Rusty740 Member

Yeah, this is pretty normal and understandable for people who've lost some weight. Hey after all, all we've heard forever is that it's really easy to put the weight back on after you've lost it. Well, not so fast. If you've learned to lose weight and eat in a small deficit and track food and all the things to get where you…

Looks like you are on the right track, but something to keep in mind. A program like strong lifts is designed to get you stronger. This doesn't necessarily mean it'll look nice or that it will make your muscles bigger. Now, yes, obviously when you can lift more weight, muscles are bigger, but there are two kinds of things…

I'd not do anything with it. It really needs to heal. This will really hamper your lifting, but it is far, far better to get it fixed up than to make it worse forever. Maybe work on abs for a month?

Here's your solution. You don't need to "not do SL 5x5" sort of, but you do need some type of quad dominant compound lift. Obviously you will not be able to lift at your max without a cage or a rack and a spotter (not that I'd trust a language barrier+spotter) :hushed: , anyhow, you make do with what you've got. I really…

Yeah, this^ is happening. 5x5 is good for strength gains, but you don't actually build much muscle. Make no mistake it's great and stick with it, but you will make faster progress with a cut/bulk cycle and you may want to change your training up to include more sets of less intensity with higher reps. Might want to change…

This is a tough one, but here it is. It is a much more efficient use of your time to either cut or bulk, rather than recomp. Recomp is a funny thing that takes a long time, but the good part is you sort of get to eat when you're hungry type thing. You would like to have more muscle bulk. Two things, when you first start…

Garmin rocks. I have the Vivosmart HR and upgraded to the Fenix 3HR and love them both. Totally waterproof, fantastic devices. I want me some Fenix 5 though. https://buy.garmin.com/en-CA/CA/p/552982

I like livestrong.com for this type of stuff, seems not to have too much nonsense...most of the time.

I find it easier to stick with "the program" if I just stay to one number each day regardless of what exercise I do.

I'm 5'6" too. The most I could consistently maintain was 1600 at 130 lbs with 35% protein. What got the extra few pounds off was intermittent fasting. I just skipped breakfast, but I had plenty of black coffee in the morning (3 cups or so). This allowed me to come within my calorie goals effectively and the last 8.5 lbs or…

"They" say the northern latitudes (all of Canada) should take a supplement of it. I dunno what the right number is.

Nice work!!

Keep coming back and reading the forum posts, we're nice people... aren't we?

Here's some - Get a kitchen scale and weight everything. - Track everything including the oils used for cooking. Not toothpaste though unless you eat it :tongue: - Don't track things in "portions", track them in grams, oz, cups, tsp etc. so you know how much a portion actually is. - Double check the common foods you eat to…

You eat your dinner and you forget about it. This kind of attitude (I messed up and now I'll never lose weight) is the kind of attitude that will get you to stop tracking your food. It's ok to go over your goal, IT IS OK :) You just keep going and develop your persistency. It's about the process, focus on that. Focus on…

You're probably over estimating how much food you are eating. Eat some more :) any kind you want.

And just FYI for everyone. It isn't actually precisely 3500 because of the varying thermogenic effects of food, digested and undigested fibres so we needn't get too caught up in the accuracy when we understand this. 3500 is a pretty rough number and over time it's good enough.

Welcome to the club :) Lot's of people have this exact problem, so try not to feel disheartened. Our problem (everyone) is that we focus on how to lose the weight, but we don't focus enough on how to keep it off. Now to be sure, there are things you can do to help you with bingeing and one of the best is to increase the…

Best bang for your buck is just to use the same scale all the time. It'll give you trends.

It is absolutely ok to skip rest day once in awhile. Over time, your body will give you some good feedback. If you skip rest days too much, you'll start to not be able to complete the planned workout, and then you'll know :) Getting into the concept of recoverable volume, fatigue and deloads; over time, we accumulate…

The deficit you are able to do, and be happy, is the right number. It will change over time, but the main thing is to focus on the process (tracking calories well) eating good foods, and the weight will take care of itself. If 3790 is working in two weeks, stick with it. :)

Seems ok to me, since you are cutting, you won't need to lift very much (60% of whatever you did before, or so, keep the weights high, reduce the sets). We'll see how it goes in a few weeks maybe.

Most of the time it's that -We're eating more than we think -We're eating back our exercise calories -We think our exercise calories are more than they actually are -We are losing weight when we think we aren't. The solution in the first three of those cases is to increase the calorie deficit some more. You might not have…

Steady as she goes. It'll come off.

Looks to me like you just need to decrease protein and eat carbs instead. 25% carbs is very little and you're body's telling you it likes them a lot. There's nothing wrong with eating carbs, so if eating a few will help you stay on track, by all means have some. The extra protein you are getting really should be helping…

Don't worry about too light. Just do your weight, then add a pre-set, small increment. The idea is not to move up as fast as possible, it's to move up at a nice rate that your muscle can keep up with. Even if you only added 5 lbs every 2 weeks, you'll still bring your DL up 130 lbs in one year, so take it slow. New lifters…

The bold isn't true (just FYI) it's backwards, but I think it's just a typo, but on a separate note, 180C is probably just fine for you on a cut, but you'll still need to reduce total calories to lose weight. To keep the muscle you have, keep protein at least 1g/lb bodyweight while cutting (it's just a nice round number…

Yeah, answer these questions and the answers will tell you exactly what you need to know. Sounds like you want to cut body fat. In general, keep lifting, pay attention to protein, reduce calories to a deficit.

Excellent post, good strategy so far. It is good that you are looking forward, best that you acknowledge you think you can do this the rest of your life, that's the ticket to success right there. Because you want to bulk eventually, and your roadmap goes through 146 (which is correct, to lose bodyfat, then bulk), you…

Being short means we have less calories to work with. It's just one of the realities we face. The above poster is correct, you'll need to create a calorie deficit somehow, the easiest way is to eat a bit less. For shorties, there's just less margin to work with so unfortunately it can be harder. I think the best advice I…