Advice on maintenance or deficit

Better around the middle will require a deficit.

Rather than trying to figure what to select for activity level, eat your normal diet and track those calories for a week and if your weight has been steady, those are your maintenance calories or at least closer than what the calculators will tell you and go off of that number to figure a deficit. Try 300 calories below that for a month and then adjust if necessary.

MrsLg wrote: »

Thank you! I've been going round in circles for 2 weeks. I think I just needed someone to tell me what to do. Last week I was around 1400 cals and lost about half a pound. Does that sound about right?

a week won’t tell you much but yes that would be decent based on your stats. Stay there for a few weeks as the first week can be water loss

What is ICF?

Your BMI is 22.9 which sounds healthy for your height. You're the best judge as to how much fat you need to lose. It sounds like you want to run a slight deficit to lose a few pounds while keeping what muscle you have as best as possible, and then recomp at maintenance.

With the lifting, would you say you're mostly going through the motions, or are you pushing hard to near fatigue, and progressively increasing weight and/or intensity and/or volume? Hopefully the latter, and you'll need sufficient protein too, say 120g-140g.

Oh, I thought ICF stands for intracranial fracture and I was wondering why the heck you're lifting with that!

So yeah, in order to lose fat you need to be in a deficit. One way would be with your normal weight to run a very small deficit, maybe 250 calories per day (eat back exercise calories), and continue building muscles. It's called a recomp, and some people here are more knowledgeable than me. I hope they show up.

Two other things to consider:
- how is your posture? if it's poor your belly might stick out more. Improving posture by strength training your core and back, and stretching the muscles shortened from sitting too much can help, see anterior pelvic tilt: your lower back becomes hollow and your belly sticks out.
- is it possible you're wearing pants that are too tight at the top? Even very slim people can get a muffin top and a belly flowing out of the top by wearing the wrong trousers.

neanderthin wrote: »

MrsLg wrote: »

Ice cream fitness. It's a. 5x5 program. Although I am doing the 3x5 cutting version.
How you have described my aims is perfect.
With the lifting, yes I am being progressive and increasing weight. Only managing about 100g of protein at the moment though.

Generally speaking and if your lifting just short of failure a 5X5 and 3X5 are good for increasing strength, which is fine but to build muscle I would suggest you mix it up every 3 or 4 weeks and add a 3X8 and later a 3X12 which I find works best when all 3 ranges are combined over the course, just a thought.

^^^^^^ this