Please Help

[simmonshx]

OK, first let me say that I am not training for a contest. However, my goals are similar to the goals of someone who does compete, so I thought this was the best to post.
I want a 30? waist, washboard abs and I want to retain my muscle. I am willing to bust my a$$ to achieve my goals and I prefer not to take any supplements other than protein.

About me:
Male Age: 33
5?7? 185lbs
Chest: 43.5? Neck: 16? Waist: 34.5? Bicep: 16.75?
(Three months ago I was 205lbs with a much bigger waist measurement)

My goal is to get a competition-like body. I have lifted for about 10 years, but I have been serious for about three years. I lift 5 days a week after work. My split is: Mon-chest/abs, Tues-back, Wed-shoulders/abs, Thurs-legs, Fri-arms/abs. I do cardio 40-50 minutes of cardio 4-5 days a week.

I try to eat 150 grams of protein a day, keep the calories at 1700 or less, and eat healthy foods. Sunday is a cheat day.

I have hit a wall, I was losing the fat at a good clip, but I have stopped losing. I can?t cut back on my calories too much more. I am considering giving up my cheat day, but I am afraid that will cause me to fall off the wagon at some point. I have read through some of the articles and meal plans on the site. Many of the plans call for consuming 3000+ calories a day. I would weigh 500lbs! Can anybody give me some tips/advice/pointers? I also have a few weight lifting questions, but I will save them for another post as this one is getting long.

Thanks for the help!!

[FlT4Ever]

1 cheat day per week is good, keeps the body in constructive anabolic mode but that don't mean go all out and eat Pizza and Ice cream...usually simply more carbs. I would cut a day in the middle of your training schedule, 5 on straight is a lot.

Diet is where you'll make more damage, bump protein to at least 180g / day, carbs should be around the same and brown, fats should be EFAs (Flax seed oil, avocados, nuts). Stick to 6 meals a day evenly spaced. Do you drink milk? No need to anymore, have your multi in the morning, drink lotsa water throughout the day and have 1 green tea with 2 of your meals. Whey protein is pre & post workout. Start with that and stick to it, give yourself an honest run and you'll bust your plateau.

I think this is a good base start

Good luck

[calimac69]

OK, first let me say that I am not training for a contest. However, my goals are similar to the goals of someone who does compete, so I thought this was the best to post.
I want a 30? waist, washboard abs and I want to retain my muscle. I am willing to bust my a$$ to achieve my goals and I prefer not to take any supplements other than protein.

About me:
Male Age: 33
5?7? 185lbs
Chest: 43.5? Neck: 16? Waist: 34.5? Bicep: 16.75?
(Three months ago I was 205lbs with a much bigger waist measurement)

My goal is to get a competition-like body. I have lifted for about 10 years, but I have been serious for about three years. I lift 5 days a week after work. My split is: Mon-chest/abs, Tues-back, Wed-shoulders/abs, Thurs-legs, Fri-arms/abs. I do cardio 40-50 minutes of cardio 4-5 days a week.

I try to eat 150 grams of protein a day, keep the calories at 1700 or less, and eat healthy foods. Sunday is a cheat day.

I have hit a wall, I was losing the fat at a good clip, but I have stopped losing. I can?t cut back on my calories too much more. I am considering giving up my cheat day, but I am afraid that will cause me to fall off the wagon at some point. I have read through some of the articles and meal plans on the site. Many of the plans call for consuming 3000+ calories a day. I would weigh 500lbs! Can anybody give me some tips/advice/pointers? I also have a few weight lifting questions, but I will save them for another post as this one is getting long.

Thanks for the help!!

I think your protein should be around 250-270 grams assuming your around 12-15% BF, this would be roughly 1.5-2g per lb of body mass approx. your carbs should be around 100-150 a day at this point. The main thing I see from your post is that I wonder how long have you been doing that much cardio at that low of a protein and caloric level? Also do how do you know your weight loss is fat and not muscle? Are you keeping caliper measurements every 2 weeks? The main problem I made in the past was I got so anxious to get lean that I cut my calories to much too fast, and started out with waaay to much cardio, I would lose a lot of weight in the first 6-8 weeks but then right around week 9-12 my weight loss would hit a wall. And if I was doing cardio 4-5 days a week for 45-60 min a session and already eating 1700 cals a day The only option I had was to add an insane amount of more cardio and cut my calories even more into muscle wasting territory. If I were you since you don't have any specific dead line and are only doing this for personal reasons to be lean like myself I would cut back on the cardio for about 1 or 2 weeks to only 1 or 2 times a week for 20-30 minutes max per session. I agree with the other poster I would change your lifting routine and give your body more rest, I switch to a M-W-F routine and since you goal is fat burning I would do a whole body high intensity work out on those three lifting days with only 45-60 sec rest between sets and your whole work out should not last for more then 45min max, I would also do 20min. of HIIT cardio only 1 or 2 days a week for the next two weeks on your non-training days. This will give your body time to rest and recover and get ready for another 6-8 weeks of fat loss to break through the plateau youve hit which in my humble opinion is from doing too much cardio for too long and starting out too early with too low of calories and for sure not enough protein in your diet.

So to summarize bump up your protein to 250-275 g, I would even keep your carbs where they are at for the next 2 weeks to give your body some rest. Normally this would not be recommended but you have dug yourself into a ditch by not progressing slowly downward with the calories and doing too much cardio too soon for too long. After this two week rest period of slightly higher calories from the increased protein with your carbs being where they were at. I would shoot for 250-275 g/ Protein, 100-150 g/Carbs, and 50-60g/ Fat from Fishoil, nuts, and some saturated fats from lean red meats, but only a small amount. This would put right around 1700-1800 cals a day with your Protein intake helping you preserve muscle, and with your carbs being low enought to make your body enter lipolysis because you won't be using too much glucose for energy since your carbs have decreased.

The most important thing is to be patient and use the next two weeks as stated above to give your mind and body a break from all the cardio and overtraining in the gym 5 days a week.

Schedule

Sunday: off

Monday: weights

Tuesday: HIIT

Wednesday: weights

Thursday: HIIT

Friday: weights

Saturday: off

Monday and Friday workouts:

A1, Barbell squats, 3 X 10?12, tempo 3010, rest 60 seconds

A2, Seated rows with rope, 3 X 10?12, tempo 3110, rest 60 seconds

B3, Split squats with dumbbells, 3 X 10?12, tempo 2010, rest 60 seconds

B4, Swiss ball dumbbell press, 3 X 12?15, tempo 2010, rest 60 seconds

C1, one leg hamstring curls, 3 X 8 each leg, tempo 3010, rest 60 seconds

C2, Incline offset dumbbell curls, 3 X 8?12, tempo 3010, rest 45 seconds

D1, Reverse ball crunch, 3 X 12?15, tempo 2110, rest 45 seconds

D2, Overhead triceps extension with rope, 3 X 8?12, tempo 2110, rest 45 seconds

Wednesday workout:

A1, Deadlifts, 3 X 8?10, tempo 3010, rest 60 seconds

A2, Dumbbell Arnold press, 3 X 12?15, tempo 2010, rest 60 seconds

B1, Russian step-ups, 3 X 12?15, tempo 1010, rest 60 seconds

B2, Neutral grip chins*, 3 X 6?8, tempo 3010, rest 60 seconds

C1, one-legged dumbbell calf raise, 3 X 12?15, tempo 2111, rest 60 seconds

C2, Scott preacher curls, 3 X 8?12, tempo 3010, rest 45 seconds

D1, Swiss ball oblique crunch, 3 X 12?15, tempo 2010, rest 45 seconds

D2, Decline dumbbell triceps extension, 3 X 8?12, tempo 2110, rest 45 seconds

Notes:

You may substitute neutral grip chins with neutral grip lat pull-downs if chins are too difficult.

The use of dumbbells for most exercises will result in increased calories being burned because of the greater demand on the muscular system. For this same reason, major compound lifts are performed at the beginning of the workout.

Tuesday & Thursday HIIT workout:

Run, Stationary bike, Rowing Machine

2minute warm-up, 2 minute sprint, 2 minute rest, 1:30 sprint, 2 minute rest, 1 minute sprint, 2 minute rest, 1 minute sprint, 2 minute rest, 45 second sprint, 2 minute rest, 30 second sprint, 2 minute rest. Completed

Note that each sprint interval your intensity should be increased approx. 10% so that by the last interval you heart rate should be around 175-185bpm. So on the bike which is my preference, on the first interval after your 2minute warm-up you would be on level 10, by the last interval of 30 seconds you would be on level 14 or 15. This total session last only 21 minutes.

The main thing for the weight training is to up your intensity this will take place of the decreased volume. One thing I have learned from years of trial and error is 90% of most guys are waaay overtrained and do too much volume with not enough rest and variety. Warm-up for as many sets as you feel are necessary before each movement then from your 1st set to your last your last reps should be to failure. This is intensity. Each set should be to failure. But you can't expect your body to grow if you are pushing every set to failure and then doing 12 sets of chest at the same time that is called overtraining. In my opinion the typical played out bodybuilding routines of 16 sets of chest with 4 different excercises got popullarized because of the all the steroid users in the magazines posting this ridiculous routines. If your on roids that may work but if your natural the only way youll grow is by training with right intensity and enough rest to avoid overtraining. Again I am going to repeat make sure you that puse your self on every rep of every set on the above excercises after a good few sets of warm-up before each movement and I GUARANTEE you that you will see major results. Your body is screaming for rest and recovery I can just hear it through the screen now as I type this. I am writing all these because I went through years of injury and wasted efforts to finally make some gains in the fat loss dept and the muscle dept.

Hope this helps!

Please keep us posted on your progress.

Good luck!

[wnbf2be]

Metabolically, there are a few conclusions we can draw about you, based on what you wrote.

1) At your height and your weight, you are like more towards the endo/mesomorphic side of things. This means you are likely to be a little more carb sensitive.

2) Having lost the amount of weight you have, you have likely supressed your metabolic rate a little bit (by accident)

3) Given what you told us about overall kcal intake and your current protein intake, you are likely not consuming a ton of carbs. Am I right? Give me protein, carb and fat numbers and we can go from there.

4) Too much protein will create an acidic environement in your body that is not good for health and/or weight loss. So knowing that, we need to make sure your carbs are optimized first, as they are the most metabollically sustaining things we eat. If you are going to keep losing weight, we need to make sure you do not compromise your met rate any further and we do that by getting carbs in you, in the right amounts.

5) Your training is probably not optimal and whatever it is, I would bet the house on the fact that you are very much adapated to it. So it needs to be reworked.

6) Given the dynamics of how your body metabolizes carbohydrates, weight loss is a VERY POSITIONAL ENTERPRISE. Meaning that you can spend days at a time depleting glycogen stores and putting yourself in position to use fat for energy and then one cheat "day" and you are out of position again, as your body goes into storage mode instantly, repletes that muscle glycogen that you just spent days buring and now you are back to square one. The more weight you lose, the more sensitive you are to this. So knowing that, That cheat day is critical...tell me more about that too? If its one moderate, nice meal...fine. If its a "eat whatever I want whenever I want" day...you are shooting yourself in the foot big time. Use the scale as a measure of this. You will weigh X amount the day befor eyou cheat. You weigh in the morning after you cheat and you will likely be up a little bit. Within another 24 hours, you could be up even more. That is your body taking those carbs, assimilating them and then assimilating the water that is associated with them. So that acute weight gain after a cheat is carbs and water for the most part (though you can absolutely store fat too). So knowing that we need to avoid storing all those carbs (or else you just have to burn through them again before you can lose weight again!), we need to moderate the cheat meal in such a way that its apporpiate to your given level of carb sensitivity. The bottom line here is that we cant compromise your weight loss just so you can eat a little pizza, etc.

Tell me more and I can help you more.

[AustrianOakJr]

Nice post right there ^^^^ Lots of truth spoken. Listen.

[calimac69]

Metabolically, there are a few conclusions we can draw about you, based on what you wrote.

1) At your height and your weight, you are like more towards the endo/mesomorphic side of things. This means you are likely to be a little more carb sensitive.

2) Having lost the amount of weight you have, you have likely supressed your metabolic rate a little bit (by accident)

3) Given what you told us about overall kcal intake and your current protein intake, you are likely not consuming a ton of carbs. Am I right? Give me protein, carb and fat numbers and we can go from there.

4) Too much protein will create an acidic environement in your body that is not good for health and/or weight loss. So knowing that, we need to make sure your carbs are optimized first, as they are the most metabollically sustaining things we eat. If you are going to keep losing weight, we need to make sure you do not compromise your met rate any further and we do that by getting carbs in you, in the right amounts.

5) Your training is probably not optimal and whatever it is, I would bet the house on the fact that you are very much adapated to it. So it needs to be reworked.

6) Given the dynamics of how your body metabolizes carbohydrates, weight loss is a VERY POSITIONAL ENTERPRISE. Meaning that you can spend days at a time depleting glycogen stores and putting yourself in position to use fat for energy and then one cheat "day" and you are out of position again, as your body goes into storage mode instantly, repletes that muscle glycogen that you just spent days buring and now you are back to square one. The more weight you lose, the more sensitive you are to this. So knowing that, That cheat day is critical...tell me more about that too? If its one moderate, nice meal...fine. If its a "eat whatever I want whenever I want" day...you are shooting yourself in the foot big time. Use the scale as a measure of this. You will weigh X amount the day befor eyou cheat. You weigh in the morning after you cheat and you will likely be up a little bit. Within another 24 hours, you could be up even more. That is your body taking those carbs, assimilating them and then assimilating the water that is associated with them. So that acute weight gain after a cheat is carbs and water for the most part (though you can absolutely store fat too). So knowing that we need to avoid storing all those carbs (or else you just have to burn through them again before you can lose weight again!), we need to moderate the cheat meal in such a way that its apporpiate to your given level of carb sensitivity. The bottom line here is that we cant compromise your weight loss just so you can eat a little pizza, etc.

Tell me more and I can help you more.

This guy definately knows what he is talking about, Listen to him for sure!!!! I did my best in my post to help with what I know but I know nothing comapred to this guy and I really enjoyed reading that post it helped me out a lot too! I look forward to following this thread after you give us more details as to your diet.