Sport Time for a chance maybe?

Sport Fitness
J

junkfoodbad

2
Ok guys, I've been very patient. I've stuck with my plan, and done everything the way i was taught. I think my progress has halted. Before i started taking pictures to measure progress i lost like 20lbs some of which was muscle. but in the following link, over the past 3 months i see almost no progress.



I thought I was doing everything right, and i was patient hoping it was just a plateau, but a 3 month plateau just doesnt sound right. here is a typical day for me food wise

6:30 - oatmeal w/ honey, whey/casein shake
9:00 - carrots and celery with natural Peanut Butter
11:30 - low fat chicken and cheese on whole wheat wrap
2:00 - peanuts or almonds
4:00 - apple or banana
5:00 - WO
6:00 - PWO shake (whey/casein blend)
7:00 - lean beef / chicken / fish and veggie, sometimes a slice of whole wheat bread
9:00 - cottage cheese and metamucil wafer

this is about 2400 calories total

for my workout, im doing a full body workout on Mon and Thur and im doing either HIIT on my elliptical or playing racquetball all other days of the week.

I have one cheat meal on saturday and sometimes a couple of beers. I know this is not good, but i hardly think its the reason behind my lack of progress.

I've taken a week off of lifting, a week off of cardio, and a week off of eating in a deficit. All of which did nothing. I'm willing to accept any suggestions, im sure you can tell from the pictures how frustrating this can be for me. I still love the fitness lifestyle but i really would like more returns.
 
There are some standards when you hit a plateau in a cutting phase of things to cut out of your diet. When i plateau I find success doing these.

Take out
-bread
-milk
-cheese/cottage cheese

Replace all those things with a whole protein source (not a shake or whey) Basically make egg whites your new best friend and since you are taking out the cheese (which has some fat) you can throw in the yolk a little.

What are the lengths and intensity of your cardios? HIIT is great yes, but the intensity is very important. If you aren't hitting 10 on a scale of one to ten when you go all out, then your aren't doing it right and might need to bump that stuff up a bit. Now i notice you are only doing 2 day a week full body, is there a reason why its not 3?

I certainly understand the frustration, I have a very difficult body and am very strict and move at a snails pace while my roomate can to two pull ups and lose 5 lbs of fat and gain 2 lbs muscle. Sometimes we have to find that nitch. Cutting out dairy and bread might be something you have to do for a little while just to bust through or while cutting. While I am not a fan of long slow cardio for fat loss, I do thing that boot camping yourself is pretty effective and pushing your self hard for a bit is a great step towards fat loss. So maybe 2 days HIIT and then 3 days Moderate to high cardio steady for 30 mins. Basically its time to really push yourself. I know thinking of losing that muscle makes it scary in the cardio aspect, but I think it would be minimal anyway.
 
well im willing to try anything. Next couple of weeks ill try that.

The reason i only do 2 days of weight training is to i can add an extra day of cardio, so i can do it 5 days a week.

As far as my choices of cardio, the past couple of weeks i have been doing a couple days steady long medium intensity cardio for 45 minutes outside only cause i love running outside and the weather wont permit it for much longer.

And my HIIT intensity is all out for 30 seconds, and jog for 1min 30 seconds and i repeat this 10 times, so with a 5 minute warmup its a total of 25 minutes. and i push myself to my limit everytime. the last interval pretty much empties the energy out of me.
 
Well then if you are maintaining your muscle pretty well (don't think you are overtraining) I would add another day of lifting. I think cardio is important but that extra push lifting gives just does so good for the metabolism in cutting.

A schedule somewhat like this...

Lift/HIIT
Med/high steady
Lift
Med/High steady
Lift/HIIT
Rest/General activity (sports maybe, nothing hardcore)
Rest (complete rest)

Try and swtich up your cardio. Take up jump roping or shadow boxing. Throw some hardcore moves in like Burpees. Really challange yourself.

That with a tighten diet should help bust through that wall. Also I just posted in LV's Forum About Plateau Issues. Could provide some help/ideas.
 
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junkfoodbad, I am in exactly the same position as you right now in my weight loss. I haven't seen any progress in about a month, though. I was acutally going to make a thread like this, haha. Thanks for posting that stuff, theleip.
 
theleip said:
Well then if you are maintaining your muscle pretty well (don't think you are overtraining) I would add another day of lifting. I think cardio is important but that extra push lifting gives just does so good for the metabolism in cutting.

A schedule somewhat like this...

Lift/HIIT
Med/high steady
Lift
Med/High steady
Lift/HIIT
Rest/General activity (sports maybe, nothing hardcore)
Rest (complete rest)

Try and swtich up your cardio. Take up jump roping or shadow boxing. Throw some hardcore moves in like Burpees. Really challange yourself.

That with a tighten diet should help bust through that wall. Also I just posted in LV's Forum About Plateau Issues. Could provide some help/ideas.
Click to expand...

see the reason i switched to 2 days a week is cause i cant do cardio and lifting in the same day. i only have a few hours after work to do it, and after a big full body lifting session i got nothing left in the tank to even attempt to look at my elliptical let alone actually use it.

I figured cardio would be more beneficial to fat loss. 2 days a week is enough to prevent muscle loss, which is my only goal with lifting currently. I'l look into other forms of cardio other than jog/elliptical
 
I would still favor weights over cardio, hands down.

There is no upper limit to weights...you can always add another 10lbs of weight to a lift.
But with cardio, you WILL reach a point where you either have to do it longer, or more intensely, to get teh same benefits as you used to when you started cardio months ago.
Going longer will inevitably lead to catabolism.
Going hard works for a while until you pass the aerobic threshold and start working anaerobically...which means you're not burning fat for energy at that point.

That's why HIIT is where its at for cardio.

Its possible 2,400 cals a day IS too many cals to drop fat now. I'm doing about 2,000 a day myself, sitting at 150lbs of lean muscle mass and a total weight of 190lbs last I checked. This is what I personally need to shed fat right now, 3x a week weights, 3x a week cardio...and working a desk job.

If all else fails, drop 200 cals for 2 weeks and see if the scale starts dropping again. 2,400 cals won't maintain 220lbs for long...you'll lose weight.
But my BMR for my 5'9" 29 year old 190lbs self is only about 2400 cals with a desk job, hence why I drop 400 cals from that to lean out.

*shrug*
 
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