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Am I on the right track to getting lean?

jrode

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Hey everyone,

I posted on the training board a week or so ago explaining how I wanted to get abs. That's one of my main goals, but I also want to get lean. I still have a bit of a gut, but it's not really a huge bulge, but enough of one.

I'm 21, 6'3" and currently weigh in at 184 pounds.

My training routine consists of lifting and running every other day. For example, Monday I'll run, Tuesday I'll lift and so on. I don't usually skip a day, is that bad?

I go down to the local high school track, run a mile and then do some interval training, by sprinting the straight-aways and briskly walking the curves.

For lifting, I'm sort of limited to what I can do here at home. I have a weightlifting machine that works on a pulley system. It's kind of hard to explain what I all do, as I don't really know the proper names, but I do sort of a incline bench press, where I'm sitting and pushing the handles out like a regular bench press, I do bicep curls, a tricep exercise, some leg exercises, the butterfly type of thing that works your pecs and seated pull downs which I think work my upper back and shoulder muscles.

My ab workout is just crunches on a exercise ball and the bicycle ab workout.

Sorry I can't really explain it any better. :confused:

Diet wise, I've sort of been following the guidelines of The Abs Diet over on the Men's Health website. I've used a few of their smoothie recipes and have tried to eat/snack on some of the things they've suggested.

I've started to control my diet better than I have in the past. Today, so far, I've had a bowl of Wheaties with what I'd estimate to be a cup, maybe a little more than a cup of 1% milk. I threw a few raisins into the cereal as well. That was it until lunch (seeing as I had to go in and take a few exams). For lunch I had a sandwich with sun dried tomato turkey, thinly sliced on whole grain bread with a bit of honey mustard to moisten it a bit and an apple. So far today that's all I've had to eat. To give you a better example, here's what I ate yesterday.

Breakfast
- 2 hardboiled eggs
- 1 8 oz glass Banana Split Smoothie (Recipe from The Abs Diet @ Men's Health) That smoothie consisted of 1 banana, 1/2 cup 1% milk, 1/8 cup frozen orange juice concentrate, 1/2 low-fat vanilla yogurt, 2 tablespoons of chocolate whey protein powder and 6 ice cubes.
- 1 8 oz glass of orange juice
- 300 mg fish oil tablet

Lunch
- Tuna fish sandwich on whole grain bread (Tuna was canned)
- 1 apple
- 1 8 oz glass of 1% milk

Snack
- Salted almonds (I'd say I had about 15 of them)
- 1 stalk of celery sliced into four smaller pieces, a little peanut butter in each section and a few raisins on top of the peanut butter on each section
- 1 cup of Green Tea with some honey added to sweeten it

Dinner
Spaghetti (made with lean ground chuck)
Salad, topped with light ranch dressing
1 8 oz glass of 1% milk

After Lifting
1 8 oz glass of Banana Split Smoothie

That's just an example of what I ate yesterday, but am I on the right track? I switch it up a bit with the smoothie recipes I found, so there's another one from the Men's Health Site I use too, which I think has more protein in it.

Also, does it matter when I lift? Usually I run before I eat dinner, so that's usually around 6:30 pm, but I usually don't lift until around 9:30 - 10:00 pm

Any comments, suggestions, advice, etc, etc are more than welcome!

Thanks!
 
This is what I came up with for what I ate yesterday.

Protein: 198 grams
Fat: 104 grams
Carbs: 400 grams
Total Calories: 3,240

That seems like a lot of calories for what I ate, so I don't know. I think I got everything as accurate as possible without actually going through boxes and entering in the custom stuff and sort of logically guessing at my portions.
 
Great start.

Okay, your protein and fat are ample and sufficient.

Do you feel these are roughly your maintenance calories? If so, the first place to drop some calories would be from the carbs. You have more carb grams than anything else, and they're the most expendable when setting up a cut. You could easily drop to 200g of carb and still have plenty of protein and fat.

How about this: increase protein to 250g, drop carbs down to 250g, leave fats alone for now.

This will drop 400 calories from your day and should still feel very satisfying. Concentrate the carbs into the meals closest to your lifting.

Go into fitday and set up tomorrow based on this:

2900 calories.
100g fat
250g protein
250g carbohydrate
25g fibre

Let me know how that feels for you. If the calories are too high you won't drop weight. At this point you can look at dropping your carbs a bit, or dropping them down to say 100g on non-lifting days, 200 on lifting days. Your fats can afford to drop a bit, but don't drop them below 75g.
 
Any suggestions how how I should trim down on the carbs and increase the protein?

What would you recommend as far as foods to get the carbs low and protein up a bit? Maybe Power Bar to boost the protein or something along those lines? I'm not the best when it comes to knowing what type of foods to eat for certain areas. I have a basic idea, but I'm not an expert on it yet.
 
Put your food that you ate today into fitday for tomorrow. Now fiddle with the amounts until they "work".

I'm not a fan of protein bars or other fake foods. They're really crap, and really, steak tastes better, or chicken. Cottage cheese, eggs... also good protein sources. Fish, tuna...

I don't use protein powder when I'm cutting. I prefer to chew what little food I eat.
 
Silly, impatient question, but how long does it take to get a flat tummy. I'm not necessarily talking rock hard abs, because I know that's going to take a lot longer. I've been doing my workout routine continuosly now for probably a month and I've been watching what I eat. I've lost quite a bit of weight (I was 191 or so and now I'm around 182-183) and a little off my gut, but it's still not where I'd like it and doesn't seem to be budging much now.
 
It'll be the LAST thing to leave. For you it's abs, for me it's legs. We get what we get. <sigh>
 
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