From 110kg to 86kg- exactly how I did it (long read)

[mlalahoi]

Greetings,

I know there a lot of threads around that outline people's exact diets and exercise plans for noobs to lose weight, but as most of them are by younger people with better metabolisms I thought I would add mine for those of us that are a little older. It can be misleading when a lot of these kids (no hate) write in that they are "cutting" on 2500 cals a day. For MOST of us over 25 or so that is just not going to work unless you are already pretty lean and built and/or 7' tall and this is not your first time trimming down.

I've been cutting for the last 8 months, started out at 111kg (~245lbs) and am just under 86kg now (190lbs). I tried just about every plan to be found on the boards and wasted several months on some of them, eventually I found the balance and I am going to detail what worked VERY well for me here. Note that of the 50lbs I've lost, most of it was during two, 6 week periods when I followed the routine below. I am a strong believer in rapid fat loss. I want to get the fat down quickly through extreme (but safe) methods and then get on with my life, i.e. building strength. My average result on this plan is 3lbs of FAT loss per week with no loss of strength. BTW this is nothing new, you should recognize it as my simplified variation of UD 2.0. UD is a good plan, but Lyle is a little crazy with the micromanaging of things trying to get the Holy Grail of body comp nutrition......precise control over nutrient partitioning.

A note on calorie deficits. I am 6'2" and for most of my cut I have been well under 2000cals a day. No I did not lose all my muscle and no I did not wreck my metabolism. I lift more today than I did 8 months ago. I am STILL losing fat so clearly my metabolism is just fine. People are so freaking scared of losing an ounce of muscle or they get caught up in that "starvation mode" crap that they end up half-assing their cut and eat too much to lose fat yet not enough to build muscle and just spin their wheels accomplishing nothing, torturing themselves with diets and excess cardio along the way. If you are cutting, cut. Make that your primary goal at the expense of PROGRESS in other areas (you can easily MAINTAIN your LBM and athletic performance during a cut) . Your body is spectactularly bad at doing more than one thing at once, so suck it up and cut right. Your calories should be maintenance minus 31 x lbs of body fat with a max deficit of around 1400 for the really big guys out there. Your max deficit will decrease as you progress. And when you calculate your maintenance it is important that you are honest. If you have a desk job, use the sedentary number.

A note on cardio. Cardio is incredibly important for your health. The benefits of regular cardiovascular exercise are multitude and well established. You should be doing some kind of medium intensity cardio (jogging, cycling, hiking) twice a week and high-intensity cardio (sprints, HIIT, sports) at least once a week. This is for your overall health and GPP, it WILL make you live longer and feel better. Period. That said, I have learned the very hard way that cardio is actually NOT a good cornerstone for a fat loss program. I spent months jogging for miles a day or doing insane HIIT sessions 4x a week and just got nowhere. For one, It is too hard to know how many calories you are burning during cardio to be basing your intake and deficit around exercise. Estimates you find online are wildly inaccurate for most people, and if you believe the readout on that cardio machine at the gym I have a big red bridge I would like to sell you. Most people grossly overstimate how many calories they burn during exercise and this WILL lead you to overeat. Additionally, it is my suspicion that what most people think is "starvation mode" is actually over training brought on by too much cardio done in an attempt to balance out the calories they logged from that extra ham sandwich at lunch. It's quite hard to put your body into starvation mode through diet alone if you are eating enough protein and EFA. You can however, get a lot of the same problems from being overtrained when you are eating at a deficit. Heavy weights 3x a week with jogging on off days and an afternoon of sports on the weekend is PLENTY while you are dieting. More that this and you probably will shut yourself down and stall fat loss. And as most people underestimate calories they eat and overestimate calories they burn...trying to make a balance sheet every day while eating like a pig is just not going to work out. Your diet should be your road to fat loss, not cardio. When my diet is on point I lose fat at the exact same rate regardless of whether or not I do any cardio at all.

A note on counting calories and food. DO you want to lose fat? Then buy a digital kitchen scale and use it every time you eat. Period. IF you are not measuring your food then you do not know what you are eating and you can not make the critical adjustments to any program to make it work for you. You also need to keep a log of EVERYTHING you eat, especially in the beginning. I also strongly recommend that you avoid calorie dense foods like the plague. While keto diets are great and you get to eat bacon and mayonnaise for every meal they also fail for a great many people because it is too damn hard not to overeat on calories. There will be some unavoidable error in your portion measurements, if that error is made up of protein and vegetables it just doesn't have the impact on your nutrition that fat errors do. Consider that an extra little handful of cashews is 400calories, if the bacon cutting machine over at Hormel slips and you get an extra thick slice of bacon in the pack there's 150 more cals than you thought you had...a couple of these little errors a day and you have wrecked your diet. I am not saying you should go nuts on avoiding fat, fat is healthy and necessary and you should eat some every day. I am just saying that you should try to avoid getting too many of your calories from fatty foods because the danger of overeating is too high during a cut. Besides, eating low-cal items means you get to eat more food and who doesn't like that?

A note on supps. As a biochemist I think >95% all BB and fat loss supplements out there are really good at accomplishing the goal of making your urine and feces more expensive. There are a couple of exceptions. I think that protein powders are good because it is hard to get enough protein in during the day if you work and you are trying to limit other macro intake. I think that a good chelated multi-vitamin is a good thing for everyone. I think that fish-oil is a necessary supplement when cutting. The appetite suppressing and CNS stimulating effects of ECA are proven and well accepted. This is the only fat loss product that I believe does anything at all and while it is not at all necessary I think it has a slight benefit if your system tolerates stimulants. There is also some evidence that ephedrine helps to spare lean muscle during caloric restriction, something my personal experience backs up.

Ok, I didn't intend to write an ebook here but apparently I had a lot to say about this. Enough of my blather and on to the details of what I did:

Diet:
Essentially a PSMF. Yes, they work extremely well.

M-Sat:
TOTAL CALS= Maintenance - (31 x lbs of body fat)
1g protein per lb of body weight (1.5g/lb on workout days), the rest from fat and minimal carbs
MAXIMUM 100g carbs, ONLY from veggies and some of fruit ( I usually eat around 40g carbs a day)

SO if you are 6'2" 210lbs and 20% bf then you have 40lbs of fat. With a desk job your maintenence is about 2400cals, every day you should eat:
200g protein: 800 cals
Fat and carbs: 400 cals ( at least two servings of green veggies)


Yep, that is only 1200-1500 calories depending on if you lift that day. You will be a little hungry at first. You will lose a lot of fat pretty quickly. You will NOT die. You will NOT go into a metabolic shutdown because every Sunday you will eat:

Calories: Who cares
Carbs: 300g-400g, try to avoid sucrose and fructose to limit bloating
Fat: as little as possible beyond fish oil and some EVO. Again, this is critical for limiting bloating

Try to wrap up this re-feed by dinnertime Sunday evening, I've noticed that if I eat too many of my carbs close to bedtime it exacerbates the bloating. If you eat too much fat during your carb ups you will swell up and look like crap until about wed of the next week, you will also see the scale go right back up to where it was the week before, which is meaningless but discouraging. You're still losing fat, but you won't look for feel like it so I personally try to avoid this.

Every week before your refeed measure your BF and recalculate your maintenance and the deficit you can support. A couple months ago I was eating at 1400cals a day deficits, today I will come in at about 800 cals in the red, my fat loss has stayed constant...cool huh?

My diet pretty much every day is this:

Protein Shake w/ 220g milk (the tetra packs here are 220g)

grilled Chicken salad or Tuna and a salad. I eat a LOT of salads.

1/2 Protein Shake
WORK OUT
1/2 protein shake


Fish/Chicken/tofu and big-ass plate of green veggies

Piece of fruit

cottage cheese or casien sludge before bed

I recommend 2 caps fish oil and ECA stack 3x a day and a good multi-vitamin an hour or so before lifting. I will say that probably NO ONE should eat less than 1000cals a day. Though it is rare for someone who has any business cutting to come up with that low of a number on this plan, IF they do work out to less than that, just eat 1000.

EXERCISE

Obviously when eating like this you MUST do some heavy weight lifting to help spare the muscle. I'm not going to go into why but I recommend a full body workout MWF. IF you want to know why I think this say so and I'll write another little book here. I'l limit myself to saying that I think you need to frequently remind your body why breaking down it's muscle is a bad idea. At any rate this is what works for me, it hits all the major groups, focuses on compound lifts, and gets me in and out before the cortisol shows up. All sets are done HEAVY to one rep short of failure with intensity of movement, keep rest times reasonably short. Warm up sets are not listed but obviously required. 5 min cardio, full joint warm-up, and lift specific dynamic stretches before all workouts.

Monday and Friday:

Back Squat 3x6
ATG Pause Squat: 1x8
3x Super Set:
Incline medium grip BP x5
roll off the bench and immediately do half your max-reps push-ups nose to the floor
get up, run over to the pull up bar and do half your max-reps curl-grip chins
BB Row alternating grip 4x6
Power Clean 1x8
Military Press 3x5
seated DB Curl 3x8
CGBP or Decline Skull Crusher 3x8

Wed:

3x Super Set:
Bench Press x5
roll off the bench and immediately do half your max-reps push-ups nose to the floor
get up, run over to the pull up bar and do half your max-reps wide grip pull-ups
Deadlift 3x5, 1x3, 1x1
Power Clean and press 2x8
BB Curl 3x8
CGBP or Decline Skull Crusher 3x8


ON Tuesday and Thursday do 30-60 min medium intensity cardio. I prefer to do this in the morning before I eat, but it probably doesn't matter one bit when you do this. Saturday and Sunday are rest. I usually do some sprints or play sports on Saturdays. Sometimes I just don't feel like or have the time for cardio during the week and I make it up with a 5k jog on the weekend...life happens. Just remember...CARDIO IS FOR YOUR GENERAL HEALTH, it is not the lynch-pin to your fat loss program. If you train another sport during the week, that is probably taking care of your cardio and more is overdoing it during a cut.

[mlalahoi]

LONG TERM

While I have done this for up to 6 weeks solid with great results, you should track your individual progress carefully. In addition to weekly re-feeds I think you should take a break every 4 weeks or so and eat at maintenance for a week to keep your rate of weight loss healthy. Your skin and internal organs will thank you for it. Clearly this is not a long term program, but rather one that focuses on burning off fat quickly and getting it done so that you can move on with your life and start building muscle again.

I hope this can help someone, apologies for redundancies, and if you actually read this whole thing I owe you reps!!


-Mlalahoi

[jjstokes1]

whats UD 2.0?

[mlalahoi]

whats UD 2.0?

Ultimate Diet 2.0 by Lyle McDonald, the keto guy. http://www.bodyrecomposition.com/ultimate-diet-20

[MrRR]

I agree with your diet plan save the deficit limit on really big guys bein 1400. Also I think having some low gi carbs in the morning can be essential to your energy levels.

[mlalahoi]

THe limit is not hard and fast, just that I don't think you can metabolize fat much faster than at that large of a defecit so there might not be a point to going deeper than that, however there really isn't good research either way on it.

Why do you say "low GI" carbs are important in the morning?

[Aboc]

I found what your wrote very interesting and will probably try it out. I've been stuck at around 250-252 for 2 weeks now but recently started a new workout routine. Maybe you could give me some suggestions or advice on what I'm doing wrong or what I'm doing right.

I'm 5'8 at 250lbs just to take that into consideration when viewing my workout/diet.

Workout:
Monday: Triceps & Shoulders / Light Cardio (30 min Treadmill)
Tuesday: Back / Light Cardio (30 min Treadmill)
Wednesday: HIIT Cardio (Treadmill/Bike)
Thursday: Chest & Biceps / Light Cardio (30 min Treadmill)
Friday: Legs / Light Cardio (20 min Treadmill)
Saturday: Tennis / Light Cardio (30 min Treadmill)
Sunday: Rest

Diet:
Without being too specific I have most of my carbs upon waking up to keep me energized throughout the day.

Breakfast: 3 Egg Whites, 1 Egg Whole, Oatmeal w/ Chocolate Whey, Fruit
Snack: Single Serve Protein Shake
Lunch: Grilled Chicken w/ Baby Spinach, Serving of Almonds, Fruit
Snack: Single Serve Protein Shake
Dinner: Fish w/ Mixed Vegetables, Fruit
PostWO: Single Serve Protein Shake (Nitro Core)

Supplements:
GNC Men's Sport Vitamin
Green Tea Extract
Flax Seed Oil
Fish Oil
ON 100% Whey
ON Nitro Core
Controlled Labs Whiteflood
(thinking about starting E/C stack again but didn't have any reaction to stimulant)

Yeah that's a short description of how a lift day would look like. Anything you see I'm doing wrong let me know. It's hard enough that I've been lifting and cardio for a while and only have lost 10lbs from when I started...

Thanks in advance. I'd rep if I knew what it even meant haha.

[mlalahoi]

Aboc,
It's hard to say about your diet without amounts, do you measure your portions? If youare eating normal portions of fish and chicken I only see about 200g protein in there, which is probably not enough for a guy your size. Get a scale and measure out all your food and let us know what your macronutrient (protein, fat, carbs) grams for for an average day, also what is your maintenance and which calculator are you using to figure it out?

While the lifting is second to diet for cutting, I just don't recommend an advanced bodybuilding split like that to anyone who is not an advanced lifter. Most athletes (and I include bodybuilders here) will do well on a powerlifting type routine for the first year. Strength>>size...once you have a solid strength base you can move to hypertrophy programs with much more success. You'll be able to lift a LOT more and you can put more tension on the muscle for longer periods, which is what hypertrophy is all about.I also feel that the intense nature of doing heavy sets with short rest in a full-body routine makes the workout much more calorie burning, you'll be puffing and sweating the whole time.

I also think that when you restrict calories considerably as I recommend, you want to do everything you can to minimize muscle breakdown. As we all know, using your muscles to lift heavy is the best way to send your body a signal not to burn up it's own muscle. I think that it is important to send that signal as often as recovery will allow. In my own and many other people's experience this just results in better LBM preservation. This means that working each body part once a week may not be optimal for reminding your body that you need that muscle. Again another reason I think full-body, low volume, high frequency is the way to go for extreme cuts.

[mlalahoi]

Forgot to mention (I am a long winded bastard you may have noticed),

Don't get discouraged by the scale not moving, if you are a beginner you could be in the magic "body recomp" phase. your waist measurement is a much better indicator of progress

[MrRR]

THe limit is not hard and fast, just that I don't think you can metabolize fat much faster than at that large of a defecit so there might not be a point to going deeper than that, however there really isn't good research either way on it.

Why do you say "low GI" carbs are important in the morning?

I understand, I guess I just say from personal experience, the higher you go the greater your deficit can be, and I would be against putting a limit on that deficit. I.E a 400 pound person and a 300 pound person would have the same deficit with your plan and I find that at 400 pounds you can metabolize ALOT of fat and have extremely large deficits with little if any ill effect. (I was 440 at one point myself). Even at 300 for an average 6' male, I think you can go up to a 2000+ calorie deficit with little ill effect as long as protein is adequate. I am currently at my weight at a 1500-1700 calorie deficit (20 percent body fat though the trainers calipers say 16 percent I don't think I'm that low) and have had no strength loss (sometimes my energy is not optimal for a workout though) and have been losing weight at a steady rate of 3-3.5 pounds a week.

I say a slow digesting carb source in the morning because without it, I personally feel too lethargic to do much of anything throughout the day. A slow digesting carbs gives me fuel throughout the day, and I find myself less sluggish and much more active, which I believe potentially offsets the calories gained from those carbs if not actually helps me burn more through movement alone. But perhaps this is because I work a job that involves physical labor.

[saltyseaman]

A note on supps. As a biochemist I think >95% all BB and fat loss supplements out there are really good at accomplishing the goal of making your urine and feces more expensive.

LOL! Thanks, it's been a while since something I read made me laugh

MAXIMUM 100g carbs, ONLY from veggies and some of fruit ( I usually eat around 40g carbs a day)

Does that include fiber?

I recommend 2 caps fish oil and ECA stack 3x a day

Does that equate to 6 caps of fish oil a day? Would you mind explaining the benefits of fish oil for losing fat?

I'm not going to go into why but I recommend a full body workout MWF. IF you want to know why I think this say so and I'll write another little book here.

Let hear it

[mlalahoi]

I understand, I guess I just say from personal experience, the higher you go the greater your deficit can be, and I would be against putting a limit on that deficit. I.E a 400 pound person and a 300 pound person would have the same deficit with your plan and I find that at 400 pounds you can metabolize ALOT of fat and have extremely large deficits with little if any ill effect. (I was 440 at one point myself). Even at 300 for an average 6' male, I think you can go up to a 2000+ calorie deficit with little ill effect as long as protein is adequate. I am currently at my weight at a 1500-1700 calorie deficit (20 percent body fat though the trainers calipers say 16 percent I don't think I'm that low) and have had no strength loss (sometimes my energy is not optimal for a workout though) and have been losing weight at a steady rate of 3-3.5 pounds a week.

I say a slow digesting carb source in the morning because without it, I personally feel too lethargic to do much of anything throughout the day. A slow digesting carbs gives me fuel throughout the day, and I find myself less sluggish and much more active, which I believe potentially offsets the calories gained from those carbs if not actually helps me burn more through movement alone. But perhaps this is because I work a job that involves physical labor.

Fist, sorry for the long delay in reply, I've been traveling abroad and didn't have much time. I appreciate your input on the deficit for really big guys, I was around 250 at my biggest so that goes outside of my realm of experience. Sounds like you have been there and I will take your word for it. There actually is not so much research on an upper limit of fat mobilization so it's cool that you are sharing your experiences. The main point I was trying to make is that for guys who are less than 100lbs over weight they prolly won't hit more than a 1400cal day deficit through diet alone on this program and they really shouldn't be so scared of going over 500cals a day in the red if they actually want to lose fat this year. If you look at my plan, once you guesstimate cals burned from exercise pretty much everyone is going to have a 1400+ deficit per day so obviously I completely agree with you.

[mlalahoi]

LOL! Thanks, it's been a while since something I read made me laugh


Does that include fiber?



Does that equate to 6 caps of fish oil a day? Would you mind explaining the benefits of fish oil for losing fat?




Let hear it

Salty,
I think fiber is important, you are probably getting enough if you eat all of your carbs from veggies but a LOT of people recommend a fiber supplement when cutting. To be honest, I am not sure why, they probably are not either. If you feel like you are having trouble crapping or getting other stomach discomfort I would say add a fiber supp and see if it helps, it won't hurt to take it anyway.

Yep, 6 caps a day. The idea here is to make sure youare getting enough Essential Fatty Acids, these are compounds that your body needs and can not synthesize on it's own from other things. The idea here is that when you cut your cals so low you need to make sure you are not eliminating anything necessary for good health from your diet. Mostly they are praised for their involvement in cardiac and arterial health. You can read up on them at:

http://goodfats.pamrotella.com/ (not primary)

http://www.mayoclinic.com/health/fis...atient-fishoil (links to primary on page)


...to be continued

[friedbanana]

1g protein per lb of body weight (1.5g/lb on workout days)

I know this is almost a 3 year old thread, but i came across this thread earlier today and after reading it i am convinced enough to give it a try. I just wanted to be sure that you meant 1g-1.5g of protein per lb of total body weight or did you mean per lb or lean body weight?

[admirza]

just realized the 3 year bump...good read regardless