zone diet and milk for SS?

[Haggit]

Hey,
Thanks for maintaining and working on the forum. I'm new to starting strength ( month or so) but have a CPT and have been reading everything I come across on fitness and nutrition. I've been trying a kind of interesting ( at least to me ha) diet plan. A 21 block zone diet with a gallon of whole milk a day. Well, the reason I'm posting is this: I'm getting good strength numbers ( 60 lbs on squat and around 30 lbs on press) but not a lot of LBW and about 5 % increase in body fat and about a gain of 6 pounds total weight gain. What's your thoughts on ways to rein in the fat gains?

By my estimates I was at about 8 ish % body fat and my weight was 175 # now I'm closer to 14 ish % and about 180#

Both diet and program changes happened at the same time and I have been doing conditioning work.

Or I suppose I should ask is this normal to see in going from bodybuilding bullshit to real work with real eating?

P.S. I have my previous diet written down if you wanted that, too. I'll post if you're interested.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Hey,
Thanks for maintaining and working on the forum. I'm new to starting strength ( month or so) but have a CPT and have been reading everything I come across on fitness and nutrition. I've been trying a kind of interesting ( at least to me ha) diet plan. A 21 block zone diet with a gallon of whole milk a day. Well, the reason I'm posting is this: I'm getting good strength numbers ( 60 lbs on squat and around 30 lbs on press) but not a lot of LBW and about 5 % increase in body fat and about a gain of 6 pounds total weight gain. What's your thoughts on ways to rein in the fat gains?

By my estimates I was at about 8 ish % body fat and my weight was 175 # now I'm closer to 14 ish % and about 180#

Both diet and program changes happened at the same time and I have been doing conditioning work.

Or I suppose I should ask is this normal to see in going from bodybuilding bullshit to real work with real eating?

P.S. I have my previous diet written down if you wanted that, too. I'll post if you're interested.

I think your body fat numbers are off, or if they're not, you have sarcopenia.

Tell me how you got your BF numbers and how old and tall are you? Are you on the novice progression? What conditioning are you doing?

[Haggit]

I think your body fat numbers are off, or if they're not, you have sarcopenia.

Tell me how you got your BF numbers and how old and tall are you? Are you on the novice progression? What conditioning are you doing?

I am 5'11" and 25 years old. I used a caliper and pictures of body fat %, but it's probably wrong. I am on the novice linear progression program.

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Got it.

I'd titrate down the milk by a glass or two or alternatively, you could remove a bit of carbs and fat from your intake (like 20g CHO and 5-10g fat).

[Haggit]

Awesome. Thank you, I know the question wasn't very clear but you got what I was looking for. I wasn't sure if I should reduce milk or cut from the zone. Also, maybe I'm just so used to trying to maintain lower body fat but what would normal amounts of body fat increases be at this stage?

I was also curious as to your opinion of using the zone diet and making up calories with milk? I've personally found it much simpler than measuring macros, particularly when making substitutions in types of food.

[Haggit]

I think your body fat numbers are off, or if they're not, you have sarcopenia.

What conditioning are you doing?

Missed you asking this... I'm doing various different things: hill sprints, jump rope, ( more or less crossfit type metcons without oly lifts)

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Missed you asking this... I'm doing various different things: hill sprints, jump rope, ( more or less crossfit type metcons without oly lifts)

That's how what I like to see most of the time, although not in a novice lifter who can gain a lot of strength really quickly, if he or she will let it happen. Something to consider...

Awesome. Thank you, I know the question wasn't very clear but you got what I was looking for. I wasn't sure if I should reduce milk or cut from the zone. Also, maybe I'm just so used to trying to maintain lower body fat but what would normal amounts of body fat increases be at this stage?

I was also curious as to your opinion of using the zone diet and making up calories with milk? I've personally found it much simpler than measuring macros, particularly when making substitutions in types of food.

I think it's okay to be cognizant of BF when in the novice phase, although it's importance becomes much greater at the intermediate and advanced levels of training if one wants to be competitive in a barbell sport or aesthetic based endeavor.

By being cognizant, I mean paying attention to the efficiency of your weight gain, i.e. is it mostly fat, mostly muscle, or a blend of both. If it's really inefficient, you're diet is suspect most of the time.

I don't particularly like the Zone, mostly because the science is bunk and the portion control protocol (blocks) seems neurotic to me on top of requiring more diligence than just weighing, measuring, tracking cals/macros on their own. The benefit of my preferred method (weighing, measuring, tracking), is that you have REAL data points that we can tweak, vs. the Zone's arbitrary data points.

For instance, a block of protein technically only has 7g of protein, but this does not take into account the fat content of the protein source. Similarly, carbohydrate sources also have proteins, fats, etc. that would all factor into the equation when it comes to tweaking and fine-tuning the air-fuel mixture. If someone had just weighed/measured/counted everything from the get-go then I'd have a real data point to tweak from that's actually meaningful to me. Because the amount of effort required to use either methods is approximately equal (I'd argue simpler for my method) it's pretty easy to see why I like my method more.

[Tamara Reynolds]

The Zone is just like Weight Watchers with blocks instead of points. I'm not sure how people miss this. The Zone is about weight loss. Tweaking the Zone makes it NOT THE ZONE. So, what Jordan said.

[Haggit]

I don't particularly like the Zone, mostly because the science is bunk and the portion control protocol (blocks) seems neurotic to me on top of requiring more diligence than just weighing, measuring, tracking cals/macros on their own. The benefit of my preferred method (weighing, measuring, tracking), is that you have REAL data points that we can tweak, vs. the Zone's arbitrary data points.

For instance, a block of protein technically only has 7g of protein, but this does not take into account the fat content of the protein source. Similarly, carbohydrate sources also have proteins, fats, etc. that would all factor into the equation when it comes to tweaking and fine-tuning the air-fuel mixture. If someone had just weighed/measured/counted everything from the get-go then I'd have a real data point to tweak from that's actually meaningful to me. Because the amount of effort required to use either methods is approximately equal (I'd argue simpler for my method) it's pretty easy to see why I like my method more.

I agree about the block diet. Its very random due to different macro ratios in various foods. I have a real problem going: ' let's try this and see what happens.'
Thanks for your time

[Jordan Feigenbaum]

Awesome. Thank you, I know the question wasn't very clear but you got what I was looking for. I wasn't sure if I should reduce milk or cut from the zone. Also, maybe I'm just so used to trying to maintain lower body fat but what would normal amounts of body fat increases be at this stage?

I was also curious as to your opinion of using the zone diet and making up calories with milk? I've personally found it much simpler than measuring macros, particularly when making substitutions in types of food.

It doesn't have to be this complicated, but for optimal results....well you can understand the importance of it.