Lengthy Introduction and Fitday Question

phillyb

phillyb

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I have been hiding in these forumns for awhile now and decided to finally make a legitimate post after I became more comfortable. I used to weigh 300 pounds back in 2004, and over the course of a year or so dropped 70 of those pounds and stayed at 230 for about another year. Then about 2 months ago I decided I wanted to change my life again, and picked up weightlifting and dieting. I found this site and have been reading it several times everyday, and have even made it my homepage. I read as much as I could about cutting, and cutting diets and proper nutrition and exercise. Since I found this site 2 months ago, I have lost about 38 more pounds and am down to 192 or so. I am 6'2" and I lift for about an hour a day 7x a week, and do cardio 30 mins a day 7x a week. I take in about 2000 calories a day in a roughly 60p/20c/20f split. I try not to eat alot of carbs because they make me feel sick and bloated even though I know that you need them for energy and to rebuild muscle.

I have been using fitday.com like so many of the people on this site have suggested and it really is a great tool. But I seem to be getting kind of worn out on my diet now, not the whole dieting and working out part, because I love doing that, but the amount of calories and the breakdown of them I take in everyday. According to fitday.com on average I take in 2000 calories a day, and my expenditures are just shy of 5000. Which means thats a 3,000 calorie deficit everyday am I right? That doesnt make sense to me, and I measure everything I eat, I weigh it all out and I calculate everything I put into anything. ( I'm a perfectionist at heart :p) My goals 2 months ago were to lose weight, and I have accomplished that, but I guess what my question really is, is can I increase my caloric intake, or even change the breakdown to something like 40/20/20 and keep getting the results I have been?
 
Mulletsoldier

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Yes. A 3000 calorie deficiet is crazy man. If you are feeling worn and run down you are probably going hypo. Try slowly bumping up your calories until you find a nice balance between lifting weights and having energy. On a cut, there will be times you feel worn down regardless, simply b/c you are eating less then you need. So work up slowly till you find that sweet spot.
 
mixedup

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that is a huge deficet especially when doing cardio and weights seven days a week. Actually i think you may be overtraining at this point. Definetly up the calories slowly by say 300-500 at a time till you feel better.
 
phillyb

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Yeah thats pretty much what I thought you guys would say. But the funny thing is my workouts are great. I always seem to power through them, and my strength has yet to diminish, infact i've actually gotten stronger.
 
JBlaze

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Now that youve lost this much weight, of course the fat loss will begin to slow a bit. Definately start increasing the calories a bit but make sure to do it gradually.

Your new split says 40/20/20 so you might want to fix that for more comments.

Great progress thus far! At 6'2" 192lbs, how much more are you trying to lose?
 
phillyb

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I don't really have a set amount of weight I want to get down to. I just want to be "lean" for summer, and then work on putting more muscle on after summer is over. As far as a 40/40/20 split goes, I have yet to try that. I have been doing 60/20/20 for 2 months, and was just wondering if a different breakdown of calories such as 40/20/20 might be beneficial.
 
Nitrox

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First off, conrgrats on the progress.

Calorie expenditure calculations are inherently inaccurate; there are a lot of variables that are hard to nail down. Based on you losing 38 lbs over 60 some odd days I would say that you have been at around a 2000 calorie daily deficit, still pretty high based on your now 192lb bodyweight.

If you are asking if you can continue to lose bodyweight at the same rate as before, then my answer is not really. The less fat you have, the more difficult it is to get it off without sacrificing muscle. That is not to say that you still cant make relatively good progress.

I would say that you are feeling worn out due to your low calorie, low carb diet. Your 40/20/20 breakdown proposal doesnt add up to 100 so Im going to assume that you meant 40P/40C/20F. In which case I would say that it is an improvement, 60% protein is overkill IMO. Find a carb source that works for you, if no lower GI starch source works, then maybe try lowfat dairy and/or fruit. Eat small and eat often.

Like the others suggested, bump your cals up slowly and see how it goes. Keep in mind, you may temporarily stop seeing losses on the scale as your body stores up some water and glycogen from the added carbs. Also consider that a big chunk of protein energy goes into digesting it so if you're cutting protein cals in favor of carbs, you can get some net calorie increase that way.
 
phillyb

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Yes, thank you nitrox I meant 40/40/20. Thank all you guys for the good advice. Looks like I have some more research to do. :twisted:
 

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