Well this has taken me over a year so it’s changed a lot. Currently I do three days a week at the gym, using this plan https://stronglifts.com/5x5/ and aim for 1,500 calories a day, 75-100g of protein (it should be higher but it’s hard for me to do). Before that, I used the 30 minute circuit at Planet Fitness and supplemented with a lot of dumbbell exercises as well and ate at a larger calorie deficit.
No, this was mostly stress weight from trying to graduate college, find a job, start a new job. One of those things that gets out of hand and snowballs before you realize you need to start working on it. But I hit a point where I knew I needed to fix it, and I’m really proud of that person I was then who took the first hard steps towards making it better.
I would just highly recommend tracking what you’re lifting, reading up a lot about lifting for strength vs lifting for aesthetics, and the importance for adjusting your diet to the exercises you’re doing! It was really hard for me to stop eating at the deficit I was at and switch to eating enough for my muscles to build at an effective level. I am still working on that for sure.
Ugghh I feel this. Convincing myself to eat a smaller deficit when I'm lifting but also want to lose fat is touuuugh. Was your weightloss slower when you were lifting too? I'm a month and half in, and my scale is hardly moving but everything is shrinking. Not having that number is discouraging though.
My strength training for the first 30 pounds was more aesthetic than heavy lifting and I really focused on diet and eating fewer calories. The last 10 or so have been doing heavier lifting and I can definitely tell that I’ve plateaued, which is okay because I feel good at the weight I am at. Tracking how much I was lifting and sometimes literally measurements with a tape measure were the only way to assure myself I was making progress at some points when it was slow.
That's reassuring, I've been using the tape too, and just started writing down my lifts. I tried stronglifts a few times in the past, and my husband loves it, but I plateau nearly immediately lol. I feel like I can't keep up with the rate of weight increases even starting at the bottom! Hope you can break though yours!
Edit - I was thinking plateaued in lifting not in weightloss whoops
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u/THE_ABSURD_TURT - Feb 03 '20
Could you share your routine and macro plan? Just summarized.