gassed out in workouts. losing weight AND strength. page

[Tom Dunphy]

Sorry for the long post, but I need some help/advice.

I've been working out HIIT since about October and eating primal since early March. The workouts were amazing from the beginning and I gained a ton of strength, flexibility and endurance quickly. I didn't lose much weight until I began PB.

I started at 6'1" and 215 pounds. Since beginning the Primal Blueprint I've lost 30 pounds, down to 185 on the scale as of this morning. I'm really happy with my weight loss results, but I feel like I'm also losing a lot of the strength I built up.

I'm frequently worn out during workouts and I can't go as heavy as I used to.

My day usually looks like this:

Wake up around 8 a.m. and have a shake consisting of 1 scoop whey, 1 cup mixed berries and 1 cup organic whole milk yogurt.

Hit the gym at 9 a.m. and do my WOD. Drink about 32 ounces of water during/after.

Lunch is usually 3 extra large organic eggs and 3 slices of uncured, nitrate free bacon. Sometimes I'll eat that AND have a large salad. Usually spinach and romaine with chicken and veggies. Sometimes some mozzarella cheese on there.

During the day I drink green tea (sweetened w/ splenda) or water.

Dinner is typically a sizeable portion of meat (grilled salmon or flank steak are staples) and plenty of green veggies (asparagus, brussel sprouts, broccoli, spinach, etc.).

Sometimes at night I'll have a piece of dark chocolate. I occasionally indulge in a slice of cheesecake.

Our workouts are 3 days a week and are broken down into push, pull and legs.

Typically we do three sets of couplets at 30/15/7 reps. Then we do some kind of timed endurance stuff at the end. For example, a pull day may consist of this:

Band pulls 30/15/7 reps
Overhead kettlebell swings 30/15/7 reps

Renegade rows 30/15/7 reps
Ring rows 30/15/7 reps

Standing rows 30/15/7 reps
Jump pulls 30/15/7 reps

Followed by something like 3 rounds of:
2 min aerdyne tabata (15 sec. fast/15 sec. easy)
1 min sledge hammer swings
pull-ups to fail

Are the workouts too long? Am I doing the wrong kind of workouts? Am I not eating enough? Am I eating the wrong things to fuel my workouts?

My goal is to lose 15 more pounds and get myself down to 170, but I don't want to do it at the price of my physical strength and endurance. Is there a middle ground for me?

Your help is appreciated!

[iniQuity]

I’m seeing a total lack of useful carbs.

I used to eat almost identically to how you’re eating (minus smoothies and whey protein) what I mean is, I used to eat mostly green fibrous veggies.

My workouts began to suffer as well and I felt like I was making little progress in them. Especially on my strength workouts.

I suggest adding starches to your workout days. Try this for a month and see how it goes. I’d go slightly lower on fat on the days you add starch as well.

The type of workouts you’re doing are depleting the glycogen stores in your muscles so you need to feed them carbs, don’t worry about weight gain I highly doubt it will happen.

Also, where is the heavy lifting?? You’re doing a ton of high-rep endurance work I’m not seeing any true resistance training at all.

I’d dedicate at least ONE training session to lifting heavy. Squats, dead-lifts, over head presses, keep it traditional.

Shit, hop on the rings and do dips at least!

Best of luck …

EDIT: To me it looks like you’re working out a tad too much, I wouldn’t do tabatas 3 days a week, especially if you’re doing more than one round in a single session. Is there a reason behind the number of reps? 30/15/7 I’ve never heard of such a scheme…

[jturk]

Start eating some sweet potatoes. With your workout schedule the extra carbs will likely just go to repleting glycogen (and not promote fat accumulation). I had some of these issues not too long after I started PB, and they went away when I added sweet potatoes (as well as rice or regular potatoes occasionally). It also got rid of my muscle cramps at night, fwiw.

[jturk]

I see iniQuity beat me to it

[primalrob]

I’m seeing a total lack of useful carbs.
I suggest adding starches to your workout days. Try this for a month and see how it goes. I’d go slightly lower on fat on the days you add starch as well.


Also, where is the heavy lifting?? You’re doing a ton of high-rep endurance work I’m not seeing any true resistance training at all.

I’d dedicate at least ONE training session to lifting heavy. Squats, dead-lifts, over head presses, keep it traditional.

i agree big time about the carbs and lifting heavy.

also, are you really after the specific weight, or are you more interested in a body fat percentage. 170 at 6'1" is pretty lean. you may have to sacrifice some muscle mass to reach that...forget the scale and focus on body fat instead.

agree

[iniQuity]

Yeah I think trying to do this much activity (or honestly ANY strenuous exercise) on low carbs is an exercise in futility.

I don’t know how zero carb people do it. I’m talking about lifting routines with the occasional cardio workout … not like just running or something which you can fuel with fat.

[tfarny]

Start lifting, you are not really lifting.
What are you truly after with your weight anyhow? I'm 6'1" too, 200lb, and I'd be happy to end up still at 200lb, just want about 10 lb worth of body recomp fat -> muscle. Once I got to 185 that's when I decided to focus on building muscle. 170 is too skinny for a tall guy (my opinion).

[jturk]

Hard to know what is "too skinny" for a given height without knowing frame size - there's quite a large variation in lean body mass (skeleton and connective tissue weight sans muscle) from one person to the next. Take a look at Shane Mosely from his weigh in over the weekend - he's 5'10" and 146 pounds, but doesn't exactly look like he needs more muscle. But he has small 6 inch wrists - i.e. a small frame.

[Tom Dunphy]

Thanks for your help, everyone.

When do you think the ideal time to add tubers would be? Post-workout meal? Pre-workout? How about rice? How frequently can I eat rice and continue weight loss and when is the optimal time to eat it?

As far as my workouts, I definitely agree that I need to do some heavy days. My training situation is such where the coach puts a workout up on the board and we just go in and do it, three workouts per week. But it's sort of become monotonous, since each week the exercises are just a variation of the same few moves. I feel like some of my stagnation could come from that. Maybe it's time to look for a new gym?

As for my goal weight. 170 is just an estimation of where I need to be to look how I want to look. I'm built on a pretty lanky frame. Long legs, long arms, thin ankles and wrists, but pretty wide shoulders. In the eight years since I graduated high school I've gone from 140 to nearly 220. The 170-175 range is where I was happiest with my body in terms of composition.

[jturk]

For me personally it doesn't seem to matter. I started eating them sometimes with dinner and things kind of took care of themselves