Post: #26

I was particularly happy to see that it would have been a line group. Something that's also fairly mobile friendly would be great. So if people don't have/want to get line google hangouts should be something most people have.

Post: #27

Ok, let's just stick with Line because quite a few people have downloaded the app already and PMed me.

We can switch later if need be.

Post: #28

I think I'm gonna join in with this Rio.

Ever since my hernia I have just lost all motivation when it comes to my training, not being able to lift really heavy.

Definitely need to cut some bodyweight given my muscles are shrinking to nothing!

I think a group thing could be just what I need to get my competitive juices flowing again after 3/4 months or so out of the gym.

I'm in for sure.

Post: #29

Sounds good bro. PM me your Line ID and I'll get you added.

Post: #30

I added all of you guys to the chat, but you have to accept my Line friend request first to join.

Post: #31

Just got a fitbit hr and a digital scale with saved nutrition values. Will start in 8 days.

Post: #32

I would love to do this next Spring, but I'm in bear hibernation mode for the Winter. I'll subscribe to this thread and then if I remember to bump it I will a few months down the road.

Post: #33

Here is exactly what my protocol looks like, when life doesn't get in the way.

Diet follows Silver Hydra's Cheat Mode, plus fasting every day. The focus is to keep insulin low during the day, jack it up post workout, and let my body repair on rest days. Lifting days 2500-2700 cal, rest days 2000-2500 cal. I track it all on My Fitness Pal.

Breakfast: Black coffee, ACV, 5g glutamine

Lunch (around 2 PM): 12 oz 85% ground beef patties and spinach salad. Vitamin D, vitamin C, fish oil, fiber gummies.

Pre-workout: Loud affirmations in the car on the way to the gym, 12 min in the tanning bed if needed

Weightlifting: Every other day, in the evening, full body training. Whatever isn't sore gets hit the hardest. Rep ranges from 1 to infinity. Drop sets, super sets, giant sets, static holds. Compound lifts to hammer curls. Train like an animal and chase the pump. Finish with this grip routine.

Peri-workout: 10-15g BCAA, 5g glutamine, 2-3g beta alanine, excessive water

Post-workout: 2 scoops of whey, 1-2 teaspoons of cinnamon, 3-5g of fiber, 2 PB&J Pop Tarts, 200-500g ALA.

Snacks: Nonexistent on training days. Almonds, greek yogurt, Barlean's greens, juice, or Udo's on rest days.

Cardio: On rest days. Intensity depends on DOMS severity. Cycle between jump rope, walking, biking, basketball, tennis.

Dinner: 1000 calories of something. Usually chili, chipotle, chicken wings, or steak & eggs. Keep it paleo, lots of meat and vegetables. Less strict about calories/macros on rest day.

Alcohol: None

PM pills: Zinc, magnesium, liver tabs, fish oil, vitamin C, ACV

Sleep: Like a bear

Post: #34

How do you drink 2 scoops of protein at a time? Is mixed with something? PB and J pop tarts?

Post: #35

Shit. Guess I didn't make the cut.

Post: #36

Mike, we only let in repped members who have been around for a while due to security reasons.

Post: #37

I'm in.

Post: #38

I'll be in. Need to cut some myself.

Post: #39

I'm in.

Post: #40

I'm in

Post: #41

They mention a few apps for food logging too and its a great review of the product.





My fitness pal lets you bar code scan new foods into the app which sounds like a good timesaver. It sounds like a lot of the reviews are user added so they might not always be accurate. Perhaps there is better software now.

Post: #42

This is mostly just for the guys on the cutting group, just stuff i picked up on 11 years of bodybuilding, powerlifting, olympic weightlifting, martial arts and a very serious injury in between. Please dont nitpick stuff i say to make me look bad, write your own guide instead if you want to contribute. Thanks.

Losing fat on a low carb diet
1. Nutrition: If you are not tracking your macros and are eating above them currently, doesn’t matter how much exercise you do or how clean your diet is, you still won’t be losing weight.
2. Weight training: weight training is the second most important thing, not only does it build muscle mass, but it elevates your metabolism and burns a lot more calories than any other physical activity.
3. HIIT: High intensity interval training burns more calories than regular low intensity cardio (such as walking, static bike) and it elevates your metabolism, problem is that people tend to overdo each session and with a frequency of only 1-2 a week. It’s another form of stress that your body has to recover from plus there aren’t many guidelines on what exactly to do so it’s easy to get carried away do too much and start losing muscle.
4.Low intensity cardio: It doesn’t burn as many calories as HIIT, but it’s a lot easier to do every day for months on end. I recommend starting off with a session after a workout and then depending on your goals add another session fasted in the morning. People say that you begin to burn fat at the 20 minutes mark, and doing it for more than 45 minutes is not ideal to maintain muscle mass.
5.Meal timing
Worrying about meal timing when you don’t have your training dialed in and your nutrition is just a waste of time, stuff like the anabolic window make such a small difference that until you have everything above done right is not worth doing.

Brotips
Don’t go all out at once or you will burn out, start gradually with weight training, if you haven’t done shit in your entire life wait until you have enough discipline in the gym to start dieting. Once you understand how weight training works and want to start dieting cut off junk food and alcohol first, on a beginner weight training alone will produce enough fat loss to see a difference, cutting out junk food (again on a beginner) will also make a difference. There is no point in starting to eat chicken breast with broccoli on every meal from day one if you’re not gonna be able to keep up with it mentally. Go slow and clean up your diet gradually. See macros above, I’m not gonna mention the ratios because this is mainly for a low carb diet.
Only when you have the training and the nutrition on point start doing cardio, it’s not worth in terms of time investment, it’s better to just eat less calories than to burn 400 calories on 1 hour on the treadmill.
-Eating fats do not make you fat, low carb low fats diets were popularized by steroid using bodybuilders in the 80’s. If you’re not eating fats your body can’t produce testosterone and you can say goodbye to your libido. Also it goes without saying that eating fats doesn’t mean eating fried shit (they raise cholesterol in the blood, yes you can have heart diseases), you should be eating nuts, almonds, olive oil, avocados, etc.

-Drink lots of water, depends on the body weight but for most people it will be like a gallon a day, it will help you with the digestion.
-It’s hard to reach your macros if you’re eating very clean everyday, as in chicken breast with brown rice on every meal. There is a reason why every serious bodybuilder goes around with his food on a Tupperware everywhere he goes.
-The opposite is true, if you’re doing IIFYM or “flexible dieting” it’s easy to go beyond your daily macros, I don’t think tracking and weighing food is healthy and can turn into an obsession very quickly. I weigh myself daily and since I eat pretty much the same, I just eat one less meal or adjust the carbs in them depending on my bodyweight. Watch your sodium and water retention if you want to do it this way.
-Since your protein intake will be high you will need a lot of fiber since it’s hard to process, eat vegetables with every meal.
-You can only lose so many grams of fat per day, there is no point in overdoing cardio, or dropping the calories too low like on a crash diet, the only thing you will accomplish doing so is losing muscle and burning out before reaching your goal.
-Having a cheat day is great to maintain muscle mass but the frequency of that day depends on how high your bf% is, it also raises leptin levels. The way I see it, it helps your body not set its basal metabolic rate too low when you’re very low on calories (That’s why people have a rebound when they stop dieting midway). It’s more benefitial to do it on a weak body part day.
-Don’t go on a fast or something stupid like that if you had an all-out weekend, just get back on your regular dieting. Like I said above you can only burn so much in the day, the opposite is also true you can only gain a couple grams of fat per day. Going out of your diet for a couple of days is not going to kill you unless you’re making a living out of your body. Slow and steady wins the race.
-Take pictures to track your progress and be honest with yourself. People say too much I squatted 400 or I benched 350 that after a while they forget that that 350 was actually 300 and it was not a set of 5 it was 1 rep with a spotter.
-Set yourself a goal before starting and commit to it until the end: many people will start a cut and midway realize they don’t have the amount of mass they thought they had, similar when bulking people miss their abs and go right back to cutting. Going up and down all the time is hard on the body and if you cut right the way the look you had midway will be a lot different than your final results.
-Try to keep your strength even on low calories days, it’s the best way to tell if you’re losing or maintaining your muscle mass, of course keeping your strength doesn’t mean going for PR’s all the time, just doing the same weight for the same amount of reps is enough.
-Once you’re really low bf% you will start to notice that maybe you should have added a bit more isolation on a few bodyparts… well nothing to do about it now. Let that be a lesson to not just focus on the compounds on your next bulk.
-High rep ranges/Hypertrophy training build great legs: Recreational lifters get a bad rep of not having legs simply because they neglect them not because training legs doesn’t work. The difference between a bodybuilding split and a full body routine like SS or SL is that the frequency is lower which makes every leg day a pain in the ass (yes the memes are true) specially since training your legs burns up more calories than any other body part and you might not finish a workout without enough calories.
-Hypertrophy training with short rest periods is better than strength training when cutting. It burns more calories and elevates your metabolism more.

Stupid stuff my friends say or do

- I went to a nutritionist once in my life, and I still start with that diet every time I unsuccessfully try to cut- If you’re cutting right you should adjust your caloric intake every two weeks since you will be weighing less and needing less calories.
- I want to start my diet but first I want to buy protein powder and lipo black 6- If you don’t do your training and nutrition right you’re wasting money on supplements.
-I went to jog for 2 hours yesterday (with no prior training whatsoever) and I want to run a half marathon 3 months from now do you think I will lose weight?- Read everything above
-I’ve been training and dieting for years and still look the same, I don’t even know what I’m doing wrong- Researching and reading all this information takes a lot of time and years for someone to learn on their own what works and what not. Real progress from a cutting/bulking cycle happens in 3-4 months, if people aren’t saying to you omg what have you been doing after a cycle then you probably could have done a lot better. Of course with work and life it’s difficult to dedicate that much time to this stuff, but if you have enough spare time and don’t know what you’re doing wrong it might be time to invest in a personal trainer to help you out.

Post: #43

^ Great post man.

Post: #44

Hey guys,

The group is already really large.

I think there's enough interest that someone should open a second cutting group. Once it gets past 10 the Line chat gets too cluttered and I think there's much more accountability in smaller groups.

Post: #45

I'm late but count me...



edit: Ok I'll only follow this thread since I can't use line

Post: #46

For those of you using Myfitnesspal, have any of you upgraded to the premium account, if so, is it worth it? So far I like the app, it user friendly and and easy way to keep track food, I've never counted calories or macros before and this is making it very easy.

Post: #47

(12-02-2015 04:23 PM)scotian Wrote:  For those of you using Myfitnesspal, have any of you upgraded to the premium account, if so, is it worth it? So far I like the app, it user friendly and and easy way to keep track food, I've never counted calories or macros before and this is making it very easy.

I've been thinking about it lately.

$50/year isn't terrible. The ability to see how many grams per macro you have left in a day is a huge advantage, plus being able to do different caloric goals for different days (rest days/lifting days).

Putting a price tag also puts you financially invested in the process...which may cause you to use it more.

However I don't see it useful for the way I do things. I'd rather plan out my calories/macros and then repeat ad nauseam. Likewise on rest days or days like today where I'm sick, I just plan on staying below 2600 calories. The macro view wouldn't help too much.

Post: #48

I'm still new to it so have to play around with it some more but one thing I've noticed is that if I put my time in on the cardio machines (elliptical, rowing machine, etc) it calculates the calories burned, or I can manually input them as the machine itself displays it at the end. However, when I put in my compound lifts from the 5X5 routine, it doesn't give me a calories burned value or the option to input it.

Do any of you guys know roughly how much I would have burned in a 45 minute workout of 5X5 squats, shoulder press and deadlift (1X10)?

Post: #49

(12-02-2015 07:19 PM)scotian Wrote:  I'm still new to it so have to play around with it some more but one thing I've noticed is that if I put my time in on the cardio machines (elliptical, rowing machine, etc) it calculates the calories burned, or I can manually input them as the machine itself displays it at the end. However, when I put in my compound lifts from the 5X5 routine, it doesn't give me a calories burned value or the option to input it.

Do any of you guys know roughly how much I would have burned in a 45 minute workout of 5X5 squats, shoulder press and deadlift (1X10)?

This is such a hard question to answer because calories burned during a weight lifting session depend on the speed of your metabolism since you keep on burning calories after your lifting due to your elevated metabolism running faster by trying to recuperate from your lifting. Personally, I just focus on creating a caloric deficit in the kitchen, and then getting a good pump at the gym and that's it. That way, the calories you burn from your lifting is extra to the expected weigh that you'll drop from your caloric deficit

Post: #50

Yeah, I ignore lifting calories when trying to lose weight...I just see them as a bonus on top of kitchen and cardio deficits.