Mycutting diet doesn't seem to be working, hints?

Below is my first cutting diet, is it suitable?

Here are a few details about myself and a copy of my current eating regime.

Have been on it for three weeks now and not seeing much in the way of weight loss at all? Doing weights three days a week and cardio three days a week, all sessions are roughly 1 hour.

6'5", 275lbs, 18% body fat, looking to get down to around 240 @ 8-10% body fat

Currently eating the following and not 1 gram more or less:

Revised diet with Macro's and calories listed (F/C/P)

8:00 am Meal 1: ½ cup porridge + 6 egg whites 7.5/24.3/29.7 290cal

10:00 am Meal 2: 150g grilled Chicken + vegies (salad with olive oil) + almonds 24/10/51.6 448cal

12:30 am Meal 3: 200g lean beef + 150g brown rice 10/47/53 504cal

3:00 pm Meal 4: 150g grilled Chicken + 100g baked sw/p 6/17/46 308cal

5:30 pm Meal 5: 40g WPC 1/2/33 127cal

6:30 pm Meal 6: 200g grilled Chicken + broccoli + almonds 25/1/58 330cal

8:00 pm Meal 7: ½ cup L/F cottage cheese 2.5/4.3/17 108cal


Totals: 76/105.6/288.3 2115cal

I maintained my weight for the first three weeks and have dropped about 3 pounds in the last week, it doesn’t seem like enough?

U should list the macros and totals of each meal so it's easier to critique. Also from first glance I don't see many fats, u need EFA (essential fatty acids), yes even when cutting.

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Originally Posted by little_dude

U should list the macros and totals of each meal so it's easier to critique. Also from first glance I don't see many fats, u need EFA (essential fatty acids), yes even when cutting.

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Thanks little dude, I forgot to include the almonds. I also drizzle a little olive oil over my salads (morning veggie meal)

Diet doesnt look too bad, but without macros its hard to say, although I can guestimate where u are right now....


If your loosing weight then thats a good sign....

Weigh yourself more often to avoid anomalies

Shoot for 1.5 - 2 lbs per week to begin with...


Keep doing what ur doing but weigh yourself more often to see the trend.

be careful with putting oil on and eating un-weighed nuts... the fats soon add up more than you think

Thanks baseline, each serve of almonds is 8 almonds only, totalling 16 almonds for the whole day and 1 tablespoon of olive oil on the morning salad.

Are the weights you are using cooked or uncooked weights. How many grams of oats for breakfast and what are you mixing them with, water? Milk?

Listing macro's would make everybody's life so much easier to help.

WPC as your last meal needs to be ditched for a much slower digesting protein, cottage cheese is my supper of choice.

Are you doing any morning fasted cardio?

What's your cardio regime? even if your diet is spot on. A vigorous cardio regime will help hugely and with your weight largely stable you ll be able to preserve muscle as much as poss and burn off fat via hard work on the treadmill.

Never underestimate the importance of diet AND cardio together. If both are in check it's a very potent tool.

Diet has been updated with macros and calories. I also added my basic workout weights M, W, F with cardio on the others and Sunday is rest day.

I do cheat on Tuesday lunch every week, I trade in the 200g of lean beef for a whole Nando's chicken (X-tra hot) otherwise this diet would kill me! I am usually an eating machine!

76 grams of fat, that is your problem right there.

Imo, that's more than enough calories. You're already getting your efa's and EXTRA from it, which may be hindering your losses.

I agree with choppers, how do you do your cardio?

Cardio is first thing in the morning, before my first meal, three days a week. Tuesdays and Thursdays treadmill for about an hour, Saturdays a 45 minute session in the pool.

For someone my weight and size what should my fat intake be for a cutting diet?

I can start making my oats with water instead of milk which will drop about 5 grams but other than that the only extra fats I consume, other than ones in my meat, are from 16 almonds, 1 tbs of olive oil and in the cottage cheese?

Ratios are currently 16%/23%/61% what should I be aiming for?

Where did you get a figure of 2100 daily cals from? I think you may be substantially undereating.

Drop the almonds. You'll be losing about 25g of fat right there. And 1 tblspn of Olive Oil is adding about 13g of fat. Those 2 combined is half your daily fat intake. Although, in fairness, if your stats are right 76g per day isn't a horrendous amount. But try and spread it out more equally between meals. Substitute your almonds for some fish oil.

What time of day do you lift?

Is your morning cardio low intensity? Do you know your heart rate during?

Thanks stem,

My morning cardio is low to medium intensity, nothing too difficult but defiantly makes me sweat! No idea of heart rate at all.

I always lift at 4:30, any earlier and I get indegestion from the previous meal. I follow this immediately with my afternoon shake.

I calculated the calories from the same website that showed me how to calculate macros. Not sure how accurate it is but it covered every type of food imaginable and every possible way to cook it as well.

I would test your heart rate whilst doing cardio, your machines have HR readers on them? Try and keep it around 125-130.

Are your meal times set by work or can they be changed at all? A couple of meals are too close together. What time to you go to bed?

Not enough carbs before of after your workout and not enough carbs or protein at breakfast. You mix your oats with skim milk?

Your macro's look like they are based on cooked weights. They REALLY need to based on dry weights. Look on the packets to work it out.

BTW, where do you live? SOme weights you have measured in cups, others in grams!

The reason I mixed up all the units was the site I was on you could choose both. I used grams for the items I weigh and cups for the stuff I measure. The site also has macros based on cooked and uncooked so I use a bit of both!

The meal times are based around work during the day but evening can be changed easy enough.

What changes would you recommend at breakfast and PWO?

I was trying to keep the fats and carbs in separate meals as I read it was benificial but there seems to be some debate?

At breakfast I would bring carbs and protein to at least 40g each, maybe even 45g. Personally, I'm not hungry 2 hours after meal 1 but if that's when you can eat, that's ok. Any way, the next meal is low in carbs so not really an issue.
Meal 2, drop the almonds and reduce the olive oil to a dessert spoon or even change to a low fat low sugar dressing.
Meal 3 is cool, maybe a little carb heavy (reduce to 45g) but not much.
Meal 4 Increase the sweet potato to give you 40g carbs. Add some brocolli.
PWO add powdered oats to provide approx 40g of carbs and take 5g fish oil
Meal 6, drop the almonds
Meal 7 - too close to meal 6. Have it at 9.30 and increase portion size to provide 30g protein.

Too much fat with carbs, for me, is an issue. 10g of fat with carbs is probably the max I would take. But, we all react different to different food stimuli. So, what you need is a good base and you need to work it out yourself, depending how your body reacts, from there.

Your original diet listed as 2100 cals. That's a figure I would use to get down to 185 at 10%. If you cut cals too much you will lose muscle. If I were you, I probably wouldn't want to drop below 2500 as an absolute minimum. Seriously weigh your food before cooking, not after.

Can you vary your protein sources? Tuna/fish instead of chicken every now and again?

Re-calculate using the changes I suggested and relist with macro's and we'll take a look.

Right, I'm off to train legs!

Just recalculated my whole diet and made a few changes using macros and weights from raw foods using the livestrong website and these are the results I got:

Daily Totals:
Cals 2170
Fat 50 g
Carbs 209 g
Protein 224 g
Fibre 28 g

New Diet: (F/C/P)

7:30am Meal 1: ½ cup porridge with 1 cup skim milk and 2 tsp of honey + 6 egg whites (3/73/35)

10:00 am Meal 2: 150g grilled grilled skinless chicken breast + 1 carrot + 1 tomato + 50g snow peas + 6 almonds + 1 tsp olive oil (14/19/29)

12:30 am Meal 3: 130g No Drain tuna in olive oil + 150g brown rice (7/41/35)

3:00 pm Meal 4: 150g grilled Chicken + 100g baked sweet potato (11/25/27)

5:30 pm Meal 5: 40g WPC + 1/4 cup powdered oats (4/32/35)

6:30 pm Meal 6: 200g grilled steak + broccoli + 1tsp olive oil + 6 almonds (8/12/50)

9:00 pm Meal 7: ½ cup L/F cottage cheese (1/5/13)

Supliments: Calcium +D twice a day, slow release multi every morning, 2000mg Vitamin C spread throughout the day, 1000mg glucosamine mornings, 2000mg fish oil with every pro-fat meal (2 and 6), multizyme (amylase, protease, lipase, tilactase, cellulase, bromelain and papain) with every meal, psyllium husks with every meal.