Hello guys 

My name is Guilherme ( i might commit some grammar erros, so bear with me haha ) and i've been working out for about 2.5 to 3 months

Last month i did a body check and measurements with the Pollock method

It was stated i had 12,93% BF, which i think is fair too low, i would give myself around 16-20% at least

Photo1 02/10 - About a month of hitting the gym, No Diet, No supplements - About 73kg

Photo 2 03/07 - Started counting macros - No supplements yet - Between 71Kg and 73Kg

This was taken in between the two photos, sorry it's in portuguese but i think the names are self-explanatory

Photo 3 03/27 - Taken in the morning fasted - Taking GLutamin, Omega3, Vitamins and Creatine 70.6Kg

Photo 4 04/09 - After Workout - Doing 5km AEJ (walking - fasted) in the mornings for a week now 71.8Kg

So i've been dropping weight, started at almost 75Kg to 72Kg steadly, but now i'm hittin a plateau where i stopped losing so much fat and started growing some muscles. Currently my weight varies between 70.5Kg and 72Kg

I'm 29 years old and my height is 1.76m

My current meal plan is something like this:

Daily Calories ~2300cal which consists of about 201g Proteins / 64g Fat / 230g Carbs 

That goal is for Fat Loss, considering im working out 5days/week (mon-fri) and walking 5km every morning

I'm considering 2 options:

1. Keep the current meal plan and increase the cardio rate gradually (like 70% walk 30%run week1, 60%walk 40%run week2 and so on), this would lead to a drop in my current BF, because i believe its around 18% and would like to get to maybe 13% before bulking
2. Change my meal plan to a Lean Bulk and drop the cardio to only 3 days a week for vascularity reasons, if my BF% is reasonable enough

My workout plan is still unchanged from the beginning 

1.  Full Upper body - 2 chest, 2 back, 1 shoulder, 2 biceps, 2 triceps
2.  Leg day + Abs

I've been training A B A B A (monday throu Friday) so 3 upper body and 2 leg days per week

So now for my questions:

• What would you guys say my BF% is reality?
• What about the progress, do you guys think it's satisfactory?
• About the workout plan, when do you think it's a good point to change it to a more focused, let's say, A B C (push pull legs) workout? Until now i've been able to progress steadly each week on the weights, so i'm still seeing progress with the current plan, keep that in mind.
• Any other advice i didn't think about??! 

Thanks in advance!

PS* Today i used some cheat/recovery technics, they really do a burn those muscles down hahaha. Let's see the soreness tomorrow :O

Hey Guilherme!

The first thing I noticed was you said you've only been training 2-3 months.. so you're still a newbie. And while you might be right about your body fat levels being a bit higher than 13%, you should still focus on muscle building in my opinion, for a couple of reasons.

Number one, you can probably build muscle and lose fat at the same time as a newbie. Number two is that, you are probably more on the skinny fat side of things, would you agree? So by cutting you're not really doing yourself any favors, because you're not allowing yourself to build any muscle.

So my suggestion would be to stop aiming for fat loss with a calorie deficit, and aim for a small surplus to start gaining some muscle WHILE watching the body fat % drop. If you're aiming for 2300 calories at the moment, try bumping that up to 2500 and then maybe 2700 to put yourself into a calorie surplus. That would mean increasing the fats in particular (try taking them up to more like 90g-100g), and maybe a few more carbs as well (between 250g-300g on training days, then about 150g-200g on rest days). Protein could probably go up to maybe 220g-250g as well to help you get into that calorie surplus.

I think changing your cardio to 3 days a week is probably a good thing, although if you are eating enough, you can still do it 5 days. Maybe do 3 days of HIIT and 2 days of the 5km walk if you want to. That's up to you.

Your progress is good so far in terms of fat loss - you look trimmer around the waist and leaner overall. If your workout program at the moment is working for you and you're seeing progress, there's no need to change it yet. But if you have tried the Cheat & Recover technique and enjoyed it, then you can have a go at the C&R program when you are ready! https://muscularstrength.com/cheat-and-recover

Skinny Nick here. Wanted to get some thoughts on a few things. I'm 6"2 170 lbs. I'm currently taking a mass gainer called synthesis gai7ner by vitasport. Any thoughts? And about mass gainers in general as well. Secondly, can anyone tell me about exertion headaches? I've been lifting since December mostly doing isolation workouts. Then I saw a PPL format I liked and switched up. I've been doing it a few weeks now, and all of the sudden I've been getting these crazy headaches at the bottom of my skull. Went to the doctor, MRA came back clean. No aneurism haha. So I'm thinking it's muscular.

Hey Nick!

My advice is ALWAYS go with real food to fill your macros before turning to mass gainers. Only use a mass gainer when you absolutely need it to fill in calories in order to get you into a surplus. I've never heard of that mass gainer so can't really say much about it.

The headaches could be from lack of water? Are you sure you're hydrating enough during your workouts? Resetting your breath in-between sets? You want to hold everything tight while doing each rep, but you still need to breathe every now and then to avoid things like that.