How to cut weight

[Lloyd90]

I'm just wondering different peoples approaches to cutting down on their body fat whilst trying to retain as much strength and muscle as possible.

Current lifts are
Squat x 5 - 385
Dead x 5 - 385
Bench x 5 - 220
OHP x 5 - 145

Age 27, 6ft tall, weighting 250-255lb.

Using kcals of TBAB puts me to 2850kcals to lose weight. I've been shooting for 2400 (although struggled with consistency) and weight has pretty much stuck the same over the last year.
I have however been extremely busy working a job, a full time placement and finishing final year of uni.

Hoping to cut back to around 220lb now.

EDIT TO ADD: Also does anyone know why Jordan often recommends only 220g of protein towards the maximum end but TBAB notes for cutting it should be 1.25g per lb? This would put me on 312g of protein lol!

[Jeff Leonard]

Look at your existing diet. What does it consist of now? Most people think they eat pretty good, but when you really start writing it down for 3-4 days and look back on it, we eat a lot of garbage. For me, I started on Jan 1 at 288 and I am now 265. My goal is somewhere in the 250-255 range and I'll see how I feel there. The reality is you are "fat" enough to lose some weight and still retain and gain strength. How I am doing it is just cut out the grains, which is not the same as cutting carbs. I just try to limit carb intake to 15 or so grams with each meal, through vegetables or whatever, just not grains (wheat). I could live on ice cream and sweets, but that stuff had to go. No more chips and all the other carb loaded junk that I used to shovel in as well. Takes some discipline and will power, but it's worth it.

As far as strength gains and retention, just keep on the program and I think at your weight you should be fine. I am still making progress each session, as well as adding some prowler and air dyne work in once a week (at least I try to).

[Peter Dempster]

I'm just wondering different peoples approaches to cutting down on their body fat whilst trying to retain as much strength and muscle as possible.

Current lifts are
Squat x 5 - 385
Dead x 5 - 385
Bench x 5 - 220
OHP x 5 - 145

Age 27, 6ft tall, weighting 250-255lb.

Using kcals of TBAB puts me to 2850kcals to lose weight. I've been shooting for 2400(although struggled with consistency) and weight has pretty much stuck the same over the last year.
I have however been extremely busy working a job, a full time placement and finishing final year of uni.

Hoping to cut back to around 220lb now.

EDIT TO ADD: Also does anyone know why Jordan often recommends only 220g of protein towards the maximum end but TBAB notes for cutting it should be 1.25g per lb? This would put me on 312g of protein lol!

Consistently is the key man!

Also, you need to be really accurate. Are you tracking accurately with a scale? Are you tracking literally every bite your eat? Are you using myfitnesspal or something like it?

There is a really good recomp in this forum from about a month ago that talks about one guys' efforts...I think his experience was to cut slowly (find what your equilibrium point is, then experiment week by week subtracting like 20 grams of carbs per week).

Can't speak for Jordan, why not ask him in his forum?

[Bryan Dobson]

It's not that complicated. If you are eating consistent amounts of foods through every day you can eliminate one thing at a time. I always put milk in my protien Shake in the morning . I can lose weight cutting the milk and keeping my alcohol intake reasonable and avoiding beer.
Steamable vegetable packs , rice in small portions and chicken breast for all your meals will really help you with consistency.
Keep training hard. When you get to the goal weight titrate up the intake until weight is stable.

[MattBraunstein]

You're going to have to track. You mentioned cals and TBAB, which suggests you're already doing this?

Just take you average macros over the last week and compare to what your weight did. This will tell you if you need to adjust or not. As long as you are dropping weight slowly, don't mess with the macros until it stops. You should only need to adjust by 100-200 cals at a time by changing carbs and fat targets. The numbers are nothing more than an average starting point. Most people will end up somewhere else based on their own metabolism.

I'm not sure how anal you are, but using a food scale is a good idea. But really, you don't necessarily have to be 100% accurate. What you need to be is consistent with how you count different foods. Because, in the end, your adjusted macros are nothing more than a relative adjustment to your diet.

Another thing is to try to spread the protein intake out as much as possible. Try for 5 meals/day spread out by at least 3 hours. These don't have to be complete meals but at least a whey shake or something.

Finally, something that really helped with compliance for me was saving some carb and fat macros for the end of the day. This way, I could eat a bigger dinner with some dessert. This is what kept me on track. There were some days where I found myself having to force myself to eat. Instead of using them up earlier in the day, then being hungry and likely eating too much by the end of the day.

[cph]

There is a really good recomp in this forum from about a month ago that talks about one guys' efforts...I think his experience was to cut slowly (find what your equilibrium point is, then experiment week by week subtracting like 20 grams of carbs per week).

Not sure if this is the post you're talking about, but it helped me.

Some other tips I've stumbled on in the last few months:

- If it helps keep you sane, ditch the starch from a meal completely and eat sugary carbs (a piece of fruit if you want to stay clean, low-fat sweets like sorbet if you don't).

- Don't eat stuff you don't like just because it's "clean." Find a way to make the foods you like fit your macros.

- It's a lot easier to stay consistent if you can keep a few of your meals the same or very similar every day. I usually eat yogurt and a banana for breakfast, chicken/veg/rice stir fry for lunch (switching up the sauces), and a salad w/ chicken as a snack.

[noviceEffect]

For what it is worth, I was in a similar situation as you: I ran HLM for several months, and a month ago I wanted to start a cut for the summer. My past attempts have been somewhat unsuccessful so I signed up to get a diet template from Renaissance Periodization. They'll send you a set of excel worksheets and how-to guides. I've been running it for about four weeks and the fat has been falling off at around 1 lb/week. It was a bit pricey--80 bucks, but worth it if you want some structure in your diet. Anyways, I heard about it because one of the SSCs, Rob Santana, is a diet coach for them. It's worth a look.

Oh, and if you decide to purchase a template from them, then sign up to for their emails, and you'll get a discount code (around 20%) in a week or so.

[misspelledDino]

I've cut about 40#'s since mid Feb of this year, going from 260 to 218 (this morning). I'm 5'11". I did it in two phases with very different lifting protocols in each phase.

Phase 1 : basically a Lyle McDonald style Protein Sparing Modified Fast (PSMF) for the first 8 weeks. This was basically 250g of protein a day and not much else besides fish oil tabs and any fat and carbs that come with the protein sources. Total calories were about 1200-1400 per day, but I gave myself a cheat meal twice per week on training days. Training consisted of working up to the heaviest set of 5 (sometimes 3) that I could handle and that's it. Squat and press one day. Deadlift and bench on the other. In the first four weeks my totals actually increased (deadlift increased, other lifts were flat). The last four weeks my strength started falling off of a cliff. I lost around 30 pounds in this phase--probably 75% fat.

Phase 2: I signed up for Avatar nutrition, created my profile and set wet loss goals for moderate fat loss. Avatar sets your macros based on current stats and goals and then adjusts them each week after a weigh in (learned about it from Izzy's Power Lifting to Win log on this forum). In this phase my total calories were around 2500 - 2800 with 230 g protein and the calorie balance divided equally between carbs and fat (based on my input preference for fatty foods). With higher calories, I could train more and decided to run Andy Baker's Garage Gym Warrior as prescribed--basically a 3x per week HLM program. I started regaining some strength, and while weight loss slowed it did continue. I lost 12 pounds of weight, probably 90% fat.

I tracked fat loss progress with the scale and DoD Navy tape measure calculator. I estimate I lost 10 percent points in bf (26 to 16) with 80% of overall weight loss being fat. In terms of strength my pre-diet 5RM was 375 for squat and 445 for deadlift. Current current 5RM estimates are 355 for squat and 435 for deadlift. Can't say for press/bench as I had a rotator cuff injury mid-diet that confounds the whole issue.

I've started a short third phase just in the past few days. I'm running another PSMF, but this time just for two weeks. Depending on results, I'll go back to moderate fat loss goals with Avatar or try the reverse diet setting to accelerate strength regain.

Geoff

[Greg Ruhl]

Tips that help me when I need to loose fat:

- Eat from single ingredient food sources. You can make something with ingredients but no buying pre-packaged stuff off the shelves.
- If you're busy, make and package a bunch of meals at once. Then it's just a grab-and-go and you know exactly what you're getting (most meal trackers allow you to reuse a meal so tracking becomes easier too)
- Track your food intake
- Greatly reduce simple starches as a carbohydrate source
- Allow a cheat meal (not cheat day) once a week

[DodgerDog]

Eh