217@13%, can't lose any more supposedly

[hackerhercules]

Friend is 217 lbs at ~13% BF, his BMR is about 2220 kcal a day.

He eats between 2280 and 1640 kcal a day. He's been doing this for a year and a half, he's done it before and dropped to 195 without an issue. Now he's completely railroaded and can't lose more weight (trend for several months now). He's successfully maintained some stupid bodybuilding brosplit workout program that's had him in the gym 7 days a week for ages.

Why can't he lose weight? He's not taking gear, he has no metabolic issues, no strange symptoms, but he's been stressed a lot lately.

I'm insistent that he must be consuming calories he's not aware of. He doesn't eat prepackaged food, he cooks and weighs it all out to a T. He doesn't drink sports drinks or anything, he's a nut about it.

Any ideas? What are we missing here?

[bobmen10000]

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
http://www.barbellmedicine.com/does-you ... ight-loss/

[damufunman]

Adaptation to what he's currently doing? Possibly reducing NEAT due to reduced intake, especially if he's been where he is for months.

Also, listen to someone who knows more about what they are talking about than me.

[hackerhercules]

Even then, BMR is calculated based off of experimental data from comatose patients, isn't it?

If he's eating below his BMR, a reduction in NEAT shouldn't make an appreciable difference in bodyweight loss.

I think he's probably consuming some hidden calories he isn't aware of or sleep eating or something, but could NEAT compensation be great enough to stall him out at such a deficit? I don't see how.

[CamLeslie]

If there isn't some weight specific event coming up why not bump the calories for awhile, get that metabolism going and start cutting again?

Body has adapted and is trying to prevent itself from starving to death.

For reference I was doing 200c, 60f, 200p on high carb days and got to 203. Back up to eating 420c 100f, 200p with no appreciable weight gain (206 now after 1.5 months). But when I decided to cut again, I will have lots of calories to play with.

[d0uevenlift]

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
http://www.barbellmedicine.com/does-you ... ight-loss/

Yeah this is part of it for sure. When you diet, your body is like WTF IS HAPPENING. So you move less, walk less, fidget less, etc.

OP's friend sounds like he dieted for way too long and didn't reverse and maintain for a bit. Maybe he has adapted to this new calorie intake and his BMR is no longer what it was before dieting.

If you and your friend are tracking calories meticulously and he's not shedding weight, it's time to up his activity. Walk more, swim, bike, etc. Unless he wants to drop his daily caloric intake even more, which I doubt.

FWIW dieting for more than 6 months was probably not the best idea and I wouldn't have him do that again.

[AaronM]

Friend is 217 lbs at ~13% BF, his BMR is about 2220 kcal a day.

Mucho jealous of said friend. I got just below 180lb recently and was still over 15% bodyfat, and I was loosing weight at 3000 calories/day.

If all else fails, I've found that a good stomach virus will get your weight down in a hurry.

[BenM]

Wish I could lose weight at 3000 calories a day.

You say he has no metabolic issues but if he has been dieting for ages as you say and has stalled at that weight then he probably has some downregulation and adding in more food (preferably in the form of more carbs) may help.

[hackerhercules]

Thanks for the replies, folks - you're all saying the exact same thing I was trying to tell him. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't off my rocker.

[jwilson625]

I agree that he has to be underreporting or missing a calorie source somewhere... 2200kcal maintenance seems quite low for a trained dude who is 217lb at 13%, especially if he's remotely active.

[mbasic]

Friend is 217 lbs at ~13% BF, his BMR is about 2220 kcal a day.

He eats between 2280 and 1640 kcal a day. He's been doing this for a year and a half, he's done it before and dropped to 195 without an issue. Now he's completely railroaded and can't lose more weight (trend for several months now). He's successfully maintained some stupid bodybuilding brosplit workout program that's had him in the gym 7 days a week for ages.

Why can't he lose weight? He's not taking gear, he has no metabolic issues, no strange symptoms, but he's been stressed a lot lately.

I'm insistent that he must be consuming calories he's not aware of. He doesn't eat prepackaged food, he cooks and weighs it all out to a T. He doesn't drink sports drinks or anything, he's a nut about it.

Any ideas? What are we missing here?

Couple of things:
- How tall is this guy?
- What method was used for determining the 13%BF number?

[hackerhercules]

Friend is 217 lbs at ~13% BF, his BMR is about 2220 kcal a day.

He eats between 2280 and 1640 kcal a day. He's been doing this for a year and a half, he's done it before and dropped to 195 without an issue. Now he's completely railroaded and can't lose more weight (trend for several months now). He's successfully maintained some stupid bodybuilding brosplit workout program that's had him in the gym 7 days a week for ages.

Why can't he lose weight? He's not taking gear, he has no metabolic issues, no strange symptoms, but he's been stressed a lot lately.

I'm insistent that he must be consuming calories he's not aware of. He doesn't eat prepackaged food, he cooks and weighs it all out to a T. He doesn't drink sports drinks or anything, he's a nut about it.

Any ideas? What are we missing here?

Couple of things:
- How tall is this guy?
- What method was used for determining the 13%BF number?

- 6'2"
- Educated guesswork based on previous measurements/physique

I've told him to get a real measurement, he has an impedance scale but it gives him insane readings that are obviously incorrect (much higher than 13-15%). He hasn't yet.

Should note he's doing RPE now (just started Bridge, going to move him to something press-focused for an expected meet in October) and he's increased his caloric intake appropriately. We've decided to reconsider a cut again after the meet, dependent on how he feels about his physique at that point. Doing some carb cycling and titration as appropriate for this leg of his programming, see how it works for him with a focus on keeping him properly fed for his workouts.

[quark]

Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
http://www.barbellmedicine.com/does-you ... ight-loss/

Yeah this is part of it for sure. When you diet, your body is like WTF IS HAPPENING. So you move less, walk less, fidget less, etc.

OP's friend sounds like he dieted for way too long and didn't reverse and maintain for a bit. Maybe he has adapted to this new calorie intake and his BMR is no longer what it was before dieting.

Just losing weight will cause BMR to drop somewhat - you need fewer calories to support a smaller body, all else being equal. It's not clear to me how much a decrease in caloric requirements is due to a slower metabolism (NEAT) and how much is due to a smaller body.

[CamLeslie]

Don't over think this guys. If he has been legit cutting for 1.5 YEARS, it is time to increase the calories. If nothing else, just for sanity.

[Murelli]

I agree with all the people who said he needs a reverse diet - increase his carbs and fats by ~10g/5g a week. Izzy Narvaez has some guidelines for cutting and bulking in his site that are quite reasonable too.

[Mugaaz]

Agree with what everyone else said here. Maybe he is under-reporting, but there isn't anything you can do about that if he lying to you and/or himself. After being in a deficit for a year and a half normal things stop working. If you double down and start doing insane things you *can* start losing again, but it is pointless since you can't maintain those kind of changes. At a certain point you are going to need to return to maintenance for a while before dieting becomes effective again.

[CamLeslie]

Furthermore it will be more time efficient to increase for awhile then lose versus lose harder. If the way I wrote it makes any sense.

[JonA]

Don't over think this guys. If he has been legit cutting for 1.5 YEARS, it is time to increase the calories. If nothing else, just for sanity.

At a certain point you are going to need to return to maintenance for a while before dieting becomes effective again.

If he's not losing weight, then he *is* on maintenance calories. It's probably not just NEAT, but all physical activity (TEPA). If he's stuck and tracking intake accurately, he needs to track output as well and be diligent about maintaining the output part of the equation.

People say you can't out-train a bad diet. That's probably true if you are extremely out of shape, but if you have good or decent cardiovascular fitness, you sure can. A guy his size is going to burn about 500kcal on a 30 min jog.

[Mugaaz]

Don't over think this guys. If he has been legit cutting for 1.5 YEARS, it is time to increase the calories. If nothing else, just for sanity.

At a certain point you are going to need to return to maintenance for a while before dieting becomes effective again.

If he's not losing weight, then he *is* on maintenance calories. It's probably not just NEAT, but all physical activity (TEPA). If he's stuck and tracking intake accurately, he needs to track output as well and be diligent about maintaining the output part of the equation.

People say you can't out-train a bad diet. That's probably true if you are extremely out of shape, but if you have good or decent cardiovascular fitness, you sure can. A guy his size is going to burn about 500kcal on a 30 min jog.

I agree with the bolded part, but that *is* the problem. If your calories are crazy low already, and you're at barely below or at maintenance, then doubling down on cardio and dropping calories further seems counter-productive. Seems more effective to work on being at maintenance while increasing calories/NEAT/TEPA.

[hackerhercules]

I'll update the thread with results at the end of his run at The Bridge or as changes warrant. He's currently in Week 2.

We've got his macros up to something like 220p/260c/62f daily. I suggested that I'd like to see him increase the fat a little bit, because I think ~100g fat is a better minimum, but said it was up to him based on how he felt/his performance is knowing that some people (like me) prefer more fat than others and as long as his totals go up as he trains I see no reason to force him to over-eat. Also decided to ditch the idea of carb-cycling at this leg of things, in the interest of getting his metabolism spiked up again - we can always introduce this later if he gains weight too fast.

Physique is definitely important to him despite shifting his focus to strength training again, and I know that if we force him to eat a bunch more than he needs and he chubs up, it's going to distract him from his strength training and interfere with his motivation to get strong. For THIS trainee it's better to keep macros a little lower, wait for him to stall or feel performance impacts, and begin titrating his macros up at that point. I explained all this to him so he understands the thought process behind my suggestions, and we're on the same page.

He's noted since starting RPE and moving from brosplits he's feeling a lot less tired, more motivated and positive, and he's doing a great job of sticking to the program as written and defending himself against the temptations of making a bunch of accessory additions, as well as making sure he eats enough via MFP logging.