Cutting advice

[teknikallysekure]

Current status:

About a year into Rippetoe's starting strength still getting pretty good gains and not quite "intermediate" strength based on my bodyweight to weight lifted ratios. Some lifts closer than others.

I do essentially this with some slight variation interspersing chins and pullups:

Workout A
3x5 Squat
3x5 Bench Press
1x5 Deadlift

Workout B
3x5 Squat
3x5 Press
5x3 Power cleans

My diet has been dialed for about 7 months now, and slowly but surely I'm gaining muscle and losing fat %'s in parallel which has been a balancing game.

My goal is track race sprinting.

I am getting sick of the slow road despite success to 10-12% bfat and decided it's about time for a cut. I'm at probably 15 or 16% now give or take. Six pack is visible, but only in the mornings or after a serious squat session, and there's a good warming layer there

.

My plan: continue SS 3 days a week, and intersperce 3 days of HIIT on a bike trainer, and cut calorie intake from just above maintenance to just below.

Is that a pretty good way to go about this without losing strength, or should I stay on the slow road? I figure where I'm at right now I can cut viciously for a month and then eat just enough above maintenance to continue gaining strength, and my squats are at a feasible enough level right now that if I can just keep it there I'll have a decent introductory year to track racing, and I can really crush it the year after.

Also any tips on HIIT methods are appreciated. What has worked for you?

 

[Dylan in AZ]

Re: Cutting advice

When i was on my school's track team our coach didn;t care about lifting weight in our upper bodies at all. He said that as long as we weren't power lifting with our legs, endurance training with our upper bodies, or doing extreme core workouts for balance that we needed to be out doing the sprints for our event. i thought that was a bit wierd because he made sure that even us 100-200m event sprinters did many 800m sprints per practice.

Our daily practices were heavily varying in what we were doing but the general idea was an 800m warmup jog around the track (2 laps), about a half hour of group stretches, then we'd split into our specific groups divided by event types (short sprints, long sprints, field events, etc), and for us (1-200m sprints and hurdles) we would do about an hour of starts on the blocks, then do around 12 800m all out sprints or 16 600m all out sprints, then we would do various other excercises meant to punish us to our limits.

All in all just do alot of running and sprinting practice based on which event you aim for and your diet does matter but as long as your healthy and excercizing religiously you can eat what you currently are and notice improvements. Definatly don't rush though, steroids are for people with no patients. And that doesn't work well in the long run. Just take your time and do it right the first time around.

Hope this helps,
Dylan

 

[JJones75]

Re: Cutting advice

what does your diet consist of now? you may be able to simply tweek the marco percentages a little and cause the body to release some extra fat

 

[teknikallysekure]

Re: Cutting advice

<div class="ubbcode-block"><div class="ubbcode-header">Originally Posted By: JJones75</div><div class="ubbcode-body">what does your diet consist of now? you may be able to simply tweek the marco percentages a little and cause the body to release some extra fat </div></div>

Was hoping you'd chime in!

2300 calories average

Protein is 26%
Fat 34%
Carbs 39%

approximately. That's what most of the BMI calcs have put me at as maintenance. I've been eating that rate for about 9 months and am obviously losing fat very slowly and am making measurable strength gains(easily attributable to beginner status).

On the weekly I eat only good carbs, mostly yams. Occasionally I'll have a piece of whole wheat bread(Dave's killer bread) or whole wheat pasta.

I've gotten really good at avoiding the shitty carbs, but I'm kind of wondering if I'm not still to high on carbs?

Weigh about 210-214 and I'm not currently taking creatine, but will probably get back on it before to long here.

Any recommendations are very appreciated.

I'm starting to hover lower around 2100 now that I'm looking to cut.

 

[teknikallysekure]

Re: Cutting advice

Nevermind I think I can figure this out. I don't know what happened yesterday I must've missed a meal somewhere because I tracked today 300 cals higher, but with a ratio:

34% protein 36% fat and 28.96% carbs.

I think if I can just maintain that I should be on track and I can just scale back portions slightly.

231 grams of Protein for 210lbs person, do I need to up that at all or is that legit?

 

[JJones75]

Re: Cutting advice

Well , in my oppinion those Macros are a bit out of wack but that may be what your body likes to run on if you have been doing well with it so far.

I personaly get fat easly with carbs so i use them sparingly and only in the early part of the day and very little while training.

Protein can and will be stored like fat if the body is in a high calorie surplus but not nearly as quickly as excess carbs of fats will. so I like to have an excess of protein rather than carbs , another reason is that the body doens't like to use protein of fats as fuel as much as carbs so the reduced carbs force the body to convert the protein to usable energy this burn calories as well as preserves muscle.

I like to start with a simple basic plan
45% from protein
25% from carbs
30% from fats
what you would need to maintain and possibly even grow some lean mass at your current body weight. What i typical like to do is start a little low and see what it does for us and adjust from their.
So lets say around 2500 cals to start with
45% protein from 2500 cals = 281g
25% carbs from 2500 cals = 156g
30% fats from 2500 cals = 83g
Now i would focus on when you get these , the carbs would come from the first 4 meals of the day and in these meals the protein intake would be from low fat meats like chicken breast or white fish or drained and rinsed 97% ground beef or egg whites (basicaly low fats) the last 2-3 meals of the day would be composed of fattier meats like lean red meat , Salmon , swordfish or whole eggs and green veggies , very little to zero carbs.
the reason for this is , the carbs are used early in the day for energy as the metabolism it ramping up the insulin response from this has little to no effect of fat storage as the body is steadly running and burning off glucose.
the higher fats later in the day along with the greens will slow digestion allowing the body to feed off of it longer during the night when your fasting in sleep and their are no carbs presant to cause any sort of insulin response which will make the body want to store all excess fats and carbs not being used for energy while sleeping as fat. Another benifit of the slowed digestion is that the body will not start to scavange off of itself during the night looking for proteins to rebuild the muscle.

generaly speaking most americans are carb sensitive and this is especialy so if you comes from a background of people from North east Europe or Africa where grain farming hasen't been around for more than a couple hundred years.

Carbs from grains are actualy not good for you , they are higher in Omega 6 fats which being an esential fat are not nearly as needed as Omega 3's , Omega 6 fats are inflamitory actualy causing inflamation in the body so its good to limit your carb intake to things like sweet potatos , fruits and milk and not so much rice and oats , actualy more than half of my daily carbs come from fruits.
try to get your fats from lean beef (grass fed preferably) or free range chickens or fatty fish , all these meats contain much more Omega 3 fats
and protein from where ever you can , preferably from meat but a couple shakes a day is no problem.

 

[JJones75]

Re: Cutting advice

alos it is possible to get your calories too low , if this happens for to long the body will see that it is starving and slow the metabolism down to keep from starving , so if you plan to run a very low calorie diest you must make sure to have one day in their out of 5-6 to "refeed" where you basicaly eat about tripple you standard calories , this will ramp the metabolism back up

 

[teknikallysekure]

Re: Cutting advice

Awesome info thanks a ton man I appreciate your time.

I think I need to lay off the milk a little and pump up the eggs chicken breast and tuna in it's place.

I've been drinking about a half gallon of whole milk a day(ala Rippetoe) but maybe it's time to reevaluate that aspect.

I'm going to give that a go and see what happens! Excellent advice.

 

[JJones75]

Re: Cutting advice

Milk isin't bad for you you just need to take all its calories into account , it has alot of sugar in their and whole milk has alot of fat so those need to be taken into account. The sugar from milk has a very low glycemic index so it doesen't jack the insulin levels up to high and Milk protein is easly absorbed by the body so its not all bad.

I go through about a gallon of raw goats milk every 3 days , raw milk is good for you as it has alot of good probiotics. Its good to have some sort of dairy that hasen't had all the "bugs" killed out of it by extreme pastruization , things like Fage yogurt at good also.

if you don't have the ability to digest your food properly then you body can't effecently use the nutrients you give it