Cal deficit (cutting)

[ToryNiquet21]

Hello all! By looking at my profile can anyone tell me if 3000 cal a day would be good for cutting, my Fitbit often tells me I burn way more than that... but I am iffy on the reliability of the figures it shows me at times although I am very active. The reason I’m asking is because I in the last year or so I’ve went from 240lbs to 165 and I weight train 6 days a week and cardio after every session but for the past couple months I feel as if I am stuck with some sleight fat in the midsection preventing me from gaining my much wanted six pack...I have gained a lot of muscle/strength and have vascularity... but my main goal after weight loss was a six pack and that is still buffering 😂. Was eating less than 3000 before for my weight loss but many have told me that i am not eating enough ... so I’m currently eating 3000 cal a day (255P, 383C, 50F)... still have the goal of cutting fat tho so curious what anyone has to say! 

[Baltoscott]

@ToryNiquet21 -- you weight graph is private so I cannot confirm that you have updated that your current weight of 165lbs.  If it is still set at 240 lbs, it will inflate your calorie burn by quite a bit, making your deficit appear to be higher than it is. 

That said, because you lost about 1/3 of your body weight in a fairly short period of time, you probably still have some loose skin do deal with (it will tighten up in time but it may take a year or more) and your metabolism may have slowed a bit below average as it deals with a year or so of constant caloric deficits.  All this is to say that you might be better served by focusing on maintenance for the rest of this year, giving your metabolism time adjust to being 165 lbs, and for your skin to shrink to your new body, and then moving back to a cut in a few months.  It will take a little time, but I am sure you'll get there. 

Flagging @Dominique who usually has a good link explaining diet breaks that seems relevant to your situation.  

[bikerhiker]

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@ToryNiquet21 wrote:

Hello all! By looking at my profile can anyone tell me if 3000 cal a day would be good for cutting, my Fitbit often tells me I burn way more than that... but I am iffy on the reliability of the figures it shows me at times although I am very active. The reason I’m asking is because I in the last year or so I’ve went from 240lbs to 165 and I weight train 6 days a week and cardio after every session but for the past couple months I feel as if I am stuck with some sleight fat in the midsection preventing me from gaining my much wanted six pack...I have gained a lot of muscle/strength and have vascularity... but my main goal after weight loss was a six pack and that is still buffering 😂. Was eating less than 3000 before for my weight loss but many have told me that i am not eating enough ... so I’m currently eating 3000 cal a day (255P, 383C, 50F)... still have the goal of cutting fat tho so curious what anyone has to say! 

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When you start at a very high body fat %, like around 30%, doing extreme caloric deficit by lifting weights and doing cardio exercises every session work to reduce your weight, because the body uses more body fat as energy to offset the deficit.  But when the body fat% goes down to around 20% or so, then the same strategy that you had success cutting when you are at a higher body fat% will no longer work.  That's because when the body fat is at a particular percentage, it will begin to preserve the body fat as reserve fuel for critical body survival.  Meaning, if you continue to exercise with the same intensity, you are not going to burn more body fat and because you don't have any rest days in between (at least 24-48hrs after weights), then you introduce stress in your body because it doesn't have time to recover.  The recovery time is actually when your lean muscle mass use body fat as fuel.  The stress in your training raises your cortisol level and will inhibit fat burning.  So basically you had reached a plateau because of 

1, Overtraining

2, No rest days and recovery

3, Eating the same calories, but not thinking about the food macros, the nutrients, minerals and vitamins that you NEED to help you maintain a stress free body and help you burn fat

4, Lack of surplus days.  You kept cutting, but never contemplate allowing the body to take a break and be in a surplus.  Too long cutting simply teaches the body to conserve body fat just because it expects you to cut and you need body fat for survival.  So up to a point, it will stop.

If you look at my trendweight, you'll see that I hit a plateau with a body fat of 20%.  Only when I started to introduce rest days and surplus days was when things start moving.  Today, I do have a flat pack and waist line around 29" down from 34" and a body fat % roughly 14% or so despite the weight staying the same.  And that was 6 months of cutting and 6 months of bulking.  Remember that weight means nothing, because body weight is the sum of the weight of your internal organs, water weight, your bones, lean muscle mass etc..  What's important is the ratio between your lean muscle mass and bones vs body fat; especially around the belly area.  It is not easy to lose fat around the belly because, what's causing the bulge of the belly are the coated fat on your internal organs.  It's not on the belly tissue; so doing crunches and planks are not going to burn them away.  It's basically about patience, time, proper rest and recovery.

Hope this helps. 

[ToryNiquet21]

Thanks for the reply! So based on what you’re saying what do you think cal wise I should be eating on a daily basis, because that is manly my confusion right now... should i still be eating below maintenance and throw in a couple re-feed days a week? How should I go about this? Because personally i feel like i should still stay in a deficit because I tried taking a couple week “diet break”eating around maintenance / slightly above and did not feel too good doing so.. still was eating clean and getting plenty fruit/greens in... just upped portions but my weight sleightly went up and i felt as if I was a little more pudgy than usual. The last week I have been on 3000 cal but just dropped it to 2700 today... don’t know if that is a good idea or not.

Also, I will try to reduce cardio to address the overtraining... how many days a week would you recommend I do cardio, and as for the rest days you recommend what kind of split should I try... are you saying that I should be getting a complete day of rest between every training session? Should I still be doing cardio on said rest days... and also should i eat less or the same on those rest days?

thanks a lot man your advice helps a lot!

[Baltoscott]

@ToryNiquet21 -- try staying at 3000 a day but laying off all unnecessary cardio for a month and see what happens. (i.e., no treadmill or other cardio machines, and no running just to burn calories ... if you bike or walk places in order to get around it is ok to keep doing that).  If you weight continues to stay the same, you can try cutting calories then.  

As far as how many days of this or that in the gym, because you are already into bodybuilding I'm going to recommend you read "Bigger Leaner Stronger" by Mike Matthews.  It is a good A-Z instruction manual for re-comping your body, explains cuts and bulks, gives you starting recommendations for macros and calorie amounts, has a year of 3, 4, and 5 day/week routines ... and the electronic version is under $1 on Amazon right now (really; it will go up to $8 in a few days).  

@bikerhiker -- I looked at your Trendweight, and it looks like you made a significant drop in your daily fat percentage on May 26.  I'm wondering if maybe you changed your scale from normal to athletic mode then? 

My experience over the past year or two with cuts and bulks is that the delta on my fat percentage change (as measured by my scale) has been about the same as my weight change.  That is, as my weight goes down, my fat percentage as measured by my scale also goes down.  When my weight is stable, my fat percentage is also stable.  And when weight goes up, so does fat percentage.  It is probably my lack of testosterone at 58 years old, but I find it really hard to truly build muscle tissue.  Although the book I've recommended to @ToryNiquet21 recommends low rep ranges (4-6 reps/set) and heavy weights, I've recently increased my rep ranges to 15-20 to avoid injury.  However neither program has really made my muscles bigger.  I'm happy with the way I look, but at 5'10", 160 lbs, and a 23 BMI, I don't have a six pack (maybe a four pack).  I think I could  get a six pack if I dropped another 20 lbs, but I would also look overly bony.

[bikerhiker]

@Baltoscott When Renpho made some software changes in the app in and around in May of 2019 to address the issues of body fat % for a certain body type was when, as you probably saw, a drastic drop in my body fat measurement and increase in lean muscle mass measurement as well.  I wasn't too overly focused on those figures anyhow in the beginning, but it was interesting to see that the current figures match what I am seeing on my body.  That is, my upper body has some bulk/muscles and my waist had shrunk.  I think age plays a big part in building muscles as the older a person gets, the more the muscle definition you lose, so I reckoned that when I do reach your age, I'll be more than happy to look as good as all of you at that age. 🙂