My current diet, why I'm trying it & why I think it may be good for you too!

Key takeaways (tldr):

1. I have lost 4kg body weight but increased back squat strength by 20kg during lockdown by following diet and training around body recomposition.

2. Body recomposition is losing fat and gaining muscle simultaneously. You eat what you want as long as it is not processed and fits into your calories and macro budgets. Simple!

3. Body recomposition can be effective for most people (only those who are well trained and eating well does it not apply).

4. Train with progressive overload and eat something along the lines of a 10%-15% calorie deficit composed of 1-1.5g per LEAN lb of protein, 20-25% of calories from fat (8-9kcal per gram of fat) and the rest from carbohydrates.

Coming up next week will be a training plan with progressive overload, MyFitnessPal tips to discover your BMR (yes, I have made a nerdy Google Sheets macro that does it for you) and some general DADthlete updates :)

A quote to keep in mind when reading the below:

“It is our attitude at the beginning of a difficult task which, more than anything else, will affect its successful outcome.” - William James

Full blog entry for those who have the time :)

Hi all! I'm back and as promised, not spamming you with nonsense. I have scaled back massively on marathon training, and picked up the iron again. Have a look at my Instagram account for some mini updates if the mood takes you, but essentially, I have lost 4kg as of today while increasing my strength massively (back squat has increased from 130kg x5 to 150kg x5 during lockdown)!

Today, I want to talk about the building blocks of good health = Diet.

As I have alluded to previously, my diet has historically been horrendous, leading to this peachy graduation photo! 107kg of chubby Physicist.

Thankfully, yesterday looked a touch better (please note, I have taken some before body recomposition shots, and will take some after as well in autumn, regardless of outcome/how squeamish people are, they are going to be uploaded!):

A year and a half ago, Anjali got me a 3-month subscription with an online company who would help transform my body. I was super excited. The before and after photos of other clients are amazing, so I was excited to have the physique that I train for (but have not been eating for).

At the start of the process, they ask your goals. Mine were probably a little different from their regular customer:

1. I am not a new gym goer and have a good strength base. I want to lose fat without sacrificing strength too much

2. I play basketball 3 times a week at a high level, so will need energy on those days, please take that into account.

The coach assigned to me set me up with a very low calorie and low carb diet.

What this led to was WEIGHT loss of almost 1kg a week for 12 weeks. The key word being weight…I ended up going from 105kg to 93kg…and the weakest I had ever been since starting training. I usually benchmark strength through looking at back squat and deadlift 5 rep max, both of which had decreased by 30%.

What was worse was every day I was hungry, angry/irritated and constantly thinking about how I would go over my carb allowance of 75g per day (e.g. 2 medium white potatoes).

Once I finished, I immediately put back on 6kg (50% of the weight lost) but thankfully regained some of the lost strength. I think what they do is great for people new to training with no strength, and those that are interested in looking good over functioning better, but not for me (no hate, just different preferences!).

I stuck with this diet for a long time, trying to make it work, getting hangry and then relapsing into bad eating, getting annoyed and disheartened that I messed up, eat more…and repeat. I did this for almost 9 months.

Well, I (and Anjali) have done a decent slog of research now and for the past 5 weeks, I have been losing weight, gaining strength through dieting and training to maximise body recomposition.

This is not a new idea, but I think there are a lot of people who think it doesn’t apply to them. Body recomposition can work for you if:

1. You are a new gym goer and have not lifted weights for a sustained period of time previously. Why? The rate you put on muscle is very high/easier at the start of your training journey

2. You are overweight, with a body fat of >20-25% for men and >30-35% for women. Why? You have excess fuel storage to assist in muscle build on a calorie deficit

3. You are returning to weight training from a long-term injury. Why? Muscle memory (a well documented phenomenon) means that you can regain strength much quicker than someone developing strength for the first time.

4. You are an experienced gym goer/weightlifter but have never put the correct diet and training regimen together. Why? Taking control of all the lost opportunity will help maximise the outcome.

Points 3 and 4 are the ones that people usually do not associate with body recomposition. In reality, it is only a (very) small subset of highly trained individuals, with diets calibrated for their current training cycle. At that point, losing fat would require a diet that would sacrifice some muscle in the process, as there is no extra fuel to burn.

For the rest of us, the additional fat we carry is enough of a fuel store to build muscle when on a calorie deficit. Or if we are new to training, muscle will come on quickly, despite being in a deficit.

The key to this though, is that the deficit cannot be big! My previous (bad) deficit was 20% or about 500 kcal's a day, which is a sure fire way to lose muscle, being angry always and fail at your diet.

Right, onto the macros. here is the low down on what I am on now and what I was on previously:

• BMR – 2,250

• Calories – 2,000 (10% deficit) vs 1750 (>20% deficit previously)

• Protein – 1.5g per lean pound of body mass = 200g vs 170g previously

• Fat – About 20% of my calories (400kcal) = 65g vs 80g previously

• Carbs – Remainder of calories should come from carbs = 150g vs 75g previously

To work out your BMR, you can go to any online calculator for a generic look, but it won’t be very accurate.

I got to mine by tracking my food intake, exercise output and looking at weight change…yeah, long.

In the next blog post, I will have the MyFitnessPal tips and tricks on how to nail down your BMR (without needing a premium account) and look into training.

Much love,

The DADthlete

Sources:

Some great research by Adam Tzur, Jeremy Ethier and Jeff Nippard plus the papers below helped my understanding, but Google the aforementioned guys! I hope to do more research as time goes on/when kids are a bit bigger and allow for it!

Losing muscle when in a low calorie diet:

Rossow LM, Fukuda DH, Fahs CA, Loenneke JP, Stout JR. Natural bodybuilding competition preparation and recovery: a 12-month case study.Int J Sports Physiol Perform. 2013;8(5):582‐592. doi:10.1123/ijspp.8.5.582

Fat change vs diet:

Helms, Eric & Fitschen, Peter & Aragon, Alan & Cronin, John & Schoenfeld, Brad. (2014). Recommendations for natural bodybuilding contest preparation: Resistance and cardiovascular training. The Journal of sports medicine and physical fitness. 55.