1 month plateau after 5 months of cutting, help! (pics) (6k reps)

[torpstar711]

Hey guys, this is not my first cut so I'm aware that fat loss isn't linear and that you just gotta keep a level head with plateaus, but I've been stalled at 200-201 for the past 4 weeks and it's getting pretty frustrating. I started cutting late august at 223lbs at 2300 calories. About 3 months in I dropped it to 2200 and started incorporating cardio. The plateau started on christmas (dec 25th), when my gf and I broke up. For a week after I was barely eating and not lifting at all, and so in the beginning of january I was 197 due to depletion. Got back to lifting and cutting and weighed in at 202 on january 1st. Dropped calories to 2100 and continued cutting, and between then and now my weight fluctuated between 203-199 but after 3 weeks of high intensity lifting 4x a week, cardio 4x a week and 2100 calories I'm still at 201. Had 2 cheat days back to back about 9 days ago, and my weight jumped up to 204 but has since come back down to 201 and remained there.

My diet consists of primarily whole foods (meat, veggies, fruits, nuts, etc) with a good mix of fats vs carbs, and eat the same thing everyday. I have been having bowel problems and feel bloated a lot, but I still should be seeing some fat loss regardless? My pwo does have creatine in it, but I've taking it since before the plateau so that's remained a constant. My strength has increased and I actually broke a couple PRs (6x100s on incline DB press) today but I just don't feel myself any leaner whatsoever than I was a month ago.

Is my only option really to bump calories down again or add another day of cardio? Once I get down to 1800 I plan on just cutting (hehe) my losses and ending the cut but I really want to cut for as long as I can, because I've never had a six pack before and I've always wanted to know what it feels like.






The pics below are for reference, left side is january 9th (201.7), right side is february 2nd (200.9). Last pic is complete before and after.


adult image sharing



image sharing



photo hosting



image hosting above 5 mb



gif image hosting

[cerigitts]

Not sure if you will have a 6 pack "pop" even if you cut more weight, but you already know the answer to dropping more weight, either going to have to cut calories or increase cardio.

Drop calories slightly & give it a few more weeks while you level out as you've only just recently started lifting again.

[JohnSmeton]

your ahead of most people already, if a six pack is your ultimate goal, Id work my abs every other day , maybe 3-6 sets each day , after weights and fort sure on cardio days. on cardio days you can hit them harder. Some people it takes a lot more work to build the ab muscles than others.

keep playing around with your nutrition and learning your body best you can, youve already cut this much, it gets a bit trickier those last pounds to get off, its good your doing it though bc experience will help you in the future with this, whether you get a six pack, or kind of one, or not, this time, next time youll have the experience

[PsyLadX]

Are ur macros sound? Lack of fat can disrupt hormonal balance. Although u haven't lost any strength, u may want to re-evaluate them.
Mind posting ur macros? U logging ALL ur intake? what about cheat day cals? what are ur daily fiber stats?..

Ur strength is up! Fantastic! Typically, thats a good indicator that u can get away with a larger deficit &/or an increase in cardio intensity. But!.... read on.

U seem to be going thru alot lately, sorry. Depressed by any chance? Cortisol related query, after all, cortisol is produced in response to stress; physical, mental or emotional. A hypo-caloric diet puts further pressure on cortisol levels. What is this barely eating bs? For fitness sake, dont ever do that again! This alone would make wana take a full diet break for 2 weeks while continuing my lifts.

Things that may arguably help decrease cortisol levels: Avoid skipping meals, have a fixed daily schedule, minimize stimulants. Why not incorporate some kind of stress reducing technique, eg, meditation, belly breathing, NLP.

Also, u may wish to incorporate direct ab training in ur training routine.
GL!

[Marky1990mark]

First of all congrats so far on your progress looking like some solid progress..

First thought would be are you hitting your macros ? 1g per pound of body weight .4-.5g of fat per pound of body weight.

I would maybe try changing up the cardio, some hiit is helpful with a good diet to help remove stubborn fat.

[reicherts78]

Been there. The longer you diet the lower your metabolism will drop. Stress doesn't help. The general rule of thumb is that you shouldn't go 9-10 times your bodyweight in calories. When you do, and you are still plateaued, take a few weeks off dieting. Bump those calories back up to maintenance. Or you could start adding some carb refeed days weekly. You could increase cardio, also. I have had a ton of clients that get stuck in a plateau and constantly need to drop calories. Be careful with that. It's how eating disorders happen. They get into this unhealthy mindset to keep dropping. I've seen countless 200 pounds guys eating 1200 calories per day and not losing a pound when they come to me for help. The toughest part of helping them is getting them to toss the scale and eat more. I wouldn't go to 1800 calories at 200 pounds. Instead, I would do as I said above. Refill glycogen stores, allow your metabolism to repair. I'm actually doing that now. I got down to 1800 calories a couple weeks ago. Stuck at 185lbs. Bumped my carb intake, and overall calories up to 2600 for the last few weeks and now I am losing weight again. It works.

[torpstar711]

Not sure if you will have a 6 pack "pop" even if you cut more weight, but you already know the answer to dropping more weight, either going to have to cut calories or increase cardio.

Drop calories slightly & give it a few more weeks while you level out as you've only just recently started lifting again.

yeah I figured I'd at least be seeing even the tiniest pop right now but are you thinking it's just because of my body type/ab shape/genetics that I won't be getting that natural looking ab pop? I guess I'll be dropping calories to 2050 and bumping cardio a little more, trying to bump down as slow as possible to salvage any metabolism I can

your ahead of most people already, if a six pack is your ultimate goal, Id work my abs every other day , maybe 3-6 sets each day , after weights and fort sure on cardio days. on cardio days you can hit them harder. Some people it takes a lot more work to build the ab muscles than others.

keep playing around with your nutrition and learning your body best you can, youve already cut this much, it gets a bit trickier those last pounds to get off, its good your doing it though bc experience will help you in the future with this, whether you get a six pack, or kind of one, or not, this time, next time youll have the experience

yeah I only recently started hitting abs directly usually planks and the one where you lie on your back and keeps your legs raised while making circles with them together, I'll definitely be hitting them more often though.

but yeah overall this will have been my third cut total over the past 4 years. First cut I did was back in 2012 with the classic "skinny fat cut with no muscle" and ended up looking anorexic. My 2nd cut was last year and I dropped from 215ish to 200 but started my senior year of college so I had a hard time (with drinking/partying every weekend) getting past 200, so I do have some experience but I guess there's no such thing as too much experience.

[torpstar711]

Are ur macros sound? Lack of fat can disrupt hormonal balance. Although u haven't lost any strength, u may want to re-evaluate them.
Mind posting ur macros? U logging ALL ur intake? what about cheat day cals? what are ur daily fiber stats?..

Ur strength is up! Fantastic! Typically, thats a good indicator that u can get away with a larger deficit &/or an increase in cardio intensity. But!.... read on.

U seem to be going thru alot lately, sorry. Depressed by any chance? Cortisol related query, after all, cortisol is produced in response to stress; physical, mental or emotional. A hypo-caloric diet puts further pressure on cortisol levels. What is this barely eating bs? For fitness sake, dont ever do that again! This alone would make wana take a full diet break for 2 weeks while continuing my lifts.

Things that may arguably help decrease cortisol levels: Avoid skipping meals, have a fixed daily schedule, minimize stimulants. Why not incorporate some kind of stress reducing technique, eg, meditation, belly breathing, NLP.

Also, u may wish to incorporate direct ab training in ur training routine.
GL!

Yeah I track my calories religiously, 2100 cal, 162g protein, lots of fat coming from eggs and nuts and between 20-25g fiber a day

and thanks for the support but no I'm not depressed, I feel great during my workouts. Great mood, energized and the complete opposite of depressed. As for the not eating, that was right after we broke up and I literally couldn't even force myself to eat, I just felt like throwing everything up for a week after.

First of all congrats so far on your progress looking like some solid progress..

First thought would be are you hitting your macros ? 1g per pound of body weight .4-.5g of fat per pound of body weight.

I would maybe try changing up the cardio, some hiit is helpful with a good diet to help remove stubborn fat.

thanks, yeah I'll try some hiit

Been there. The longer you diet the lower your metabolism will drop. Stress doesn't help. The general rule of thumb is that you shouldn't go 9-10 times your bodyweight in calories. When you do, and you are still plateaued, take a few weeks off dieting. Bump those calories back up to maintenance. Or you could start adding some carb refeed days weekly. You could increase cardio, also. I have had a ton of clients that get stuck in a plateau and constantly need to drop calories. Be careful with that. It's how eating disorders happen. They get into this unhealthy mindset to keep dropping. I've seen countless 200 pounds guys eating 1200 calories per day and not losing a pound when they come to me for help. The toughest part of helping them is getting them to toss the scale and eat more. I wouldn't go to 1800 calories at 200 pounds. Instead, I would do as I said above. Refill glycogen stores, allow your metabolism to repair. I'm actually doing that now. I got down to 1800 calories a couple weeks ago. Stuck at 185lbs. Bumped my carb intake, and overall calories up to 2600 for the last few weeks and now I am losing weight again. It works.

haha yeah I'm a slave to the scale and I know that's not healthy, it just gets addicting seeing the numbers drop. Weighed in this morning, 201.2. I'm familiar with reverse dieting but in your experience how long from when you bumped calories back up to 2600 did you start losing weight again? I figure I'll try doing a refeed today, bump up cardio a little and keep cutting over the next week. If I'm still 200 by the end of next week I'll reverse diet, sound like a good idea?

[Tommy W.]

Couple things,

You don't look like you have enough ab muscle to get a 6 pack yet. Raising calories will do nothing but stall fatloss. Many times raising cals temporarily cause some water to be released making you think you've lost fat. You didn't. As far as building abs, trying to do it in a deficit won't work, just as trying to build any other muscle in a deficit won't work.

Add a day of HIIT cardio, not more steady state if that's what your current cardio consists of. You CAN lower cals however once they get too low you're depriving yourself of proper nutrition. 1800 isn't that low and you may even find yourself a bit lower by the end of your cut.

[reicherts78]

Yeah I track my calories religiously, 2100 cal, 162g protein, lots of fat coming from eggs and nuts and between 20-25g fiber a day

and thanks for the support but no I'm not depressed, I feel great during my workouts. Great mood, energized and the complete opposite of depressed. As for the not eating, that was right after we broke up and I literally couldn't even force myself to eat, I just felt like throwing everything up for a week after.



thanks, yeah I'll try some hiit



haha yeah I'm a slave to the scale and I know that's not healthy, it just gets addicting seeing the numbers drop. Weighed in this morning, 201.2. I'm familiar with reverse dieting but in your experience how long from when you bumped calories back up to 2600 did you start losing weight again? I figure I'll try doing a refeed today, bump up cardio a little and keep cutting over the next week. If I'm still 200 by the end of next week I'll reverse diet, sound like a good idea?

For me, it's usually within a couple days that I drop a pound or two. That applies both to reverse dieting and carb refeed days. If I'm around 2000 calories a day, I'll do a carb refeed day once per week, and I'll wake up a pound or two leaner right off the bat. It's crazy. Some people retain water for a couple days afterwards but then drop it. Right now, I'm back up to 2700 calories per day, from 1900. I started that about 3 weeks ago and I'm down 5 pounds since. It seems counter productive to a lot of people, but it does work. I've been cutting very slowly since a year ago, starting at 205 (4000 calories per day), and now I'm 180 (2700 calories per day). At my lowest I was 185 and 1900 calories per day and I was stuck for a couple months. 185-180 was solely from reverse dieting back up to 2700.

[Tommy W.]

Just understand that if you raise calories you're signaling the body to drop water in most cases. Your homeostasis mechanism regulates body weight and will hold water when fat is being lost to compensate and it will drop water when it sees it's getting more food This is one reason why the scale is such a bad tool for gauging fatloss. You generally will lose about 1" in your waist measured at the navel when dropping 5-7 lbs of fat. If your waist isn't dropping but the scale is, then you're not losing fat.

[Jackson195]

Looks as if love handles have shrunk on bottom pic?

[torpstar711]

First off, thank you everyone for taking the time to provide some input, I definitely do appreciate it.

Couple things,

You don't look like you have enough ab muscle to get a 6 pack yet. Raising calories will do nothing but stall fatloss. Many times raising cals temporarily cause some water to be released making you think you've lost fat. You didn't. As far as building abs, trying to do it in a deficit won't work, just as trying to build any other muscle in a deficit won't work.

Add a day of HIIT cardio, not more steady state if that's what your current cardio consists of. You CAN lower cals however once they get too low you're depriving yourself of proper nutrition. 1800 isn't that low and you may even find yourself a bit lower by the end of your cut.

Just understand that if you raise calories you're signaling the body to drop water in most cases. Your homeostasis mechanism regulates body weight and will hold water when fat is being lost to compensate and it will drop water when it sees it's getting more food This is one reason why the scale is such a bad tool for gauging fatloss. You generally will lose about 1" in your waist measured at the navel when dropping 5-7 lbs of fat. If your waist isn't dropping but the scale is, then you're not losing fat.

yeah I'm not sure where my ab muscle is. At the end of my last cut I looked like this but with less muscle, and ended up with the same problem of not even a hint of abs. I had guys tell me "just focus on heavy compounds and your abs will be fine", so I got my deadlift up to 525 and squat up to 395 but funny enough still no abs. I understand that muscle can't really be built in caloric deficit, especially as low as I am, but I'm incorporating direct ab work so hopefully that helps a little.

I'll also definitely be adding in HIIT work, just got back from the gym and did suicide sprints as my HIIT and it definitely felt good. All my cardio up to now has been steady state/aerobic work like jogging/biking, so I'll definitely be switching things up.

As for the scale, yeah I agree that it's not a good habit I'm in. When I started at 223, I was a 38-39" waist, I'm now a 34-35" waist. Funny enough, I do feel like I'm leaner than I was a month ago (clothes seem looser), but the scale doesn't agree and I'm bloated from bowel problems half the time so that doesn't help either.

For me, it's usually within a couple days that I drop a pound or two. That applies both to reverse dieting and carb refeed days. If I'm around 2000 calories a day, I'll do a carb refeed day once per week, and I'll wake up a pound or two leaner right off the bat. It's crazy. Some people retain water for a couple days afterwards but then drop it. Right now, I'm back up to 2700 calories per day, from 1900. I started that about 3 weeks ago and I'm down 5 pounds since. It seems counter productive to a lot of people, but it does work. I've been cutting very slowly since a year ago, starting at 205 (4000 calories per day), and now I'm 180 (2700 calories per day). At my lowest I was 185 and 1900 calories per day and I was stuck for a couple months. 185-180 was solely from reverse dieting back up to 2700.

Oh wow that does sound pretty good, but I'm not sure I want to reverse diet just yet. I know in the long term it'd be more beneficial but in 2 months I'm going to miami with a couple buddies as a morale booster to help me get over my break up, and I'd like to be as lean as possible and definitely don't mind dropping my calories to 1800 later down the road. Just got back from the gym and went to the supermarket to prepare for my refeed which is definitely what I'll be doing though, and I'm planning on going back on an IF schedule as well to help with satiation.

Looks as if love handles have shrunk on bottom pic?

Do you mean the last pic, as in the 5 month before and after? I'd hope so because there's a 23lb and ~10%BF difference between the two....

[torpstar711]

update: weighed in at 199.7 this morning

[Tommy W.]

I had guys tell me "just focus on heavy compounds and your abs will be fine",







...

That's fine for some people however everyone is different and your natural ab structure will dictate if you need direct work or not. Most people need direct work and some more than others

[torpstar711]

That's fine for some people however everyone is different and your natural ab structure will dictate if you need direct work or not. Most people need direct work and some more than others

Any preferable routine or types of ab work that you think would be better given my body type? Ive recently been incorporating planks, weighted sit ups and that one where you lie down and keep your legs raised parallel to the floor and make circles with your legs

[Tommy W.]

Any preferable routine or types of ab work that you think would be better given my body type? Ive recently been incorporating planks, weighted sit ups and that one where you lie down and keep your legs raised parallel to the floor and make circles with your legs

Hanging leg raises

[torpstar711]

UPDATE:

1 month after. Have done 2 refeeds since then, kept calories the same (2000) bumped up cardio and continued lifting heavy with intensity. Have also been incorporating about 4-5 sets of abs after every workout. Have lost about 5-6lbs, feel clothes getting looser around my midsection and tighter around my delts/arms. Lifts are just as strong as a month ago and I also just feel better overall.

Left side is when I was plateaued on Feb 2 (200.9), right side is March 7 (194.4).



print screen



img upload



post a picture



screen grab


Is the difference noticeable?

[Luclin999]

You aren't at a low enough BF percentage to require "refeeds" yet. That really only applies once you get to 12% and below.

A "refeed" for someone at a higher BF percentage than that is really just a cheat day which cuts into your weight loss progress.

That said, it looks like you have dialed in your deficit correctly as you are losing about a pound a week now.

You look a little bit leaner however I agree with what others have said in that you are not really going to have "abs" on this cut because your abdominals just aren't built up enough yet and won't become really any bigger while you are in a deficit.

If you really want to have a solid torso, then if I were you on the next bulk cycle I would focus on the abs and bit on the obliques.

[torpstar711]

You aren't at a low enough BF percentage to require "refeeds" yet. That really only applies once you get to 12% and below.

A "refeed" for someone at a higher BF percentage than that is really just a cheat day which cuts into your weight loss progress.

That said, it looks like you have dialed in your deficit correctly as you are losing about a pound a week now.

You look a little bit leaner however I agree with what others have said in that you are not really going to have "abs" on this cut because your abdominals just aren't built up enough yet and won't become really any bigger while you are in a deficit.

If you really want to have a solid torso, then if I were you on the next bulk cycle I would focus on the abs and bit on the obliques.

I've been cutting for 6 months now, the refeeds weren't so much for the leptin but for my mental health, and it's been working as they've kept me incline benching 105lb dbs for 5 reps at the leanest I've been in a while as soon as I started feeling like chit. They also helped me bust through the plateau so overall they seemed pretty effective.

As for my torso, I agree it's not built but I'm honestly happy with where I am in regards to that now. If I were to maintain this physique for the rest of my life I'd be happy and I'm not planning on bulking/cutting anymore after this, just maintaining the physique I have and keeping a healthy lifestyle and not worrying about become neurotic about counting calories . I know that by bb.com standards I look average but I have a better physique than 85% of the rest of the world and I'm fine with that, I'm just taking this cut as far as I can go just out of curiosity.

I appreciate the post though, repped.

[Luclin999]

As for my torso, I agree it's not built but I'm honestly happy with where I am in regards to that now. If I were to maintain this physique for the rest of my life I'd be happy and I'm not planning on bulking/cutting anymore after this, just maintaining the physique I have and keeping a healthy lifestyle and not worrying about become neurotic about counting calories . I know that by bb.com standards I look average but I have a better physique than 85% of the rest of the world and I'm fine with that, I'm just taking this cut as far as I can go just out of curiosity.

I understand where you are coming from as I am in a similar (if much older) place right now where I just want to get to a reasonable shape and then maintain it for as long as possible.

Only thing I would note is that if you really want "abs" then once you are done cutting, working them steadily while at or just above maintenance for 3-6 months should help to make them at least noticeable when active/flexing which would probably be a bit more satisfying over the long run.