Cutting - Making "adjustments" to your nutrition

TX_Aggie_Dad

I am four weeks into my current plan of cutting body fat. I'm eating at TDEE - 20%. My exercise regime involves 5-6 days per week of a combination of Crossfit (2-3 per week), traditional strength training (1-2 per week), running (5-8 miles per week), and Yoga (once per week). I "weigh-in" once per week and measure body fat % through my scale and through the navy circumference method. Here are my results thus far:



Directionally I like the progress thus far, but my concern is losing too much muscle mass. However, I also know that the BF measuring methods I'm using are inherently inaccurate so I hesitate to use them exclusively to fine tune my nutrition.

With all of that, would you make adjustments at this point, or stay the course a few more weeks to get more data?

TX_Aggie_Dad

Any help?

melmckay99

This sounds almost exactly like my schedule! I run, I do crossfit, I do weight lifting and I do Yoga once a week!

Though I am not trying to lose anything anymore (not even BF%), I can say that I have been able to maintain everything with this exercise regime. I have even been able to up my maintenance calories quite significantly too (yay!), which is always a bonus because I like eating A LOT! lol.

tubzzy77

You're going to lose muscle mass when you cut. I would stay a few more weeks and see how its going. I mean you're losing weight and your cut is going good. You haven't plateaued or anything.

jwdieter

Any help?

Looks like you're making progress consistent with your approach. That's a pretty good definition of success.
If you wanted to lose more, faster, you could try a different approach.

TX_Aggie_Dad

Thanks. Mostly concerned about the ratio of fat loss to lean mass loss. That seems to be about 50/50 which isn't quite what I expected. I guess I was thinking I'd lose more body fat and lose less lean mass.

TX_Aggie_Dad

Does anyone think I should be eating more? Is 2200 calories maybe a bit low and making it harder to maintain lean mass while cutting? I have another weight-in tomorrow and if I stay true to form I think I'm going to bump up to 2600 calories and see what happens.

fluffykitsune

I thought I read somewhere that you can only lose about 4lb of actual fat a month. Raising your calories will help you maintain muscle, not sure if you want to raise it 400 cals though. Aiming for 3 days of Strength Training might do you good.

SideSteel

OP:

Is your strength training program providing a progressive resistance? (Are your lifts going up incrementally?)

Are you lifting full body twice/week or a split program?

SideSteel

EDIT:

Rather than asking "Am I losing muscle" I think a better question is: "Am I doing everything correctly in order to minimize any muscle losses while I diet?"

And I think the following criteria need to be addressed to assess this.

1) Am I keeping my rate of loss within a reasonable target (and consequently not creating a massive caloric deficit)?

I think 1% bw/week is a good general guideline. Obese people might be able to go slightly faster without much additional risk of muscle loss and at a certain level of leanness (very lean) it's likely to happen (leaner = tougher to hang onto lbm).


2) Are my macros set reasonably? (Total calories in a good spot, adequate macronutrients?)

Lean middle-aged people doing lots of activity in a big caloric deficit will require more protein than an overweight 18-year old eating in a small deficit with less activity. (context).

3) Is my training providing adequate stimulus?

There's a big difference between, say, a bodypart split hitting everything one time per week in a non-progressively loading fashion, vs a full body barbell program with progressive loading (everything gets hit 3/week and you get stronger over time).


I think you should look to answer those questions above and if you find that you're doing all of these things, I would stop worrying about it and just enjoy your progress and trust that the body-fat measurement tools are pretty inaccurate.

If you AREN'T doing the above things, I'd consider examining them.

morkiemama

EDIT:

Rather than asking "Am I losing muscle" I think a better question is: "Am I doing everything correctly in order to minimize any muscle losses while I diet?"

And I think the following criteria need to be addressed to assess this.

1) Am I keeping my rate of loss within a reasonable target (and consequently not creating a massive caloric deficit)?

I think 1% bw/week is a good general guideline. Obese people might be able to go slightly faster without much additional risk of muscle loss and at a certain level of leanness (very lean) it's likely to happen (leaner = tougher to hang onto lbm).


2) Are my macros set reasonably? (Total calories in a good spot, adequate macronutrients?)

Lean middle-aged people doing lots of activity in a big caloric deficit will require more protein than an overweight 18-year old eating in a small deficit with less activity. (context).

3) Is my training providing adequate stimulus?

There's a big difference between, say, a bodypart split hitting everything one time per week in a non-progressively loading fashion, vs a full body barbell program with progressive loading (everything gets hit 3/week and you get stronger over time).


I think you should look to answer those questions above and if you find that you're doing all of these things, I would stop worrying about it and just enjoy your progress and trust that the body-fat measurement tools are pretty inaccurate.

If you AREN'T doing the above things, I'd consider examining them.

SideSteel to the rescue!

TX_Aggie_Dad

OP:

Is your strength training program providing a progressive resistance? (Are your lifts going up incrementally?)

Are you lifting full body twice/week or a split program?

Progressive resistance - yes. Absolutely always pushing to lift heavier.

My program consists of:
Monday - Upper body traditional strength training
Tuesday - Crossfit plus some kind of strength component
Wednesday - Yoga
Thursday - Crossfit plus some kind of strength component
Friday - Lower body traditional strength training
Saturday - Crossfit or Long Run
Sunday - rest day

I think I could definitely replace some of the Crossfit and Run with another strength day or two. I'm actually planning to cut out the running and go with 3 days per week of traditional strength training (alternate between upper and lower days - staying heavy), 2 days of Crossfit, 1 yoga, and 1 rest day going forward.

TX_Aggie_Dad

SideSteel - thanks for the responses. Very helpful.

EDIT:

1) Am I keeping my rate of loss within a reasonable target (and consequently not creating a massive caloric deficit)?

I think 1% bw/week is a good general guideline. Obese people might be able to go slightly faster without much additional risk of muscle loss and at a certain level of leanness (very lean) it's likely to happen (leaner = tougher to hang onto lbm).

I think I'm ok here. I have my calories set to drop 1-2 lbs per week. I estimate I'm looking to lose between 20-30 lbs of body fat to get down into the low teens body fat %. This seems to be ok.

2) Are my macros set reasonably? (Total calories in a good spot, adequate macronutrients?)

Lean middle-aged people doing lots of activity in a big caloric deficit will require more protein than an overweight 18-year old eating in a small deficit with less activity. (context).

I'm currently doing a 40/30/30 split of carbs/protein/fat. Calories have been at 2200 which is TDEE - 20% (or so I think - see below).

3) Is my training providing adequate stimulus?

There's a big difference between, say, a bodypart split hitting everything one time per week in a non-progressively loading fashion, vs a full body barbell program with progressive loading (everything gets hit 3/week and you get stronger over time).

With 3 days of crossfit plus additional heavy strength training I think I may be underestimating my TDEE if anything. I sit at a desk all day but I'm hitting it pretty hard in the gym. Stimulus doesn't seem to be a problem as I can tell I'm getting stronger as I continue to beat myself into submission.

So, with all of that said, I don't think I need to make any drastic adjustments. I am going to go ahead and make two minor changes going forward:

1. Bump calories from 2200 to 2500 per day sticking with same 40/30/30 ratio.
2. Drop the long steady state running from my program and do a split of 3 days heavy strength training (2-day split), 2 days of Crossfit, and 1 day of yoga per week.

We'll stick with that for 4-6 weeks and see if progress changes at all. I'm not in a huge hurry here so if the added calories caue me to stop losing, I'll have gained the increased knowledge about how my body responds to nutrition and training.

jwdieter

We'll stick with that for 4-6 weeks and see if progress changes at all. I'm not in a huge hurry here so if the added calories cause me to stop losing, I'll have gained the increased knowledge about how my body responds to nutrition and training.

Just quoting and bumping to support a great approach.