If I eat fruit and take tons of fish oil + a multi, what amount of vegetables would be satisfactory for a person who aspires to be reasonably healthy? Currently I just eat 1-2 servings some days, other days people cook dishes or side dishes with way more vegetables and I probably get 3-5 servings. And once a week we have a vegetarian dinner and I'll have something like a large sweet potato loaded with kale and other things, or many servings of eggplant .

Is this an OK level or am I really missing out?

^ Not exactly a specific answer to your question but a great post nevertheless:
https://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/s...&postcount=102

Hey, need to lose a few pounds, and just wanted some feedback.

Current exercise: - Shaun T dvds, 4x a week for 25 min. Pushups, crunches, burpees, leg kicks, squats, etc.


Current diet: - No processed foods or desserts or sugar, unless from natural foods.

Carbs - sweet potatoes, steel cut oats, quinoa, brown wild rice.


Items I'm concerned about, unsure of how "natural" or ok it is to eat:
Nonfat plain yogurt (unflavored, no fruit)
White potatoes
Optimum Nutrition Whey
Minimally processed, uncured chicken sausages from Trader Joe's - checked ingredients, everything is something I can pronounce, but it is processed.

Also - 2 cheat meals a week, only 1 dessert a week.


So basically, 4x a week exercise, 2 bad meals, otherwise clean eating.



Everything look ok?
What about with items I'm concerned about?

Those are items are fine. Really all items are fine as long as you keep portions under control, but those are definitely fine. Everything else looks good, standard weight loss advice is to try and make sustainable long term changes instead of trying to do a quick cut and then reverting back to old habits

Here's the situation:

I'm about to get serious about a cut I should have started months ago. My squat is right now near PR levels, but I'm about 10kg heavier.

Let's say plan is to lose 0.5 kg per week. Goal is to lose 15kg Also I only have time for one squat session for week.

What would you recommend that I do from a programming perspective to minimize my squat losses with the above constraints.

What does the rest of your programming look like?

General advice is more volume > less volume

The short answer is that it looks like shiet.

Basically what I'm doing is running 3x per week. About 15-20 miles a week. Sometimes it will be one two runs and one rowing session.

3 days I lift. One day is OHP + DL + accessories. One day is Bench + accessories. One day is squat + accessories.

Of course the above gets ****ed up by life getting in the way, so there are a lot of missed days.

My lifting generally done late at night and by that point I'm just too mentally drained to do heavy squats. Just not enough WIM. Even for something like 75% of my worksets.

There's only one time a week that I can reliably squat.

I suppose I could add something like RFESS as an accessory.

I've also seen kind of opposite advice. That is, when cutting, you should keep the weight as high as possible, and just do fewer reps. But I guess you could get your volume in by doing more sets.

In any case, right now my worksets are at about 110kg x 5 x 3.

What would you have me do on my squat day in order to keep my losses to a minimum?

Well, you're running 3x per week, so I'm not really sure. It's probably unreasonable to expect strength maintenance while running 3x week and lifting 3x per week while in a deficit.

But if youree squatting 110x5x3...that's a max of ~130. I'd probably start with volume around the 5x3 range but keep intensity in the @7-8 range and add sets, while also looking to make those sets heavier over time.

I think choosing a program like the bridge that ramps volume rather sensibly is a good option.

+1 to KC's post, though I'd ask what specifically Melk's general goals are. The amount of weight on the bar is kind of arbitrary if your goal is general health, which it seems like it is.

With all that said, the gestalt of KC's post - that a full body program concentrating more on the compound lifts and less on accessories while keeping intensity manageable is probably indicated while cutting - seems about right to me.

I've lost a lot of fat while adding muscle over the last year, now I'm trying to take everything up a notch. Right now I'm only eating fruits, vegetables, and nuts (and a lot of them, always hungry) and two 25 gram protein shakes a day. I want a big calorie deficit, but is this likely too much of a deficit for someone doing a ****ton of cardio and lifting 7 days a week? Weight loss is first priority, but I'd really like to keep adding muscle like I have been on my less strict version of this diet.


Open to suggestions... I'm 46 btw

Yeah, I'm not expecting strength maintenance at all. It's going down. I'm just looking for max damage control. I'll take a look at the bridge. Thanks for the recs.

I guess wt loss is my short-intermediate term goal. I've had two ankle fractures in the last 3 yrs and I have gotten into fat cut territory. I just want to do it while maintaining as much strength as possible given the time I'm willing to devote to lifting.

Melk,

If the priorities are 1) weight loss, 2) minimizing strength loss, and 3) cardio work capacity/general health, then I'd take KC's advice and also think a bit about which accessories are worth the (time) squeeze. Without knowing what exactly you're doing, it's hard to say, but doing some lateral raises or skullcrushers instead of adding a second day of (lighter) squats to your routine would seem to be against your stated goals.

Yeah, you're obviously correct. I'm going to give it a shot starting in April. I've got a couple of weeks off then, so I can definitely squat 2x/wk then. And with a little bit of WIM, maybe I can make it a semi-permanent thing. But I'm not too optimistic.

I'm basically looking for results and not willing to put in the work. Even lighter squats are somewhat mentally taxing for me. I'm definitely lacking in the WIM.

It's a common problem in these parts, and I guess I'm no different. But when I'm back in 6 months significantly weaker than I wished I was, I know I've only got myself to blame.

So, the good news is my DL is getting a bit better. The bad news is I'm having problems with my grip. The bar is rolling down my fingers more and more.

Should I just get straps and be done with it? Or, are there good exercises to strengthen grip?

Chalk and mixed grip should allow you to handle intermediate loads. I have the nut low of male hand size and I didn't have much trouble holding onto 315. Being 6'4" I doubt grip strength would ever be the limiting factor for you.

I think DLing with no straps is probably going help your grip a lot, and farmer carries etc. The real issue with overhand is less grip than the rolling if you can't do hook or do not like mixed. I do not like mixed grip, personally, and have no plans to compete so I use straps on sets as soon as it becomes a limiting factor, but not before. My biggest issue with it is it changes the dynamic of the set-up, which I already struggle with.

The weird thing about grip is it seems to fluctuate much wider than other strength. When I do trap bar DL where rolling is not a factor sometimes my top weights are no problem one workout then I can't get close the next without straps. I've heard it is closely tied to your CNS.

Anytime you're talking about weights that are like 75% or higher 1RM your CNS is a much bigger factor.

Lot of broscience with this CNS stuff. Let's not put ideas in the beginner's thread that aren't well studied. Suffice it to say that heavy deadlifts are more fatiguing overall than other lifts and that holding on to heavy loads is anecdotally hypothesised to be more fatiguing than using straps.

Literally anything in life where repetition improves performance is a function of the CNS and the more taxing that thing is on the musculature, the more important your central nervous system is.

It's just seems to me like what affects our readiness in a given training session is too complicated and multifactorial to categorize as definitively systemic or definitively muscular or definitively psychological given the current literature. Show me the studies that identify that CNS fatigue is real. Until then it seems like a jargon that only serves to nocebo people.

I certainly did not say "definitively"

I don't know how it couldn't be real. The CNS literally is what makes your muscles function. How to differentiate between the CNS just not cooperating versus muscular fatigue?

I think a more intriguing question is, is muscular fatigue actually just the CNS?

Question for you Renton. What is the driver that makes grip ability change more drastically in both directions from sesssion to session than other factors in your opinion? We can take it to lc if that is a better place.

I dunno maybe holding on to heavy things is just hard for us, and being more or less psyched up on a given day affects performance more than in other things. Or maybe it's the eccentric component of a bar opening your fingers that is more taxing locally.