Coming out of a deficit

jennjenn760

Here is the scoop. I'm 5''4 weighed 120 prior to hiring a trainer to just help me along because I was stuck and not obtaining my goals of leaning out further. I just ended my 3 month contract with my trainer who had me on a clean eating diet. These past 4 weeks have been killer because I had all my fat sources taken out and very little carbs. He has failed to get back to me on how to come out of this diet to begin working on restoring metabolism and gaining muscle. I am down to 114 lbs and I know it's probably mostly water since the lack of carbs. The total calories I'm at now is between 800-900 with one cheat meal a week. How do I begin adding in more calories and switch up this diet plan.

Current diet plan

1/4 cup dry oatmeal (every other day) two egg whites. On alternating days I get 1/3 cup oatmeal and two egg whites.

Meal 2- either a Greek yogurt or a protein shake with a small-medium banana (I do the protein shake and banana on days I workout and the yogurt on my two rest days)

Meal 3- 12 ounces chicken breast/ 1/4 cup cooked rice/ handful of green veggies

Meal 4 - 4 oz. tilapia 1/4 cup rice handful of green veggies.

I'm so used to eating like this the past four weeks that I'm scared to come out of it and ruin my results. Any advice is appreciated. Btw- I know some weight gain is going to happen but I want to minimize the fat gain to make my next cut not so lengthy.

Thanks in advance!

AJ_G

Basically, listing the meal plan is pointless, it's much much more helpful when seeking nutrition advice to list your calorie intake, which you have done, as well as your macronutrient intakes (how many carbs, protein, and fat you're consuming a day IN GRAMS).

First off, sounds like your trainer had you on a terrible diet. Removing or extremely reducing dietary fat from your diet is not healthy and can be dangerous. Also, low carb is completely unnecessary, and now that you've been low carb for a while, unless you plan on staying low carb the rest of your life, you are going to gain some water weight when you return to a balanced diet. If you've been low carb for a while without any refeed days, your current weight is artificially low due to water loss from glycogen depletion.

If you want to increase calorie intake without putting on fat, you should return to a balanced diet and reverse diet. Basically every week you add about 50 calories to your daily calorie intake until you reach a point where you hit maintenance calories and you maintain your weight at a certain calorie intake.

jennjenn760

I figured reverse diet was definitely the direction I needed to go and I have read up on it where I should only add in about 10 grams of carbs per day for a week then another 10 and so on while watching the scale and mirror. The initial two months my diet had a good amount of carbs and fats then the last 4 weeks he just depleted everything. I hate low carb, even though I do a once a week refeed meal I'm always hungry. Thanks for your response and confirming my initial thoughts on doing the reverse diet.

AJ_G

10g of carbs is 40 calories, so yea, basically the same thing. Good luck

Christine_72

As stated above, the only thing you can really do is to slowly add calories back into your diet. I agree with 50 calories per day.
I'm curious on why your trainer had you on such a low calorie plan??

jennjenn760

He wanted to lean me out and I plateaued with the previous diet so I guess either he got lazy on me and did the typical no fat low carb thing or he really figured it was a good diet. This one didn't do much either though.. But I do know my body needs to come out of this. I am pleased with the results but now need to work on building up muscle again. Thanks for the advice I appreciate it.

Christine_72

If you want to build muscle, you're going to have to find your maintenance calories. As you won't be building any muscle eating at a deficit.

rpgfreak128

I mean you can easily gain some muscle and weight if you bump up your calories from protein