Tweaking Thrive for sustainable fat loss?

Hey @Jeff Serven, I'm enjoying Thrive so far—I've cleaned up my diet quite a bit and I'm feeling more energy and mental clarity throughout the day.

What's bumming me out a bit is that I'm putting on some fat in the process.

I don't fault Thrive for this. I'm coming off a 10-month diet where I dropped from 152 lbs. and 20% body fat down to 130 lbs. and 12.5% body fat. I did some pretty extreme stuff to achieve that: 2+ hours a day of low-intensity cardio, intermittent fasting, weighing food down to the gram and restricting calories to around 1300 per day.

I've done this twice now, and both times I've found that the weight came back pretty quickly. Classic yo-yo.

The problem I'm having with Thrive is that I can easily pound down large amounts of Thrive-approved foods, and I'm still starving. Since Thrive is about adding and not taking away or restricting, I wind up consistently overeating. And since I'm still early in my GST workout regimen (early in F1, H1), where the focus is on mobility vs. heavy strength work, most of those extra calories are going to fat.   

To give you some idea, for dinner the other night I started with 8 oz. of ground beef, 3-4 cups of broccoli/cauliflower, and a cup (cooked) of white rice. Easily 700-800 calories, and I was still pretty hungry after that. I think I followed that with a couple hundred more calories of oatmeal with raisins, and probably some Greek yogurt...

It would not be hard for me to eat 2500-3000 calories a day like this, and I'll gain 1+ pound per week, mostly fat.

Maybe the solution is as simple as being more disciplined, "eat less, move more."

I've proven to myself that I can do that for extended periods of time, but if I'm not driving hard for a goal, my resolve cracks and I can't maintain.

What are some steps I can take to troubleshoot this?

Josh, I'm not Jeff but I'll throw in my two cents in the meantime.

Firsf off--congrats on substantial fat loss! I know what it's like to be very disciplined, get great results, and then struggle with "maintenance" eating. I think Thrive can help you with this.

Assuming this lesson is as far as you'be gotten into the program, you'll notice this is the first task with a serving size, and there will be more serving size guidance forthcoming. Getting those in line should help with the hunger and restrict excess eating.

Servings are often ranges--and for me, when I stay on the lower end of the requirements I tend to lose fat. When I eat at the upper end, I maintain. 

Of course, the above is true for me when I pretty much only stick to my Thrive meals and don't have any add-ons/extra snacks/treats. 

So--based on my experience, I think you'all get what you want by the end of the program. In the meantime, I'd follow your instinct to move more and eat less (maybe mix up your carb source with a lighter calorie option or add some additional volume work/low intensity cardio or sprinting since Foundatin is taxing you just yet!).

Thanks, @Julia Quigley, that's helpful. 

You're correct that this is as far as I've gotten into the program, although I'm guessing that the remaining steps are portion sizes for the elements in each meal. 

I somehow got the impression though that the portion sizes will be in the form of minimums, i.e. at least 1-2 fist sized portions, rather than maximums. Maybe that's just for the veggies.

Sounds like you're treating them as an upper limit, which makes sense.

From experience that will likely leave me ravenously hungry, but perhaps if I power through that for a while my body will adapt. 

Without necessarily knowing what I'm talking about, I'd say if you're experiencing this even with eating large amounts of food then it's probably just due to "not being a good fat burner" (in the words of Jeff).

Also, could have to do with how much sugar you have throughout your day. I've been making a point the last few days to drop my daily added sugar intake down a LOT and the more I've been dropping it, the more I've been noticing this same effect. I think it's less actually being hungry and more that my brain would really really like it if I gave it some sugar or more carbs or something! I personally just keep telling myself that it's all part of the process and that soon my body will realize it's time to start using fat for fuel as well as good carbs, and everything will start falling into place.

In any case, as I understand it, if you've been used to getting all of your energy from carbs and not fat then your body needs time to adapt. In the meantime, if you're using quick-burning carbs like white rice, your body is going to plow through that pretty quickly and start asking you for more before long. I'd say stick to smaller "snack meals" in between larger ones for the time being if it's too annoying. I've heard in other threads to just have smaller portions of what you'd have for lunch/dinner.

14 hours ago, Bryce Hewett said:

Without necessarily knowing what I'm talking about, I'd say if you're experiencing this even with eating large amounts of food then it's probably just due to "not being a good fat burner" (in the words of Jeff).

Yep, this makes a ton of sense. To reframe my question to @Jeff Serven:

Are the steps in Thrive 1 enough to become an efficient fat burner, or does it require more a more "extreme" approach that'll be covered in Thrive 2?

And what minor modifications can I make to start to tip the scales in the right direction while waiting for Thrive 2 to land?

14 hours ago, Bryce Hewett said:

Also, could have to do with how much sugar you have throughout your day. I've been making a point the last few days to drop my daily added sugar intake down a LOT and the more I've been dropping it, the more I've been noticing this same effect. I think it's less actually being hungry and more that my brain would really really like it if I gave it some sugar or more carbs or something! I personally just keep telling myself that it's all part of the process and that soon my body will realize it's time to start using fat for fuel as well as good carbs, and everything will start falling into place.

This also makes sense. The feeling is similar to what I experienced in a zero-carb experiment a while back. You can be "full" but still hungry.

The problem isn't so much, "waaaaa, I'm hungry." I can power through that for months at a time when I'm gunning for a specific goal.

But the idea of fighting that feeling every evening for the rest of my life is not really sustainable. 

14 hours ago, Bryce Hewett said:

I'd say stick to smaller "snack meals" in between larger ones for the time being if it's too annoying. I've heard in other threads to just have smaller portions of what you'd have for lunch/dinner.

This is where I run into trouble. Right now, I probably need around 1800-2000 calories per day to maintain my weight. If I eat an extra half-meal, that would easily put me over into fat-gaining territory.

I don't have any issues between breakfast and dinner. It's lunch-time now, and I'm not really even hungry.

The wolf only comes out at night.

One thing I'm trying this week is upping my intake at breakfast. I'm eating 4 eggs instead of 2 and adding half a cup or so of full-fat yogurt.

I'm also working on retraining myself to think of the Thrive portions as maximums—what my body actually needs, vs. what it thinks it needs.

Still too soon to know if this will help, although last night seemed moderately better. 

How much do you weigh? How tall are you? I need the frame of reference for cals. For example I am 6 ft 190 and I usually eat about 2900-3300 cals in a day. If your roughly my size then I would say you aren't eating too much. 

Mastering the basics gets you pretty far, but once you have got there then its time to do more. Its possible that you are there its also possible that you just need some time off the Yo-Yo diet. With those type of diets there is no way not to gain weight on the rebound. So it may not matter what you eat after that diet you may gain weight. 

2 minutes ago, Jeff Serven said:

How much do you weigh? How tall are you? I need the frame of reference for cals. For example I am 6 ft 190 and I usually eat about 2900-3300 cals in a day. If your roughly my size then I would say you aren't eating too much. 

Thanks, @Jeff Serven. For context, I'm 5'9" and currently 144 lbs. Scale puts me at 15.4% body fat.

I finished my last round of dieting at the end of August, and I was around 132 lbs. and 12.5% body fat.

Initially coming off of the diet (and before starting Thrive), I was gaining around 1 lb. a week and BF wasn't climbing much. I think I was mainly just regaining some of the muscle that wasted away during my diet.

Now it's leveled off a bit, and I seem to be gaining around 0.5 lb. per week, mostly fat.

This is typical of how how my body likes to roll.

I'm not a very muscular guy, and in the past when I've eaten a calorie surplus it seems to go 70/30 into fat vs. muscle.

Then when I diet off weight, I lose 50/50 fat and muscle. Not a cycle that leads to a lot of success.

Moving discussion on this out to the general forum: 

Josh.

Assuming your scale is correct on body fat(unlikely, but lets use it) you went from 144@15.4 which is 22 pounds of body fat to 132@12.5 - 16.5 pounds of body fat. So you lost 12 pounds in total but 5 pounds of fat (22-16.5 ) and 7 pounds of muscle. In so many words your diet sucks. whatever you are doing you should never do again. you literally made your body composition worse. But on the brighter side we will get ya' going in the right direction. 

You gain weight after a diet like that because your body is attempting to gain back some of the functional mass it was forced to ditch. This is normal and heathy. This is not a failure on your part. You didn't end the diet then do something wrong. Its just simple mathematics. 

For a 132 pound guy I would guess 2000 cals a day give or take 20%(extremely rough estimation) 

Take home point for everyone else: IF only works if you are on PEDs or you have 50+ pounds of fat to lose. 

56 minutes ago, Jeff Serven said:

Assuming your scale is correct on body fat(unlikely, but lets use it) you went from 144@15.4 which is 22 pounds of body fat to 132@12.5 - 16.5 pounds of body fat. So you lost 12 pounds in total but 5 pounds of fat (22-16.5 ) and 7 pounds of muscle. In so many words your diet sucks. whatever you are doing you should never do again. you literally made your body composition worse. But on the brighter side we will get ya' going in the right direction. 

You gain weight after a diet like that because your body is attempting to gain back some of the functional mass it was forced to ditch. This is normal and heathy. This is not a failure on your part. You didn't end the diet then do something wrong. Its just simple mathematics. 

For a 132 pound guy I would guess 2000 cals a day give or take 20%(extremely rough estimation) 

Take home point for everyone else: IF only works if you are on PEDs or you have 50+ pounds of fat to lose. 

Hey @Jeff Serven, completely agree—that's why I signed up for Thrive. My problem before is that when I wasn't "dieting" with a specific goal in mind, I had no fence around what I was eating, so I'd just slowly gain weight. Thrive is helping with that, a lot.

Also agreed that the scale BF% isn't really accurate—I just use it as an indicator to see which direction I'm heading.

When I first came off my extended diet this fall, I was gaining weight but it was mostly muscle. For the last 1-2 months any gains have been 80-90% fat. I can see it on the scale and in the mirror.

The main reason I've been gaining some fat with Thrive so far is the approach of adding good habits without imposing any restrictions. 

I ate a lot of Thrive-compliant foods prior to starting Thrive, so it's not like broccolli started crowding out pizza dinners. 

Plus deliberately adding in more starches made it super easy to shoot my calories way above my daily needs.

The fat gain seems to have somewhat leveled off. I'm hovering right around 15.5% BF on my scale at 144 lbs.

It seems like the later steps in Thrive do start to put an upper limit on total daily calories, so that's been helpful.

I have a follow-up question, but I'll post it out in the General thread.