leangains isn't working for me.. again

**joshh** · 02-08-2012, 02:15 AM

what up guys

after i did a fairly good keto cycle i decided to give leangains a go again and try and build some lean muscle, it seems as though it has backfired on me however. i have been doing leangains for about 2 weeks now and i have put on around 8-9lbs. i have put on quite a bit of muscle but i'm pretty sure i put on a fair bit of fat even though I am still eating to a 500cal deficit. i have dropped cardio all together, just lifting 6 days which puts my tdee at around 2500, im on a 2000cal diet. i used to do cardio twice a day but got flammed by people because the calorie deficit was supposedly too much? I was told i would still drop fat on a 500cal deficit without cardio and also possibly gain muscle in the process.

anyway, even though i have put on a bit of size, i think i have put on a fair bit of fat aswell as I feel more "pudgy", and i think it's 1 of 3 things, or even all 3.

1. 500 cal deficit not being enough?
2. consuming a 1000cal post workout containing 100g+ protein?
3. eating carbs all day even in my last meal of the day?

I have spent a little bit of time on bb.com forums recently and i have somewhat changed my views on dieting in general.
one thing they are very firm about is meal timing and they think meal timing is completely irrelevant. basically they say you can eat whenever you like during the day, whether it be 2 meals consisting of 1000cals each or 10 small meals throughout the day, as long as your hitting your daily macros and cals then you're fine.

i was thinking about instead of 3 meals, changing it to 4 and dropping carbs from my last meal of the day?

**joshh** · 02-08-2012, 03:09 AM

or maybe carbs post workout only?

**--->>405<<---** · 02-08-2012, 10:38 AM

hey josh why dont u start out by posting ur complete stats:age, weight, height, bf%

then post ur complete diet including macros as well as the time when u eat and ur workout times..

**joshh** · 02-08-2012, 11:11 AM

20y/o, 170lbs, 5'9, 15% bf% currently
this is what my leangains daily routine and meal plan looked like:

08.30am - Wake - 10g BCAA's

09.00am - Weight Training

10.00am - 400g chicken 115/0/7/525, 250g brown basmati rice 9/64/5/340 | 124/64/12/865

01.00pm - 175g tuna 29/1/15/254, 45g whey 36/3/1/165, 75g oats 10/40/7/285 | 75/44/23/504

06.00pm - 200g kangaroo 46/2/0/196, 125g brown rice 4/36/5/211 | 50/38/5/407

total 249/146/40/1776

I was taking 1tbps evoo with each meal to bump fat and cals up to around 2000

**--->>405<<---** · 02-08-2012, 01:53 PM

just curious .. u stated in ur op that ur "pretty sure u put on a fair amt of fat..." if u know ur bf% is currently 15% why r u only pretty sure??

also ur tdee at 15% and 170lbs is 2767cals
BMR = 1785cals

different people on here believe difft things about meal timing.. personally im having great results with 6 meals/day and carbs focused solely around my lifting routine.. while eating 3 bigger meals may not negatively affect ur progress i know for a fact eating 6 wont...

i see u do ur lifting in the am fasted..BAD IDEA BCAAs or not!.. if u lift at 0900 wake ur lazy butt up at 0730 and eat man!

u wanna have protein and carbs in meal 1 for sure.. then u want to have carbs again PWO and again PPWO since u lift so early.. IMO that should be the end of ur carbs for the day in meal 3(if cutting fat is ur primary goal)... meal 4 and meal 5 should be a lean protein and green veggie.. meal 6 lean protein and maybe a fat depending...

i would definitely NOT want to bump my cals up to where i want them by eating olive oil... like a smart guy on this forum always says.. FAT is most easily stored as FAT... if ur short on calories u need to look at ur diet and fix it.. u shouldnt be eating food daily and adding them up to see where ur at.. u should know where ur gonna be at the end of the day before the day starts! make a diet plan and stick to the plan..

at this point i think u need to decide what ur primary goal is gonna be from here.. if reduce bodyfat then id reduce ur calories lower than 2000.. we can get to that once u decide what u wanna do...

**joshh** · 02-08-2012, 07:15 PM

my primary goal is to cut but not loose precious muscle. i just recalculated my BMR and it is 1860, not sure how i calculated it at 2100 last time.

im not sure what category i would fall under to calculate my TDEE if I lift for an hour an day? anyway i know that an hours lifting burns around 300-400 calories so that would put my TDEE to around 2260, so eat to around 1800 cals?

i was told you don't really want to go under a 500cal deficit if you want to preserve muscle mass, so doing cardio wouldn't be a good idea for me?

**BrownGirl** · 02-08-2012, 07:43 PM

So I'm not an expert but let me tell you what I do....I'm on the IF diet myself, and I eat 400-500 calories less than my TDEE on my nonlift days (I do 1hr fasted cardio on these days) and 400-500 over TDEE on my lift days. I'm pretty sure I've ben losing some body fat due to the cardio and definitely am gaining muscle (I can see the change). I saw that you had mentioned u lift 6 days a week. Could it be that you're not getting sufficient rest for you to build muscle?? Also I really don't think some cardio would ht you. I mean maybe don't do it TWICE a day, but every other day couldn't hurt you IMO.

**joshh** · 02-08-2012, 08:04 PM

how does this look?

07.30am - 60g oats 8/32/6/228 + whey 24/3/1/120 | 32/35/7/348
09.00am - *LIFT*
10.00am - 1.5 scoops vitargo 0/55/0/220, whey 36/5/2/180 | 36/60/2/400
01.00pm - 150g chicken breast 43/0/3/197, 125g brown rice 3/30/1/140 | 46/30/4/337
04.00pm - 190g tuna & mayo 30/16/6/237, 30g almonds 6/2/15/173 | 36/18/21/410
07.00pm - 200g kangaroo 42/2/2/193 + salad | 42/2/2/193
10.00pm - casein shake 24/3/1/110

total - 216/147/37/1798

**BrownGirl** · 02-09-2012, 01:34 PM

I'm confused now. I thought you were doing the Leangains/IF diet? If so, your fasting period seems very short. I don't think a 9 hour fasting window would do you any good in terms of thise specific diet plan.....

**--->>405<<---** · 02-09-2012, 01:54 PM

ok man my dang puter connection got lost as i was sending u a detailed post of how to get ur bmr and tdee and all stuff.. havn major puter probs today...

ur tdee math at 170lbs and 15% bf is wrong..

bottom line:

BMR = 1785
tdee = 2768

tdee estimates high.. id suggest 2000cals:

u want to keep pro high to preserve LBM,, keep carbs low to lose fat,..

2g pro per 1lb LBM gets u to:
290g pro
110g carb
44g fat

split pro 6 ways
split carbs 3 ways eating in meal 1 , pre w/o, pwo only

keep pro lean:chk breast, canned tuna, fish, egg whites, lean beef, etc..
carbs: oats, brn rice, yams ONLY

i suggest u do cardio 5days/week either am fasted (with 10g bcaas prior) or PWO..

meal 1 u want to have real food instead of a shake for ur protein.. my choice is 1whole egg, 5 whites, oats...

post a diet hitting those macros and we can take a look...

**joshh** · 02-09-2012, 10:02 PM

I have spent some time on bb.com forums lately. they rekon cardio isn't needed if i keep my cals low (~500 cal deficit), as there are 3500cals in a pound of fat, you can loose 1lb of fat per week, so in a 12 week program i could loose 12lbs of fat. they also recommend not going below a 500cal deficit if i want to preserve muscle. I used to eat 1800cal and do cardio twice a day. I did loose fat but i lost muscle aswell.

so if i just ate to 1800cal per day, i wouldn't necessarily need cardio would i?

**joebailey1271** · 02-11-2012, 03:11 AM

I think you should listen to 405, he seems to be doing good. What kind of weights are you lifting, if you are doing light weight and a bunch of reps, wont do much for building muscle, dont make your workout complicated, do core lifts, 2 or 3 exercises per bodypart with heavy weights, that muscle u gain from that will build muscle and increase your metabolism. At 20, building muscle should be easy for you, but you have to feed your body meat to put on meat.

**BBrian** · 02-11-2012, 04:36 AM

A couple points you pointed out raise some concern for me. First of all, if gaining fat is an issue, why would you cut out cardio? I understand the calorie deficit but it seems much more efficient to perform more cardio to burn fat and take in more protein to maintain lean muscle. Also, I'm not surprised at all to see that people debate whether or not meal timing is an issue, but numbers of meals will affect metabolism. Eating more meals, even without increasing macros, sends signals to the brain that basically says "more food is coming soon, no need to go into survival mode and drop metabolism".

**--->>405<<---** · 02-11-2012, 07:55 AM

Originally Posted by joshh

I have spent some time on bb.com forums lately. they rekon cardio isn't needed if i keep my cals low (~500 cal deficit), as there are 3500cals in a pound of fat, you can loose 1lb of fat per week, so in a 12 week program i could loose 12lbs of fat. they also recommend not going below a 500cal deficit if i want to preserve muscle. I used to eat 1800cal and do cardio twice a day. I did loose fat but i lost muscle aswell.

so if i just ate to 1800cal per day, i wouldn't necessarily need cardio would i?

from my understanding cardio isnt necessary to cut fat if diet is spot-on...ur progress will be slower though.. personally when im cutting im doing cardio... thats why u keep ur protein high.. and take 10g bcaa's prior to fasted cardio..

in ur op u said u were told at 500 calorie deficit u would drop bf and poss gain muscle simultaneously.. this could possibly happen if u were fat and hadnt worked out in a long time.. for a typical person whos been lifting and working out consistently the idea of losing fat(from a caloric deficit) and gaining muscle(comes from caloric surplus) is pretty unattainable.. it doesnt even make sense.. its like saying im in a caloric deficit and a caloric surplus at the same time.. i do think exceptions can be made when steroids r put in the mix...

im also confused cuz in ur op u said u were eating 2000cal/day and doing cardio 2x/day and gave up the cardio cuz people told u u should.. as a result of this decision it seems u gained some muscle (maybe) as well as fat.. and now u r here trying to get rid of the fat but wanting to do it doing the very thing that caused u to gain it (no cardio)??? it appears ur answer to this is to simply reduce cals from 2000 to 1800?? what im wondering is why did u go from 2x/day cardio to no cardio??

since ur trying to lose fat is ur primary goal i would suggest u do exactly what i already suggested above.. once u get to where u wanna be fat-wise u can re-evaluate and start a lean bulk.. even then id continue to do some cardio.. pick a conservative number for ur caloric surplus and do cardio 2-3 times per week.. keep an eye on ur LBM and ur bf%.. adjust accordingly..

the only reason i can see to worry about the speed at which u accumulate muscle is if u have some deadline to meet such as a contest or taking full advantage of a cycle..otherwise if ur just a normal guy, speaking for myself , when bulking my eye is gonna be on my bf% 1st and my gains 2nd.. the worst case is it takes a little longer to gain vs getting fat and have to lose it..

**joshh** · 02-19-2012, 06:21 AM

thanks for the reply and sorry for my late reply.

well basically on bb.com forums, they suggest not going below a 500cal deficit if wanting to cut. i got told i was doing way too much cardio whilst being in a calorie deficiency.

so at the moment i'm pretty much just trying to find a good calorie deficiency but not to go crazy like 1000cals under. I'd like to incorporate cardio back into my program as i love it. post workout cardio did work well for me in the past, 45 minutes low intensity. sound good?

**joshh** · 02-19-2012, 06:26 AM

and people on bb.com seem to think anything more than 1g protein per lb is useless..

**Bodybuilding-Student** · 02-19-2012, 12:04 PM

Well if people on bb.com are sayin this then why are you asking on here? ll tell u why..its coz they are full of sh*t and deep down u know it. Some guys on there know what they are on about but the majority are d*cks. Follow one route not 2 or 3 otherwise u will get confused like now and set urself up to fail. 405 is giving u some good advice, take advantage of it. Good Luck

**--->>405<<---** · 02-19-2012, 01:05 PM

Well josh i tell u wat.. Go 500cals below ur tdee and add back the cardio.. Monitor ur bf% and see how u do.. Like ive said before the tdee multiplier tends to put u higher than wat ur actual tdee is so 500cals deficit may only be 300cals.. Time will tell u if 500 is enuff.. Ive been at 900cal deficit for 5 months with no major loss of lbm..And 5-6 day/week fasted cardio..

Basically choose something and run it and see how u do.. Then ull know..

As far as grams protein.. I prefer to base all macros on LBM NOT total bodyweight... Fat is non-contributory tissue... Think about it like this.. (an exaggeration but makes the point).. A 200lb guy with 50%bf eating 1g protein per lb of total bodyweight is eating 200g protein.. Hes only got 100lbs of LBM... Which is 2g pro per pound lbm.. Another 200lb guy with 10% bf has 180lbs of lbm and is also eating 200g protein .. But hes eating 1.1111g pro per pound of lbm... Do u think they both have the same protein requirements??

I also agree with bodybuilding student.. While its def a good thing to seek different views to gain info.. U need to choose Wisely whose advice ur gonna follow and follow it...

**joshh** · 02-19-2012, 03:46 PM

i'll take your advice 405 and go back to 1800 cals and cardio pwo.

I'll be having my first meal at 07.30 then lifting from 09.00-10.00 followed by 45 minutes of low intensity cardio.
just wondering if i should take a protein shake or bcaa's after my lifting before cardio?

**joshh** · 02-19-2012, 06:17 PM

and would doing cardio in the evening be as beneficial as pwo? as i've been told it's best for muscle sparing.

**--->>405<<---** · 02-19-2012, 07:33 PM

I would Re-read and apply what i advised u in post #10.. if u wanna do cardio in the pm try it out.. See how u go.. U can always change it to pwo.. Or am fasted.. The only thing u can lose is either fat, or time and energy

**joshh** · 02-19-2012, 10:44 PM

okay well i used to do cardio pwo and i can do it again. it seems pointless to take vitargo after cardio then? vitargo is a simple carb twice as quickly absorbed than any sugar to refuel glycogen levels.

i just received some liquid clen , so i want to give it a cycle aswell

**--->>405<<---** · 02-20-2012, 08:06 AM

While cutting definitely leave simple carbs out of ur diet.. IPersonally wouldnt even use it on a bulk...

**joshh** · 02-21-2012, 06:01 PM

How does this look?

05:00 - 60g oats 8/32/6/228, 7 egg whites + 1 whole egg 35/2/5/189 | [43/34/11/414]
06:00 - 60 mins weights + 45 mins cardio
08:00 - whey shake 48/4/2/220, 60g oats 8/32/6/228 | [56/36/8/448]
11.00 - 150g chicken breast 44/0/0/292, 125g brown rice 3/30/1/140 | [47/30/1/432]
14:00 - 140g tuna 35/0/13/258, whey shake 12/1/0/55 | [47/1/13/313]
17:00 - 200g kangaroo 42/2/2/193 + salad | [42/2/2/193]
20:00 - casein shake [48/3/2/220]

Total- 283/106/37/2020

Is 2000cal okay? Or should we try and drop to 1800? Would a clen cycle go good with this diet? And should i swap out the carbs (brown rice) for fat in my 11:00 meal?

**--->>405<<---** · 02-21-2012, 06:27 PM

Ur diet looks pretty good.. The only thing id chAnge is:

1. reduce the amt of rice at 1100 to 100g to compensate for additional veggies..

2. Add green veggieS into 1100 and 1400 meal and id lose the shake and eat more tuna..

3. The salad at 1700 i hope its good lettuce (spinach, romaine) and not iceberg...

Other than that it looks pretty good to me.. Good work.. Ur on ur own with the clen .. Personally id see how the diet does by itself first..

**joshh** · 02-26-2012, 06:45 PM

I have taken everythin into account, seems like a solid diet.

I lift mon, tue, thu and fri. What is recommended on my days off in terms of diet and cardio? Would i need to mix the diet up on my days off?

**--->>405<<---** · 02-26-2012, 06:55 PM

I would keep ur diet the same 7days/week for a few weeks without any cheat to get a feel for how its going.. When i started my cut i went 5complete weeks with 100% adherence to diet.. No cheats..

Id try to get in cardio 5-6 days/week.. If ur doin cardio PWO on lift days u could thrown in am fasted cardio on an "off" day.. Or 2

just be sure to ingest bcaas (10g) prior..

I wouldnt mix diet up on off days either.. Ur body will use the nutrients to repair and heal

**joshh** · 02-27-2012, 02:30 AM

So you wouldn't recommend lowering carbs or cals and increasing fats on my non lifting days?

**Back In Black** · 02-27-2012, 03:45 AM

Originally Posted by joshh

So you wouldn't recommend lowering carbs or cals and increasing fats on my non lifting days?

Out of curiosity, why does this seem like a good idea to you?

**--->>405<<---** · 02-27-2012, 06:10 AM

Originally Posted by joshh

So you wouldn't recommend lowering carbs or cals and increasing fats on my non lifting days?

No.. Keep in mind though ur tdee stands for "total daily energy expenditure" it is a calculation for ur weekly caloric requirements.. The "1.55 multiplier" is based on activity for the entire week.. Therefore on "off" days u would still eat the same ..

**joshh** · 02-27-2012, 08:26 AM

Originally Posted by SteM

Out of curiosity, why does this seem like a good idea to you?

I can't remember who it was (it may have been gbrice), but i remember someone saying to lower carbs and increase fats on days you don't lift. I guess the most logical explanation for this would be because i'm not burning as much energy on a non lift day so therefore not over feeding carbs

**Back In Black** · 02-27-2012, 08:31 AM

I know he is a fan of lowering carbs on non workout days but not sure he would say up fats. If so you just end up with the same cals or even more. Interesting to see if that was his recommendation.

Have to say I don't reduce as I beds them for recovery.

**BigDave1995** · 03-04-2013, 07:03 PM

Ive been eating 3550 on work out days and 2350 on non workout days. I'm 18, 6'0 at 168. This seems pretty high in my opinion, however, ive lost 2 pounds in the last 12 weeks so clearly its slightly under my maintenance. 3 workouts a week plus working 8 hours weekdays as a labourer.

My workout day macros are about (assuming no work): cal:3550, P:240 F:45 C: 525+
Rest days are about (assuming no work): cal: 2350, P:250 F:90+/- C 175+/-
im seeing visible changes but certainly not drastic ones, given the amount of time. What should I change up?

**Kagenical** · 03-04-2013, 09:48 PM

Fun anecdote for you, OP.

I did some hard keto for two weeks, starting around Vday (after freeing myself from a shit relationship, lol). Dropped around 10lbs of water weight in the first week, then another 2-3lbs the second week.

Last weekend I went out and carbed up. I shot up 8lbs overnight.

Going from keto to non-keto, leangains or not, may contribute lots to your gain over the last few days.

**951thompson** · 03-05-2013, 04:20 AM

When coming off keto you have to gradually introduce carbs back into your diet, if you boast them up too fast, you will gain fat, and as mentioned, carbs make you hold water,so soon as you reintroduce them to your diet you will gain weight, (water weight, not necessarily fat)

As for the IF diet you was following the protocol wrong, on laingains it is protocol for you to get most of your carbs post workout, around 70-80% of your carbs for this meal.

**951thompson** · 03-05-2013, 04:22 AM

Originally Posted by Back In Black

I know he is a fan of lowering carbs on non workout days but not sure he would say up fats. If so you just end up with the same cals or even more. Interesting to see if that was his recommendation.

Have to say I don't reduce as I beds them for recovery.

I think he is getting it from leangains, it's leangains protocol to up your fat intake on none training days.