Burnt Out on Starting Strength. What should I do next? (Fat loss desired.)

[Soda]

I started weight training back for the first time ever in August and ran Starting Strength. Starting from nothing, really. At that time I weighed about 213-215 lbs. I was hoping that eventually body fat would moderate from low/mid 20's percentage-wise to upper teens as predicted in the book but this didn't really happen for me. I counted calories all along and watched my diet closely. In the last month of SS I just ended up exceeding my ability to recover, gaining belly fat, and feeling like crap. And I learned to dread doing heavy squats, unfortunately...

I would like to re-do my programming and diet to focus on fat-loss, and even though I also want to continue to make strength gains (I think it would be great to hit 225 on the BP and 405 on the DL), doing that in less time would be lower in priority to me than losing excess fat. I'm not obsessed with "abs" and all that, but I would like to get down to a healthy body fat percentage, which from what I can tell would be in 12-15% range.

Current Stats:
Age: 38
Sex: M
Height: 6' 1"
Weight: 234 lb.
BF %: 24% (best guess)
Squat: 250 x 5 (achieved 280 but with bad form issues, so I reset to 225 and worked back up)
Bench press: 180 x 5
Deadlift: 360 x 3 (OH grip)
Press: 125 x 5
Power clean: N/A

I've seen that some people seem to be having good success with the Leangains approach for losing fat while gaining strength and wondering if that's the route I should take.

[Charlie Davies]

I lowered my body fat from about 23% to about 17% over 6 months last year while maintaining or slightly increasing strength. Not impressive I know, but I'm old (47).

For diet, I ate clean and high-protein, aiming to feel hungry an hour or two before lunch and again before dinner. I avoided hunger at bedtime for better sleep. Actually counting macros or doing IF would likely be better but I was too lazy. I substituted a half-glass of wine for my normal dinnertime beer and completely cut snacks, ice cream, desserts, etc.

Conditioning was 2 days per week -- bike sprints or hill sprints on non-weightlifting days.

My lifting was a very ordinary 4-day split with a press, squat, bench, and deadlift intensity day with 5x3 volume work at the opposite day. I.e. Tuesday I'd press 5RM and bench 3 sets of 5 at 90% of my bench 5RM.

My only assistance exercises were chinups on press days. Chins are fun on a cut, they go up with lower bodyweight when all your other lifts are stalled.

[veryhrm]

All this, especially that it feels heavy, is to be expected, except that if you watched your calories you should have just adjusted the number to be lower if you saw your weight going up so fast.

Have you done advanced novice and the adjustments to DL ?
http://blackironbeast.com/starting-strength

After that you can transition into something like the 4 day split cwd mentions.

On the fatness: there's actually no official definition of what is healthy, but the closest to it <= 20%bf. That said, 12%-15% is a fine place to be, if you can get there. Where does your 24% best guess come from? (my guess based on where i was at similar strength/training/age levels and based on your weight is that you're prob ~30% currently and that to get to 15% you'd have to get at least below 200lbs. )
As to diet... The only thing i know anymore is keep your protein up in the 150-200g / day (or 250 even if you really want). Your fat non-zero. Eat some carbs around your workout. Beyond that it's the cals and compliance. I like 1 day a week cheat days (a la 4HB) but that requires significantly low cals the rest of the week. Read around... esp in the Nutrition forum. Be ready for it to take a lot longer than you think it will.

[kessg]

Are you doing HIIT/conditioning at all?

[Tom Narvaez]

Beyond the novice level of advancement, which you have not necessarily surpassed given your numbers and size, if you're interested in maintaining or increasing performance while dieting, you will have to optimize your nutrition. This will mean counting macros and reducing bodyweight by 0.5-1.0% per week, maximum.

Alternatively, a second approach that bares some merit is extreme dieting. Given this choice, you'd go with a diet like Lyle McDonald's Rapid Fatloss Handbook or some form of ketogenic dieting.

The former is essentially a starvation diet with high protein levels and a variety of other dietary mechanisms designed to limit muscle catabolism. With this approach, performance drops of up to 10% have been noted. Something closer to 5% seems to be more in line with average. The trade off is that you're done dieting in a handful of months rather than spending a year getting down to 12-15%. And make no mistake, if you've never seriously dieted into relative leanness before, and you're handling your nutrition on your own, you are EXTREMELY unlikely to have things go off without a hitch. The odds are probably even less than people correcting implementing SS on their first go with the program and we all know how many people actually DTFP. Frankly, even I didn't do DTFP to the letter.

As for the latter, ketogenic diets cover a wide enough spectrum that I can't make anything any specific comments. Low/Zero carb diets tend to be very effective for those who can comply.

Lean Gains is nothing more than an eating schedule that often prompts spontaneous compliance to useful calorie levels. If you're actually going to count macros, it doesn't necessarily matter when you consume them. High calorie, and high carb days especially, are particularly useful for longer term diets. Lean Gains incorporates refeeds which serve the same purpose. There is no magic in Lean Gains. If you're not counting, and it still works for you, it is because the change in habits has led to a spontaneous improvement in consumption patterns. That is it. If you seek further improvements beyond this, you'll have to optimize.

There are a lot of different approaches to losing weight. Which one you decide to take depends on how much effort you are willing to expend and whether or not performance is a major concern for you. After all, everyone can lose weight by "moving more" and "eating less". Simplistic approaches work, but not for long and they won't get you remarkable results. It all depends what you want.

[Soda]

Have you done advanced novice and the adjustments to DL ?
http://blackironbeast.com/starting-strength

No, I didn't know about that. So the progression I was doing is called Version 2 of Starting Strength, or is a Novice Progression from Practical Programming. It doesn't require power cleans. It's basically alternating between Squat, Bench, and Deadlift one workout, and Squat, Press, and Pullups on the next. But doing Squats and Deadlifts on the same day got to be a drag after a while.

Where does your 24% best guess come from? (my guess based on where i was at similar strength/training/age levels and based on your weight is that you're prob ~30% currently and that to get to 15% you'd have to get at least below 200lbs. )

I was basing my guess from this online calculator:

http://23.239.16.235/bodyfat.html

As to diet... The only thing i know anymore is keep your protein up in the 150-200g / day (or 250 even if you really want). Your fat non-zero. Eat some carbs around your workout. Beyond that it's the cals and compliance. I like 1 day a week cheat days (a la 4HB) but that requires significantly low cals the rest of the week. Read around... esp in the Nutrition forum. Be ready for it to take a lot longer than you think it will.

OK Thanks. I have been tracking all my calories/macros every day since last May so its become an ingrained habit at this point.

[Soda]

Are you doing HIIT/conditioning at all?

I was doing sprints before the weather got really cold. Then I stopped.

[Soda]

Lean Gains is nothing more than an eating schedule that often prompts spontaneous compliance to useful calorie levels. If you're actually going to count macros, it doesn't necessarily matter when you consume them. High calorie, and high carb days especially, are particularly useful for longer term diets. Lean Gains incorporates refeeds which serve the same purpose. There is no magic in Lean Gains. If you're not counting, and it still works for you, it is because the change in habits has led to a spontaneous improvement in consumption patterns. That is it. If you seek further improvements beyond this, you'll have to optimize.

Well the Leangains program holds some appeal because I've read of some health benefits to intermittent fasting (besides weight loss), and I actually do like how I feel after going long stretches without food. Beyond that I was interested in the Reverse Pyramid Training scheme as it makes workouts shorter and less stressful when you only have one top set and can back off on the next two.

[Simon Rest]

I did IF from before I started SS. I very quickly came to a stop with my lifts. Putting 230 on your back for 3x5 isn't much, but if you haven't eaten for 20 hours it's a right fucker. Plus you get dizzy which could be unsafe.

My advice would be to gradually drop calories out of carbs, maybe at 25g per week. Jordan said he didn't get really lean until he was down to 2200kCal/week.

Alternately if it's that important go and do IF for 6 months while doing BB exercises, then come back to SS

[Immortal_k]

I did IF from before I started SS. I very quickly came to a stop with my lifts. Putting 230 on your back for 3x5 isn't much, but if you haven't eaten for 20 hours it's a right fucker. Plus you get dizzy which could be unsafe.

My advice would be to gradually drop calories out of carbs, maybe at 25g per week. Jordan said he didn't get really lean until he was down to 2200kCal/week.

Alternately if it's that important go and do IF for 6 months while doing BB exercises, then come back to SS

Wow. How much of a deficit is that and how did it impact his training?