bigbassbrent's Journal, 30 May 2014

Hey everybody, I hope you all have found some sort of success during May!

My May summary: I’m still doing great sticking to low carb. It has become an engrained lifestyle at this point. The problem is that I haven’t been managing my calories like I should. I loosened the reins a little at the beginning of the month and decided to eat when I felt like I needed it to help with workouts and recovery. Some days I ate over maintenance calories and other days I ate below. My average daily calories for May are at 2283 and my calculated average daily deficit is - 322. Something is not adding up because I haven’t lost any weight this month and it looks like I have added muscle mass. I think my deficit is not really -322 for the month because of inaccurate logging of my exercise in fatsecret.

I still have a way to go with trimming up my mid-section and that bothers me. At this point I want to make that a priority. I found that in May I was changing my goals between adding muscle mass and losing fat from one day to the next. I need to pick one goal and stick to it.

Here is where the decisions get confusing for me. My body measurements show that I have gained muscle mass. So that’s good. I have also lost about a 1/4 inch around my belly. This is good too! So, it seems like things are working out as planned. However, the fat around my midsection is still there and I want it gone pronto!

So for June I’m going to try a new strategy. I will continue working out but I will place more emphasis on diet and cutting the remaining body fat. I am going to use the IIFYM site calculations to set a daily caloric intake based on their calculator numbers. For the IIFYM calculator I will only mark that I work out four days a week even though I walk 5 days a week, lift 3 days and do a 20 min ab routine twice a week. (What do they consider exercise anyway? walking, weight lifting, rugby, shopping, carrying the baby around?)

After running the calculator IIFYM says that I should consume 2053 daily calories to lose weight slowly. I will round this number up to 2100 to keep things simple. I will set 2100 as my fatsecret RDI. I will stick to this for my daily intake regardless of the daily exercise that I do. Once everything averages out over the course of the month I hope to see some positive results. I also think that eating to the same set number of calories each day will be easier for me mentally than what I had been doing, which was to try maintain a specific deficit each day based on my daily exercise.

I will have one full on cheat day every 15 days in June where I can eat over my calories and let loose on the carbs. Whoo Hoooo!!! I think this part is important to keep your body from becoming overly adapted to the same amount and type of calories every day.

My only concern is that I do not want to lose the muscles I have built while I try to cut the fat. I would like to eat more protein but it spikes my blood sugar if I go over 150g a day. So I am stuck with that because of pre-diabetes. I hope the moderate protein and continued lifting will do the job of retaining muscle.

I have been at this for 8 months now. I just put a couple of progress pics on my public profile page if anyone wants to see a shirtless “no tan having” 40 something year old who has lost almost 50 pounds and built some muscle. 

Have a great weekend!

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2035 kcal

Fat: 131.44g | Prot: 156.47g | Carb: 55.09g.   Breakfast: Now Foods Creatine Monohydrate, Now Foods Dextrose, Spectrum Spectrum Organic Virgin Coconut Oil, Coffee (Brewed From Grounds). Lunch: BelGioioso Aged Asiago Cheese, Taylor Farms Organic Baby Kale, Baby Spinach, Hormel Baby Back Ribs. Dinner: El Milagro Tortilla Chips, Daisy Sour Cream, Western Family Shredded Monterey Jack Cheese, Ground Beef (90% Lean / 10% Fat). Snacks/Other: Boar's Head Asiago Cheese, HEB Peanut Butter, heb greek yougart, So Delicious Coconut Milk Unsweetened Vanilla, Now Sports Whey Protein Isolate, Stevia, Hodgson Mill Milled Flax Seed. more...

2940 kcal

Activities & Exercise: Driving - 1 hour and 45 minutes, Resting - 6 hours and 29 minutes, Walking (brisk) - 4/mph - 26 minutes, Desk Work - 7 hours and 30 minutes, Housework - 1 hour, Sleeping - 6 hours, Weight Training (moderate) - 50 minutes. more...