Trying to break a FAT LOSS PLATEAU with low MUSCLE MASS

[JKPel]

Seems I’ve hit a fat loss plateau and can’t get past it. Can anyone help?

I’m hoping to reach under 10% and hit maybe an 8% mark. To be realistic I plan on spending 1 or 2 more months doing what I can to lower my body fat some more. After that I’m going to put on muscle and eat more.

But I think I’ve hit a strong plateau here. As these recent photos of 12th November show me looking virtually the same as ones I took in August 11th.
I’ve been Intermittent Fasting on a Calorie Deficit of about 600 calories. Weight lifting twice a week. Sometimes 3 or 4 times on a rare amount of weeks (including when I was did one Maintenance dieting for 2 weeks in October).

I do 10k steps a day, but as I do 20-30 minutes cardio Monday to Friday most days, I would lower my steps to around 8k a day. My Fitbit shows my 10k steps to be around 800 cals burned, and my cardio workouts to be 150-200 cals.

Body fat and muscle maintenance has been great since starting this from April.

April I started whole body weight around 81-83 kgs, BF around 21-23%. Muscle Mass around 61kgs.



Right now my Tanita scale has me at around 71 kgs, BF around 7%, Muscle Mass around 61kgs. There is give and take of the weight and I don’t believe my Body Fat is that low at all. Visually I don’t think I have dropped body fat.

If I can’t push past this wall I seem to be in, then I wonder if what’s stopping me getting lower body fat is because my muscle mass isn’t higher? I wonder if my muscle mass is too low to lose more fat and my body is hanging onto the body fat as it feels I need it to keep going as my muscles are not large enough?

Not sure what else I can add to what I’m doing to break this apparent plateau. 
So any advice on this would be welcome. Much appreciation.

 

[Llama]

Hi JK and welcome! You´re looking great in both the August and the November pic if you ask me. Hard to say anything with certainty but a few things stand out to me. First off: if you were 82 kg in April and 18 of those kilos were fat and 61 were muscle that leaves only 3 kg for your skeleton, inner organs including gut and stomach filling, skin, and everything. Sounds unlikely so it´s hard to take those scales seriously. Second: I would be very surprised if you burned 800 kcal on 10,000 steps. That would be around 100 kcal/km and most calculators I´ve seen call it around half that. Especially if they´re just your everyday moving around and not hard hiking. So you may simply be burning less than you think. If your deficit really is only 200 kcal instead of 600 per day that puts you into margin of error territory for your calorie counting. How precise are you with weighing/measuring everything you eat and drink?

 

[JKPel]

Hi JK and welcome! You´re looking great in both the August and the November pic if you ask me. Hard to say anything with certainty but a few things stand out to me. First off: if you were 82 kg in April and 18 of those kilos were fat and 61 were muscle that leaves only 3 kg for your skeleton, inner organs including gut and stomach filling, skin, and everything. Sounds unlikely so it´s hard to take those scales seriously. Second: I would be very surprised if you burned 800 kcal on 10,000 steps. That would be around 100 kcal/km and most calculators I´ve seen call it around half that. Especially if they´re just your everyday moving around and not hard hiking. So you may simply be burning less than you think. If your deficit really is only 200 kcal instead of 600 per day that puts you into margin of error territory for your calorie counting. How precise are you with weighing/measuring everything you eat and drink?

Yeah I can't put much stock into the cals that I'm told that I burn in exercising. It's so hard when there's no accuracy, I have to be vague with my estimations.

The 8-10k steps are from individual walks, not anything like NEAT at home moving around etc.

The only thing I know that is more spot on is my kcals from food.

Well over the months I've fine tuned things more and more with weighing, though I am still making mistakes.

Generally I weigh everything except powders (I don't use oils 90% of the time). But even with garlic powder and soon with ginger I'll have to look at how much powder I put in and estimate what that is as a clove etc.

So you think I'm not burning so many cals? I've started this week to start walking more steps or putting some jogging into the walk to get more cals burned.

 

[Llama]

I think it's very likely that you're burning less than you think. Going from walking to running would be one way to change that, although it'll probably be a while before you can run for the same amount of time you now walk. You could of course cut some more calories from your diet if you have any to spare. The real problem here, I think, is that you're working toward a pretty extreme goal and for that everything has to be exactly right. not much room for guesswork. Although the difference between half a teaspoon of garlic powder and a whole one is likely negligible What are your current macros?

 

[Err2]

Hello and welcome! I just have 2 comments:

1) I think you look great as you are - I'd certainly be happy to be that cut.

2) Fitbit calories are notoriously inaccurate - since May I have lost 85 pounds, but fitbit thinks I've burned enough calories to lose 173 pounds. For instance, yesterday I burned about 2900 calories and fitbit thinks I burned about 4500...

 

[Trusylver]

visually I would put you at about 8 or 9 %

at sub 10% bodyfat levels you need to be spot on with diet to make further progress and it will be very slow otherwise you will be at high risk of loosing muscle mass.

what form of cardio are you doing other than your steps ?
What does your lifting routine look like ?

 

[JKPel]

visually I would put you at about 8 or 9 %

at sub 10% bodyfat levels you need to be spot on with diet to make further progress and it will be very slow otherwise you will be at high risk of loosing muscle mass.

what form of cardio are you doing other than your steps ?
What does your lifting routine look like ?

I do 20 - 30 minutes of high intense cardio per day for 5 days of the week.

I lift weights about 3-4 days a week. Legs, Shoulders, Chest, Back, and arms on seperate days.

I seem to be keeping my muscle as it has gone up about 3-4 kgs since August on some days on the Tanita scale. It can go down though. So some days it is 65kgs, but like today, it was 61 kgs muscle mass. It fluctuates a lot. It seems to go up after I do weight lifting and go down if I don't do it for a couple of days.

 

[Err2]

What is your diet like - how much protein are you getting?

 

[Trusylver]

I do 20 - 30 minutes of high intense cardio per day for 5 days of the week.

is this steady state or intervals ?

I lift weights about 3-4 days a week. Legs, Shoulders, Chest, Back, and arms on separate days.

Free weights ? Machines ? rep scheme ? does it include compound exercises or isolation ? weight lifted (light, moderate, heavy very heavy etc.) ?

Timing of meals compared to training ?

expect wild fluctuations at times from the tanita scales, they are a good brand but have the same flaws for measuring bodyfat as all other digital scales when it comes to measuring bodyfat % good for long term trend but not for day to day changes. Visual is the best method at your fat level.

 

[JKPel]

What is your diet like - how much protein are you getting?

I’ve been Intermittent Fasting on a Calorie Deficit of about 600 calories. Maintenance Level around 2300 and my actual calorie intake at 1750/1700 a day.

Protein is 0.8 x bodyweight in lbs which puts the minimum requirement at 127gs
Fat 57gs
Carbs 180gs

I eat lean meats, avoid processed food. Get in vegetables and healthy carbs, no bad fats.

Generally I stick to raw chicken, 5% beef mince. Get in greens and salads. Potatoes, brown rice. Lately it's just been lean meat and stir fries and salads, mixed vegetables.

 

[JKPel]

is this steady state or intervals ?



Free weights ? Machines ? rep scheme ? does it include compound exercises or isolation ? weight lifted (light, moderate, heavy very heavy etc.) ?

Timing of meals compared to training ?

expect wild fluctuations at times from the tanita scales, they are a good brand but have the same flaws for measuring bodyfat as all other digital scales when it comes to measuring bodyfat % good for long term trend but not for day to day changes. Visual is the best method at your fat level.

Steady State cardio mainly. There are some days when there are 30 second breaks so there are occasionally intervals. Most days it's just non stop all the way through.

Both free weights and machines. Sometimes I hit the gym when it's open for both methods, when it's closed I have free weights at home.

2 days of the week it's upper body (biceps, shoulders, chest), then lower body (legs, deadlift, bicep or tricep.

2-3 days of the week it's just chest, shoulders, back. Heavy to very heavy.

I eat later in the day, so I train and do all exercises beforehand, fasted.

Visually my fat levels are no different from AUgust. See my body pics for no new lines really. All my face photos and mirror images show no change at all.

 

[JKPel]

I think it's very likely that you're burning less than you think. Going from walking to running would be one way to change that, although it'll probably be a while before you can run for the same amount of time you now walk. You could of course cut some more calories from your diet if you have any to spare. The real problem here, I think, is that you're working toward a pretty extreme goal and for that everything has to be exactly right. not much room for guesswork. Although the difference between half a teaspoon of garlic powder and a whole one is likely negligible What are your current macros?

Maintenance Level around 2300 and my actual calorie intake at 1750/1700 a day.

Protein is 0.8 x bodyweight in lbs which puts the minimum requirement at 127gs
Fat 57gs
Carbs 180gs

It's hard to reduce calories, I'm already starving so much. I was told to increase my exercises with weight training and cardio - to do another 3000 steps a day or to burn another 300 calories, make the deficit larger by increasing the calories going out. I've done this for the last 3 days now.

I still make mistakes entering foods, but I'm on top of it a lot and being very specific, triple check what I eat and enter so nothing is forgotten. Try to account for oils and any powders that I can weigh and enter that is meant to count, such as salt as well as garlic.

Sometimes I'm over by 30 cals or even 100, some days I'm under by no more than 80 cals.

I always hit my protein goals, that's easy to do. I can exceed it by 50-80gs. (I can pull back my protein so I can make room for calories to come from other foods.)

 

[JKPel]

I'm sorry I do not understand your post and your language. Can you repeat please?

 

[Trusylver]

Steady State cardio mainly. There are some days when there are 30 second breaks so there are occasionally intervals. Most days it's just non stop all the way through.

Both free weights and machines. Sometimes I hit the gym when it's open for both methods, when it's closed I have free weights at home.

2 days of the week it's upper body (biceps, shoulders, chest), then lower body (legs, deadlift, bicep or tricep.

2-3 days of the week it's just chest, shoulders, back. Heavy to very heavy.

I eat later in the day, so I train and do all exercises beforehand, fasted.

Visually my fat levels are no different from AUgust. See my body pics for no new lines really. All my face photos and mirror images show no change at all.

Steady state is not ideal at the moment, HIT is the better option especially for maintaining your muscle mass.

you don't say what your rep scheme is. Does heavy mean you could not possibly lift 1 more rep after 6 reps and Very heavy not being able to lift 1 more rep after 3 ? Is the training high or low volumes ? I am trying to get an idea of the type of training your actually doing. Intensity and volume needs to be different depending on goals.

you need food to power your training, eating a small meal about 1 hour prior to training will allow for adequate energy levels to fuel your training at the intensity it needs to be at. A small snack within an hour of training is also beneficial

there is a definite difference between the August and November pics, in particular the serratus

Please also remember when you see pics of male models and bodybuilders, they do their photo sessions in a dehydrated state and perfect lighting to highlight the muscle definition, and they don't maintain super low bodyfat levels (2-3 %) year round as it is not healthy.

The diet part of the equation is tricky, when body builder prep for competition diet is very strict and boring and only done for a limited time, I would suggest this is not the right place for getting advice on contest prep style dieting. As a coach I mostly work with powerlifters who are less concerned about being super lean and who only cut fat to make it into their weight division for competition. Contest prep level dieting is a very specialised type of advice.

 

[JKPel]

Steady state is not ideal at the moment, HIT is the better option especially for maintaining your muscle mass.

you don't say what your rep scheme is. Does heavy mean you could not possibly lift 1 more rep after 6 reps and Very heavy not being able to lift 1 more rep after 3 ? Is the training high or low volumes ? I am trying to get an idea of the type of training your actually doing. Intensity and volume needs to be different depending on goals.

I lift to as many reps as I can, which is to say that I fail on my last rep. Generally I go for 8 reps a set, so my load is to take me to 8, though I may fail on 7 or make it to 9 or even 10.

I also do some pyramid training, where I would start with a weight and maybe hit 12 or 15 reps, then load more weight so I end up with a 3rd set of just 8 reps. Sometimes I go the other way.

Most commonly though I go with 4 sets of 8 reps.

I also don't do steady state cardio but try to go as hard and fast as I can with my cardio. Though with the cardio having so many reps to do which can be hard exercises, I can only go so fast. But I'm certainly not doing my cardio at 'jogging' pace, just as fast as my heart and limbs will allow.

 

[GregG13]

Add up some protein to your diet, take some bcaa during workout/run to get some energy and help loss weight without losing muscle mass.

 

[Trusylver]

Add up some protein to your diet, take some bcaa during workout/run to get some energy and help loss weight without losing muscle mass.

Firstly I don't think you read the OPs post correctly, he is not in need of extra protein, so extra at this point in time just adds up to excess calories leading to fat gain not loss.

as for the BCAAs the evidence is weak to non existent, while animal trials showed promise in the 70s but has not translated to being effective in human studies. Only those with something to sell or that have been sucked into marketing hype push these types of supplements.