Maintaining Strength while losing question

JeffInJax
JeffInJax Posts: 232 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I am slightly confused about something and just wanted a few peoples advice. I currently do not see a doctor or nutritionist or anything of the sort for my weight loss journey. Ever since I have started 152 pounds ago I was able to maintain and sometimes even increase my strength while shedding the pounds and operating on a deficit.

Now that I am getting down towards the end of the "weight loss journey" before I start doing bulking/cut cycles, I am finding that my strength is diminishing relatively quickly. I currently eat on average 2050-2100 calories a day on a 40/40/20 P/C/F split as an attempt to up my intake slightly to stem some of the strength loss and am sleeping on average 8 hours a night. My main question is, should I just ignore the losses in strength until I am where i want to be? Or would I be better off upping my calories to around maintenance which is 2700 or so for a month to try and replenish them?

When ive been on a progressive lifting routine ive never lost strength, so not sure how to deal with it or if i even should until im done my cut. Any advice or opinions? Also im 6'5 and 228 currently

Replies

  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
    Dude, you're not eating enough. You eat less than I do sometimes.

    Not eating back exercise cals, unless you are doing TDEE then you should be eating them back.

    You are also not meeting your goal every day even without exercise.

    Your protein is also pretty low. UNless your LBM is like 130, you would probably do better with more protein.

    Definitely not enough fat either, which is not related to weight loss but you need enough fat to function well. 30% of your weight in fat is usually a good place to start.


    Track smart, eat consistently, meet your protein goals.... and you haven't outlined your lifting routine either, as there may be problems with the routine.
  • SideSteel
    SideSteel Posts: 11,068 Member
    Assuming you value strength and want to maximize LBM retention then I would address the losses in strength. There's a few ways to attempt to do this but it's hard to diagnose without knowing the cause of the strength diminishing.

    One would be to try a diet break for 1 to 2 weeks where you bring calories to maintenance.
    Another would be to address training variables such as deloading or taking a very short training break if needed, or adjusting the actual guts of the program itself if it's needed.
    You could attempt to add in reefed days and position these near the toughest lifting days in your cycle to attempt to take advantage of the additional carbohydrates.
    You could adjust calories upwards if you have room to do so while still losing fat.
    You could look at rest intervals, pre-workout supplementation, peri-workout nutrition to see if any of these are variables impacting strength while dieting.

    And you'd want to look at the big picture when diagnosing things like that.

    If you've been dieting continuously for a while now the diet break would be the first thing I'd attempt and I'd consider adding in a 1/week reefed if you're starting to get lean (low teens).

  • 3laine75
    3laine75 Posts: 3,069 Member
    You've probably reached your peak of CNS adaptation. When eating at deficit, it's your strength (mostly) you're building rather than muscle.

    If you're not ready for a surplus yet, try upping to maintenance. I remember being very disappointed the first time my strength progression stalled out but the minute you add calories it's onwards and upwards again :)

  • JeffInJax
    JeffInJax Posts: 232 Member
    Excuse the wall of data but just going to outline my current 12 week regiment I am on just to try to identify if the deficiency is there. I feel pretty confident on the lifting side, but the nutrition is another story.

    Monday: Chest/Biceps
    4x 8-12 Flat Bench, Incline DB Press, DB Flys, Pec Dec
    4x 8-12 Straight Bar Curls, Hammer Curls, Iso Curls

    Tuesday: Core/Cardio

    Wednesday: Back/Triceps
    4x 8-12 Reverse Grip Barbell rows, Lat Pulldown, DB Rows, Deadlifts, Back Extensions
    4x 8-12 Close grip bench, Skullcrushers, Cable extensions, Kickbacks

    Thursday: Core/Cardio

    Friday: Legs/Shoulders
    4x 8-12 Overhead Barbell Press, Side Lateral Raises, Barbell Shrugs
    4x 8-12 Squats, Leg Press, Stiff Leg Deadlifts, hamstring curls, standing calf raises, seated calf raises.

    I have been eating at a deficit since Mid march roughly and always take a week off from exercise after a 12 week program. Ive never taken a diet break as of yet. I dont add weight training as exercise in regards to calories but generally add cardio and try to eat around half the calories back since I go by the machines numbers. According to MFP im around 1 pound loss a week currently and -550 or so from my maintenance calories.

    I take optimum gold standard and creatine on occasion which i will likely start doing daily during the week once again. I know for one I likely need to increase my daily protein consumption.
  • ana3067
    ana3067 Posts: 5,623 Member
    why would you only work lower body once a week and everything else twice a week? And especially in a deficit, it's ideal to reduce volume. So fewer reps or fewer sets. Also biceps will end up being works on Wednesday, triceps worked on Monday. So you're working some muscles more than others aside from just the obvious upper/lower issue. Have you considered an upper/lower 3x a week split, so ABA then BAB, doing each twice a month?

    Increase protein, consider a program that doesn't involve so much volume or isolation work (I do 3 lifts per session, which takes about 40-45 minutes when I take into account my rests, and I work every muscle group twice a week with 2-3 days of rest between, while working out 4x a week).

    Honestly I would say an overhaul in workout routine, addressing the inconsistent protein intake and eating enough protein, and likely taking a break from both dieting and exercise is needed. I wound up having to deload most of my upper body stuff because I developed tennis elbow. I was also overtraining and had to deload due to some minor ego lifting.
  • Francl27
    Francl27 Posts: 26,371 Member
    I haven't lost any strength at all, but I'm eating at a 200ish deficit in average. 500 calories deficit is too much when you don't have much to lose, and you're probably losing muscle.

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