not getting leaner

Hi there,

For quite a while I have been cutting all my carbs and the junk food. Problem is that I dont see any progress regarding being leaner. I have no food scale at home and I dont know how to count calories properly but I dont think I eat badly. Essentially I stick to a few carbs for breakfast (oats) and before/after workout so my body doesnt burn the whey. I am 1.80 86kg and VA says my BF is around 14-15%

Here's a typical day of mine:

Morning: Whey, Oats and Milk Smoothie

Mid: Morning: Omlette (sometimes a low-carb protein bar)

Lunch: Warm Chicken & Veg Salad

Afternoon Snack: Bilton & Nuts (sometimes a low-carb protein bar)

Preworkout: Some carbs (eg Banana)

Postworkout: Whey & some carbs

Supper: chicken or fish plus Butternut and other veggies

You would need to give at least an estimate of the quantity of the foods as well as how you are prepping them.

Define"quite awhile"....Generally when you try get your body fat down its relatively easy to get it down from say 20 down to 14-15 but getting it down from there to under 10% is (imo) incredibly difficult. Perhaps an increase in cardio and lessening the rest periods between sets will initiate an increase in fat loss. A change in workouts but also in timing can break a plateau. An increase in poundage and a decrease in reps can kickstart an increase in muscle mass leading to a greater increase in fat burning but its not a short term process and does take longer period of time than the initial losses.

saiman wrote:

Hi there,

For quite a while I have been cutting all my carbs and the junk food. Problem is that I dont see any progress regarding being leaner. I have no food scale at home and I dont know how to count calories properly but I dont think I eat badly. Essentially I stick to a few carbs for breakfast (oats) and before/after workout so my body doesnt burn the whey. I am 1.80 86kg and VA says my BF is around 14-15%

Here's a typical day of mine:

Morning: Whey, Oats and Milk Smoothie

Mid: Morning: Omlette (sometimes a low-carb protein bar)

Lunch: Warm Chicken & Veg Salad

Afternoon Snack: Bilton & Nuts (sometimes a low-carb protein bar)

Preworkout: Some carbs (eg Banana)

Postworkout: Whey & some carbs

Supper: chicken or fish plus Butternut and other veggies

i have highlighted your problems bro...

u need to know how many grams of everything u are taking in,with out knowing a gram value and counting the calories u wont know where u are going wrong.. email me for a custom diet,its worth the cost as there is no guess work,u get a meal plan with every single gram of every thing u should be taking in...worth the money

u will need to invest in a scale.. R250 for a digital one at clicks bud...

thanks for the help. As soon as I can afford it I will invest in the customized diet. But I still dont understand why I have but down so much on carbs and sugar and I still seem to be stagnating on the weight I had when I was just eating what I felt like.

saiman wrote:

thanks for the help. As soon as I can afford it I will invest in the customized diet. But I still dont understand why I have but down so much on carbs and sugar and I still seem to be stagnating on the weight I had when I was just eating what I felt like.

saiman wrote:

Here's a typical day of mine:

Morning: Whey, Oats and Milk Smoothie

Mid: Morning: Omlette (sometimes a low-carb protein bar)

Lunch: Warm Chicken & Veg Salad

Afternoon Snack: Bilton & Nuts (sometimes a low-carb protein bar)

Preworkout: Some carbs (eg Banana)

Postworkout: Whey & some carbs

Supper: chicken or fish plus Butternut and other veggies

Well I dont have amounts of what you are eating but it looks to me that there is a possibilty that your fats are too low and so your overall calories for the day are too low and as a result you wont lose anything as your body is running on low calories. You might want to increase your fats once you know how much of everything you are actually consuming

saiman wrote:

thanks for the help. As soon as I can afford it I will invest in the customized diet. But I still dont understand why I have but down so much on carbs and sugar and I still seem to be stagnating on the weight I had when I was just eating what I felt like.

bud when u eat sugars and high gi carbs your body secretes insulin which is your storage hormone,high gi carbs and sugars are digested very quickly to give u an energy boost,if u dont use that available energy and insulin is secreted your body stores those carbs for later use in the fat cells,if your muscles are very depleted of glycogen(carbs stored in the muscle) and then u take in high gi carbs/sugars your body will secrete insulin and store glucose(blood sugar) in the muscle... now lets say u train in the afternoon and u have sugar and simple carbs in the morning after having a full days food the day before,u are going to spike insulin,your muscles are already going to be saturated from all the carbs from the day before so your muscles wont absorb the carbs and if u are sitting on the couch or behind a computer and not using the energy u have just eaten from the carbs your body is going to store those carbs...and where do they go to be stored? body fat... rule of thumb is u should have carbs 3 times a day... LOW GI CARBS in the morning,they do not spike insulin as much as high gi carbs and take longer to digest giving u sustained energy, Low and high gi carbs pre work out to give u instant and sustained energy for a heavy work out,and then high gi carbs post work out to replenish glycogen stores and spike insulin to shuttle protein into the muscles... the other meals of the day should be a combination of protein and fats and minimal carbs(20-30g low gi carbs) to sustain energy... if u are using fats protein and low gi carbs as a meal then the fats will slow down the digestion of the carbs aswell...

so therefore sugar is bad... also u are not eating enough protein,protein is the building blocks of all muscle and cells... if u want to cut body fat and retain muscle u need to keep your protein constant on a daily basis, and then if u like u can go ketogenic with only fats as your fuel source,or u can use fats and carbs to get your body down to low levels of bf, u need to stager your carb intake to keep your body guessing and keeping your fat loss constant...

what u need to realise is to burn body fat u need to take in less calories + increase energy expenditure(through cardio) to burn up the excess stored calories(body fat) but u cannot keep the low calories for too long otherwise your body becomes adaptive to this and starts to go into starvation mode where your body will start feeding on muscle to give the body energy as the body likes to hold on to body fat as it can keep the body fat for incases of extreme need... just think of you going for 40 days in a desert with no food and water,after 4 days your body will become adaptive and start holding onto body fat as its a source of energy which can be used over a long period of time for sustained energy,the body will then turn catabolic and start feeding on muscles for amino acids and energy which is a bad thing...the more muscle u loose the less energy u burn,therefore the less fat u burn... think of your body as a car engine, if u are at 2.0l and u start reducing the size of the engine your start to use less petrol... so the bigger the engine (the more muscle mass) the more petrol(body fat/carbs/fats) u burn up... so by reducing your muscle mass by starving the body u are going to burn less body fat....

u gotta realise that 80% of the work is nutrition, even when bulking,u can take 5000000000000000mg of test a week, if u are not giving your body enough energy to repair and recover from weight training and enough energy to push heavy weights u are going to not put on a single kg...

so basically u are not taking in enough food from protein quality carbs and fats and u have slowed your metabolism right down to a snail as your body is starving..

cut the sugars, increase the protein and try some clen....stuff is so reliable in fat cutting if used correctly its crazy :laugh:

but isnt that what i was doing? In the morning I have a cup of raw oats (Low GI carbs) with my whey and then I only take in carbs around my training hour. But as beesting said, I may just not eat enough. Whats a good way to get my metabolism up again. Do like a refeed?

eish i dont know any more. I am not even sure whether I am really not eating enough or the problem is something else. I never knew that nutrition can be so frustrating and complicated. I though the hard part is the discipline not figuring everything out. I guess first I have to buy the damn scale and then start understanding all that diet maths etc.

like i said bro,its worth the while getting me to draw u up a diet,all u have to do is buy the food,weight the food,eat the food,report back once a week for 3 months and i make adjustments weekly depending on your weight loss... simple dude..i take all the guess work out of things and u get the results u want... if i was to do your diet i would up your calories for a week or 2 and make sure u get your metabolism to a certain point and then after that 2 weeks we will cut the calories then start putting in cardio... u can ask a couple guys,i have ogre dieting already for his shows,he started at 122kgs and with not a stitch on cardio he is down to 113 and is stronger than before... he will be adding in cardio to get his weight down to 105 and then we will start playing with anabolics and cardio...

Well i can second what DJ is saying regarding his diet plan.went from 100kgs almost to now 86kgs.lost a shit load of bodyfat and still in the process of losing more.all i can say it was the greatest investment investing in DJ's diet plan.u may know what to eat,the type of foods etc,but the finer things like quantitys to eat is most important. i was eating very clean before DJ's diet plan but i was under eating and after the his diet plan everything went boom"from zero to hero"

yeah you right bro, I will invest in the diet. Only way to take my gyming to the next level

Saimen u hit the nail on the head "taking gyming to another level"

Sash wrote:

Well i can second what DJ is saying regarding his diet plan.went from 100kgs almost to now 86kgs.lost a shit load of bodyfat and still in the process of losing more.all i can say it was the greatest investment investing in DJ's diet plan.u may know what to eat,the type of foods etc,but the finer things like quantitys to eat is most important. i was eating very clean before DJ's diet plan but i was under eating and after the his diet plan everything went boom"from zero to hero"

thanks for the vote of confidence bud..

only a pleasure