Top 3 Q&A: Maintenance, no weight loss, whole body vs. split

Today, we'll discuss the three questions we're asked most often in our Facebook group, email list, or Instagram.

1. What are my maintenance calories?

The most frequently asked question is definitely "What are my maintenance calories?" This is actually surprising, since it is not at all important to be able to calculate the maintenance calories exactly before starting a diet or a bulking phase.

Let's think about why we want to calculate maintenance calories in the first place. We want to calculate them to get a basis for determining calorie intake during a diet, bulking phase, or maintenance phase.

• During a diet, we don't want to lose weight too fast or too slowly,
• during a bulking phase, we do not want to bulk up too fast or too slow,
• and during a maintenance phase, we want to maintain our weight without major fluctuations.

Now, what if we calculate the maintenance calories incorrectly? Let's say your actual maintenance calories are 3000 cal, but you incorrectly estimate them to be only 2500 cal. Since you want to lose 1 lb per week (and need a deficit of about 500 calories per day), you start the diet eating 2000 calories per day.

So the mistake is that you actually need to eat 2500 calories instead of only 2000 calories to lose 1 lb per week. So you will lose weight faster than you actually wanted to. But if you diet for 2 weeks and weigh yourself daily, you will notice that you are losing weight too fast.

You will realize that you have underestimated your maintenance calories, so you can then counteract this by simply increasing your calories. After that, you will be able to lose weight at your intended rate.

So, you lost weight a little too fast for 2 weeks because you underestimated your maintenance calories. If your diet lasts for 16 weeks, then this hardly matters.

It would be just as bad if you initially overestimated your maintenance calories. Then you would simply lose a little less weight for the first two weeks.

This is exactly the same for a bulking phase. Whether you gain too much or too little weight for two weeks at the beginning doesn't really matter, because you can counteract it. You are not obligated to leave your calorie intake unchanged for the entire bulk.

Oh yes... and with a maintenance phase it is of course not bad if you do not maintain your weight during the first few weeks. You will find out after a short time how high your actual maintenance calories are and can then adjust your calorie intake accordingly.

Of course, for this to work you must weigh yourself daily and track your calorie intake and compare the weekly averages.

That's not to say you have to track calories for life, but if you have no idea what your maintenance calories are, you should at least track your calorie intake for a while.

Since many people want to diet but don't actually feel like STARTING that diet, the "I don't know what my maintenance calories are" line is often just an excuse not to start the diet.

Abraham Lincoln may have said "If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I'd spend six sharpening my axe," but you can also overdo it with sharpening your axe.

Don't go crazy calculating maintenance calories BEFORE you start dieting (or bulking). Just use the maintenance calories from a typical calorie calculator as a guide and GET GOING instead of waiting any longer. For an example of a calorie calculator, you can use the one on our website at alphaprogression.com/en/tools.

If you then diet for 2 weeks, you can see how much weight you have lost and can adjust the calories as necessary. By the way, it is best to note the weight loss from the 1st week to the 2nd week and not from the week BEFORE the diet to the 1st week, because a lot of the initial weight loss will be due to decreased water retention.

2. I'm actually always on a diet, so why don't I lose weight?

Another question we get very often is "I'm actually always on a diet, so why don't I lose weight?" Well, most of you will already be thinking "well, then you just weren't in a deficit and were therefore not really on a diet if you didn't lose weight."

That's absolutely right, of course. That's why we'll formulate the question the way most people probably mean it - namely: "I feel as if I'm dieting all the time. I'm often hungry, tired, listless, and irritable, and all I think about is eating. Why am I not losing weight?" There could be two reasons for this.

It could be that you are already very lean and are trying to become even leaner. In that case, it's already a pain for your body to even maintain your already very low level of fat. Your body wants you to build up some fat reserves again to survive the next famine.

And what do you do? You want to lose even more weight. This cannot and will not go well. Forget this strategy and maintain your current weight - or even better, gain some weight back.

If you only want to be very very lean for a short period of time (e.g. for a photo shoot or a competition), then this is certainly feasible by lowering the calories even more or exercising even more.

After the photo shoot or show is over, however, you will need to gain back some weight to feel comfortable if you want to work with your body and not against it.

Because what would you rather have? A very good friend who is ALWAYS with you and ALWAYS supports you and on whom you can rely, or an enemy who is always with you and only wants you to feel bad? Probably the friend, even if that would mean that you might have one less visible vein on your body.

But it could also be due to the following reason that you feel as if you are dieting all the time: Monday to Saturday you restrict yourself and on Sundays you completely overdo it. This happens quite often!

While most people know that the weekly balance of calories is crucial, they completely underestimate how much damage you can do with one cheat day per week.

If you are in a 500 calorie deficit 6 days a week, but then eat at a 3500 calorie surplus on Sunday, this is enough to completely offset the week's deficit. This is definitely feasible.

Although you will not be in a deficit in the weekly balance (and therefore will not lose weight), it will feel like a permanent diet. You will feel tired most days and think only about food.

On cheat day Sunday you will feel quite good (provided you don't feel bad about deviating from your diet), and on Monday and possibly Tuesday you will still have plenty of energy from all the Sunday calories.

By Wednesday at the latest, however, you will feel as if you are dieting again due to the low calorie intake during the week. And yes... you are dieting - but only from Monday to Saturday and not in the weekly balance, which unfortunately is what decides whether you lose weight or not.

Often such cheat days are combined with eating out - and unfortunately also often with all-you-can-eat buffets. You don't know how bad most people are at estimating how many calories they eat at the buffet - especially if they have been dieting for 6 days.

Ask your friends who are on a diet how many calories they think they ate after a buffet meal. Of course, you can't estimate 100% accurately how many calories they actually ate. In most cases, however, their estimate will be MUCH too low.

If they estimate 1500 calories and you saw that they ate 3 plates of food during the main course with lots of fried stuff and then had 3 plates of tiramisu and ice cream for dessert, then that was probably at least 3000 calories, not 1500 calories.

By the way, the fact that they estimate it so poorly is not because they are stupid. They are definitely not. Actually, they know that it was more like 3000 calories. But they don't want to admit it. This can happen if you have already been dieting for several days and your body signals to you that it really doesn't want to be on a diet.

Another thing that can have the same impact as an all-you-can-eat buffet is if you go out and drink a fair bit of alcohol over the weekend. Remember, alcohol has 7 calories per gram, nearly twice as many as in a gram of protein or carbohydrates. And if you go out drinking with your friends every weekend, this will probably end up undoing all the hard dieting you did during the week.

Whether it's because of what you eat or what you drink, if you regularly have days when you consume more calories than you do during the rest of the week, check exactly how many calories that really is - even if it means foregoing the all-you-can-eat escapades for the next few weeks.

If you then realize that you are really ruining your weekly balance with these cheat days, then you have two options.

Either you eat less on these former cheat days or you don't do the "eat less for 6 days and then eat a lot on one day" thing. Most people would be best advised to eat about the same amount of calories every day to avoid uncontrolled cheat days.

Then you will still feel the way you feel during a diet (e.g. not as energetic as usual), but you will also achieve results and won't end up going around in circles!

3. Should I do a full body training plan or a split?

Another question that is often asked is "Should I do a full body training plan or a split?"

Before we go into this question in more detail, we should clarify one thing in advance: When we talk about a "full-body plan", we don't usually mean that you should train ALL muscle groups every day.

Generally, your plan is considered "full body" when you do upper body and lower body exercises in one day and these exercises are not ONLY push or ONLY pull exercises (because in that case these would often be called "push" or "pull" days).

Therefore, we can already refute the argument against a full-body plan that "then I'll be working out for ages." You are usually not in the gym longer on a full-body day than on a leg day. You will only do one or at most two exercises per muscle group.

The research on "how often should I train a muscle?" shows us that (for the same number of sets per week) it is better to train a muscle two or three times per week than only once.

Research has not yet been able to establish any benefit from an even higher frequency (as already mentioned: of course only with the same number of sets per week).

While a disadvantage due to a higher frequency could not yet be established either in terms of muscle building, it is nevertheless not recommended, especially for advanced users, to spread out the weekly volume for a given muscle group too much. This is mainly because you then end up spending far too long warming up.

After all, you have to perform warm-up sets for almost every exercise, because in a plan like this you almost never perform several exercises for the same muscle group in a row. Accordingly, I would only advise training any muscle group more than three times per week in exceptional cases.

So the answer as to whether you should do a full body plan or a split depends very much on how often you want to go to the gym.

• If you only want to go to the gym twice a week, then the answer is pretty simple: do a full body plan to work out most of your muscle groups twice a week.
• If you go to the gym three times a week, a full-body plan or, for example, a Push/Pull/Legs plan would be conceivable.
• If you are going to the gym four times a week, you would be well served by an Upper/Lower or Push/Legs/Pull/Legs plan.
• If your going to the gym five times a week, a Push/Pull/Legs/Upper/Lower plan would be a good choice for most.
• If you go to the gym six times a week, do a Push/Pull/Legs plan or an Upper/Lower plan, for example.

Of course, these are only examples. The choice of split also depends on which muscle groups you want to focus on.

For example, if you want to focus on your lower body, then it would make sense at 6 sessions per week to run an Upper/Lower plan instead of a Push/Pull/Legs plan, because then you can train the lower body more often when it is fresh and also do more lower body volume overall. After all, you have more lower body days available.

Just get a plan from our Alpha Progression App, and then you will see what kind of plan fits best for your prerequisites and preferences.

Last but not least, as always, the best way for you to train depends on what you enjoy the most! For example, if you hate working out with a full-body plan, then you're better off with a split, even if it might not be optimal from a physiological standpoint.