workout plan to lose weight / maintain muscle

[rickymartinn]

I am about to start a new plan which I hope will be more efficient than a cutting phase because I am training for a sport and bored too, let me know your thoughts if you have nutrition experience in extreme caloric deficit diets, I will let you know my results.

Goal: to lose 10lbs of fat while not gaining or losing (hence maintaining) muscle and muscle strength

5'11 180-185, around 15-17% BF trying to drop to around 10%(170lb) in 4 weeks.
thats about 2.5lbs per week, so about a 1250 calorie deficit would be needed 7 days a week theoretically. two main lifts i will track are squat (265), db press (90)

here's the basics. 2 workout days a week (probably tues/friday)
Tuesday will be major lifts, Squat, DB bench, leg press, good mornings, abs
Friday will be circuit auxiliary full upper body lifts (bi's/tri's shoulder, back, pullups, pushups, chin ups, abs etc),

and then other 5 days will be cardio and deficit

workout days: I will try to keep a caloric equilibrium, with the main intake of carbs before and after the workout and then light fats and carbs throughout the day with protein shakes, about 200g of protein on these days
off days: I calculated my diet for the first day of this program:
total: 1400 calories
28g Fat
110g healthy carbs
170g Protein
add: supplements - multivitamins, antioxidants, fish oil

about 1100 calories before 6pm total.

30+minutes of walking spread through 8am to 4pm
40 minute run at 6pm. (530pm CytoLite lowGI 80cal 17g carb pre drink)
Stimulant before the run.
1/2shake+bcaa immediately before.
20minutes run.
10min rest with full protein shake+bcaa
followed by another 20 min jog.
12hr protein shake at 9pm, end caloric intake for day.

*On all days I will be drinking at least 120oz of water
*On workout days I will be taking explode or expand, arginine, beta alanine, anabolic switch, and T-bomb will be used during the 4 weeks for the heck of it.

The goal of this is to cut around 1000-1500 calories on off days while maintaining high protein levels, bcaa's, and a balance of a low carb / low fat diet. My theory is that creating a strong anabolic stage on workout days will offset the 'starvation' metabolism slowing effect enough to keep the diet working for four weeks while not losing any gains in the gym.

I have an excel spreadsheet of the times when I eat and food intake for offdays if you want to see that, but I will be eating no junk food and only lowGI carbs and healthy fats throughout the process. About half of the foods are organic, and all grains are whole grains. The idea of that is to ease stress placed on the system so it can deal with the dieting. Hopefully this theory works, and the body will have no choice but to burn the fat as energy but I guess I'll find out. Let me know your thoughts on this workout plan.

[Jonis]

In my opinion you'd be better off lifting more to maintain the muscle. From my understanding and what I personally am doing, if you eat at least 1g/lb of protein and lift as hard as you can you will maintain the muscle that you have. Other than that its the caloric deficit that will lose the fat, so you can either eat less or workout harder, or both like you plan to do. But I will propose this question to you; would you only lift twice a week if you were trying to gain muscle? If not, why lift less than that.

[xstillfly]

take pics of yourself. and take another one in 2 weeks. look at them and decide if it worked or not. if it did. share


I must say, It sounds like what i was doing a month ago. a lot of weight training and high protein and very very low carb/fat diet. my abs looked amazing but then i decided to get big again instead of cut and started putting carbs back in my diet. I'm interested in your spreadsheet. ill try to stay posted

[rickymartinn]

In my opinion you'd be better off lifting more to maintain the muscle. From my understanding and what I personally am doing, if you eat at least 1g/lb of protein and lift as hard as you can you will maintain the muscle that you have. Other than that its the caloric deficit that will lose the fat, so you can either eat less or workout harder, or both like you plan to do. But I will propose this question to you; would you only lift twice a week if you were trying to gain muscle? If not, why lift less than that.

that makes sense, the only thing I am concerned about is if I lift to get stronger, say adding weight to reps(or I could lift three times at the same weight I guess too), that my deficit of calories on the off days will cause the muscle to not heal because they were torn that extra day (because it will probably take longer to recover on a deficit) and that would actually hurt maintaining the muscle, but I have no evidence or theory to support that, just from reading around it seems like that may happen - but if what you say about the protein is correct then I may consider trying 3x per week like my normal lifting plan and see if I can make gains while being on a deficit 4 days a week. (the other reason was I wanted to have 5 days of deficit alone from lifting. but I guess an added workout day would also increase anabolism - I guess the only way to find out is to try).

[rickymartinn]

take pics of yourself. and take another one in 2 weeks. look at them and decide if it worked or not. if it did. share


I must say, It sounds like what i was doing a month ago. a lot of weight training and high protein and very very low carb/fat diet. my abs looked amazing but then i decided to get big again instead of cut and started putting carbs back in my diet. I'm interested in your spreadsheet. ill try to stay posted

I attached my off day diet in 2007excel, it's basically what I ate today
I am getting hungry as I type, but I see it as a good sign because that means my body needs energy and thus my metabolism is still going, burning fat, drinking lots of water helps.

the calories burned was basically just off an estimate of 2400 based on 5'11 183lbs, so 100 calories an hour essentially then added some for periods of walking and activity and 500 when I run 40 minutes later tonight, then 400 for sleeping 8-9 hours.

multivitamins are 1, 3x a day, quercetain and bromelain after i run, and fish oil at lunch. I tried to evenly space my meals as much as possible because the #1 cause of fat build is over eating.

I will probably log my workout day diet when I go through the process later this week.

[xstillfly]

Nice, thx for responding fast... but yeah, this is all I care about myself. Just always looking cut and feeling strong all the time without losing muscle mass. I don't log any of my diets or workouts, my workouts are different every time, I never have the same workouts twice, it's just what I've been naturally doing. but I bookmarked this thread. hopefully I'll have before & after pics come spring time

[rickymartinn]

Nice, thx for responding fast... but yeah, this is all I care about myself. Just always looking cut and feeling strong all the time without losing muscle mass. I don't log any of my diets or workouts, my workouts are different every time, I never have the same workouts twice, it's just what I've been naturally doing. but I bookmarked this thread. hopefully I'll have before & after pics come spring time

yeah ill try and take a before picture this weekend, I attached my workout day diet that I did today to this post , I probably ate too much and carb-overloaded pre and post but I got it to relatively even out anyways, but I think in future workouts I probably won't overload as much as I did today, I didnt realize how much I was eating on workout days, more of a bulk diet I guess. The only thing about these is I have no idea how close my caloric burning estimates are (they are off online estimators) but everything else is pretty accurate, this one is also in better form and I will use this one as a template for off days now.

I like your style of lifting I think that it is funner that way change it up every time, and I have never logged diets before either, but I am finding it a lot easier to stick to the portions of meals I make when I plan the daily diet at the beginning of the day so I know what exactly and when exactly I am going to eat. As for goals right now I am not as concerned about being in perfect shape as I am about losing fat weight so I can become faster and create more torque around a smaller waist for baseball, but if I dont make the team in the fall Ill probably try and get down to 5% bf for fun. and staying anonymous so no Q's about school lol D1 though

[xstillfly]

Nice, good luck go hard