37, ‘M’, 198lb, 25-30%bf, 41" waist. My goal is to recomp from 198lb to around 180lb to get waist down and bf around 20%, preferably under. Going for 2,500cals as i seem to maintain on 2,700cals.
breakfast
3 egg 3 whites scrambled in olive oil
oats in 2% milk with cinnamon & honey
25g whey / apple
chicken breast
rice or potatoes
steam fresh veg
25g whey banana
95% lean beef
potatoes
veg
25g whey
220g protein / 230g carb / 65g fat 2,500cals.
does this look ok for recomp diet?
I would try to get all my protein from real food sources rather than whey. I generally don’t use whey at all except for a pre-workout meal and the rare occasion nightime with nut butter.
Cool. But that’s like your opinion man. Whey is one of the least expensive sources of quality protein and there are no studies I’ve seen suggesting it’s any worse than anything else for strength or general health outcomes.
To the OP- I’m not sure why you’re calling 20 lbs of weight loss recomp, but I’d shoot for macros in to be a beast for your real goal: weight loss. Personally, I seriously doubt 200 calories is enough deficit to produce weight loss. Everyone is different though. I need about 700 calorie deficits to see any meaningful weight loss.
TBAB gives those macros as “guidelines”. It privileges your actual experience, i.e., its better to track for a while and see what keeps you at the same body weight over 1 to 2 weeks. Why would you point to the macro chart in TBAB as the end all be all for what your macros should be? It also explicitly says not to make large, arbitrary jumps in calories. I would say track every week and titrate your energy substrates according to the pace of your progress. If it takes several weeks to see “significant” results, and by the time you do see results, you’re at more than a 500 cal deficit, then fine. Besides the futility of arbitrary jumps in calories, TBAB explicitly talks about basing your weight loss/gain on changes in grams of carbs and fat, not by strictly adding or subtracting calories.
I do think you’re right about OP really wanting weightless and not “recomp”.
As someone who has lost a significant amount of weight in the past and is in the process of doing so now I’m going to have to STRONGLY DISAGREE with this. I wonder if you’ve actually ever tried to lose weight.
1-2 weeks is not enough data. It might be for a very small portion of the population, but you’d need to have the experience losing weight multiple times and know you’re one of those lucky people who’s weight loss is almost linear and very predictable like that.
I think TBAB cutting macros is a much better start for someone with a 41" waist who therefore needs to lose weight yesterday. I recommended it because it’s LOWER calories than the OP’s original suggestion. If it were higher I’d probably have suggested cutting 500 calories instead. The reason, again, is that “finding maintenance” does not take 1-2 weeks for most people. Over 2 week periods (or longer) in the last 6 months at the same body weight I’ve consumed anywhere from 2400 to 3400 calories and not gained or lost any weight. The first time I lost a lot of weight I consumed 1800 calories for 4 weeks and lost no weight. I stuck with 1800 calories for another 4 weeks and lost 12 lbs. More recently I consumed 2450 calories for 4 weeks, after “maintaining” for 8 weeks with 3,000, and lost no weight whatsoever for the first 3, then lost 8 lbs in the last nine days (probably 3 lbs or so of non water weight). I can stand on a scale tomorrow and weigh 6 more lbs than I did today depending on what I eat.
So my recommendation is actually born from a lot of experience. TBAB might be a guideline but my experience and the experience of a few others jives pretty well with Jordan’s – namely that people don’t vary nearly as much as they think they do. TBAB has been within 200 calories or so of me and I reckon that’s true for most people from the age of 25-45. If the OP accidentally eats 200 less calories than he should have for his optimal outcome the risk is what exactly – he has to cut for less time overall?
From TBAB:
“I like to make fairly small modifications in the macronutrients and calories and honestly, I don’t typically add or subtract calories explicitly. Instead I reduce or increase the energy substrate(s), carbohydrates and/or fat, for the desired increase or decrease in calories. Remember the threshold I was talking about earlier? Instead of jumping the gun and adjusting calories by 500kCal+ increments I prefer a much more gradual approach along the lines of 10-30g of carbohydrates and 4-10g of fat. Changes are made based on progression of training, waist measurements, photographs, and weight changes. These are addressed more explicitly in case study #3.”
If you want to offer your own personal experience, thats fine, but don’t pretend like you’re not explicitly contradicting what this website’s gospel says. How many times has Jordan said that personal diet history is a greater determinant of setting your caloric load and macronutrient ratios than any standardized table?
Again, from TBAB:
“When designing a template for someone it helps to have information on what they’ve been eating previously. People’s metabolic rates vary wildly and the influence of dietary habits cannot be overstated.”
If you want to say that 1-2 weeks is not sufficient for determining maintenance, fine. But you’re not “jiving” with the standard gospel around here:
From TBAB, again…
“So my initial suggestion to all folk looking to start an intelligent nutritional plan is this: Use MyFitnessPal to track your intake over a week WITHOUT CHANGING your current intake and get the scoop on what you’re actually taking in and how you respond to that level of calories and macronutrients.”
To be clear, OP seems to fit case study #3 from TBAB. I would recommend reading that. His nutrition plan seems fine, albeit he didn’t give us his maintenance macronutrient ratios.
2,700cal macro’s were 230p/270c/75f
Maybe you can tell me where in my post I said my recommendation was from the Gospel of Jordan. I said TBAB macros are a good starting place – if you don’t know where to start. I don’t think the OP has enough data to cut 200 calories and have a better outcome than just trying TBAB macros.
And yeah, I openly admit I strongly disagree with the recommendation to cut slowly. If we’re going to appeal to authority mine is Mike Matthews or Robert Santana when it comes to weight loss while strength training. I think it’s an incredible waste of time (to cut slowly) when intermediates need to be building muscle, not losing it.