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Cutting before adding muscle, want some advice



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  #1  
Old 12-02-2010, 09:12 AM
OnceMore OnceMore is offline
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Default Cutting before adding muscle, want some advice

Hey guys

Just wanted to know how much should I be eating per day to maintain steady weight loss? I'm 192lbs, 24%bf, 6ft tall, 18y/o male. Worked out my BMR to be 2080 so I obviously take 500 off that for 1580 calories daily. My question is how many grams carbs/protein/fat should I be eating if I want to lose fat but not lose the muscle I've built so far (not loads but still). I'm doing 30min to 1hour low to medium intensity cardio once a day monday to friday. Is this the best option or would there be a better way?

Hope someone can help =)
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Old 12-03-2010, 12:23 PM
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Frontline Frontline is offline
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Basically if you've already calculated your BMR then start at that number and if progress slows you have two options: slowly cut calories or increase cardio. When I say slowly cut cals, I mean 250 cals or so daily until you're seeing progress again. Cutting calories too quickly is usually counter productive especially since you are trying to hold onto your muscle mass.

In all honesty, carbs are not a neccessity when cutting. You could try completely cutting them out or if you feel like you need them, time them around your training only. If your taking this approach I would recommend giving yourself a refeed once a week to restore glycogen. This will help fuel your workouts throughout the week and help with making yourself not look so "flat" due to the lack of glycogen as the week progresses. The carb refeed will actually boost your metabolism and help your progression as far as fat loss goes. Keeping protein intake high will also aid in preserving muscle. At the bare minimum, you be consuming at least 1g of protein per pound of body weight.

Use the below macronutrient information to form your meals to reach your target caloric intake:

1g protein = 4 calories
1g carbohydrates = 4 calories
1g fat = 9 calories

This should be enough to get you started, plenty of other information on the subject can be found on the forum.
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Old 12-04-2010, 01:29 AM
OnceMore OnceMore is offline
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Ok I think I get what you're saying. Thanks for your reply.

I think I will stick to having some carbs because I just feel so weak and tired otherwise. So keep carbs below say 50g a day and have 20g for breakfast and 30g PWO? As for the refeed day, what sort of intake am I looking at for that? Will it be mostly carbs?

At the moment I'm doing 30 mins of cardio monday to friday then having weekends off. So I guess it would be best to have the refeed day on the weekend?

Thanks again!
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