good, I googled how to find out bmr. I'm guessing it's pretty rough estimate as it doesn't even take into account bf%. Anyways, still going with the 1400 calories for a few weeks to see what happens. Just need to get to 15% ish and can start a very clean, slow bulk
Going to throw 10 mins of hiit into the mix to get that metabolism cracking hard
When figuring bmr your bf isnt a factor

Its your basal metabolic rate. Or your static rate. What you need to function. So going under that rate your body will search out stored fats to make up the difference.
 
SWOLDIER_1

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Total daily energy expenditure is basically the same as figuring out your adjusted bmr. Either way i think the cals shoukd be less then what he is taking in. Hence no bf loss that he has reported. Or something in his diet is off
 
JDybya

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Just my humble opinion, but at 5' 8", 120 lbs and 20% bf, maintaining weight on 1800....while it's true you need to drop cals to lose weight. I'd think about trying to manipulate macros, quality of food, and intake timing to try to build some muscle first. Losing weight with such little muscle could compromise your metabolism further.

Further, If you try to drop weight now, you could be sacrificing what little muscle you have.

More questions need answers:
What's your average daily diet like? Macro breakdown? What are your goals? How do you feel day to day?
 
SWOLDIER_1

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Just my humble opinion, but at 5' 8", 120 lbs and 20% bf, maintaining weight on 1800....while it's true you need to drop cals to lose weight. I'd think about trying to manipulate macros, quality of food, and intake timing to try to build some muscle first. Losing weight with such little muscle could compromise your metabolism further.

Further, If you try to drop weight now, you could be sacrificing what little muscle you have.

More questions need answers:
What's your average daily diet like? Macro breakdown? What are your goals? How do you feel day to day?
I do absolutly agree w this. Maybe the diet is the culprit
 
gagandugan

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He does not weigh 120lbs. More like 147 or so, but the point stands.
 

Bencsis

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Hey guys, thanks for having the discussion. My diet is clean, I get my carbs in my first 2 meals from oats first mixed with whey in a shaker. Meal 2 is chicken and brown rice and salad. Meal 3 is chicken and a whole avocado with salad. Meal 4 is chicken or if I have beef and 30 grams of almonds or walnuts. Meal 5 is small tin tuna + small tin salmon and 20 mls extra virgin olive oil and a serve of chia seeds soaked in water. That's my diet guys,
Yeah I do get that I should be more worried about putting on size but my belly holds way too much fat for my liking and I feel uncomfortable with it. My belly is 38 inches!! So when I get that down to more like 32" I'll be healthier more confident and ready for a clean bulk. Sound ok guys?
I'm not trying to cut to like 10%bf just get rid of my belly asap
 
SWOLDIER_1

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Hey guys, thanks for having the discussion. My diet is clean, I get my carbs in my first 2 meals from oats first mixed with whey in a shaker. Meal 2 is chicken and brown rice and salad. Meal 3 is chicken and a whole avocado with salad. Meal 4 is chicken or if I have beef and 30 grams of almonds or walnuts. Meal 5 is small tin tuna + small tin salmon and 20 mls extra virgin olive oil and a serve of chia seeds soaked in water. That's my diet guys,
Yeah I do get that I should be more worried about putting on size but my belly holds way too much fat for my liking and I feel uncomfortable with it. My belly is 38 inches!! So when I get that down to more like 32" I'll be healthier more confident and ready for a clean bulk. Sound ok guys?
Diet seems fine. Calories go lower and up the cardio.
 
gagandugan

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Lower the calories, do full body workouts focusing on compound movements and your waist size will go down. Honestly, if I were you, I'd forget splits, and iso exercises. This won't do much for you at this stage. Later, sure, but not right now.
 

Bencsis

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Just got back from the gym. Shoulders and legs. So it's set then lower the calories, stick to my usual macro breakdown but just less of it. Just had meal 1 so only 2 serves of oats, half scoop whey (since oats already gave me 10grams protein and 200 calories) and 80 grams banana. So I'm sitting at 300 calories so far. Can't wait for this waist to drop. Thinking of doing a journal so everyone that has given me advice can come with me on this journey and give advice, all appreciated. Little camera shy though since a lot of my fat is in my chest and waist.
As for full body workouts outs hmmmm I have honestly heard that but I get exhausted and tend to start dropping exercises near the end. Maybe because I have too much volume for each muscle group! My exercises r compound based example today all done to 5-8 reps for 4 sets if I hit 8 reps on all 4 sets I up the weight:
Behind the neck shoulder press
Lateral side raise
Upright row to a front press (think called hang clean to press)
Rear delt cable fly

Legs
Squat
Hack squat
Leg curl
Leg extension
Calf raises

And when I try full body I tend to do the same, so I'm exhausted half way through my session
 
gagandugan

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You don't do the same when you start full body workout. Find a good program (GreyskullLP, some 5X5 variation etc.), stick to it, and you won't be exhausted. Frequency trumps volume for someone like you. You hit most body parts with heavy exercises 3X per week, every week. There is absolutely no need for you to do squat+hack squat+leg extension... why would you do that? Will it help you drop waist and pec fat? No.

The reason I am telling you this is that I was at around 18% bf , while my weight was around 130lbs. And it's like all the fat in my body was stored on my waist and in the kidney area. Right now I am 20lbs heavier (that's after a rigorous cut actually) and at 10% BF. Full body workouts got me there. I do some isolations for aesthetics now, at the end of my workout, but that's all. Get in the gym, give it all you got for 45-50 minutes, get out and rest. If you keep getting stronger and your diet is in check, that fat will melt, I promise you that. Do fasted cardio on off days. Use Yohimbe before it if you want, it helps. If you want more volume, or you feel lazy because you go to the gym less often, here's what you do:

Off day: Pushups (or diamond pushups) or Dips + Pullups. Do as many as you can. That, with full body workouts will get you strong and lean. And you could do this at home. Goodle "ladder method training".
 

Bencsis

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Ok gagandugan, advice taken. Will be spending today looking for a good full body routine. And yep I do feel lazy if I go to the gym less often so I will being doing pull-ups, dips ect. I actually have a power rack to do all that. I just enjoyed doing all that volume cause after the workout the body part I trained actually felt trained but like u said, it won't help me loose waist/chest fat and that's my goal ATM asap. So ur 150lbs at 10%bf. That would be great hope I get there some day. So about 1400 calories a day hey? Did it yesterday and yep actually felt hungry for the first time and already lost scale weight and belly is MUCH tighter in one day. Might take a photo and see if u guys can judge my bf%. People at the gym all say 20% + but after yesterday dropping the calories I feel so much tighter already today
 
gagandugan

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Consistency is key, that's all. You will make a lot of progress, just stick with heavy barbell exercises and do calistenics on off days. 1400 calories? Sure, that will work, but don't do it for too long. Drop 3-4% BF and transition into a slow bulk. I went from 130lbs 18%, to 165, 13-14% easy (I forgot to mention that I am an inch shorter than you). Then I decided to cut, and get really lean (10% seems like you would be "ripped" but that's not the case. You are simply athletic and muscular at that point, which is probably enough for most fitness enthusiasts anyway). Next week I will start a lean bulk to get back to ~160, staying at around 10% the whole time. Even now full body is what I do, with added "plug-ins" at the end.

In fact, let me help you some more. Simply do this:

OUcEY.png


Before you do your 3 heavy sets, warmup with two, bringing it to 5X5 program of sorts. Final set is "AMRAP" = as many reps as possible. What you see here is your core program. Read the Greyskull LP ebook if you can. You can do lat pulldowns instead of weighted chinups if you want, especially if you do bodyweight pullups on your off-days.

Then you can put an additional plug-in (iso exercise) at the end of every workout. For your first month, you could do bicep curl, calf raises, shrugs. Next month you might want to get other body parts up to speed by isolating triceps, shoulders etc. Or try a new fun cable exercise and stuff like that. Just don't go overboard. Perform your main sets, add 1 plug-in, go home and rest. Off day - cardio and/or calisthenics. Makes sense?
 

Bencsis

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Thanks for that gagandugan, makes sense up until that plug in. So say I do bench press, barbell row, squats then say I want to do tricep extensions as a plug in, I just do that for 3 x 5?
And sorry to be a pain but how long did it take u to go from 130lbs @ 18% to 165lbs @ 13%? 165lbs @ 13% would be pretty good I think, so were u in a calorie surplus to get to that or calorie deficit? Thanks again
 
gagandugan

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Those plugins for small muscle groups are different. You do 2-3 high rep sets with good form, get a good pump going. For triceps you can do 10-12 reps, for calves 15 would be good.

How long it took? A long time, bulking very slowly... Almost a year. 200 surplus, once I stopped gaining upped the calories by another 200 and continued in the similar fashion. But I also completely changed my diet.
 
HIT4ME

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The person above who stated your BMR is around 1600 calories is "correct" that is probably your BMR. But as Driven2lift and others have mentioned - your TDEE is different. BMR is what you burn just laying around doing nothing all day. Even just doing a sedentary office job will probably get you to 1900-2000 calories burned pretty easily. Adding in training for an hour will probably get you between 2200-2400 calories for your TDEE.

If you want to lose fat, you need to be in a deficit. A lot of people worry about eating too little, but we often don't need as much food as we are trained to believe. If you are eating 1350/day and burning 2400/day, you will lose around 2 pounds of fat per week, in theory. In practice, it will be slightly less than this, fat always comes off more slowly than you expect.
 

Bencsis

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Yep, that's exactly where I went wrong hit4me. i listened to too many other people at the gym and read too many other forums and all say that I should be eating over 2000 calories. And while they are right if I was bulking yes I'd want to be eating around that but I'm not I wana cut the fat off my waist line. Fact is I've been spinning my wheels at 1800 calories and now that I'm at 1400 I'm actually hungry and loosing scale weight, while my arm measurements haven't changed. Funny thing is, I'm actually adding weight to the bar. So pretty happy ATM with my progress. And yes I believe we r trained to think that we need more food then we actually do need
 
HIT4ME

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Yep, that's exactly where I went wrong hit4me. i listened to too many other people at the gym and read too many other forums and all say that I should be eating over 2000 calories. And while they are right if I was bulking yes I'd want to be eating around that but I'm not I wana cut the fat off my waist line. Fact is I've been spinning my wheels at 1800 calories and now that I'm at 1400 I'm actually hungry and loosing scale weight, while my arm measurements haven't changed. Funny thing is, I'm actually adding weight to the bar. So pretty happy ATM with my progress. And yes I believe we r trained to think that we need more food then we actually do need
I am not surprised ...I have maintained strength well even dipping to 600-800 cals doing a PSMF for almost 5 months. Not something I recommend and if you go that low you need to do it right...but people wanna believe all kinds of fiction. You have some good advice in this thread though
 

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