I've been pretty religious about going to the gym 3x week for the past 1 1/2 years. Doing about 45 minutes of cardio and 20-30 minutes of weight training. I've followed a few different training programs, from the 5x5 to the Men's Health online personal trainer. I am consistently getting stronger with them. I started doing HIIT for my cardio about a month ago. I also play hockey 1-2x week. I keep my diet in check pretty well, with it averaging around 2000/day with a 4/30/30 carb/dat/protein breakdown. After doing this for all this time I have not lost any weight in the last 6 months or so.

Very slowly after a few months I dropped 30 pounds, since then nothing. My BF% is still the same and I lose/gain in a week maybe 2 pounds. I've tried eating more (up to 2500/day), eating less (1600/day), upping cardio and more reps less weight, nothing has helped. I switch-up my weight-training every few weeks, and always rotate around with the cardio equipment to different things.

Does anyone have any suggestions? If it helps, I'm 6' and 216 right now. I'm getting really frustrated as I hoped I would be really close to my goal at this point.

Hi, Igor,

You might want to check out a technique used by pro body builders used for pre-competition leaning called "calorie cycling" or "zig-zagging", which is basically doing diet levels for 3 days, then on the 4th up them, (most effectively and pleasantly done by increasing the good carbs), to maint. levels.

Give it a go for a couple of weeks and see how that works for you.

And congrats on your work and rewards thus far.

Thanks for the advice Minu.

I have one question though, how long are you supposed to stay with this technique? A few weeks? months? as long as it seems to work?

Thanks again.

Bingo.

Thanks!

I started doing this today.

Hey man back in the day when I was fit as hell I had a simliar situation, what many people I know did was push their weight training by lifting heavier, and longer (compound workouts). Doing this increased mass but decreased body fat and in most cases weight. At the same time eating every 2 hours did wonders. I am hoping to be able to do this again in about 5 months.

Maybeee you aren't meant to lose the weight?
Divine intervention perhaps.

No, but really, 216 lbs at 6' isn't that bad. I'm 5' 11" and 192, but I'm a bit of a chubster at the moment. If you have a significant amount of muscle, you could be good to go. Even at my smallest for this height (168) I still had a little bit that I could pinch on my belly. But maybe I'm just being accepting of chubb that could actually go.

But again, I don't see there being anything wrong with a little chub to fill out a bigger guy. It makes sense almost. As long as you're healthy, I'd say keep up what you're doing. Maybe these last couple of pounds will take a while.

Or maybe you're stressing over these last few pounds. Stress can keep that little bit on. Who knows. Meditate. Even if you aren't stressed.

Have you been tracking your body fat?

I have been tracking my body fat, and it has stayed pretty much the same with my current weight. It dropped a lot when I first starting losing weight since I'm doing weight training and cardio.