Reply With QuoteWhat is your top priority?
Member
Recomp diet stall ?
Been steadily losing 1lb a week, losing 13lbs from 180-167, whilst keeping my lifting numbers up, in some instances seeing a good increase, but now the scales are no longer moving. I've been the same body weight for the last 2 weeks. Waist is down from 40-36.5 inches. The Tanita scales show 23% BF and using neck/waisted measurements I've calculated 22.3%. I was looking for 19%.
Do you think I should stay on the current diet (est 1800 calories). That calorie number was about a 500 calorie deficit for my starting weight, then see if I can continue to increase the numbers on the bar. As my weight is static anyway it appears I've happened on maintenance calories accidentally, then allow muscle mass increase do the rest of the work to reduce BF ?
The other option I think, is to cut calories further, which I know will have a negative impact on my strength in the short term, but suck it up for a month to see if I can ditch that final few percent ? Or any other option ?
Starting Strength Coach
What is your top priority?
Member
To lose that body fat. What I don't know is whether my current calories and macros are causing the weight stall, or if I'm actually still losing body fat and gaining heavier lean muscle mass, as I'm still adding weight to the bar ? It's obviously much easier at the beginning of the recomp because there are initially very obvious shifts, but as the numbers come down it is the law of diminishing returns.Originally Posted by Robert Santana
I had thought that I could cut back on the calories and see what it did to strength. If it started having a huge negative impact, then clearly that's not the right direction. I don't want to lose fat at the cost of losing too much strength, but I will accept some loss if it's minimal.
Starting Strength Coach
My suggestion is if your circumference measurements aren't changing then you probably need to cut calorie further, lose whatever you gotta lose to satisfy your need to be lean, adjust your recovery cycle as lifts start getting hard or you start missing, and reboot LP once you are done. No sense in dragging this thing out longer than you need to, just rip off the band aide and get it done.
Member
When you say "reboot LP" do you mean run NLP through again ?
I like the band-aid analogy and good idea to use the circumference measurements rather than weight on the scale and BF approximations.
Thanks Santana.
Starting Strength Coach
You are welcome.
A lifter coming off of a diet is similar to a lifter coming off of a lay off. NLP is appropriate for both.
Member
Cool. I was hoping that when I came out of deficit that there might be a turbocharging effect for a short period where I could make up a bit of lost ground and how to programme that. Certainly simplifies the process.
Starting Strength Coach
It won't last too long but it will get you out of that fatigue hole the deficit and loss of leverage will put you in.
Member
Ive made good progress even with the deficit. Taken the DL from 150Kg to 170Kg in 12 weeks and lost 13lbs of body weight-waist from 40" to 36.5". The only lift where I have seen a fall -but after initially hitting a PR of 118Kg at around week 6-is the squat and only by negative, 2.5Kg. The weight loss has been nice and slow @ 1lb per week, so I've never felt like recovery was an issue until the DL volume began to give me a sore back (but that was a lot more volume than I had been doing on HLM).
I'm only intending another 3 weeks of cutting wherever that ends up will have to be good enough as we are on holiday for a week so calorie counting is out of the question. Then I shall follow your recommendation of NLP and see where that gets me before choosing another programme - tempted by Andy Bakers 5x5 even though it looks pretty tough.
Starting Strength Coach
Sounds like a plan. Keep us posted on your progress.
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