No BF% Changes!

Well, after a few months with no changes in bf, I need some suggestions on my diet I suppose. It usually isn't my main goal to be focusing bf, but after seeing no changes in it for quite some time, it gets a bit irritating to say the least. Anyways, heres what I eat currently. I don't eat it all in one day of course, just the items I throw around from day to day. Also, should I be having protein shakes on rest days?

Eggs 3-4 (Whole)

Beef .24kg

Chicken .18kg

Frozen Mixed Veges (usually end up making stir-fry)

Banana

Apple

Carrots

Cashews (30g, the odd day)

Grapes

Broccoli

Caesar salad (rarely)

Tuna (2-3 days a week)

Protein Shake (usually 2 a day) - with the following ingredients

2 cups coconut milk,2 cups skim milk(or)rice dream,4 tsp cocoa powder, 3 scoops protein, 1-1 1/2 tbsp honey - this makes about 4 servings.

Example Day:

Eggs - 3-4

Banana

Protein Shake (pre-workout)

Grapes

Protein Shake (post-workout)

Grapes

Stir Fry (.24kg beef, 2c mixed veges, stir fry sauce)

(Snack) Apple(and/or)Cashews

Tuna(or)Chicken (cooked in a bit of Jamaica Sauce, or Stir-Fry Sauce)

Have you tried reducing your calories?

Yes, I was around 2000 for quite a while, even now I'm not at very much more each day. I also don't want to eat so little that I stop my strength gains.

What's your weight?

161, 5'11 and probably around 9% bf

Well, I would say that you were overestimating your calories. That's all I'll say, though, as I'm alone in my nutrition theories on this board. Everyone will contradict me and so you won't listen to my advice anyway. :wink:

I've counted calories, actually counted each thing, many times, for a long time. I know pretty much exactly how much I'm eating each day, and it's never a huge amount.

Small mistakes in calorie counting plus a diet induced decrease in non-exercise activity thermogenesis can close the gap between between intake and expenditure really quick. I'd say that's probably what happened. If you you were truly accurate on your calories then you probably reduced your NEAT significanly. So, reduce calories or keep/increase NEAT levels. But I've said too much already!

I think I'll reduce calories on my rest days a bit more where possible, and increase NEAT levels. Sometimes I get really lazy and don't do much, especially in winter...

You could also be seeing something as simple as not eating often enough. When you're on a low calorie diet it is very important that your body be getting food every 2-3 hours. That helps keep you from going into a temporary starvation mode where your body attempts to preserve and replenish the fat. if you're already at 9% that may be part of the issue. Do you have any idea what your daily fructose intake is and when you are consuming it? You may want to only have the grapes AFTER the workout and just have white or sweet potato before if getting lower than 9% is your goal. 9% is pretty lean.

Triangle is right as I see it. But dude check your protein shakes, they're massive! Maybe drop the pre WO shake and only take in 10-15g BCAA pre WO. Isn't there also a significant amount of fructose in honey?

slizzardman-

I do eat every 2-3 hours, smaller meals, the stir fry is probably as big as it goes for me. No I don't know what my daily fructose intake is, I'm not to sure about many things on nutrition, which is why I ask these things because I've tried so many things that people have advised me to do, many different forums, still don't get very far. If you're talking about fructose from junk food/pop etc, I drink pop around once a month, and same with the junk food. It's very rare, and usually isn't very much when I do have it.

Razz-

I already know the protein shake has nothing to do with me not losing any body fat. I just recently made the protein shakes like this because I saw someone post up what they put in their shake, so I just wanted to try it out (it's actually really good lol). So, that's just recent, I wasn't seeing bf changes way before I started with those. Usually I just stick the 1 scoop in water.

Junk even once or twice a month may be too much unless you restrict your calorie intake more. I've noticed in myself that if I drink once or twice a month I don't lean out at all but if I do then I slowly lean out. And I have a very high activity level. If you don't wanna change your diet, add in some metcon a few times per week. Of course there are also other factors such as getting good sleep, having a low stress level etc..

I know this is not what you want to hear, but could it be possible that your body is pretty content with the amount of bodyfat you have right now? - after all the whole fat synthesis and oxidation process is hormone restricted. 9 % is pretty lean. This might not be the case but I'm just throwing it out there..

slizzardman said:

You could also be seeing something as simple as not eating often enough. When you're on a low calorie diet it is very important that your body be getting food every 2-3 hours. That helps keep you from going into a temporary starvation mode where your body attempts to preserve and replenish the fat. if you're already at 9% that may be part of the issue. Do you have any idea what your daily fructose intake is and when you are consuming it? You may want to only have the grapes AFTER the workout and just have white or sweet potato before if getting lower than 9% is your goal. 9% is pretty lean.

Hey slizzardman, it's trianglechoke, your most favoritest and annoying debate partner.

"Starvarvation mode" is something that takes a really long time to kick in. One of my finals in schools this semester was a presentation on meal frequency and weight control. I looked at this issue of "starvation" in the literature and found something very interesting - studies on starvation are mixed in their results in that some show decreases in metabolism over the first few days of starvation and others show increases in metabolism. I highlighted two studies in my presentation as examples of these mixed results. One study starved people for 3 days straight and only seen an 8% decrease in metabolism. That's a significant amount but consider these people ate 0 calories for three days. What do you think is going to happen over only a few hours? An example of starvation causing an increase in metabolism can be seen here:

http://www.ajcn.org/content/71/6/1511.long

In this study the authors saw a sustained increase in metabolic rate over 84 hours of eating nothing.

Slizz, I don't think the whole eat every 2-3 hrs is the only way to go. I've known a lot of people who had very good success with IF. In terms of both muscle gain and fat loss. And as Triangle posted, it seems very unlikely that body goes into "starvation mode" after only few hours of not eating. Especially when you consider that if you believe in the paleo stuff, that man likely went days without eat very often. Certainly they did not eat many small meals a day.

Check out Lean Gains. It may work for you to lose some of that stubborn fat while still maintaining, or even gaining strength.

To tag onto my last post: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/9155494.

Study that compared eating everything between 1-17 meals/day and found no metabolic advantage to eating more meals.

I talked about that review in my presentation. Nothing has come out since 1997, that I could find, which contradicts its findings.

What are you studying Triangle?

Razz said:

What are you studying Triangle?

I'm a grad student in exercise physiology.

Grad student=last year of bachelor or is it equivelant to a masters degree?

Either way thats cool shit! Same thing I'm doing

Grad student = currently pursuing masters degree. I completed my bachelors almost 4 years ago and now I'm going back to school.

Ido's book recommendations:

Ido Portal said:

I have many books that paint part of the picture, but not even one that contains the whole Shabang.

Here are some:

The Metabolic Diet / Mauro di Pasquale

Lights Out / Wiley

Protein Power / Eades

The Paleo Diet / Cordain

Natural Hormonal Enhencement / Faigin

Neaderthin / Audette

I can go on and on. I am an obsessed reader. I read many books at the same time and on many topics.

I also recommend to get my good friend's upcomming book - Robb Wolf on nutrition. If you are smart you will make this book a part of your library as I will.

Ido.

Might be of help for OP

Once I get to meet Ido I'm gonna interrogate him about books to read

Well I'm sure hoping it doesn't take too long for me to figure out what exactly it is that I'm doing wrong. I'm going to try decreasing calories, and watch very carefully how much I'm having. NEAT levels being too low sounds like something that might be messing me over a bit too. Maybe adding in HIIT or metcon like Razz suggested. I think this part got missed in my first post, should I be drinking protein shakes every day? Or just workout days? I find it hard to get enough meals in my day without taking 1-2 each day, usually food ends up being a bit limited here, many people in the house. So, protein shake daily, good or bad? (Talking just 1 scoop and water btw, not the other one I've been making lately, unless that one would be more beneficial, comments on that as well would be great.)