u/Able_Engineering_545

TL:DR, macro counting and adherence to 50-25-25 split is making adequate calorie intake super hard outside of carefully curating all my own meals, and leaves no room for social flexibility or eating what I actually want, how big of a deal is bumping fats to get in calories easier and make life more flexible?

I’m lifting 4x and running 3x weekly on an aerobic maintenance and strength rebuild lean gain/recomp phase right now. TBH my two favorite things to do in day are workout hard and make/eat meals so it works out fine for me lol. I’m running into the issue of feeling pressured to optimize at every corner however, and I’m not sure if it’s just AI psychosis from me overusing it as a brainstorming sanity-checker or if adopting higher intensity mixed-discipline fitness routines just require a lot more sacrifice in terms of normalcy.

The biggest hurdle I’m encountering is nutrition. Despite my (for my size) gargantuan caloric budget of 2400, I feel super boxed in when it comes to nutrition and flexibility in day to day life. Avoiding fats and trying to keep diet moderate fat/protein and high carb has made it such that I can’t really eat most “normal” foods because of fat content and have to prepare everything myself, but not even in the low-carb high protein way everyone would expect lol. As far as I’ve been told carbs are the biggest lever and fat and protein should be kept the same as any other lifting and/or running program with fats being the driving lever. However I as a 123 lbs 5’4 man cannot easily cram down 300+ healthy grams of carbs in a day without some extreme measures. Not to mention that the exact macro split of required grams of protein and fat per day is leaving me super dissatisfied, as even though I have enough calories left over every day to make some really good food or indulge a bit, I’m always relegated to plain chicken and rice or 100 grams of dry carbs as an afternoon top-up since I don’t want to undereat but also don’t want to “waste” the calories or risk unnecessary fat gain from patching with fats.

I’ve been trying to run 50-25-25 but I just cannot for the life of me get in all 2400 cals a day cleanly and in a manner that is actually satisfying without bumping the fats, but I’ve been les to believe that aside from the amount you need to function they’re kinda antithetical to performance nutrition by slowing nutrient absorption post workout, is it really that big of a deal or am I just taking too much AI advice?

I’ve always been very active and played sports or at the very least worked out intensely 4-6 days a week. Every time I go out to eat I seem to be the only one finishing my whole plate at a restaurant. How often do y’all finish your plates at restaurants because I’m the only person im around often that does.

Also do any of y’all purposely order smaller portioned meals so that you aren’t over served and end up eating too much? Whenever I go out to eat I always have enough room to finish whatever I’m served so I avoid places or entrees that are larger (Chinese, fajitas, etc.).

Like I’m confused on how people order a plate of fajitas and get 3 pieces of meat and 1 tortilla down and are ready to het a to-go box, since any time I’m ordering a meal I’m fully expecting that meal to be finished in whole by the time the check comes around.

Is this normal?

For the sake of accurate TDEE accounting and recovery, should you hit step goal including steps from runs or in exclusion to exercise?

I was walking about 10-12k steps a day recently, however schedule changed and now if I didn’t intentionally go for walks I’d be mostly sedentary. I run 3-4x a week and lift 4x a week. Should I, on run days and lift days, go for a few walks adding up to 10-12k, or should I let runs add to that 10-12k number?

I’m trying to work out what my maintenance is on my given schedule and activity level. Idk if I should treat steps as a background thing that happens any day (meaning run days would end higher at 15-20k or more depending on run) or if I should try to hit that number every day and let runs carry most of the steps. And for the sake of TDEE calculation which is better, a 10-12k weekly average with runs counted in that number, or 10-12k daily walking before any workouts?

I’m trying to maintain or maybe add a little weight slowly right now. I don’t want to risk undereating and losing even more weight or underfueling but I also want to avoid double counting my NEAT. What do y’all do?

TLDR: peripheral fatigue in legs led to abysmal interval performance that barely surpassed my easy pace on normal days. Quads not sore necessarily just no force production despite adequate carbs and sleep and protein. What to do?

In a weird transition week between routines trying to find one that fits my recovery abilities and schedule. Sunday I did a tempo run and this week’s schedule was/is as follows:

Monday: upper + HIIT (skipped HIIT)
Tuesday 8x400
Wednesday lower
Thursday push and easy run
Friday pull
Saturday long run
Sunday rest

I absolutely flopped on today’s intervals. Usually running 5:30-5:45 for my 8x400’s, today I could barely muster 8:30 during them. I tried different format of 1 minute walking instead of 2 minutes jogging which I think may have contributed to it, but my legs felt flat on the warmup. I even failed one of the intervals, having to stop to walk on rep 2.

What should I do today to recover and salvage this? Should I cut intake since effort was down? Should I still get my steps in or should I try to take today as easy as possible?

This run was weird. Yesterday I ate a gargantuan amount of carbs, got great sleep, stretched, did mobility, the works. This morning I woke up and did dynamic warmups, went for a quick walk, caffeinated and had a light carby snack 90 mins before run. I did everything perfectly from recovery to fueling to warmup and it still fell flat.

TLDR: started running to get shredded so I could bulk, I like running but lost a ton of strength, want to keep getting better at running but I want my strength back and to stay lean.

I’m a 19 year old male. I’ve been active for the past 5+ years mainly from lifting. I did 2 wrestling seasons junior and senior year HS. Wanted to be more “in shape” and “generally fit” so I started adding running here and there to my program a few months ago but I’ve got no idea what I’m doing when it comes to adding cardio to a lifting program so my legs are just dead 99% of the week. I’ve resorted to asking ChatGPT what to do but for obvious reasons that’s yielded some bs.

This addition of cardio also came from a desire to drive fat loss, which was in service of prepping for some lean gaining. At the start of this journey I was mid 140’s probably 17% bf. I have no bodybuilding ambitions but I noticed I feel better lean and also wanted to trim some fluff to “make room” for a lean gain to break through my strength plateaus.

My current proposed split is as follows:

Monday: Easy 4 miles, upper strength

Tuesday: lower strength

Wednesday: long(er) run

- for me this entails about 5-6 miles

Thursday: upper volume and explosivity, easy run

Friday: off, steps only

Saturday: lower explosivity and volume

Sunday: speed run, intervals or sprints

I also have built a habit of getting a weekly average of 15k steps a day just from background movement.

I’m running into the issue of every week hitting a wall on one of my runs or leg days where my legs are absolutely fried and the session is a slog to finish or doesn’t get finished at all. This has manifested as my lifts going from what they used to be (300x2 S, 185x2 B, 115 OHP, 200x6 RDL @ 140lbs) to a much less impressive (140x2 B, 225x3 S, 100 OHP, 185x5 RDL @ 125lbs). However my running has improved spectacularly, I was barely able to run a mile when I started and now just this week I was able to go for 5.5 miles in zone 2 at a 10 minute pace, and I’ve run a max distance of 6.3 miles at a 10:31 pace.

I’m not training for a particular event/goal or anything like that. I’m generally just looking to be as strong and fast and overall athletically capable and healthy as I can be. If I had to articulate what my goals are numerically (I’m a 5’4 124-ish pound male) I’d say return my weight to the mid 130’s from lean mass, have a 200+ lbs bench, 315 squat, 135 overhead press, 25 ish minute 5k, and be able to run 15k (don’t care about speed on that one just want to say I could do it).

For context I’m relatively new to what you would define as “hybrid training.” My general routine has consisted of 4 lifts and 3-4 runs a week. I’m 19 started out just lifting weights when I was 14 to fill out a T-shirt. Up until I was 16 I did that, then did 2 wrestling seasons junior and senior year of high school that gave me a taste for something more than just looking big. About 6 months ago, as a college student no longer wrestling, I added running to my routine of fitness as well as about 10-15k steps a day. My goal with this was to be more “in shape” and also burn some extra calories to try to lean out enough for a long-term slow gain phase.

basically running was added to my regimen for the sake of priming me to add some more muscle and strength while being fit enough to run an impressive mile or perform well enough in whatever sport I landed in just off of being well conditioned and strong.

For the past 6 months, partially due to the cut, though I suspect equally as much as a result of my poor programming, I’ve seen some serious strength dips. While the cut started in September of last year the holidays set me back to square one in terms of progress on body fat reduction, and it wasn’t until early January of this year that I locked back in and knuckled through it.

Over the course of the cut I went from 147 to my current weight of 124. Strength held steady enough, lost a few reps here and there but nothing major, that was until I got below the 130’s. My lifts pre-cut were about 185x2 bench, 300x2 squat, 315x1 DL at 143lbs, right now I can barely grind out 3x140 bench, 4x225 squat, 1x275 DL, and strength has dipped slightly on accessories but not as significantly as compounds.

How should I restructure my training to stop the slide and actually add muscle again? Currently I just feel like all I’m doing with the gym, steps, running, and fitness as a whole is just grinding myself into dust for no real payoff other than looking a little leaner, though I’m too skinny for even that to be good.

My current routine looks like this:

Monday: combined session, upper strength lift + 40 mins Z2 run (for me that’s about 3.5-4 miles)

Tuesday: lower strength, no running, squat, RDL, bss, hammy curls, core rotation

Wednesday: longer easy run, 5-6 miles

Thursday: split sessions, AM upper volume workout, PM easy run (thinking about dropping this, usually feels too hard to be productive)

Friday: recovery, steps and stretching

Saturday: power generation lower day, higher volume and explosive, box jumps hack squats and unilateral isolations,

Sunday: speed work, 6x400 intervals or sprints