cant seem to get below 20%

cumminsrat
cumminsrat Posts: 30 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
been exercising an hour a day weights and cardio on alternate days, eating literally as clean as i possibly can and yet my fat has been at 20% and hasnt really moved from it at all. weight keeps going down so i upped protein but still no luck.... anyone got ideas.

Replies

  • TheRealParisLove
    TheRealParisLove Posts: 1,907 Member
    It is probably your diet, but it's hard to say. When you say you eat "as clean as you can" I'm assuming that you are not getting 7-9 servings of veggies and 2-4 servings of fresh fruit a day.

    How body builders do it is by eliminating anything processed, eliminating all grains save for brown rice (even then only very sparingly), and get their carbs from beans (lentils, mostly) and sweet potatoes. The have 2 grams of protein for every pound of lean body mass, and fill in the rest of their diet with low glycemic vegetables and healthy fats. Fruit should only be eaten once a week, if at all, for the best effect while cutting.\

    Basically, go paleo and you should start to see those percentages drop pretty quickly.
  • leebesstoad
    leebesstoad Posts: 1,186 Member
    Well you might want to send me a friend request and follow my diary because I'm in the same boat (well besides being a much, MUCH older boat). So today I'm trying something very different. At the suggestion of an MFP friend here, I've started a 4 week ketogenic diet. Today was day 1. If you're interested, I can be your guinea pig to see if this works. The ketogenic diet is certainly not for everyone. You'd have to consider it carefully. And if you are a diabetic, under no circumstances should you do it (ketogenic diet and diabetes are a definite no-no). But it has been used by natural body builders for many years. It has also be used in medical cases such as epilepsy in children when medications can't control seizures, and in some cancer patients.

    So follow along if you're interested.
  • digyan
    digyan Posts: 7 Member
    15-20% is pretty strange territory. Depending on where fat strips off your body you may not notice much difference or even look worse (i.e. more hourglass). Also you could be losing visceral fat around organs that doesn't manifest in mirrors. Scale and tape measure goes down but still look... voluptuous. Just have to plow through it.
  • cumminsrat
    cumminsrat Posts: 30 Member
    It is probably your diet, but it's hard to say. When you say you eat "as clean as you can" I'm assuming that you are not getting 7-9 servings of veggies and 2-4 servings of fresh fruit a day.
    im gettting as many as i can but every time i bring carbs up my weight does the same thing. so im trying to stay as low carb as possible. and im on herbalife products too and i know that im getting the nutrients that i need. im eating veggies as much as i can but at the same time staying low carb. bread is out of my diet completely. i hardly ever eat whole grains other than my oatmeal in the morning before my workout. no carbs after my lunch meal the best that i can. maybe im just doing something wrong
  • cumminsrat
    cumminsrat Posts: 30 Member
    15-20% is pretty strange territory. Depending on where fat strips off your body you may not notice much difference or even look worse (i.e. more hourglass). Also you could be losing visceral fat around organs that doesn't manifest in mirrors. Scale and tape measure goes down but still look... voluptuous. Just have to plow through it.
    now that you say that i have had my visceral drop quite a bit and i have also lost 4 inches off my hips and im toning up and seeing results and looking better but i cant seem to shake that layer of fat off my middle. everywhere else seems to be thinning down at a decent rate
  • digyan
    digyan Posts: 7 Member
    Fat is first on, last off. Maybe your stomach fat is just spiteful, yours wouldn't be the first. Either Way, you're on the right track if something is moving. Watch the scale, watch your tape measure, watch your calipers for body fat etc, etc, as long as one of them is changing in your favor. That's all assuming you have enough LBM under the fat to show off when you get to lowish bf%. You can look better at 15% with 10 extra lbs of muscle than 10% without.
  • cumminsrat
    cumminsrat Posts: 30 Member
    i have the LBM to be jsut fine last it was checked i was at 153lb of LBM at a weight of 192. i know for a fact that im getting vascular in places i didnt know was possible on my body so i must be doing something right. ive never before had abs that a person could see without flexing and that is my goal by mid october. pushin as hard as i can for it.

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