Calorie concerns & fat loss stall - Help!

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Guys I'm going to cry reading all your comments! At 5'11, 82kg already looks/feels a tad on the light side. In clothes I look thinner and weaker now than I did when I was fatter!

To get from 22% bf to 15% id have to loose another 5-6kg. I can't imagine being only 75kg, I think il look ill/girly and my wife will leave me lol!!

Strange really as I went through a similar transformation about 4 years ago... Search for my earlier threads guys. At that time I started at 95kg and got down to 83kg but my body fat was 19.5%. That time round it was low carb not keto. I would have thought this time round with a keto diet (meant to destroy body fat fast!) I would have ended up with lower body fat than last time, not more!
 
Caporegime
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Guys I'm going to cry reading all your comments! At 5'11, 82kg already looks/feels a tad on the light side. In clothes I look thinner and weaker now than I did when I was fatter!

To get from 22% bf to 15% id have to loose another 5-6kg. I can't imagine being only 75kg, I think il look ill/girly and my wife will leave me lol!!

Strange really as I went through a similar transformation about 4 years ago... Search for my earlier threads guys. At that time I started at 95kg and got down to 83kg but my body fat was 19.5%. That time round it was low carb not keto. I would have thought this time round with a keto diet (meant to destroy body fat fast!) I would have ended up with lower body fat than last time, not more!


I think you need to get a better idea of what an ideal body type is, I'm a couple of inches shorter than you and weigh in at 64kg, will be around 61kg by April if training goes OK. That is pretty much optimal, I'm well muscle, well toned, you can see a reasonable 6-pack definition.

Here is some examples of optimal body shape:

Massai Mara tribe in Africa. This is where Human being evolved form, the tribes still perform the same activities that humans and our ancestors have done for millions of years. This is what we have evolved to do, and what we look like.These are very strong, very healthy people. They hunt animals by hand with spears, they track prey for days, will carry 100lb of meat back home over 30 miles. The children will go 20 miles to get good water, 12-15 miles to school. The Young men will fight off lions to defend live stock. As a right of passage to become an adult, they must go out and chase down a lion, killing it.

massaiMara.jpg



AN uncontacted Amazon Tribe. These people have never, ever been in contact with western human, not once. They have no idea what the drone is. They have lived this way since crossing the land-bridge to asia. They hunt and fish, and gather everyone they need from the forest. This is a prototypical human. This image has some children but there is a young adult in his prime on the right in red paint.
amazon-tribe-main.jpg




Here is a photo that makes it easier to see. This tribe has had prior contact so are posed for a photo, but they live entirely in the traditional way without external influence.

amazontribe.jpg





These are ideal body shapes for the fittest, healthiest, strongest men, exactly as evolution intended over millions of years. They aren't skinny, they are lean, strong and tough. Strong deviations, either skinnier or fatter, or with massively more muscle are not the norm, and gaining much more muscle is a lot of hard work because human's simply didn't evolve to have that, otherwise it would be easy. For example:

cow.jpg


This is a breed of cow specially selectively bred for big muscles. The cow doesn't do a single workout, doesn't take protein shakes or supplements, or special diets. It eats grass stood in a field all day, within a few years it looks like that, because it is genetically programmed to do that. Humans evolved to be hunter gatherers, not to bench press.



I'm not having a go at body builders at all. I'm just trying to get you to understand what is normal and healthy, and what is not normal (I;m not say not healthy). The fact that humans can't stand in a field eating salad and turn in to Mr Universe is why body building is an actual competition and gets respect. It takes a lot of dedication to training and diet. That is the appeal. just don't think for 1 second that a lean, toned, strong athletic body is some how not attractive or not normal. It is the epitome of what a human male should look like. Don't be so insecure about not have huge biceps whiel losing weight.


Furthermore, the lower you body fat the more toned and defined you will look.
 
Man of Honour
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To be fair at the end of the day it's personal preference, I'd rather look as I do now at 5'6 and 240lbs than like any of the tribesmen in those pictures.
 
Caporegime
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To be fair at the end of the day it's personal preference, I'd rather look as I do now at 5'6 and 240lbs than like any of the tribesmen in those pictures.

OF course, people are free to look how they want but no one should feel bad for having the ideal human body shape, no one should belittle others for being the way humans are designed to look. And people need to have realistic expectations of how our evolution has guided the design of the human body.
 
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D.P - I do see your point but I want to strike a balance between what you say is the natural ideal body shape and what is considered ascetically ideal in todays society which is for a man to carry a little more muscle mass.

To clarify, my ideal body would look like a mens health magazine cover model.

That being said based on the BMI scale (which I know is far from great) at 5"11, 82kg, I am on the boarder of healthy weight/over weight.

If I google body fat stats body fat between 18%-24% is considered average. Making my 22% on the higher end of average.

If I google muscle mass stats it says 33.4%-39.4% is considered normal. My muscle mass % is 38.8% which means I'm on the higher side, nearing the 'High' stage.

With the above in mind and judging by the stats online for BMI, body fat and muscle mass it seems I should concentrate on getting my body fat down and not worry so much about loosing a little muscle mass along the way.

May I ask, what is your body fat and muscle mass percentages guys?
 

V F

V F

Soldato
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If you all agree its impossible and I can only choose from bulking or cutting what do you suggest in my case?

At 82kg I'm still carrying a lot of body fat at 22% and this needs to come down. Based on averages I'm bordering the high side for a male in his 30s.

That being said I can't imagine loosing any more weight without looking very skinny. Please have already started to say I look unhealthy and scrawny and too thin. And loosing strength and muscle mass iv worked so hard to build the last 6 months sounds....sad!

Are these people that commented quite big?


Guys I'm going to cry reading all your comments! At 5'11, 82kg already looks/feels a tad on the light side. In clothes I look thinner and weaker now than I did when I was fatter!

To get from 22% bf to 15% id have to loose another 5-6kg. I can't imagine being only 75kg, I think il look ill/girly and my wife will leave me lol!!

Strange really as I went through a similar transformation about 4 years ago... Search for my earlier threads guys. At that time I started at 95kg and got down to 83kg but my body fat was 19.5%. That time round it was low carb not keto. I would have thought this time round with a keto diet (meant to destroy body fat fast!) I would have ended up with lower body fat than last time, not more!

75kg isn't scrawny or as you said, girly. Lewis Hamilton is 68kg and he isn't scrawny. Lean but a lot of muscle.

I remember reading an article on Wayne Rooney how he got a lot of stick in the dressing room for being 83kg. The coaches wanted him to lose weight.

Sebastien Vettel borders on scrawny at 58kg. He aint bad but looks boy-ish.

David Beckham is 75kg and looks anything but girly.

Lionel Messi is 67kg and Neymar 68kg.
https://www.flickr.com/photos/messipic/28473712094/


Weight loss also doesn't run to your timeframe so don't freak out about it.


D.P - I do see your point but I want to strike a balance between what you say is the natural ideal body shape and what is considered ascetically ideal in todays society which is for a man to carry a little more muscle mass.

To clarify, my ideal body would look like a mens health magazine cover model.

That being said based on the BMI scale (which I know is far from great) at 5"11, 82kg, I am on the boarder of healthy weight/over weight.

If I google body fat stats body fat between 18%-24% is considered average. Making my 22% on the higher end of average.

If I google muscle mass stats it says 33.4%-39.4% is considered normal. My muscle mass % is 38.8% which means I'm on the higher side, nearing the 'High' stage.

With the above in mind and judging by the stats online for BMI, body fat and muscle mass it seems I should concentrate on getting my body fat down and not worry so much about loosing a little muscle mass along the way.

May I ask, what is your body fat and muscle mass percentages guys?

What was that, 24? I never entered green until I was 75kg...

My body fat is 12.9% with 118.4lb of muscle.
 
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For fat loss whilst maintaining maximum muscle do you guys recommend intermittent fasting and/or a keto diet?

Keto boasts that it burns much more body fat faster. And IF is meant to be a great way to drop weight (though I'm not sure if this is simply due to a calorie deficit?).

I work out in the evenings 8-9pm so I can do IF with my meals between 3pm-10pm allowing me to fit in pre and post work out meals.

Iv done keto before, I can hack the control but my PT insists its bad for muscle loss?
 
Soldato
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For fat loss whilst maintaining maximum muscle do you guys recommend intermittent fasting and/or a keto diet?

Keto boasts that it burns much more body fat faster. And IF is meant to be a great way to drop weight (though I'm not sure if this is simply due to a calorie deficit?).

I work out in the evenings 8-9pm so I can do IF with my meals between 3pm-10pm allowing me to fit in pre and post work out meals.

Iv done keto before, I can hack the control but my PT insists its bad for muscle loss?

There's nothing superior about keto. There have been plenty of studies recently that have shown that when protein intake is matched between a keto diet and non-keto diet (prior to this protein was not matched) there was no meaningful difference in results.

Same for IF - no magic bullet other than for some people it promotes better adherence on a calorie restricted diet. As for muscle loss it would depend on what the IF protocol actually is; something like 16/8 is different to 5:2 although they both fall under the banner of 'intermittent fasting'.

Preserving lean mass on a diet is the same whatever method you use:
1) sufficient dietary protein
2) your deficit/rate of loss not being too severe for your body fat level: fatter people can afford to lose weight quicker as they have more freely available energy from fat cells floating about (the recommendation these days is to aim for 0.5-1% of your total bodyweight lost per week rather than a set number in kg/lbs since this sorts out the scaling automatically)
3) sufficient training stimulus by maintaining training intensity aka weight on the bar (although overall training volume can be lowered, e.g. doing slightly less sets).
 
Associate
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I tried keto, albeit I only lasted two weeks, the cravings for carbs is awful. I workout at 6:15am, on a non-keto diet I found IF very useful and could easily go until 12pm without food. On keto I was starving on the drive home from the gym (7:30).

Everyone is different, keto didn't work for me but it could for you. I don't think there's anything wrong with losing weight slowly, when you plateau either decrease calories by 100 or up your cardio :)
 
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Just read this post, the picture of the tribe with no outside human contact are awesome.....
I mean they managed to perfect forging steel into a machete just like the rest of the world and make what looks like an enamel pot.
Pictures speak a thousand words if you look
 
Man of Honour
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I tried keto, albeit I only lasted two weeks, the cravings for carbs is awful. I workout at 6:15am, on a non-keto diet I found IF very useful and could easily go until 12pm without food. On keto I was starving on the drive home from the gym (7:30).

Everyone is different, keto didn't work for me but it could for you. I don't think there's anything wrong with losing weight slowly, when you plateau either decrease calories by 100 or up your cardio :)
it's likely it didn't work, because you didn't become fat adapted ie. you where only on it for two weeks, same reason you were hungry. Keto is great for suppressing cravings, suppressing appetite and feeling great. But you have to give your body enough time to adapt.

however i do agree everyone is different, but the vast majority seem to respond well to keto in studies after the adaptation phase (and even better results for people suffering metabolic syndrom http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/metabolic-syndrome/Pages/Introduction.aspx). Seems to be a much smaller proportion of the population that responds very well to high carb low fat.
 
Man of Honour
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due to the benefit of such a diet which are numerous, and despite what you have said i cant find any research to back up your comment, unlike ample research on ketogenic diets.
 
Soldato
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I must be a real hipster, I carb cycle on heavy weight days and 16/8 IF. In all honesty I only do the IF because I don't like eating breakfast and can easily go through lunch with just a black coffee. Do like feeling lighter without any food in my stomach but my job isn't physical at all so don't need the calories early on in the day.
 
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it's likely it didn't work, because you didn't become fat adapted ie. you where only on it for two weeks, same reason you were hungry. Keto is great for suppressing cravings, suppressing appetite and feeling great. But you have to give your body enough time to adapt.

however i do agree everyone is different, but the vast majority seem to respond well to keto in studies after the adaptation phase (and even better results for people suffering metabolic syndrom http://www.nhs.uk/conditions/metabolic-syndrome/Pages/Introduction.aspx). Seems to be a much smaller proportion of the population that responds very well to high carb low fat.

I thought the same however I had fruity breath which is a sign my body was in ketosis. I struggle with cravings so super strict diets never work for me which is why I switched back to just eating 500 cals below my TDEE and using IF so fitting in the odd cheat meal is easy.

I must be a real hipster, I carb cycle on heavy weight days and 16/8 IF. In all honesty I only do the IF because I don't like eating breakfast and can easily go through lunch with just a black coffee. Do like feeling lighter without any food in my stomach but my job isn't physical at all so don't need the calories early on in the day.

I was tempted to try carb cycling, how many low/high carb days do you have per week?
 
Man of Honour
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It means you are producing ketones, it doesn't mean your body could use them effectively. And that is one of the massive benefits of keto is lack of cravings, sounds like you didn't research enough.
 
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