Can you rate my diet? Any suggestion?

pusanisa03pt

Hi, I’m female/ 21 years old. I’m 128 lbs/ 5’7”. I work out 4-5 days a week. My goal is to lose fat and gain more muscles. My calorie deficit is 1500 cal. I aim to eat 120+ grams of protein per day. Should I eat less carb and more protein? Or this is fine? Thank you so much in advance for your suggestion.

pusanisa03pt

And here is my workout routine. I’m pretty new in it btw. I just started last month.

sollyn23l2

You can really only do one or the other at your weight (which is already lean). You can gain muscle or lose fat. If you want to gain muscle, increase your calories and lift weights. If you want to lose fat, decrease calories. Pick the one you want most. If it's gaining muscle, then you can lose the fat AFTER you gain the muscle. As far as diet, it looks like you're already eating high protein, lower carb. If it's working for you, great, don't worry about other people's opinion.

neanderthin

Your asking about macro's and not really about your diet which are the foods you consume. Your obviously in a deficit and the only thing I will say is that getting quality protein would be to your advantage. Good luck and keep adding weight to your weight training.

AnnPT77

With your demographics, and with your exercise schedule, we'd expect your TDEE (maintenance calorie needs) to be maybe 2100-2200, possibly even more. You're eating 1500. That would be a loss of a pound to nearly a pound and a half a week, if that estimate's close.

At your current height/weight, you're BMI 20. BMI is imperfect for evaluating individuals, but it's reasonable to assume on that basis that you're already at a healthy weight, and even probably fairly slim. At BMI 20, if you don't think your appearance is where you want it, I think there are higher odds that you're mainly under-muscled rather than overweight, but that's just a guess.

Your goals are to lose fat and gain muscle. IMO, your calorie goal is probably too low for those goals, in your circumstances. The bigger the calorie deficit, the less likely is muscle mass gain . . . or at least it will be much slower.

If you feel you must be in a calorie deficit, I'd suggest you not shoot for more than half a pound a week weight loss, or even slower. Eating at estimated maintenance would possibly be even better. If you gain muscle at steady weight, you will have less body fat, but that process is admittedly one that requires patient persistence.

If you want muscle gains (or any other fitness improvement), it's essential to fuel that with calories as well as protein and other nutrition. A big calorie deficit for faster fat loss is not helpful in that scenario, if not necessary for other reasons (such as health-threatening obesity).

Also, if I were you, I'd be aiming for more like 45-60 grams minimum fat, rather than 42-ish as you appear to be doing now. Fat contains essential nutrients that our bodies can't manufacture out of other intake.

I agree with Neanderthin that what you're eating matters, not solely the macro composition. Yes, that includes choosing high quality protein (complete in essential amino acids, EAAs; and very bioavailable), but also includes getting micronutrients (ideally from food, not supplements), diverse fiber, and (IMO) some good prebiotic and probiotic foods. Eating mostly whole foods will deliver more benefits in diverse ways than highly-processed or refined foods, and I'd include protein powder/shakes/bars in the "highly processed" category, personally.

At 21, if you're starting from zero and going to 60 minutes of cardio plus strength training 4-5 days per week, you may be OK, since youth is resilient. I'm always going to advocate that anyone of any age start gradually and build volume, frequency, and duration on the cardio side of things (about which I know more) and follow a well-designed progressive lifting program (vs. just going to the gym and doing weight stuff ). The total exercise load should be challenging, but not exhausting. Fatigue that persists through the day is counter-productive for fat loss, and suggests under-recovery that will compromise fitness improvement, too.

I don't know enough about strength programs to evaluate yours with any confidence. I'm seeing a consistent 3x10 in there (though it's sometimes 3 sets times 10 reps, sometimes 10 sets times 3 reps) which makes me a little suspicious. Perhaps some programs will do that, at least at the start, but it's definitely dissimilar to programs I've followed in the past. But you didn't ask about your exercise program, anyway.

Best wishes!

Retroguy2000

5'7" and 128 pounds sounds like that's quite lean already? You definitely shouldn't be in a deficit of 1500, but perhaps you meant deficit at 1500.

If you're new to lifting, you can gain some muscle in a deficit, but 500+ deficit is still stretching it for that goal. I don't know what your body composition is like. With those stats I think you're better off either focusing on fat loss (lift frequently, high reps, don't expect to build much if any muscle), or focus on muscle gain with minimal weight gain by eating around maintenance or with a very small surplus (100 calories) and focus on lifting, progressive overload, etc.

Your protein is ideal right now. It's at least as much as you should need.

AnnPT77

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

5'7" and 128 pounds sounds like that's quite lean already? You definitely shouldn't be in a deficit of 1500, but perhaps you meant deficit at 1500.

(snip)

I wondered about the terminology, too. I think it's a calorie goal of 1500, deficit unknown (but probably the 500+).

Estimated from macro grams, her calorie intake (in order of the photos) was 1388, 1605, 1423, 1323. Average is 1435 (rounded).

We all know the macros are unlikely to add up precisely, but that suggests calorie goal of 1500, possibly with a tendency to lowball it (which is common ).

120g protein alone, as you know, would be 480 calories, so likely almost no room for fats/carbs if there were a 1500 calorie deficit, unless she's not telling us about a full-time job as an apprentice bricklayer or something.

pusanisa03pt

Hi everyone, thank you so much for all of your suggestions. I greatly appreciate it. I don’t know how to reply to each of you guys. First of all, what I meant is that my calorie intake per day is about 1500 (my TDEE is 2100). I apologize for the confusion. As far as I have read all the suggestions, I think I will change my calorie intake to 1600-1700. I will focus more on my quality protein and others. And I will follow the well-designed progressive lifting program. (The reason why some of my workouts have 3x10 and 10x3 is because I typed it wrong and forgot to retype it.) thank you so much everyone (English is not my first language. I apologize that I may write it so confusing)

AnnPT77

pusanisa03pt wrote: »

Hi everyone, thank you so much for all of your suggestions. I greatly appreciate it. I don’t know how to reply to each of you guys. First of all, what I meant is that my calorie intake per day is about 1500 (my TDEE is 2100). I apologize for the confusion. As far as I have read all the suggestions, I think I will change my calorie intake to 1600-1700. I will focus more on my quality protein and others. And I will follow the well-designed progressive lifting program. (The reason why some of my workouts have 3x10 and 10x3 is because I typed it wrong and forgot to retype it.) thank you so much everyone (English is not my first language. I apologize that I may write it so confusing)

Your written English is better than some native speakers: No need to apologize at all.

I think your updated plans sound very reasonable.

If you don't have a lifting program in mind, other MFP-ers shared programs they like in this thread:

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10332083/which-lifting-program-is-the-best-for-you/p1

While free weights (dumbbells, barbells, etc.) have some advantages, it's OK to adapt some of the programs to machines, if that works best for you right now. You want to be in a rep/set/weight range where the last couple of reps of the last set are . . . very challenging, but you can maintain good form. Once those reps are relatively easy, your program should add more challenge (which can take various forms, such as more reps, more sets, higher weight, slower reps, or a bunch of other variations - the program should tell you how/when to progress).

Wishing you success!

Retroguy2000

I just looked at the workout routine. Can you clarify some things?

It looks like that's the last four days, and you're doing leg press and shoulder press every day?

And you're doing half an hour of cardio before lifting?

You also have nothing for the back, no rows etc.?

I think there are far better ways to structure this. A few general thoughts:

- Do cardio after lifting if it's the same session. A 5-10 minute warmup is fine before. The reason for doing cardio after is to ensure you have max strength for the lifting, which also reduces injury risk since you aren't tired.

- Muscle groups take time to recover. It's roughly 2-4 days for legs, 2-3 days for chest/back, 1-2 days for arms and shoulders. So you should manage a split accordingly, and based on your schedule.

- You should have some rows in there. Don't only work one side of the body.