u/Timmy_no_clue

For the first four months of cutting my numbers in the gym just kept dropping, which I expected a little but not to the degree it happened. Bench went from 185 for reps down to struggling with 155, squat took an even bigger hit. Honestly there were a few weeks I almost gave up on tracking lifts entirely and just focused on the scale number instead, easier to look at one number going down than three going down.

Started this back in March at 246 lbs, im at 212 now, so 34 lbs down over about five months. The first three months were pretty agressive (close to a 750 calorie deficit, probably too aggressive looking back, hindsight and all that and that's when strength tanked the hardest. Around month four I slowed the deficit down to something more like 400-500 a day and ate more protein than I had been, and that's when things started to level out.

For me the real turning point wasn't some program change or new exercise, it was just eating enough protein consistently and not chasing the scale as fast, and also sleeping more which I didn't expect to matter as much as it did. Once I stopped rushing the deficit my lifts stopped bleeding, and by month five bench was back to 175 for the same reps I was doing at 185 before, so not fully recovered but climbing instead of falling, which felt like a genuine win after months of only going the wrong direction.

Squat took longer to come back. still not where it was at the start honestly but its moved up two sessions in a row now which hasnt happened once since I started this. anyone else notice squat lags behind bench and deadlift when cutting, or is that just me

Deadlift barely dropped though, still not sure why honestly.

But the plateau period where strength drops during a cut is just going to happen to some degree no matter what, in my experience, at least for me it did. The mistake I made was cutting too hard for too long and expecting lifts to just stay flat instead of actually going down. Slowing the rate of loss down and prioritizing protein is what turned it around for me, not any specific program or exercise swap, and still got a good chunk of weight to lose but seeing the numbers on the bar move the right direction again makes the whole thing feel a lot more sustainable than the first few months did

Been doing the 16/8 thing for about three weeks now. First meal around noon, done eating by 8pm, and on weekdays it's actually not bad since I get busy with work and don't think about food until lunch anyway.

Weekends are a whole different story though. Saturday my wife makes coffee around 8 and puts a splash of that vanilla creamer in mine, the kind with like 40 calories in it, and I keep telling myself that doesn't count because it's "just coffee," but I know it technically breaks the fast. Then Sunday my neighbor does this whole pancake thing for his kids and somehow I end up over there around 9:30 eating one because his kid Mason insisted, and honestly the syrup he uses is some maple stuff from a farm upstate, kind of a nice touch actually, not that it matters here.

So by my math I've had a real clean fast maybe half the days I've tried this.

My buddy at the gym who's been doing leangains for like two years says the window isn't actually that strict and creamer doesn't really matter. But the app I'm using tracks it down to the minute, and it just sits there at 14 hours 40 something on those days. Which bugs me way more than it probably should for something this small, honestly.

Dropped 4 lbs so far either way. My shoulder is still weird from moving furniture last month, been meaning to get that looked at, unrelated I know.

so is it just me or do weekends quietly sabotage the fast without anyone actually deciding that on purpose?

41m, 5'9, was 263 lbs, down 81 since january of last year. i need to tell this somewhere because i cant tell it anywhere in real life. my wife is the only person who knows and she is useless about it, ill get to that.

in 2020 i was trying to lose weight for maybe the fifth time and the diet part was fine, the office was not. donuts on monday, a birthday cake every single week, a candy bowl at reception (the good kind, not the strawberry candies nobody touches), and every no thank you turned into a whole negotiation about how one wont kill me and how somebody made these themselves and how im no fun anymore. so one day i lied. i told a coworker i had a gluten intolerance and that a doctor found it on a blood test. took about 10 seconds and i gave it no thought at all.

that lie is 6 years old now and at this point it has its own life at the company. theres a gluten free shelf in the office kitchen with a post it that has my name on it. every catered lunch comes with one labeled gf box, for me. a coworkers wife bakes me my own separate brownies for every office thing because her nephew has celiac and she knows how hard it is, and new hires learn about me during onboarding, in the same conversation as where the bathrooms are and dont touch the tuna in the fridge. i have watched a whole company slowly rearrange its food culture around a sentence i made up to get out of eating a donut.

heres the thing though, the diet finally worked because of it. i failed in 2020, but i started counting calories for real last january, and being the gluten guy made it stupidly easy. nobody pushes anything on me. nobody comments on my plate. i lost 81 lbs in total peace while everyone around me fights for their life at the snack table at 3pm.

but now i can afford a donut again. i budget my calories, i could fit one in every friday. i cannot eat one. at the christmas party i took a bite of a regular cookie without thinking and a coworker pulled it out of my hand and asked where my epipen was. i dont have an epipen. its an intolerance i invented, it doesnt even have symptoms, but the whole thing is way past the point where i could correct it.

so i eat gluten in secret now. last month i sat in my car in a parking garage eating a costco muffin and i caught myself checking the mirrors. i logged it, 690 calories, but i typed it in as lunch like i was hiding evidence. my wife thinks this is the funniest thing that has ever happened to either of us and has refused to help in any way. she brings home bagels and just looks at me.

yesterday the office manager announced, genuinely proud of herself, that the caterer for the summer party is a fully gluten free place. the entire menu. for all 40 of us. because of me. everyone nodded like it was a lovely gesture. some guy from accounting said his wife went gluten free too and feels way better.

the party is in 3 weeks. im going to eat the gluten free cake and tell her its wonderful. and the worst part is i checked the caterers menu online and it honestly looks pretty good.