any advice moving forward? my overall goal is just to look decent

are you getting all your protons anon?

>>39380242
Get rid of "cheat dinners" first they're just going to slow you down.

Do HIIT cardio if you aren't already, continue cutting until you feel happy with how you look without a shirt, then clean bulk.

You're basically at a crossroads of keep cutting into skelly mode, yet be lean, or bulk to throw in some good mass, but get more fat (not what you want probably) so keep cutting.

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>>39380242
>cheat dinners
>crash diets
>thinks cardio kills gains

>>39380255
no senpai it's hard on 1500 cals, I usually get about 100g a day

>>39380260
yea that's my fear of bulking, but I know it's something I just gotta deal with. is it inevitable that I'll have to gain some fat at some point?

>>39380277
I dont think that, I just meant I did the dumb cardio bunny thing of thinking my weight is all that mattered so I ran 5 miles every day and never ate but still looked dumpy

>>39380242
any advice moving forward?

Are you fucking kidding me, what the fucks happened to men these days????
Fucking snowflake faggots, listen up you utter faggot hippy shit, its fucking easy
Put one foot in front of the other then lift you other leg up and in front of the other one, easy as fuck

>>39380562
if you ever make a joke out of my thread again I assure you it will not go unpunished.

consider this your warning

>>39380597
Whats the difference between hillery supporters and a lump of shit ??


NOTHING

>>39380609
you're dead meat

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>>39380242
1500 calories is TOO little if you are lifting.

i don't know your height but for a guy that's 5'9" and 178 lbs his TDEE is at around 2500 with 3 workouts per week. you said you are eating at 1500 which is less than what your body needs to function normally which is around 1850 calories.

this is the reason why your bench has stalled this early. your body has to consume muscle mass to stay alive. sure you are losing weight fast but your muscles are going with it.

it's much easier to drop weight than it is to gain muscle mass. simple rule of thumb is to never go more than 500 in any direction from your TDEE.

here's what you should do. calculate your TDEE and your BF%. if you are less than 20% BF start to eat at around 300-500 surplus. if you are more then eat at around 500 less and wait until you get to around 15-16% then start to clean bulk.

clean bulk from ~15% until you get to around 20% then start to cut down to ~15 again. repeat and see great progress. cardio is great for fat loss but do it after your lifting and not before.

you will gain fat on a bulk it's inevitable. muscle gain and fat gain are linked together. you can only control the ratio of them with how active you are. for example, a fat person sitting on his ass gaining weight has like 5-10% muscle gain but the rest is all fat while someone who works out can skew it more like 60%+ muscle gain and the rest fat.

like i wrote before, it's much easier to lose fat than it is to gain muscle mass.

>>39380909
thanks so much, this was really helpful.

I don't know how reliable MyFitnessPal is, but that's how I log my calories and they have me set at 1500cals to lose weight, being 5'10, 178lbs. However, most other calculators (like you said) put me closer to like 2300-2500. is MyFitnessPal just unreliable?

just looking at comparison pics online, I think I'm more than 20%, so I'll raise my 1500 cals to about 2k cals, which I think is enough to go back to increasing my lifts while still eating below my TDEE, so hopefully lowering my bf%

>>39381048
>is MyFitnessPal just unreliable?
i don't know never used it. there are tons of TDEE calculators online, there's even one linked in FAQ

i hope you aren't looking at calories burned on MFP. that thing is broken as hell and you should never rely on it.

simply find your TDEE and select your activity level and go off that. don't start eating more simply because you think you've burned 1000 extra calories with cardio becaue MFP said so. ignore that shit and simply go off your TDEE.

>just looking at comparison pics online,
you can buy calipers which are dirt cheap and you can get them at most pharmacies or just do a tape measurement. it's really hard to tell from pictures.

>>39381119
I dont plug in my exercises, just activity level, height. Weight, and goals. It must be off

>>39381048

jesus christ, just use scooby's tools

the man knows what he's doing when it comes to engineering (inb4 he crashes his plane)

>>39382164
The only thing holding me back is I did lose 2lbs a week and kept my muscle, so 1500 doesnt seem too off. I worry higher estimations may considrr "active" like playing a bunch of sports and doing body builder level training

>>39380242
Oh, hey. You and I have the same body type.

>>39382668
have u gotten better? I always feel like it's impossible to get rid of this unending gut. I got down to 160 before but still looked like a pregnant woman

>>39382721
Not really. I've been down to 145lbs once (which is super skinny for me) and that gut is still there.