Can an advanced trainee make changes at maintenance?

Nutrition Q&A [Moderated]
1

I have recently completed a large 30lbs cut in which my waist has gone from 39” to 33” and I am now 185lbs (AM weight) ant around 6ft tall. My BMI is pretty much bang-on 25 and I meet the physical activity guidelines (not sure about the new Five metrics beyond being 103/67 but could maybe try the 1.5 mile time!) with 150 mins a week of Zone 2-4, 300 mins or so of Zone 1 (walk pad) and 3-4x resistance sessions depending on my meso.

My bodyfat percentage seems pretty high despite cutting so much weight and having trained for a decade or longer with weights. I think I’m high teens if not bang on 20% despite my waistline being below the cutoffs. The trouble is I’m finding it harder to keep cutting, in the last month my waistline has dropped half an inch and I’ve averaged 2lbs lost.

This is despite some horrendous days where I’ve felt ravenous and overblown on calories ( a couple of 6k days too.)

My current intake is around 2500kcal with MacroFactor putting me at an estimated TDEE of 3200. This seems accurate as my bad days have averaged to around 2800/1900 across the month .

I want to take a break and I want to gain some muscle, but I also don’t want to be fat, and having such an annoying stubborn layer of abdominal fat around my lower abdominal region is influencing me too much when given the difficulty in adhering to a prolonged deficit (currently at six months with no concerted break.)

Will I lose this fat and/or recomp at maintenance, even as an advanced trainee? How best to approach?

Thanks

2

It’s unlikely that you’ll lose a lot of body fat in a short to medium time frame (3-4 months) at maintenance. That said, a dietary break may be useful to recover some motivation for the next phase. I’d probably favor that in this situation.

3

Thanks Jordan

Is it possible for any kind of meaningful recomp at about a decade into training?

4

Assuming someone has made lots of progress over the previous 10 years and isn’t coming off a period of bulking and/or detraining, I don’t really think recomp would be dramatic in the short to medium term.

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