Getting Lean and Mean

[Scott Caron]

 

I think that a realistic 6 month goal is to be in the 15 to 18 percent range, and that's with extreme dedication.

 

I think your deficit is too large, quite honestly, but if you want a more detailed analysis you'll need to open a thread in Nutrition.

 

From the Handstand forum:

 

DEFINITELY time to get lean and mean.  Fun fact: I was obese growing up.  Lost 60 lbs in 4 months when I was 18 from teaching myself how to dance every day.  Even so...I have NEVER been super lean, never seen the definition in my abs or any other part of my body really.  I am voyaging into virgin territory for myself.

 

According to my Bod Pod test, I am at 32% body fat. RMR is 2600+ calories a day (just lying in bed wasting away as it were). "Sedentary" (like being a desk jockey who drives home and sits on the couch and watches the telly is 3400 calories a day.  Moderate activity is 4600, and intense activity is 5500 cal/day.

 

Now those are maintenance levels, and I need to be in a deficit.  I'm not quite up to the 5500/day level.  I'm guessing I'm around 4000.  So I set my intake at about 3000-3500/day.  Even so its hard to eat this much, especially when doing it Leangains style in 8 hours.  That's a LOT of food, especially when its done clean, which I am. I finally figured out I have to use oils and fats to get myself there.

 

My meals are:

 

 

-8 ounces organic chicken breast or grass fed ground beef, 1 cup baked yams, 2 cups broccoli or green beans, 2 tablespoons of mac-nut oil and an avocado

 

Salad: 6 ounces baby spinach, 8 ounces baked organic chicken breast, 1 cup peas, 1 avocado, and 6 tablespoons dressing made of 1 part almind butter to 2 parts mac-nut oil

 

-4 hard boiled eggs, 2 cups low fat cottage cheese, 3 tablespoons almond butter and an avocado

 

-occasional post-workout shake: 2 cups unsweetened almond milk, 1 whole carton (2 cups) of liquid egg whites, 6 tablespoons hemp protein powder (since whey has ben shown to be insulinogenic), and 2 tablespoons mac-nut oil.

 

Each of these meals comes out to being a little over 1000 calories, plus I have 8 ounces of coconut water after a workout, and an orange or two per day to stave off sugar-addiciton cravings.

 

I drink approx 150 ounces of water/day.

 

So yeah, that's the plan.  I am doing aggressive progressive cardio 30-60 minutes 5x/week, mixing it up between steady state, HIIT, and LT-Intervals, and I am getting my body comp retested every 2 weeks in the Bod Pod to see how my work is working...

 

Goal: 6 months from now to be down to 10% or lower from my current 32%.

 

Analyze away...

 

[Aaro Helander]

Do you have some really serious muscle mass on you, or how come did you manage to get a +2600 kcal RMR?

 

I'm 6 feet 1 tall and weigh 190 lbs with ~10% bodyfat and my RMR is about 2050 kcal

 

What's your height and weight?

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

How long have you been following this very precise diet and what were the results so far?

It is a lot easier to make adjustments once you have results/feedback, than comment on a "pie in the sky" yet to be implemented project - Please do us all a favor and post your results so far.

[Larry Roseman]

And age. 

 

My suggestion is, if weight loss is your main goal, to go to some of the weight loss sites.

Like fitday or myfitnesspal for example. You may be able to get a sense of what goals work and what

approaches are sustainable. The sites will also give you approximations for your caloric needs.

 

Overall your diet makeup looks pretty good. Water intake seems on the high side - make sure you're getting enough

electrolytes with that kind of volume.  

 

The post workout shake. Make sure that the egg whites are pasteurized for safety and also for deactivating the avidin and making the protein more bio-available.  If you can keep that down you are a better man than I

 

People with a high body fat % can sustain a higher ratio deficit than people in the average 10-20% range,

assuming you can manage the hunger. When you get below 20% then I would start to be concerned about

micro managing the size of your deficit. Suggest you set a reasonable goal like 25% at first and then

adjust rather than "an impossible" task that it is easy to get depressed about.

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

You weight 141 Kg @ 32% fat = 45Kg fat

Assuming you do not lose any lean mass,

your target is 106 Kg @ 10% BF = 10.6Kg in 6 months

 

You need to lose 45-10.6 = 34.4 Kg fat

That is 34.4/6 = 5.75Kg fat per month.

 

5.75 x 7,700 (there is water in your fat tissue) = 44,275Kcal per month

 

44,275Kcal / 30 days = 1475 Kcal deficit energetic required per day.

 

That seems to be too much to be able to retain all your lean mass, but hey, I am not a dietician.

[Scott Caron]

Helander: 6 feet, 7.5 inches tall. 310ish lbs. 210ish lean mass. Please do note my name.

FiC: Just started last week. Have dropped 5 pounds so far (was 315). Will get my body recomped this Friday and every two weeks after that.

FiN: I use MyFitnessPal as a meal planner to make my meals. My calories deficits come from my BodPod tests. Egg whites are pasteurized and go down yummy and make my shake light and fluffy!

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

In that case, keep at it for a full month before making or requesting adjustments and fine tuning.

You (and everyone else) need feedback from the results to help with anything.

 

Heads up on your journey Giant!

[Scott Caron]

FiC...you ninjaed me! Sorry I'm an American bloke...kgs are throwing me off a bit.

But yeah about 10 lbs/month.

I'm eating a high protein diet so hopefully that will help retain lean mass, but from what I hear losing some lean mass along the way I helpful...truth be told I need to cut down on the bulk in my thighs, as I get stronger. Having such long heavy legs makes acro hard even with my strength.

Btw, when I met Coach he noted I am strong...just not gymnast strong, because my strength:weight ratio is so low. That's why I'm really focused on getting cut first, to make my existing strength go further. Will be starting F1 and H1 first week of may, on top of daily intensive cardio, and working with me 2 coaches.

[Joshua Naterman]

Make sure to ignore the first two weeks, because that's when all your water weight will drop, which is what you are seeing. I do not believe that you lost 5 lbs of fat in one week, but that doesn't mean I'm right. At any rate, after the two weeks (assuming you don't change anything, as has been properly suggested) you should track your progress once per week for 4 weeks.

[Joshua Naterman]

Only use calipers or ACSM circumference for tracking your progress, and always have the same person measure the exact same sites.

 

For simplicity, 3 site male skinfolds are going to be your best option unless you can afford to get BodPod done every week. Same time of day, same day each week will give best results.

[Scott Caron]

Prefer the BodPod...no human error and I go every other week.

 

In any case...celebrating a win!

 

Had my first BodPod retest and in only 2 weeks I lost nearly 6.5 lbs of body fat and put on nearly 8 pounds of muscles.  So I gained nearly a lb of weight overall but my body comp went down a net 2.2% in body fat down from 32% to 29.8%.

 

For the curious, with the added muscles mass, my RMR is 2738 kcal/day.  Sedentary is 3505, Low Active is 4134, Active is 4764, and high active is 5695, all maintenance levels.

 

Because I'm cutting down and not crazy active yet, I'm estimating my maintenance level right now to be between 4000 and 4500, and I've been eating between 3000-3500 kcal/day...

 

At this rate I am on track for 10% in 6 months and maybe even hit 5-7% in time for Christmas dinner!

[Daniel Burnham]

8 pounds of muscle in two weeks? Sounds like the calibration may have been off one of the times.

[Scott Caron]

The huffing part of the BodPod was hard for me to get the first round in the BodyPod, but not enough I think to account for 8 lbs...

 

Initial Body Volume was estimated at 137.385 Liters.  The accurate measurement is 137.409 Liters.  Body Density was estimated at 1.0270 kg/L.  The accurate measurement is 1.0317 kg/L. Thoracic Gas Volume the first time was estimated at 5.104 L, but the actual measurement was lower at 4.209 L.

[Joel Tomkins]

 

Had my first BodPod retest and in only 2 weeks I lost nearly 6.5 lbs of body fat and put on nearly 8 pounds of muscles.  

I'd agree, that sounds like a lot for two weeks.

 

I've been hoping to ask Josh about this for a while now because I read a post of his somewhere saying he gained 10lb's in so many months - the exact figures I'm not sure but it was certainly 10lb's in less than a year. I haven't been able to find the post again so I haven't asked but before I found GST I read on Scooby's Workshop that there is a calculable maximum lean mass increase someone can achieve in a year. Josh's gains in the post I can't find seemed to much higher than what Scooby's calculator would say is possible. I don't doubt he gained those figures however, I'd like to know his take on this calculator.

 

I have heard some people talk about muscle memory - where you may have trained for a year and built up a lot of muscle which over a year of non-training has been lost but as soon as you start training again your muscles get back to their peak condition a lot faster than someone starting for the first time.

 

Scooby's calculator is here:

 

http://scoobysworkshop.com/muscle-gain-calculator/

 

For someone who has just started lifting heavy 5-7hrs a week, 186cm and eating a strict bodybuilding diet (best case scenario) your maximum lean mass gain would, according to the calculator, be approximately 21lb's - and your tests results say you gained almost half of that in two weeks? Like I said, I'm not saying they aren't true, I'd just like Josh and others to weigh in on this calculator.

[Joshua Naterman]

Something to keep in mind is that while 8 lbs in 2 weeks is PROBABLY a little off, this guy is way, way bigger than us. He has a larger gut, and can absorb more protein than we can because of it. He's also nowhere near his FFMI limit, so even theoretically he's quite a ways off from leveling out on muscle gain.

 

I saw two of my friends, one of whom was a hardgainer, put on 35  (6'2" 135 to 170) and 45 lbs (5'9" 145 to 190), respectively, in 4-6 months. I'd have to ask them to know for sure whether it was 4 months or 6 months. We lived together for that time, worked out together, cooked together, everything was in place as perfect as it could be, more or less. The majority of that was muscle. It was kind of freaky, actually. Obviously these gains were outside the norms, but we were in the literal ideal situation for this. In the same timeframe, I gained 8-10 lbs, because I had a whole lot more muscle on my frame than they did.

 

The point here is that as you get more muscle mass, your gains slow down.

 

Best estimates are that well-developed competitors can put on 12-15 lbs of actual muscle per year under ideal conditions without drugs. About 1 lb per month.

 

If you're staying really LEAN and gaining, it's slower than that, because you don't have the extra calories powering growth.

[Joshua Naterman]

Very few studies examine 3x per week full body training, if any, and this is what we were doing.

 

Right now I am literally at the theoretical maximum that Scooby lists. Only time will tell whether I ever move beyond it. We'll know in a year or two lol In theory I can no longer gain muscle mass. We shall see.

[Scott Caron]

What is the FFMI limit...and what is my supposed theoretical limit?

[Joel Tomkins]

Very few studies examine 3x per week full body training, if any, and this is what we were doing.

 

Right now I am literally at the theoretical maximum that Scooby lists. Only time will tell whether I ever move beyond it. We'll know in a year or two lol In theory I can no longer gain muscle mass. We shall see.

Is this limit imposed because your body is not capable of absorbing enough protein (and other nutrients) to sustain any more muscle tissue than you already have?

[Joel Tomkins]

What is the FFMI limit...and what is my supposed theoretical limit?

If you enter your results into the calculator I linked above it gives your theoretical limits at 5, 10, 15 and 20% body fat. The predicted maximum table is just below the one year gain table.

[Joshua Naterman]

Is this limit imposed because your body is not capable of absorbing enough protein (and other nutrients) to sustain any more muscle tissue than you already have?

No, not even close. FFMI was based on observations of the biggest known (or strongly believed to be) clean bodybuilders, in the pre-steroid era, and I do not believe there is any specific set of mechanisms that box it in nice and neat.

[Joel Tomkins]

No, not even close. 

 Okay!

[Scott Caron]

Ah, FFMI stands for Fat Free Body Mass.  According to that calculator I will only able to ever add about 24 lbs of muscle mass on to my frame.  Not sure if I buy that at all.  As I do bodyweight training and add upper body muscle, my bones will get denser as well.

 

Is this calculator credible?  Body builders believe a lot of things that are not necessarily true.  For one thing Intermittent Fasting blows conventional body building nutrition practices out the window, and of course we know that Body Builders who seem strong easily fail when they try to do GST...

[FREDERIC DUPONT]

One step at a time The Giant: First lose the fat, then prove him wrong by putting on 50 pounds of lean muscle.

[Scott Caron]

Fat loss in progress! 

 

To be fair though, again, that is fro a body building mentality.  I surely do need to add mass in my upper body, and cut down on the mass in my legs while making them stronger.  How much so though I have no way of knowing.  I want just enough mass and strength to have total mastery of my body in the acrobatic sense, and not an ounce more or less... 

[Joshua Naterman]

Giant:

 

According to FFMI estimates, at your current weight of 310 llbs you cannot drop below 21% body fat.

 

You could, however, theoretically hit 280 lbs @ 12%. That would give you a lean mass of ~244 lbs, which would be pretty ridiculously huge.

 

You could also be 266 @ 8%, but that would probably not be super fun to maintain. A true 8% is really, really lean.

 

All of those are based on an FFMI of 25.9-ish, which is where I am right now. I have fluctuated between 25.9 and 26.4-ish for the past 6 months. Of course, I haven't been eating enough either, and I have only been really working out properly for a few months now. I have provided this information partly for fun, because you asked, and partly because I understand the desire to know what one's limits are.

Having said that, here is some food for thought:

 

There is no way to know how relevant any of this is, and I do not suggest that you spend any additional time thinking about it, because your energy really needs to stay focused on what you are doing right now. If you eat right, work out right, and stay consistent in your efforts, you will discover your limits on your own terms, and in the process move far beyond anything you have accomplished up to this point.