6 Months to Make it Happen - w/questions regarding paleo and strength training

[jmtimme21]

Hi!

 

I'm John, I'm 25 yrs old and I have a little bit of what you'd call a "weight problem". I was never really a big athlete, and never had a "fit" body type, but wasn't considered obese either - I was just average. Working 3rd shift at my company on the shop floor as a machine operator kept me at a decent weight - 207lbs @ 6'0" -  until I was promted to the front offices. At this time, I met the love of my life. Within a year her and I had gained 30 pounds. I ate fast food a lot, and I really got into craft beer and bad food. 3 years later I'm a hefty 260 lbs - and we realized we had both gained over 50lbs since meeting each other. Now with our wedding coming up in 6 months we decided to make a change. Since January 2014 we cleaned up our diets and half-heartedly started working out with my weight bench in my basement. She dropped around 10 pounds and I started feeling better but only dropped 5. Last week we went about 60% paleo and trained hard. I can't tell you how much better the both of us felt. We decided that starting yesterday, we were going to do about 90% paleo with only 2 cheat meals a week, eventually working to almost full paleo. I have spreadsheets to track every measurement and metric I could think of, including pictures. I have a set of dumbells, a barbell and a weightbench. I have a killer full-body lifting plan that I really enjoy doing (with a sweet RUSH mix to work out to). I'm on my second day of full paleo and I have strength training tonight. I had a few questions regarding the diet - I noticed my caloric intake is definitely a lot less than it should be with paleo. How will this impact my muscle growth? I'm currently at about 39% muscle and want to grow to about 48-50%, while trimming my fat (28.1%) to about 15-16%. Our meal plans and snacks are well balanced, and I'm sure we won't go hungry, but I'm at about 1200-1300 calories a day. Should this be increased throughout the week or only on my lifting days? Does it need to be increased at all? I just don't want all my lifting work to be wasted. The research I've done hasn't really helped, so I figured I would ask the experts here.

 

 

[JPrev]

Your strength will increase despite the cut, mostly due to neurological changes.  This will last a few months or so.  You may be able to put on some muscle over the next few months as well because you're new to lifting, but in general, you shouldn't expect to grow your muscles when you're in a deficit.  Especially not one that's as steep as yours.

 

Not that I think it's a problem.  Personally, I'd focus on decreasing the fat for a while and let the muscles develop however they might.  Have you seen the article on this site about Saint?  When you see his final pic, your first thought might be he put on a lot of muscle.  While he certainly did get stronger and grew his muscles some amount, the real reason he looks ripped is because his body fat % is so low.  His result was more due to leanness than hypertrophy.

 

Keep your protein intake high, and put more stock in your tape measurements than your weight.