Nutrition

Your calories are likely too high. I'd have you around 1400/day. Also for many people as we age we become less insulin sensitive, so your carb intake is likely too high as well.

Eliminating all sugar, and trying to keep your carbs low - around 100g or less/day... (calories coming primarily from fats and proteins) should help you get to your goals.

Not knowing your medical history, lifestyle, and preferences you may want to look into something like ketogenic diets or paleo diets as a source of food plans.

Give it a few weeks and see if you're moving in the right direction. If you are, great. Keep going. If not, you may want to get some blood work done to check your hormone levels (Thyroid panel, estrogen, testosterone,etc) and inflammatory markers (i.e. c-reactive protein).

All that said, rethink your plan of "drastically reducing body fat." Unless you like the idea of putting it all back on and then some. Rather, think more along the lines of "healthfully and methodically reducing body fat." The mind your most powerful tool employed in sculpting your body.

Good luck!

Answered by Roman Footnick

The main thing on your training days is protein (specifically after you train)... and staying in a positive nitrogen balance. If you truly know your RMR, and you're maintaining a positive nitrogen balance throughout the day (i.e. eating protein and good fats.), then really all you need to do to gain lean muscle is match the calories you expend during training by adding extra protein (post workout meal.) Lean mass comes on slow and steady for most people. And even the genetic freaks who put on muscle fast, often don't eat much more than us mortal men (i.e. Big Ramy.)

Answered by Roman Footnick

You are losing weight at a normal rate. A healthy weight loss is anywhere from two kg to four kg per month. You are following a good diet and exercise regimen. If you maintain your current diet and exercise regimen, then you will likely reach your goal weight by next May.

If you want to lose weight and build muscle, then you will need to add more protein to your diet. Chicken, beans, eggs and fish are all great sources of protein. You also want to make sure that consume protein after a workout because it will help your body start rebuilding the damaged muscle. Not only can protein help you gain muscle, but it can also help you lose weight because it helps suppress appetite. Therefore, you want to eat more food on the days that you workout and less on the days that you do not workout. This will help balance your calorie intake, which is one of the keys to losing weight and building muscle.

Furthermore, you should include cardio exercise in your routine four or five days a week for thirty minutes and weight training two to three times per week.

This is simply a matter of losing weight. You need to take a step back and objectively look at your nutrition. Write down what you eat for a week and notice trends in your diet. If you like to eat junk and fizzy drinks, seeing just how much you drink on paper will help you realize the adverse effects it can have on your physique. 
You're welcome to upload your daily eating habits for the week onto our site so I can look at them with you and help you better your diet.

As far as not eating fruits and vegetables are concerned, get a juicer! The various, delicious drinks you can make will encourage you to get those vitamins, minerals and fiber in.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Hi Jackie,

Yes losing belly fat is weight loss.
Do not worry, even at 8% body fat my stomach expands when I'm sitting. That's a normal movement from your body. 

What kind of stomach pain do you currently have?

A cheat day would involve eating clean the other 6 days of the week. Do you follow a certain eating protocol?

Cheat day's are mainly used for when you go low carb for lengthy periods (5+ days) and then carb load your body for a day raising the leptin hormone which is crucial for fat loss. But unless you are eating low carb (75g or less) the other days I wouldn't suggest a full blown cheat day.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Hello Ganesh,

Yes you can grow your chest at any age with sufficient stimulation.

Do you exercise your chest? Try doing pressing movements like pushups & bench presses as well as chest isolation exercises like cable & dumbbell flys. ALso make sure you're consuming enough protein in your vegetarian diet to recover and grow the chest muscle.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Hi there,

Well it sounds like you already know that your diet needs changing! Let me simply inform you of what is best for your body, what is okay in moderation, and what you should put on your blacklist.

You'll want to focus more heavily on eating protein. Research has shown a myriad of benefits from eating a higher-than-recommended (by the USDA) amount of protein. These include greater muscle synthesis which in turn burns more fat to maintain. Aim to get about 40% of your nutritional intake from protein. Sources include meats, eggs, certain dairy products and protein powders.

I used to work at a bakery. Nearly every morning I would have a toasted bagel with turkey, 2 egg whites, and cheese on it. This worked out to around 30g carbs, 35g protein, and 5g fat. So no excuses for the pastry and baguette! Make healthy choices.

Fried food is a no no. Now I'm not saying one fried meal will automatically make you fat, in the same way that one healthy meal won't automatically make you fit, but it's better to stay away from them as they do nothing productive for your body and will most likely be stored as fat. Definitely not every weekend.

It does not particularly matter what time you stop eating so long as you're not eating a huge meal and then hopping on the couch to watch TV or going tstraight to bed. That food might not get used for energy and when it's not used for energy or recovery, it will get stored as fat.

Hope this all helps! 

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Hello there,

It sounds like you're on the right track and have the perfect mindset! Congratulations on achieving the goals you set out for yourself, I know there is no better feeling.

Plateauing (or the temporary halting of any progression) can be frustrating, and often times people plateau for reasons they wouldn't think of. 

Your training is absolutely fine, your eating habits however, are not. You are simply not eating enough to burn off that last 10 pounds.
Not eating enough?! As crazy as it sounds, this could be the solution to your problem.

Your diet focuses mostly on fibrous veggies and fruits and a spot of the occasional dairy and bread. This sounds like you're going very low calorie. So low, in fact, that your body begins to naturally shut down fat burning mechanisms in order to retain the fat it still has. This is a survival mechanism that has pre-dated cavemen. When there was a lack of food, instead of dying off, the body would hold on to whatever it had left.

Fat loss needs to be coaxed, not forced. For this very reason I suggest you start eating more carbohydrates right before your interval training, and more protein right after your workout.

This will not only tell your body that food will be regularly coming in so it has no need to hold on to what it has, but will also build muscle. The great thing about muscle is that it take more calories to function and be retained, thereby essentially allowing your body to burn more calories 24/7.

Introduce more clean calories into your diet, give it a couple weeks, and let me know how this makes you look, weigh, and feel. 

Answered by Jamie Kerem

No you can most definitely consume that protein after 2 months of opening it.. assuming it was kept shut during those 2 months.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Think of weight gainers simply as a method for consuming extra calories. 
Putting on 15-20 lbs of lean muscle is no easy task, and you're going to need to find a balance of calories that works with your body to deliver the added muscle mass without fat gain.

I can tell you that Serious Mass is a good product. They don't use fillers and added sugar which could cause unnecessary fat gain. But again, simply think of it as a way to get in more calories throughout each day.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

No there is no specific way to start taking protein powder. Protein powder is simply a way to supplement your protein intake. Basically, instead of eating handfuls of meat, eggs, and dairy products all day to meet your protein requirements, protein powder offers a different way to hit the mark.

You should aim to consume 1-1.5g of protein per pound of bodyweight. So if you weigh 150 pounds, consume 150-225g protein a day. Most protein shakes offer 25-30.

Think of it only as a way to hit your protein requirements, and as a way to get protein to your muscles quickly after a workout.

Since protein powders come in powder form and are made of easily digestible, quick release sources like whey, they can be absorbed into your bloodstream quickly.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

This is a naturaly way of your body telling you that it doesn't like what you're feeding it. It is not reacting well with one or more of the ingredients in the foods you consume.

If I had to make an educated guess I would say it is from the sugar in your weight gainer. The body often reacts to copious amounts of sugar in the form of pimples. Check your weight gainer to see if it has sugar, and next time opt for one with little sugar and no added sugar. 

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Getting that lean is not 75% diet, it is 100% dedication to diet and training.

Of course, nutrition will play a major role in this. Based on your measurements, I would advocate following a meal plan that gradually (over the course of weeks) decreases carbohydrates therefore dropping calories.

I do not know enough about your schedule, daily habits, likes and dislikes and more to give you a laid out meal plan, but here are foods to focus on eating and to create a plan around.

Protein:

Eggs
Chicken
Beef
Turkey
Cottage Cheese
Low Fat Cheeses
Protein Powders

Carbohydrates:

Vegetables
Fruits
Sweet Potatoes
Rice
Quinoa
Beans
Bread
Oats

Fats:

Nuts
Nut Butters
Olive Oil
Avocado
Coconut

Just remember, 7% body fat is very lean and most fitness models do not stay in that sort of shape year round. Nonetheless, it is a great goal to look towards and very attainable with hard work.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Hi there,

It sounds like you are looking for a quality mass gainer.

Look for a product that touts quality calories and carbohydrates with no added sugar. Your mass gainer could also include creatine which will help develop strength and size.

You could also mix this powder with whole milk instead of water for extra calories. 

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Burning pesky fat off your body often needs to come from diet instead of exercise. 

Find a reliable BMR calculator (basal metabolic rate) online and calculate yours, then aim to consume 500 calories less than that number, if weight is being stubborn then drop it by a further 200. Never drop it below ~1400 as that can start to be unhealthy. 

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Vegetarian diet plans can work. Most people think it's harder to consume enough protein on a vegetarian diet plan - and it is, but it is not impossible.

I would suggest you eat the foods you currently eat in your vegetarian diet, only tweak the amounts, portions, and most importantly - proportions.

Aim to consume 30-40% of your calories in protein. You'll find decent amounts of protein in certain beans and legumes, quinoa, nuts, seeds, tofu and some leafy greens.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

The reason you're not seeing the results you want is because you're not following the food plan. Nutrition is THE KEY to seeing change in your body.

This plan is there for a reason, most likely constructed in a specific way to accompany the workouts and help you reach your goal. It's macronutrient breakdown is what you need to achieve, and even if you think you're eating correctly or "not eating too much", you're most likely not falling in this macronutrient breakdown.

Follow it for the next 3 weeks and see what it can do for you. If you notice a change, incorporate those dietary breakdowns into your lifestyle while you continue to exercise.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Many people are faced with this problem.
There are foods that you should focus on eating in order to provide your body with enough calories to pack on the pounds.

My biggest tip would be to focus on calorically dense foods. Now this does not mean to scarf down candy bars and milkshakes, you still want your food to be nutritiously dense, but focus on foods that pack in a lot of calories for their small size.

Nuts provide excellent sources of energy, a decent serving of protein, and could be eaten anytime with ease.

Your run of the mill protein shake could suffice, but you might want to consider a mass gainer. This would simply be a shake with a high amount of calories to replace those that you usually couldn't consume.

How exactly do you eat these tuna packets? If you have time at the fuel stop to eat an entire tuna packet, your problem might just be able to be solved through proper meal prep.

If you take a couple hours out of your weekend to prepare meals for the upcoming week, and appropriately tupperware them, it might be convenient and quick enough to eat during your stops.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Hi Reikiron,

Yes there is something you can improve on, and that is the amount and quality of your food.

Most people don't actually realize that when you drop your calories so low, you do nothing good for losing weight. When you don't feed your body with the food that it so desperately needs and wants, it tends to shut down fat loss mechanisms in an attempt to hold onto any fat you already have. This mechanism dates back to prehistoric ages, where cavemen would go days without food, and the body needed to survive. 

Fat loss cannot be demanded, it needs to be coaxed.

So up your calories.

This is aso the reason you feel sore and in constant pain from these six exercises. You are not fueling your body with enough quality food to recover from the previous exercises and to repair any damaged muscles.

If you are serious about weight loss, you need to take the slow-but-steady route. Begin by eating 2500 calories a day, for 2 weeks. Observe how your body reacts. If you are losing 1 pound a week or more, maintain this for another 2 weeks, if not, drop it a further 250 calories a day. Everytime fat loss halts and you aren't losing 1 pound a week anymore, drop those calories by 250. Do not drop them further than 1750, at this point you can maintain your caloric intake, but increase the cardio you do (run up that mountain!)

Also make sure to consume enough protein. You do not want to lose muscle instead of fat on your weight loss journey. In order to avoid this, aim to consume 1 gram of protein per pound of your target weight.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Hi Dhaval, 

Consider buying a quality casein protein. Casein is the slowest digesting form of protein, and when taken right before bed, will provide a constant stream of amino acids throughout the night. So you will "have food in your stomach all night".

Focus on this, and getting in enough calories and you will gain weight.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

This can be somewhat of an opinion based list, but I'll list a few top brands and their products.

Your top USA brands and their products would be:

Optimum Nutrition - 100% Gold Standard Whey, PRE, Opti-Men.
Musclepharm - Assault, Amino1, Combat Powder.
Cellucor - COR-Performance Whey, C4 Extreme, Super HD.
BSN - N.O. Xplode 2.0, Syntha-6, AminoX. 

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Fat has gotten a bad reputation over the years, and people are finally coming to realize that fat and being fat aren’t synonymous.

Fat is a naturally calorically denser macronutrient. While carbohydrates and protein both weigh in at 4 calories per gram, fat is over double that with 9 calories per gram. When you couple that with the insanely fatty foods that people eat on a regular basis from their favorite fast food restaurant, its no wonder everyone thinks fat makes you fat.

But fat is essential for the body to create a positive hormone environment. It’s vital for allowing the body to optimally function, and it’s great for your skin, hair and nails. But there’s a major difference in the fats that cause these positive benefits and the fats that provide no more than a ton of calories. 

At all costs, you will want to stay away from trans fats. These are the fats found in your sweets, cookies and cakes, and sodas. They do nothing positive for your body and will just get stored up as body fat.

Saturated fat is essential for the body, but in very low amounts. Try to stay away from saturated fats as you will get them naturally in the right amounts from other, healthy fats.

Unsaturated fats, particularly monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats are good fats and provide a myriad of health benefits. These are found in nuts, nut butters, avocadoes, fatty fish like salmon, and flax seeds.

Introduce these fats to your diet, and begin to replace the old, unwanted fast food fats with these fats, and you will see a spike in satiety, mood improvements, performance improvements, and general wellbeing improvements.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Have you ever looked at a picture of someone depicting an amazing physical transformation they underwent and thought: “How come they can do that and I can’t?” What separates those who can make a noticeable physical change from those who can’t, when both parties put in the same effort in the gym, and go through the same bodily torture? The answer is in what those two parties do after sweating it out on the treadmill or under the barbell.

Nutrition is a key aspect to any weight loss, strength and endurance or general health program. Without it, don’t expect to see that fat melt away or the peak in your biceps rise. An hour workout takes up just 4% of your day. Take a step back and think about what you’re doing for the other 96%. If you’re like any other human being, you’re fuelling your body’s never-ending hunger, and then letting it rest overnight. So what you feed it can literally make or break any changes you wish to see.

“Clean eating” is eating foods in absence of processed chemicals, high levels of trans fatty acids and free radicals, and high amounts of sugar. Think back to the caveman era, when men and women had to survive on the meat they hunted, the fruit and vegetables they gathered, and not much else. Nowadays, you can’t drive 400 feet without being greeted by the smell of highly refined, overly processed fast food. Our bodies were not meant to run on food that is high in calories yet low in nutrition. 

If you want to be in one of those pictures, illustrating your astounding transformation, and you already train your body consistently, then it’s time to take a serious look at the food choices you currently make, and discard anything our ancestors back in the caves wouldn’t touch with a ten foot stick.

Answered by Jamie Kerem

Chocolate has gotten a bad rap for years, but recent studies have shown that it can help lower blood pressure. People should make sure that they eat dark chocolate. Dark chocolate has a higher cocoa content, which means that it is lower in fat and sugar.

Cold water fish is an excellent source of omega 3 fatty acids. Omega 3 fatty acids help keep the brain and heart healthy. This nutrient can also help lower a person’s risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease. Experts recommend that people get at least two servings of cold water fish per week.

Blueberries are high in potassium, vitamin C, phytoflavinoids and antioxidants. Blueberries can help prevent inflammation, which is the root cause of a number of illnesses. Researchers have also found that blueberries can help lower a person’s risk of developing heart disease and cancer.

Superfoods are low in calories, but high in the nutrients that the body needs to stay healthy. These foods have been shown to help people maintain a healthy body weight and live longer lives. Below are some examples of superfoods that everyone should include in their diets:

1. Blueberries 
2. Cold Water Fish
3. Dark Chocolate

The effect of alcohol on the body does seem to help performance. Although, that seemingly beneficial feeling is not an indication of a positive effect on your workout. The problems with alcohol as a performance aid are many.
For one, alcohol slows hand eye coordination as well as delays reaction time, these two things alone can lead to injury and poor performance. In addition, alcohol has an effect as a pain reducer which when exercising can cause one to be unaware of overtraining or injury leading to greater damage that could have been avoided.
On another note, alcohol acts as a diaretict which can lead to severe dehydration during exercise and extra care is needed to maintain proper hydration.
The proven method of proper nutrition, adequate hydration as well as enough rest/sleep will help maintain energy needed for exercise or any physical performance, in a healthy way.