222.8 6'3"

joshuajones1862

Been dieting 3 months from 240 to weight now active gym strongman/bodybuilder heavy weight consist of 545 bench and 740 squat and rest of workouts follow. Problem is I'm a heavy set 222 not lean guys I workout with have 50lbs on me and I'm still stronger trying to get lean been on diet cut carbs and maintain protien 3 day fasting has cut near 10lbs each fast once a month. Been 240 near 15 years and always strength trained with no efforts but never able to cut fats enough to get lean. Smallest ive been since middle school and I still have love handles but still out pace Mr lean 280lb 3 months and still no we're near my goal. Help a helping helper maybe?

AnnPT77

Are you logging what you eat?

Being completely honest, if I were a guy your size trying to lose some body fat while retaining muscle and strength, I wouldn't be doing 3 day fasts. I also wouldn't try to lose aggressively fast. Fast loss and aggressive tactics create a higher risk of losing lean mass alongside fat loss. Strictly speaking, at your size you might be able to lose 2 pounds a week without increasing health risk, but that's a different matter from minimizing muscle loss and also different from making a plan that's easy to stick with but still successful.

Losing a pound a week or less would be more conservative. It would also be easier. Yes, it would be slow, but you say it's been 15 years without getting lean. What's another year or so, if you can get steady loss going, loss that well preserves your strength and muscle mass?

As an aside, if you do a 3 day fast and lose 10 pounds, a big chunk of that 10 pounds is water weight and weight of waste in the digestive tract, not fat loss. I'd also expect an energy drop that limits exercise performance, though that effect is individual.

Maybe you already know this, but your post is unclear to me: Losing body fat isn't simply about cutting down on the amount of fat you eat. What matters for losing body fat is how many calories you eat. Cutting carbs and maintaining protein is a reasonable overall strategy, but if it doesn't result in eating lower calories on average than you burn on average daily, you won't lose body fat.

If you're logging food, how many calories are you eating on average? How consistently do you do eat at that level, as a rolling average? How do your log your food? (That last question is complicated: Eyeball vs. measure vs. weigh portions, create your own recipes in MFP vs. use other people's recipe entries like "ham sandwich" or "meat lasagna"; log every single bite, lick, taste, beverage, condiment, cooking oil, cheat/treat/oopsie meal or day; etc.).

If you're logging tightly over a period of at least 6 weeks, and don't lose any weight (looking at the overall weight trend line), reduce your calorie goal by 250 calories, and try another 6 weeks. Eventually, you'll dial in the right tactics.

I weighed up to and over 50 pounds more than I should've for 30 years. When I got serious about food logging, I lost that in less than a year. I wasn't as large or strong as you, but I did preserve my athletic performance while doing that. It can work, IME.

Wishing you success!

nossmf

Welcome to MFP! Those are some seriously strong lifts for your current body weight.

As Ann said above, losing the body fat is about calories, regardless what you eat. If you eat 100% protein, but your calories are too high, you will gain body fat. Going the other way, you can lose body fat while still eating large amounts of fat (the Keto diet is all about this); or lose body fat while greatly reducing fat eaten (but NOT eliminating it, as the body needs a little each day for hormone regulation); or eating a little bit less of all three macros (carbs, fat, protein); or any of a hundred different combinations.

As a fellow lifter, I cannot imagine going on a fast which lasts three days and not having it impact my lifts in the gym. But even if I did, the calories saved do not equal 10 lbs of fat loss (at most 2-3 lbs); as Ann said, most of the loss is water and food from before the fast making its way through the digestive system and out the bathroom.

If you want to get serious about losing fat and keeping the muscle, it's as simple as keep protein up, keep lifting, and reduce overall calories. How do you know if your protein is high enough, or your calories are low enough? You're going to need to track what you eat. Start by tracking what you are eating right now, every bite of it. MFP will help show you which foods you are eating are adding the most calories to your daily total.

From here, you need to cut 250 calories per day, every day. (For example, if you're used to eating 2500 calories, your new daily total will be 2250. Use this total for at least the next 4-6 weeks while you monitor changes to your weight.) Where the calories come from is up to you. You may eliminate one type of food completely; or you may search for a lower-calorie version of the same food; or you may keep eating the same stuff, just smaller portions. Remember to keep protein at least 0.7g/lb-1g/lb of BW (at your BW of 222, your target will be 155-222 grams of protein per day minimum), and keep lifting so the body has a reason to keep the muscles and drops the fat instead.

Losing the fat takes time, but so did gaining the muscle. You've already proven you have the dedication to do one; let's now work on the other.