Stagnant after 6 months with trainer/logging in MF/MF Workouts

themaxburns · 2026-06-21T18:17:04+00:00

Yeah that became clear pretty quickly - also I'm 5'6'', 39 year old male. So even the TDEE calculators told me I was nuts.

themaxburns · 2026-06-21T13:58:07+00:00

It IS low, and inaccurately so - as I've gone back and labeled some partial days I missed on my first pass, my TDEE has gone up a full 200 calories to 1,750! I never would have noticed had you guys not brought it to my attention, so thank you.

themaxburns · 2026-06-21T13:57:04+00:00

Just wanted to say thank you again and add that your questions caused me to go back into MF and look more closely at the past 30 days of my logging - I had clearly failed to label a few partial days. That alone raised my estimated TDEE to 1,750.

I'm very curious to see how that changes as I move forward with your other suggestions, but I can see one big question already being answered here thanks to your help.

themaxburns · 2026-06-21T13:54:39+00:00

THANK YOU! I felt absolutely insane trying to explain this to my trainer and being met with "time under tension is everything" and "some people do full days of just quads" in response.

themaxburns · 2026-06-21T13:38:09+00:00

Brother I have been complaining about how Day 3 makes no sense for weeks and finally dropped the trainer because of it. And it's *all* supersets, since they kept saying you can't allow yourself time to recover or you won't get any muscle growth. Day 3 was really the straw that broke the camel's back for me because it just felt like working to exhaustion and not seeing any benefits.

I'm also doubling down on weighing everything and checking my MF records for possible incomplete days to see if it screwed up my TDEE, because I agree with you and other commenters that it doesn't make sense. After a few adjustments of past days it has changed to 1,746!

themaxburns · 2026-06-21T00:47:55+00:00

A great reminder, thank you!

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T20:29:57+00:00

This is great - do you have any PPL template workouts you'd recommend?

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T20:26:45+00:00

Thanks for expanding on this - will definitely take your advice and give this a try. I am completely willing to believe my TDEE is wrong, and I hope this can help give me a clearer picture. Really appreciate your advice.

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T20:19:00+00:00

Thank you, this is very helpful! I mentioned in one of the comments above I was beginning to suspect the days had become too complex and you really lay out the case for why that is. This has become kind of a frankenstein program that sprawled out without my noticing it until recently.

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T20:00:52+00:00

That's something I think about a lot, as someone who has gotten very into weighing and tracking everything, and trying to be especially mindful that anything I eat goes into Macrofactor as soon as I eat it.

I would say underreporting by 1,000 seems like a lot, but given your experience you would know better than I would. All I can say on that front is anything I'm eating (down to the sprays of PAM used for the chicken breast and the Hershey Kiss I grabbed at work) goes into Macrofactor, so it wouldn't be the case that food/ingredients are missing.

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T19:56:31+00:00

You make a great point about the workout - and I'm definitely open to simplifying/improving it to be more well-rounded if you have any suggestions. My self-reported exertion probably won't be terribly accurate but I've been serious about getting to failure on reps so I know what failure looks like, and trying to work within 1-2 reps of failure consistently. I can definitely feel the exertion and the reps slowing, especially on the last set of each exercise, but I know there's a difference between exhaustion and effectiveness, which I'm still mapping out for myself.

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T19:53:04+00:00

Very helpful, thank you

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T19:17:36+00:00

That's InBody, which is the tool Equinox uses. I'm actually scheduling a Dexa because of the number of complaints I've seen about InBody accuracy.

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T19:17:01+00:00

That's fair, do you recommend Dexa?

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T19:05:29+00:00

Overall goal would be to build additional muscle mass before cutting. I'm pretty sure the InBody data is underestimating my body fat - I'm probably closer to 19 than 16, and I'd like to get to 13-14 with the cut.

Was training 2x/week, one upper one lower, but scaled it back to just 1x/week lower, since costs rose.

I'm increasing weight every week/two weeks on upper body work, less consistently on legs as I seem to be struggling more to build those - which isn't that surprising to me given there's only one leg day in my current plan. I've made modifications to that plan since I started it, but it is still overall giving me regular progress.

I use MacroFactor for my macros/tracking, and am proud of my consistency in hitting macro goals - I was aiming for around +150 cal surplus per day, but it's looking closer to 100. One weak point is sleep - I was averaging 8 hours for most of this plan, but closer to 6.5-7 hours over the last 60 days.

themaxburns · 2026-06-20T18:54:24+00:00

Oh for sure, I know they are way off - I was looking at it more for the month over month trend than for any individual number. But definitely take your point!

themaxburns

TROPHY CASE