Dad bod to Grandpa bod

mrschwarten wrote: »

Hahaha! Love your attitude, thanks for the motivation!!!

Thanks for checking in and the kind note! Our attitude is the only thing that we can truly control, and thankfully I generally have a good one (whether I'm naively delusional or not is debatable)

October check in, same as July. Maintaining without meaning to maintain. Seems like I should still be losing but I'm not.

Time for a refeed?

https://community.myfitnesspal.com/en/discussion/10604863/of-refeeds-and-diet-breaks/p1

MaltedTea wrote: »

MiNinaLisa wrote: »

maverick4x4 wrote: »

MaltedTea wrote: »

Sidebar: this thread need more recent pics, please. The MFP Thirst Community (MFPTC) - of which I am but one of legion - thanks all previous JPG, PNG and/or GIF contributors for their service. /sidebar

Here you go.

well done Sir - impressive changes!

In absolute agreement over here 🙋🏿‍♀️ @MiNinaLisa is never wrong, besides.

As to whether a refeed is going to be helpful will depend on your goals. Mind you, your ability to maintain is quite impressive in and of itself @maverick4x4!

Thanks, I appreciate that!

I was maintaining while trying to lose, which was bumming me out...I was hoping that maintaining would be closer to 2200cal/day rather than 1600.

In the gym I'm used to "trying to improve" = "maintaining" (or "slowing the decline") but I was really hoping this 1600cal/day wouldn't become the new normal.

Goals are to get under 190 / get a 6-pack and then maintain between there and current leanness, and try to get my squat back up a little.

There's a little lateral vein on my right bicep that comes and goes, keeping it visible will be my maintenance goal 😎💪😉

Modifying my diet to add refeeds.

I've been on my "bro-diet" for 2 years. Macros set at 1600cal/day, 25/50/25 c/p/f

Over the first 8 months I dropped weight 232 to 192, pretty consistently. The mirror and gym performance suggest that it was mostly fat that I lost, so pretty happy. Based on what I was eating and losing, I was able to back-calculate my starting BMR at 2100-2300.

After 8 months, I plateaued in August 2019. Then in November 2019, I discovered that I had been undercounting an afternoon snack of mixed nuts, dating back to Sept. Severely....to the tune of 500 cal/day. Mostly fat*. That was the end of that snack.

Through Christmas and holidays, I rarely went more than 100cal over my goals, actually, from then until this last Oct I've been very consistent. Got down to 191 but that's it. Avg has been 1700cal/week, weight stayed 195 +/- 2lbs. Basically no change for 15 months! Even after identifying some mistakes, the scale/mirror/strength didn't change. I was hoping to go back to 2200ish and maintain, but I was concerned that my new BMR was "permanently" at 1700, so I started reading about plateaus and saw the stuff here about refeeding, leptins, and Lyle McDonald. *Since the undercounted mixed nuts were fat calories, they didn't do much to refeed.

I've done 3 short refeeds now, with a few weeks in between: a 3 day, then 9 days during Thanksgiving week, and 2.5 days last weekend. I was in the 2400-2900 cal/day range each of those times...you know, just to make sure I was over BMR I don't have much to show for it except I'm 7 lbs heavier, look the same, and a little stronger.

It seems like it may need to be a weekly thing, so I'm going to try a 5/2 or 4.5/2.5 split, maybe a 2/1/2/2 split. I like the idea of refeeding on the weekend, plus maybe half day friday (to prep for a light fullbody Sat am to increase sensitivity) or a full day Wednesday to help with glycogen loading for Thurs/Friday workouts. To be clear, Sat/Sun will be refeed days, Mon/Tues will be calorie deficient days, and then I'm going to experiment with the other three days. There will be a minimum of 4 calorie deficient days/week, sometimes 4.5 and sometimes 5.

Scale goals have been adjusted...not sure what it will be right now, just looking for a downward trend again. Pretty consistently at 202-204 since starting the refeeds. Assuming glycogen stays consistently recharged, and daily water weight fluctuations, maybe a net 5-10 lbs will do it? Or maybe this will just be the new normal for a while period?

Oh, refeed days will be 2250 cal, 45/35/20 cpf. Still looking at g/lb of protein, and upping the carbs to make the difference. Calorie deficient days will continue at 1600 25/50/25 cpf, though I may take this to 1700 or 1800 later on.

This is all pretty new for me, and certainly counter intuitive. I've got the track record of sticking to the plan, and I have 2 years of daily calorie intake and 4-5 days/week of scale weight, so as a nerd exercise, I'll be exporting the data and graphing to see if I can identify any "accidental" refeeds over the last two years.