Height/Weight/Age/Sex/Lifts (SQ/BP/DL/P/Chins)?
Before the lockdown I was making good progress and completed my linear progression, eventually progressing on to a Bill Starr style program. During this time I drank a lot of milk, about a litre to a half gallon per day. However, once the lockdown hit I gained a bunch of weight. I had fairly sizable gut beforehand (I'm 6' and pre-lockdown I weighed about 225 lb.), but I really ballooned out when I was cooped up inside during lockdown. As a result I went on a low carb diet inspired by Bill Starr last July, where I followed his advice of keeping my carb intake to below 60g per day. So far it has worked pretty well. Since I resumed training at the end of August I now have numbers comparable to how I was before lockdown and I'm looking a considerable amount leaner than I did on "house arrest", as it were. Additionally, I have had no problem progressing in my training despite eating at a caloric deficit with very little carb intake.
However, I still have a slight gut and love handles, to which I am unfortunately genetically predisposed to have. I have no idea how much I weigh now but it's probably 200 lb or a bit less. Maintaining this diet has not been too difficult, and I've sworn off bread and grain entirely, but the one thing I do miss is drinking milk. On one hand I want to keep dieting down until I lose the love handles and the gut for good (I haven't had a completely flat stomach since I was about 10), but on the other hand I'm sick and tired of having to put almond milk in my protein shakes instead of the real stuff. If I resumed drinking milk again I'd probably limit myself to only a glass or two a day instead of drinking up to a half gallon as I did before, but I'm really concerned about the carb content. Since milk has about 12g of carbs in it per cup, I'm worried that it would just make my midsection bigger than it already is. I absolutely hate the fact that I'm genetically predisposed to carry a lot of midsection fat, despite having lost weight. My shoulders and traps are huge and look well-defined, but my silhouette is ruined by my gut and love handles. For somebody like me, whose physique looks really weird because of this, is it recommended to even touch milk at all? I miss drinking milk but I want to actually have a good physique instead of one that's ruined by stubborn midsection fat that won't go away.
Height/Weight/Age/Sex/Lifts (SQ/BP/DL/P/Chins)?
Male, 24 years old, 6', about 200 lb or a bit less, ~20-22% bodyfat
Here's my current working weights
Squat: 115 kg 3x5
Press: 52.5 kg 3x3
Bench: 72.5 kg 3x5
Deadlift: 140 kg x1, 135 kg x5
Power Clean: 57.5 kg 5x3
Started cleans only about a month and a half ago, hence the relatively low number for that lift. Before that I was doing barbell rows for three sets of five. I've been training three times per week since 30th August of this year, when I resumed training after a nearly six month layoff starting in early March.
Keep getting stronger and that will all even out. DO NOT lose bodyweight, you're in a good place. Just need to fill out the muscle mass by getting stronger. Do you have macro data?
You are bailing on your deadlift if your best single is 5 kg more than your best set. of 5 btw. It's not really heavy, its probably in your head.
Artificially Weak Deadlifts, Part 1: Perception vs Reality | Robert Santana
If I should eat more carbs, would it be reasonable to obtain them primarily from dairy and vegetables? I worry about eating too many carbs and I certainly still want to stay away from grain; I'm concerned of accumulating more fat after working so hard to lose all the weight I gained during lockdown. However I would imagine it'll be harder to gain excess weight now that I'm training very consistently. At the very least I'll have a couple glasses of milk per day for extra carb intake. Should it still be no more than 100g or so of carbs per day? Starr says that this is roughly how much a man of my size needs to maintain weight.
Vegetables and dairy are not very good carbohydrate sources. If you are worried about regaining fat then you will have to watch your fat intake. My only issue with grain is that it isn't filling. I prefer rice, oats, fruits, legumes, and lentils