harbinator said:
Calories Eaten Today
grams cals %total
Total: 1908
Fat: 24 216 13%
Sat: 9 81 5%
Poly: 0 0 0%
Mono: 0 0 0%
Carbs: 97 252 15%
Fiber: 34 0 0%
Protein: 313 1252 73%
Alcohol: 0 0 0%
Breakfast 5:45am: 4-8 egg beaters + 8 oz lean chicken breast
11am: oven roasted chicken breast wrap from subway with double meat (44g prot, 18g cab (9g fiber), 5g fat)
1pm: same as 11am
3pm: protein bar (30g prot, 21g carb, 8g fat)
4:15pm: workout while drinking 50g protein 25g dex/malto mix, some before, some during, some after.
7-8pm: 1 cup cottage cheese + can of tuna.
I also take udo's choice gelcaps throughout the day.
I know some of these foods are bad, and at the moment Im trying to clean them up with more wholesome less processed foods. Im trying to lower the carbs more and more to keep the weight coming off, down about 85lb in the past 1.5 years. I drink about 1.5g of water a day, and usually have a cheat meal or two on a friday night or saturday night when Im out with friends.
Currently Im also doing about 3-4 days a week of 30-45 minutes of biking at 70-75% max heart rate, also 3-4 days sometimes more of DDR (dance dance revolution video game for PS2 that burns a few hundred calories an hour).
Just wondering if anyone has some tips for me, by the way Im around 16-17% bf 230lb, 6'4.5ish.
TIA
Congrats on the weight loss -- but dude..... I cut on 1800 cals for competition and I'm a girl. You're like 10 inches taller than me. I think first you're starving yourself and second you are following a diet that is so low in carbs that I suspect your metabolism is completely stalled out.
If you've been following this diet to get to where you are, congrats - restricted cals will work for a while. However you are now at what one might call a "normal" size for your height. I think your body is probably crying out for sufficient fuel to run efficiently like it WANTS TO. Just like the Atkins Diet helps people drop weight, it absolutely sux moose cawk for muscle building. You are at the point where you dont' want to continue to sacrfice your muscle mass in pursuit of a "lower weight". Eventually all you get is weak & skinny fat.
Some recommendations:
- Increase your carbs -- dont' get paranoid about eating carbs- they are your energy source to fuel solid muscle building & fat burning. What is left over is deposited as fat. But if you don't eat enough to support your activities your body will turn to the muscle to provide energy - that is called catabolism. Particularly if you have been running on carbs this low for a long time, your metabolism will have slowed itself down to adjust to the smaller intake of carbs. I would suggest increasing them for a bit (say 4-6 weeks) and then look into carb cycling as a tool to optimally run your metabolism for fat loss - this is my biggest tool for competition cutting.
**** I'll get a link for some info in a sec ****
- Cut back on your protein ratio -- I would probably keep the amount of protein the same as what you are eating now - for guys - I guess a rule of thumb is maybe 1.5 g protein to each 1 lb of your weight? But the amount of protien in your total diet is too much relative to the fats & carbs --- therefore you need to increase your total calories where the additional calories are from more carbs & fats.
A good ratio for muscle building is 50% protein / 30% carb / 20% fat
- LIke nycgirl said - no fats in there. "Fats" are not what make you fat - instead good quality fats are necessary for your body to work right. Even in the Atkin Diet the fats are way up to provide some sort of energy for the way low carbs. Good sources of fats are the gelcaps you are taking, but also include red meat, fish, almonds, natural peanut butter, Udo's Choice or flax seed oil.
- Increase your total cals --- like I said above - you are starving yourself. Sure you'll lose some weight for a while, but there's a point of diminishing returns. Your body WANTS to run efficinetly - but you need to fuel it w/ what it needs to run. If you skimp on the fuel, your metabolism has two routes it will take - first it will slow down to preserve the energy sources it does have (bodyfat) - its a survival mechanism -- to your metabolism, it probably looks like you live in a drought scenario right now, and second, when it does need to draw energy from somewhere, it will go to your muscle mass because there's no carb left to burn. For you I would probably run the cals up to 2500-3000.
- No veggies or fruits - fruits aren't all that great for "cuttng" because they are fructose - a simple sugar - but you can get lower GI fruits such as strawberries, blueberries, grapefruit - the thing w/ fruits is that they haven enzymes that our bodies don't produce but rely on to help shuttle out waste material like free radicals and other shit that accumulates as a result of metabolism. For ex - your high protein diet -- there's a lot of leftover shit from that because we weren't realy meant to eat crazy high amounts of protein. And just like drinking enough water - your body runs more efficinetly when it isn't blocked up w/ extra shit that it can't dump. To give you some context - I have been competing in BB on & off for 5 yrs, however I pretty much almost always follow a BB diet. I've had some ups & downs over the last yrs w/ my employment situatoin (internet boom & bust) and ended up doing some periods of some pretty heavy stress eating -- lots of sugar, chocolate, comfort food shit. So I go from a restricted diet of high protein / no fruit to a junk food diet. You bet i've got shit in my system. I make a point of runnign a "detox diet" at least once / yr to clean out my system & have a good place to restart the next diet cycle. By "Detox Diet" -- I do a week or two of juicinig, low protein, lots of fruit - its exhausting because it is a lower calorie diet, much less complex carb so Its not a good time to plan a switch to heavy lifting in the gym - but it does clean out the pipes.
**** link to my detox diet post from a few yrs ago ****
Changes I would suggest:
Breakfast 5:45am: 4-8 egg beaters + 8 oz lean chicken breast
==> add in some complex carbs to kick start your day - you've been "fasting" all night since your last meal and now is an optimal time to introduce some quick energy that you will burn. Consider 1 c old fashioned oatmeal (not the quick oats stuff or the indivdiually packaged flavored stuff) You coudl even put in some fruit -- e.g. strawberries, etc. Doesn't add much 'sugar', great anti-oxidants and you will burn the carbs.
11am: oven roasted chicken breast wrap from subway with double meat (44g prot, 18g cab (9g fiber), 5g fat)
==> Add veggies here - would suggest toss the take out food & cook mass amounts of chicken and include some cups of veggies or salad. Here you could also introduce some fats, e.g. handful of almonds or vinaigrette on a salad.
1pm: same as 11am
-- Here I might make it a protein / carb meal instead of fats -- again 8 oz chicken + veggies + 6 oz sweet potato, 1/2 c of rice or something.
3pm: protein bar (30g prot, 21g carb, 8g fat)
- if this is convenient for you, go for it - but I always prefer real food. This could be anther meal like 11 am. If you are very watchful of your carbs, this is not a quality source of carb or fat - the calories could be supplied in better form.
4:15pm: workout while drinking 50g protein 25g dex/malto mix, some before, some during, some after.
==> fine here
7-8pm: 1 cup cottage cheese + can of tuna.
==> probably ok - would suggest include some veggies again
Might add a final meal because you don't eat your next meal (breakfast) for another 10 hrs. If you have some protein + fat it will metabolize slower and not give you any sugar buzz that would interrupt your sleep. Could be maybe 6 = 8 oz red meat + veggies or a protein shake + 1 tbsp natty peanut butter.
I would probably consider increasing carbs for at least 2-4 weeks just to let your body get back to having enough carbs to run efficinetly - then switch over to a carb cycle -- basically you go thru a 3 day cycle of meals where your total carb intake goes high, med, low. The idea is that your body will expect to be getting a certain amount of carb each day & will adjust metabolism to burn at the rate of carb intake - here we're obviously going to set the carb intake level at somethign that is sufficient for your size & level of activity, but not too much extra - don't want to bog down w/ too much carb either. So then when you've been eating that amout of carb long enough for your body to have made the adjustment to the correct burn rate, it will "assume" it will be receiving that much carb and continue to burn accordingly. Then you start the carb cycle, .e.g
day 1: 200 g carb total
day 2: 125 g carb total
day 3: 50 g carb total
-- these are just numbers - but you see the total carb amount drop over 3 days. But your metabolism will still be burning like it expects the 200 g carb (if that had been your typical amount of carb intake prior to starting the carb cycle). Then you start cutting the carb intake so your body will continue to burn like its expecting 200g carb, but it isn't getting that - so it will continue burnign but you are putting in less --> less carb to burn off ---> bodyfat drops. Then on day 3 you reduce carbs even more and your body is still burning like its getting more carb but it isn't and will continue to turn to stored fat as itis energy source.
BUT, you'll also notice you have less energy or you get tired or moody more easily on this low carb day. Remember your brain also runs off carbs, so the symptoms of low carb will start to show, but your metabolism wont' have made the switch over to slower burn rate yet. It takes it a few days to respond to change in the "norm". So then on day 4 = day 1 again, you increase your carbs just before the metabolic rate slows down, and your body will think the short term drop in carbs is just a hiccup in the overall trend of its expected carb intake and continue to burn as if expectinig the 200 g carb again. And just keep repeating.
This method is short term manipulation of your metabolic rate so you are able to eat the amount of carb you need, but still induce bodyfat burning w/o the full on stall of eating low carbs for a long time. This is truly one of the most powerful tools in competition cutting. I've cut down to 7-8% bf using this + increased cardio, but still maintaining a total cal intake of 1800 cals. When I've done it, on the days I cut the carbs, I replace the total cals of the carbs removed with equivalent calories in fats (e.g. remove 4 oz sweet potato, replace w/ 1 tbsp flax seed oil).
You would probably need to experiment a bit to identify the right amount of total cals for you to continue to see an effective bdyfat drop, but what you are doing now is not goign to be as productive and your probably feel lexhausted alot from the very low cals in general. The point of a healthy diet is that it is a Lifestyle as opposed to a period of time where you do exrteme things to force a change in yoru body and then stop when you think you reached your goal. As soon as you discontinue the extreme diet, your body will start to rebouund. You need to run somethign that allows slow but steady changes in your body that are maintainable with no big changes that the body has to accommodate and then rebound from.
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