F'ING FRUSTRATED!!!!!!!!!!

[BIGHIGGS]

I can guarantee you that red meat will not alter this. In your situation, it's the extra mass that is worrisome and not the raw numbers. BTW, what is your cholesterol and breakdown?

Several things you should start:
1. Change up the diet...a lot. You have very few nutrients in your diet and, even more alarming, a severe lack of produce. The protein is decent, but you either need more fat or more carbs
2. For accuracy purposes, start taking measurements. The only parameter is to take it at the same time everytime.
3. Fatty fish. It'll help in a myriad of ways.
4. Take a week or so and increase your caloric intake by 500-700 per day.

It was early in the year that i had my blood work but i was in the normal ranges, just on the high end of normal

 

[BIGHIGGS]

A deficit is only a deficit if your body hasn't slowed the metabolic process down low enough to match the caloric consumption. Also, you logic is flawed on eating nothing, considering that eating nothing and eating low calories are two different animals.... again, I reference TSH, Estrogen, Cortisol.

I think my metabolism has shut down altogether

 

[BIGHIGGS]

How do you feel in the gym, how's the strength levels?

If you're feeling gassed and losing strength then your metabolism has shifted to muscle burning. Refeed for awhile and then drop the cals back down.

If your energy levels are fine and strength is stable or even increasing then you are eating too much (don't get fixated on the numbers - what's happening is the reality).

Some days i feel like my strength has improved and other days i feel like its gone down. its really inconsistent. energy is up and down at times too.

 

[BIGHIGGS]

I think you have your answer...

honestly i think your right. There are times where i will eat something i think is "small" but in reality that **** adds up more than im thinking. im going to check this bad habit right away. if its not on my daily menu its not going in the mouth...unless its the wife's puss

 

[BIGHIGGS]

[Well first of all congrats on your weight loss, 30 lbs is no small feat. Now down to business. If you are training six days a week, assuming that you are lifting, you are overtraining. Period. Next point is that you are not eating nearly enough. Put these two factors together and your body is in survival mode. This is making it nearly impossible to lose body bf.

How do you start the process over and get a consistent rate of fat loss? Notice how I said fat loss and not weight loss? Body weight will fluctuate very rapidly for a host of reasons, therefore you must not rely on the scale. It can be heartbreaking to see the scale hover around the same weight every single day. Right now I say to only weigh yourself every two weeks. When your metabolism is ripping again then you can weigh yourself every week. Just wait.​

Next thing you need to do is lower your training volume and or frequency. Since I do not know your routine/split I will give you some guidlines to work from. Three to four weight training session per week, max. Six sets per large muscle group ( chest, back, legs,and shoulders), four sets for small ( biceps, triceps, calves). Warm up properly, but do not burn yourself out with super high reps on warm up sets. I recommend compound movements, six to nine reps per set. Make every set count. Intensity is key. Try to increase your reps by one or two every week and add weight when needed to stay in the six to nine rep range. You can and will gain strength while dieting if you constantly beat the previous weeks best.​

Now about cardio. Do not go nuts on cardio! Give your diet a chance to work! If you start off doing an hour of cardio a day, seven days a week you will lose bf. You will also set yourself up for failure long term. When fat loss stalls what will you do to kick it up a notch? More cardio? I think not. Start off with no more than 120 mins of LISS or 40 mins of HIIT per week. There will be a point when you may need to increase the amount of cardio you perform, do this in small increments to break plateaus in fat loss.​

Now to the most important aspect of your fat loss plan: Diet! You just lost a tremendous amount of weight.Your body is freaking out! Refeed for five to seven days at 4000 to 4200 cals, which is at or only slightly above maintenance. You may even lose some bodyfat during this time which is pretty common after long periods on very low calories. Regardless this is very, very important. Starting at zero, fatloss will resume once you begin to reduce calories. This will be at 3500 calories a day. 40/40/20 should be a good place to start. That is 350g protein, 350g carbs, 78g fat. You should include some green veggies and mixed proteins from whole foods. Shakes should be consumed in emergencies or post-workout only. Try to avoid yogurt and milk because even though they may be low GI, they have a very high insulinic index. Drop the banana, the GI can vary dependent on ripeness and is always on the high side anyways. Good, clean carbs. This might seem like a lot of carbs, and it may be, so give it time. Healthy fats are a must! You may want to drop the pb and increase fish oils, evoo, and evco. Stay at 3500 cals for two weeks and see what happens. Bi weekly weigh ins, photos, and caliper readings are all options. You may or may not see an improvement, yet. You must be patient. Now you find what works for you. Lets start to cut.Starting week three drop 50g of carbs per day and add 25g of protein which puts us at 3400 cals a day.Here is an example of the first eight weeks.​

1. Week 1-2 3500 calories 350p 350c 78f
2. Week 3-4 3400 calories 375p 300c 78f
3. Week 5-6 3300 calories 375p 275c 78f
   1. Week 7-8 3200 calories 375p 250c 78f

Burning fat yet? I think you will be. We still have yet to increase cardio which happens soon.Right now you need to reset your metabolism with a refeed at 3800 calories for one week. Then back into the cut. Starting back at 3300 calories a week and adding 20- 30 mins of cardio a week fatloss should be steady. The next cycle will look like this.

1. Week 9 Refeed at 3800 calories 400p 375c 78f
2. Week 10-11 3300 calories 400p 250c 78f + 20-30 mins cardio a week
3. Week 12-13 3200 calories 400p 225c 78f
4. Week 13-14 3100 calories 400p 200c 78f
5. Week 15-16 3000 calories 400p 175c 78f
   1. Week 17 Start cycle over. Add 30 mins cardio/week if needed. It is also a good point to add thermogenics other supps/drugs to keep fatloss high. If you want long term steady fat loss add one at a time, spaced out.Instead of using all of your fat loss tools at once and burning out, methodically removing macro nutrients and adding cardio as well as supps/drugs leaves infinite possibilities to further facilitate fat loss and avoid metabolic shutdown. It works if you are patient. By the way I used a simple calculation to determine caloric needs. Body weight(14). Find a starting point and work from it. Good luck.
   Ckd will work when this ceases to cause fat loss. Great plateau buster.

'
Wow...Thanks for taking the time to post this.​

 

[BIGHIGGS]

Ok so ive been in a deficit or at least trying to be since may 2010. ive lost 30 pounds which im happy with. My new goal is Just fat loss not weight loss althoiugh id=f the scale number goes down i wont mind. im trying to get a leaner athletic look not a huge cant wipe my ass bodybuilder look. the consensus is to raise my cals so for a week im going to hit around 4000 cals at a40/40/20 split and get the metabo rollin again then each week from there i will drop 100-200 cals and see where this gets me. what types of foods do you guys suggest for me now. anybody care to lay out a sample menu??? you all have been great and i enjoy reading all your input. thanks for taking time to help me out. if i knew anything id do the same.

 

[TateFTW]

honestly i think your right. There are times where i will eat something i think is "small" but in reality that **** adds up more than im thinking. im going to check this bad habit right away. if its not on my daily menu its not going in the mouth...unless its the wife's puss

I agree that this is a huge part of the problem. People who are super strict tend to get away with a larger deficit, but a metabolism that has slowed down is very "sensitive", so any extra bit of food gets stored. This is why there have been cases of people eating under 800 calories a day and still holding on to bodyfat. They have a little treat here and there and that slowed metabolism just stores every little thing it gets a hold of. If you experiment with your calories and find the number that lets you lose 1 or 2 lbs a week, you'll have a good number to stick with that shouldn't make you're metabolism slow down to much.

The problem comes when people get greedy or fall prey to the "more is better" logic and start pushing the deficit higher and higher.

 

[Bionic]

As it turns out, it is all about calories.

 

[chocolatemilk]

As it turns out, it is all about calories.

Great read.

 

[BIGHIGGS]

Great read.

what he said ^^^^

 

[mikaveli06]

i too stalled in my weightloss a while back. I was 335 and stalled around 290 for about 3 weeks. Keeping calories roughly the same, my fix was to switch up my routine. I went from liftingfull body minus legs everyother day and about 6 hours cardio aweek to doing push-pull-legs-push-pull-hour cardio-off for my week. Also on lift days i did 10 min cardio warm-up and 20-30 min after snd the weight loss kicked in again, dropping to 277 and falling, while getting stronger by the week. Sumplement wise i use the basics (wheyblend and isolate, multi, anadraulicstate , alpha t-2 and oxyelite. Right now im 6 weeks into my first testboosting stack of erase and titanium. Dont know if any of this helps or not but good luck