For a vegetable it won't change the macros, but the weight will change so it can be hard to know exactly how much you're eating. If you really wanna be a nazi then just weigh it raw and compare to raw on fitday or nutritiondata.

Meat should lose fat as it cooks, but unless you're really charring something I don't see protein being affected.

ty

I know this has been discussed already but since I'm unique and special I want affirmation that I'm going about my weight loss the right way.

I want to lose 15-20 lbs over 12-16 weeks. I followed the fat loss for athletes articles so I think my diet is ok, but with training I've never successfully cut without losing lots of strength. I'm thinking I'm just gonna do a slight modification of SS with the volume minimized a bit:

Squat (high bar) 1x5
Bench/Press 1x5 alternating
Chinups 3 sets/Deadlifts 1x3/Power movement 3x3

I'm gonna start at my near maxes and try microloading which is something I've never really done before. I'm also going to start drinking coffee and eating a banana about an hour before workouts so that I can be as productive as possible in the gym.

Any glaring leaks?

Eh, not very sure where to post this but here goes. I recorded some squats but I'd need to rotate the screen 270 degrees. I can already upload vids to youtube and I can convert the vid using Any Video Converter but that doesn't seem to have a rotating option. When I play the file in VLC I can edit videos and rotate them but as soon as I open the new file again it starts in the wrong angle. Halp needed.

I use motionbox to rotate my vids. Free, no download, etc.

i use this, does rotate and convert

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/products...and-Rotate.htm

Thanks, works!

this can't be too bad, but if you're doing 3x chins to failure you could def hinder recovery

I think it's pretty bad tbh

Doug,

can you provide more info about yourself and this plan?

Question about progression here:

My Deadlift 1RM easily qualifies for intermediate(as per Rip's guidelines or whatever). I know it's just a guideline and not supposed to mean anything, it's more of just an average and doesn't actually mean you are a novice or intermediate lifter. The guideline for intermediate is working out steadily for 9 months-2 years.
Ok I've been lifting with no previous experience for about 5 months, so I am obv happy with my progress on DL. However, I can barely lift enough on the OHP to qualify for a rank novice. Barely.

What would be the main culprit for this:

Programming, Diet, or Genetics? Or something else? Or a combination of those? At this point I really just feel like blaming genetics. FU genetics.

The culprit for this is the overhead press sucks.

You probably have **** form. Take a vid. Poke your head through the window. Setup higher (Not nipple level. I was a noob.) There are a ton of reasons. Its like kyleb talking about his bench.

form, anthropometry (genetics). also mental stuff like prioritizing your best lifts and generally not being aggressive enough. get angrier that you suck.

Press does suck, yes.

I have been posting form checks of every single workout for the last month and intend to keep doing so. I don't think my form is terrible, but it's def not optimal. I guess I'll keep working on it.

I'm pissed I suck but now I'm really angry. >:[ rawr.

>:[ is a good one. The furrowed eyebrows are excellent.

I must have the worst ankle mobility/flexibility in the world, took some video of my front squats and I have an impossible time staying anywhere near upright when I'm just wearing shoes or even standing on 5lb plates. Then I stood on 25kg bumpers and it was a lot better, and I felt the movement so much more in my quads. Is this anywhere near standard? At first I thought it was just being used to the Low-bar bottom position, but focusing mainly on front squats for a month now and I haven't been able to see any improvement at the bottom when I don't have any plates under my feet.

So what can I do (besides getting oly shoes, which I'm in the process of) to improve this?

there are excercises for ankle mobility in MM. Actually, EC had a newsletter about this just recently: http://ericcressey.com/the-importance-of-ankle-mobility

23 yo, 5'8, 175 lbs, 15-17% bodyfat. Diet compliance is basically a non-issue. I'd like to be back around 10% bf for vanity purposes. Following Lyle's recommendations I'm gonna start out around 2500 calories with 225gs protein (36%), 75gs fat (27%), 225 gs carbs (36%) with most of the carbs coming from milk and fruit. I usually eat 5 times a day out of habit.

I'm fairly intermediate in all my lifts. Recently my focus has been to get my squat and bench up using the Texas Method. I really like TM but I've read it's not so great on a deficit.

Nice quantum physics jokes about this - good time had by all - but Smiley was serious, yes? Do you place your hands equidistant from the middle of the bar, or slide over a bit to compensate for the extra weight on one side (as axel suggested)? Or was he kidding? I don't have many solutions for micro-loading at my current gym other than this.

He was serious and if I remember his log correctly this is something he does/has done.

nah i have not. considered it once though.

what i'd do if i were to do this for real was adjust my grip slightly to the side of the 2,5 and take it out, then feel if the weight is balanced (equal pressure on both hands) then press, don't realize it's still offset in the middle of pressing because it will make it needlessly hard.

Thanks. I'm going to give it a try.

Diet sounds fine. SS style template is not ideal for this.

The specific setup doesn't make sense in the context of what you are trying to do (low-frequency training to lose fat, yes?). I had a problem during my recent cut related to training frequency for some lifts that was the result of poor programming. I can go into more detail if you're interested.

The reality of dieting/training past the novice stage is that your plan needs to reflect individual factors including training age, bodyfat%, genetics.

For most trainees >15% bodyfat to 12% or so is going to be easy and continued strength gains will be possible during this period. I let calories auto-regulate through hunger/set portion sizes, but setting kcal and allowing a little flexibility is fine. Eat your base diet. Lyle's interpretation of this is useful.

Tighten up the diet, consider adding some cardio, and stick with linear progression for several weeks with the exercises you plan on using the entire training cycle. I would cut out full deads when volume drops, but it's negotiable.

If you keep pushing for fat loss- weighing less makes you weaker, even if it's all fat that is lost. That's just the way **** works. This doesn't necessitate net strength loss for the training cycle ofc, though that is usually the case.

The specific plan you proposed is bad for a lot of reasons. Linear progress won't hold up and starting near a max is too heavy. Adding weight is laughable after the initial recomp stage. Squatting twice as frequently as you bench no longer has merit.

A well-designed recomp/fat loss program might look like

weeks 1-3 (or whatever) linear progression
4-5 roughly maintenance (drop volume)
6-> goal: drop frequency and continue until goals are reached with refeeds/breaks/whatever when necessary

You could always just start at "6", but you wouldn't be getting the most out of your training. You can recover reasonably and continue to make progress while losing fat right now. Doing otherwise would be cheating yourself.

It's not so much the specific program as what it does. If you're obsessed with adding weight or are particulary plump you could stretch out the recomp phase for longer, or even peak it. I ran a very similar plan and peaked it, but I think I'm finally past the days of adding 5lbs/week to my 5RM squat.

fknlols

Jeff, thanks for the explanation. I'm hoping you can go more into detail on cardio for fat loss. I remember you talking about fasted cardio in the AM, can you go a bit more in depth on duration, intensity, etc...?