Retroguy2000 Member

What makes you think you're in a calorie deficit? If your weight is going up, then you aren't in a deficit. Aside from short term water fluctuations. A pound of muscle weighs the same as a pound of fat, but yes it's denser, so your body composition will improve and your measurements will change. You should definitely be…

Congrats! Great results. Yeah it's totally possible to gain muscle in a deficit. Assuming good training and nutrition, a few factors help more with that: being a new lifter, having a lot of body fat (fuel), light deficit. Even if you weren't gaining muscle, you should still lift regularly and get high protein to help…

That's the route I went. It's very cost efficient. I can use the 10's, 5's and 2.5's (pounds) on the loadable db's, and also reuse them on my barbell and EZ-bar. That's efficient for cost and space. Swapping the weight amount between sets isn't a big deal during rest times, but it does hamper drop sets and super sets…

Exactly what Tom said. Since you're already quite lean, you aren't going to gain much muscle without a calorie surplus, and progression and intensity with the lifting. Assuming you're a new lifter, you could go as high 500 calories surplus and see how you get on. Definitely add at least 250, which should result in weight…

And OP was never seen again.

Even faster than that. Here's Bugenhagen with the Nature Valley oats and honey bars, smothered in peanut butter. 1200 fast calories! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CeNR6ReJtH0&t=175s

I just get whatever whey protein powder is on sale, usually via Amazon. Check slickdeals for alerts for protein powder. Look for brands like Optimum Nutrition, Muscle Milk, Dymatize, Muscletech, MyProtein. Costco also sells ON Gold. About $7/lb is a very good price, over $10 is a bit expensive imo. Look for at least 70%…

Your BMR is the calorie burn if you were in a coma, so your estimated activity level has no bearing there. Did you mean your estimated TDEE is 1900-2100? This is a good calculator. Note, as is typical except for MFP, this calculator includes your estimate of all of your activity including exercise:…

Maybe that's the default, I don't remember. You can change it to whatever you want in Goals easily.

If you can hook the band to your ankle and anchor it low to a door or something, you can do lying hamstring curls, or if you sit on a chair facing away from the door, leg extensions. They aren't ideal for squats the way you describe. There's no tension when you're in a squat position and full tension when standing, which…

It looks like OP posted once and never came back.

Check out these on YT. Renaissance Periodization, look at their playlists, tons of good info there about hypertrophy etc. I like Jonni Shreve for form guides and cues, he's a former pro bodybuilder. Jeff Nippard is very good too. Dr. Mike at RP is open about his steroid use and doesn't promote it. Jonni is open about how…

Add exercise, Cardiovascular, Strength training. Enter session time. For lifts progress tracking, use Google Sheets or Fitnotes or some other app.

Sorry to hear about your situation, Shannon. I'll second noss' protein rec above, with the addition that if you're not lifting you don't need as much as our rec. I'm assuming you're quite lean, in addition to the post-injury muscle loss you speak of. The real reason you're tired likely isn't muscle mass related, it's…

Sure, if you're basing your calorie target on a TDEE model, which is not how MFP sets peoples daily calorie goals. MFP sets that as (TDEE-exercise).

Consider a periodic refeed or diet break too. That might be a weekend at maintenance, or up to a couple of weeks. That helps you mentally and physically recharge before continuing, and helps get rid of diet fatigue. You will likely gain a little temporary water weight in that time, so don't be alarmed if the scale edges up…

The most important thing is track what you're consuming, and track your weight change. Everything else is just guesswork. Most of your weight loss is from diet. You didn't say what weight loss rate you requested which resulted in that 1,400 estimate, however since MFP does not include intentional exercise in that number,…

OP, you're doing great. Your estimated calorie deficit is in line with your weight loss so far. I wouldn't trust the body comp data, but if you use the same machine in similar circumstances maybe you can trust the trends. Your calorie deficit is fine for now imo, it's less than 1% per week. I wouldn't recommend increasing…

Like Claire said, I'd be very skeptical of body comp measurements, especially if they're from scales. It's encouraging that your lifting volume is going up. This suggests muscle growth. You don't say how lean you are. If you're quite lean and maintaining weight, then the body has no extra fuel to build much muscle. As well…

Don't take my advice here, but I like the afternoon of February 29 for ab work.

18 working sets in 1.5-2 hours? Full body 6x per week? Every set to failure? Yeah, all of those are far far from optimal. Too much rest time during each workout, too much going to failure which builds fatigue, and not enough rest time for muscle groups between workouts. If you're going 6x, something like PPLPPL is better,…

Hmmm, the chest supported row db image was working earlier but not now. Maybe this will work:

The good news is weight loss is mostly diet. So if you start tracking your calorie inputs and making some changes there, that's achievable even without much exercise. As for suggestions to build strength, that should really start with your specialist and PT. Do more than the PT suggests (imo they suggest the minimum…

This is perfect. I hope the weight training includes intensity and progression. I'm just saying, a lot of people don't really challenge their muscles and leaving a ton of reps in reserve won't do much for you. If you've been maintaining your current weight, track your input calories here and that's your current TDEE.…

It depends on many things, e.g.: Your training age : for a novice lifter, that's probably too much unless they are short sessions with good splits. Your max recoverable volume : if you're lifting with intensity (low RIR, high RPE) and also high volume, you may be accruing fatigue, leading to stagnating progress and feeling…

There is a transfer effect going on. People who exercise tend towards healthier diets. It may be a mostly psychological thing, related to goal setting and recognition that both exercise and diet lead to the same goal, so progress in one of those can lead to progress in the other. Conversely, if you skip a workout, you…

I don't know what that is. If you want to enter calories, look under Cardiovascular and enter total session time for Strength Training or maybe there's a HIIT there or something applicable. If you want to track weight/reps for progression, Google Sheets, or FitNotes is good.

What is your estimated TDEE here? https://www.sailrabbit.com/bmr/

It's a little hard to recommend right now because your stated goals are a little vague. What I mean is, "stronger" can run the gamut from focusing on powerlifting (deadlift, squat, bench press) to focusing on strength (1-5 reps in working sets, focus on compounds with free weights, Starting Strength is a common program for…

You can maybe target 1 pound per week, i.e. 500 cal deficit per day. So figure how long you need to cut for. If that's 6-10 weeks, start whenever. If it's more, you might want to target a few weeks maintenance break between two mini-cuts of 6-8 weeks each, and you'll probably need to start soon.