If you’ve read my previous posts, you know that I’ve been in prep for my second bikini fitness show at NPC Sweden. I decided fairly recently to postpone the comp to later this year as I’ve realised that I will not be able to cut weight enough in time and my shoulders might be too small, even if it would be good to go for the experience I feel like the cost of competing is not worth it. Instead of diving right into off season, I’ll do things a little bit different.

As much as food and eating normally sounds tempting after 13 weeks of same chicken, fish and rice, I will continue to persuade low body fat percentage. I went and got my body measured a couple of weeks ago to get a realistic picture. I’m not gonna lie, the body dysmorphia is raging. I thought surely I’ll be around 15-17% body fat as I can see some abs and shoulder striations, but turns out it was more like 21%. Most of it stored in my buns (not complaining) but also in my abdomen as visceral fat. Visceral fat is good fat to a certain degree, I have been struggling with stress the past 3 years and it’s just been increasing lately — There might be a connection between increased visceral fat & higher levels of cortisol. 

I’ve always been lean so I prefer to stay that way. One might argue that I am lean, but it’s all relative, lean to me is close to stage lean. I say close because stage lean is borderline unhealthy, I’m thinking as low body fat percentage as possible where hormones are not affected negatively. 

You don’t need extra fat to build muscle, normally you gain some fat during a bulk and that’s why most people embrace their off season and curves that comes with it. I could, but I won’t or rather I will later. The reason being that I want to have a better picture of how much my physique has developed since the competition (if anything at all). Cortisol might be a hinder for muscle growth and like I said the stress have just been increasing lately. I am afraid that if I jump on a bulk I’ll just put on fat.

I asked ChatGPT how much fat I need to lose from 21.1% body fat to end up on 12% and got the answer 6.53kg. Also asked how many calories that translates to; 50,321.

So week one: Calculating how many calories I burn per day. Normally TDEE is easy calculated by adding BMR + TEF + Activity level or MET level together. The problem is that work is a kind of activity when you’re not stationed by a laptop majority of the day. Working in a warehouse, my task is to drive around on a forklift and unpack and stack boxes. Some boxes are quite heavy and I might have choose to stay in the heaviest section of work to burn some extra calories.

My BMR is around 1475 calories and my TDEE normally (if I would just train 6 days per week) would be around 2400. I ate around 1700 calories last prep which worked really good so I tried that for a while thinking if anything I’ll just get shredded even faster. Ended up in some kind of starvation mode of my body holding on to what little amount of stored energy I got on me, because that’s just basic survival instinct.

Some people claim that starvation mode isn’t a real thing, but it is, we have evolved from living in caves when food wasn’t unlimited. How do you think we survived through long winters of bad harvest and unfortuned hunting?

I got the latest apple watch and honestly I see it as an investment to my health & wellbeing. It’s not 100% accurate, but I get a better estimate. Turns out I may burn up to 4000 calories some days, and if I was at 1700 calories you can imagine how lethargic I must have felt at times and my body screaming for help.

50321 calories divided over 12 weeks is 4,193 calories deficit per week.
Average calories burned per day, according to my watch, is 3200 calories (Monday to Friday)
That is about 20% inaccurate and I’m not sure if it’s + or -

So I will baseline at 2500 calories, Monday to Friday.
Since I don’t normally work on weekends, I’ll reduce calories to 1700, same as last prep, 700 below maintenance.

Roughly that’s a 700 deficit each day, 700 x 7 = 4900 calorie deficit over the week.

I will stay on this for 2 weeks and keep an eye on the scale, compare pictures & check mirrors for changes.
If all goes to plan and I see changes, then I’ll stick to this for 12 weeks.

— Being to deep in deficit is more likely to risk muscle loss and metabolic slowdown.

If you’ve read my previous post, you already know how I plan my meals around my day’s activities such as workout and work to avoid muscle breakdown, but I’ll go over it in short anyway:

→ Make sure to supply enough energy to perform at the gym, because if you’re not actively forcing your muscles to work your body may use them as energy.
→ Make sure to supply enough energy while you sleep as most muscle is recovered while we sleep.
→ Keep a constant flow of amino acids to keep protein turnover positive.
→ Cycle carbs around work & gym.
→ No fasted workouts.