260 lbs Calorie Intake Help/Advice

[reekviem]

Hello everyone I decided to ask for help/opinions about my transformation process.
I am 23 years old, 5 ft 7 (172cm) and 260lbs (120kg), lifting 3-4x a week, hitting 10k+ steps every day, what would you recommend, is eating 2100 calories too aggressive or should I drop below 2k?

Macros are : Protein: 170-180g
Fats: 65g
Carbs: 200g

My diet is 95% based on “clean” foods with only some sweet snacks up to 200cal like ice cream bar, I don’t expect miracles over night I just wanna improve my physique in next 100 days, p.s I’m pretty much new to lifting so I still haven’t used my “newbie gains”, I just wanna know how low can I go with calories to not sacrifice too much of a muscle loss and should I maybe increase my daily steps up to 15-20k?

 

[CasperKValentine]

You may need to play around and see what works best for you. Everyone can be a bit different in this regard. Even with a clean dialed-in diet I can't go less than 500 calories under maintenance without muscle falling off. I have a friend about your height and weight who can go as low as1700 calories and still hold on to muscle and stay strong as an ox. Dude can drop 20 lbs and look like a totally different person in a flash!

 

[Whisky]

Ok so if we cut to the chase, you have a lot of body fat to lose bro. At your height and new to lifting we can be confident BF percentage will be high

Good news is that you are asking the right questions and the fact you are lifting from the beginning of your journey is avoiding one of the biggest errors people (inc me when I lost 140lbs) make - just reducing calories and doing cardio.

if your serious about changing for good (and honestly I would highly recommend it, one of my few regrets in life is I waited till I was in my 30s, I have loose skin that means I’ll never look as good as I should regardless of how lean I get) then 100 days isn’t close to long enough.

don’t crash the weight off, you’ll end up losing a lot of muscle. See this as a lifestyle, commit to getting in amazing shape and being able to smash anything in a skirt you want by the time your 25.

calories is hard to call but below 2.5k with your bodyweight plus training is probably too low.

right now I wouldn’t even focus on losing weight (by the way, you want to lose fat, not weight), I’d focus on building muscle. Lean mass burns more calories just by being there (for example I eat 3.5k calls plus just to maintain these days, I like food so that works nice for me), you’ll find that just building muscle in the beginning will see you lose body fat from just a small deficit, plus you’ll keep your calories higher for longer whilst still losing fat which gives you somewhere to reduce to further down the line.

I’d up your protein to 220g personally. I like high protein though and think it’s more beneficial in a fat cutting phase.

i would eat 2,750 calls for now and watch the scale, drop by 100 a day if you don’t lose anything, increase by 100 a day if you lose more than 2lb a week

get a personal trainer/coach or mate who knows what he is doing. Base your training round squat, bench, deadlift, rows abs OH presses. Use free weights with solid form. Use your newbie gain phase to build a foundation, progressively overload weight or reps each week, rep ranges between 5 and 10 is optimal in you position.

good luck brother, enjoy the ride

 

[CasperKValentine]

A lot of solid advice above.