I would cut body-fat as low as possible, or at least as low as you are willing to go. Looking at the bigger picture, you will almost certainly gain some fat when adding muscle, so, in theory, starting from a lower level of body-fat will mean you can afford to gain this extra fat while still looking lean. I appreciate that trying to add muscle when in single digit fat levels may not be optimal from a hormone perspective but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. Equally, the improved insulin sensitivity and anabolic rebound you’ll experience after cutting may improve the results of adding in calories again.
[quote]jonny142 wrote:
I would cut body-fat as low as possible, or at least as low as you are willing to go. Looking at the bigger picture, you will almost certainly gain some fat when adding muscle, so, in theory, starting from a lower level of body-fat will mean you can afford to gain this extra fat while still looking lean. I appreciate that trying to add muscle when in single digit fat levels may not be optimal from a hormone perspective but that doesn’t mean it is impossible. Equally, the improved insulin sensitivity and anabolic rebound you’ll experience after cutting may improve the results of adding in calories again. [/quote]
Seriously? Does anyone actually do this? Cutting down to single digit body fat levels when your goal is to get bigger seems like a major conflict in direction. 10% bf is not fat. It’s not even chunky. It would seem to me that the more muscular you are the easier it is to lose body fat, the leaner you are the harder it is to gain muscle.
[quote]AEhrat wrote:
ok for all the people who have probably sat in their computer chair all day and freaked out about this thread all day chill out. i have gone from 201 from 205 with body fat staying the same ive always found putting on muscle was rather easy im a college athlete who just finished playing so it was my first time to really put up big weight everyday and not have to be careful with my shoulder and only reason i was considering cutting was to get that really tight skin look so bricknyce you can slow your roll big guy[/quote]
HUH?!!!
Seriously? Does anyone actually do this? Cutting down to single digit body fat levels when your goal is to get bigger seems like a major conflict in direction. 10% bf is not fat. It’s not even chunky. It would seem to me that the more muscular you are the easier it is to lose body fat, the leaner you are the harder it is to gain muscle. [/quote]
The OPs question was whether he should bulk or cut, this has the inherent implication that he cares about body-comp, he doesn’t just want to be huge. I agree that many factors mean that adding mass when in the teen fat percentages is easier than in single figures. However, assuming that we aren’t on a time constraint here and assuming fat is an inevitability of adding significant muscle why not diet into single figures before looking to add mass? This is leaving out arguments that post-cut you will most likely rebound due to previous calorie restriction and favour muscle gain over fat gain due to improved insulin sensitivity.
Fair points. I still think maintenance is essentially overlooked on these forums. It is really rare that someone recommends a maintenance diet combined with consistent heavy lifting, yet it seems to me that a setup like that would do a majority of beginner and intermediate level folks the most good in the long run. Maybe OP should figure out what his actual goal is and work towards that instead of asking an internet forum, sight unseen if he should be trying to lose weight or gain weight.
Agreed, I think to be honest I would only ever suggest cutting before a bulk if the person is already holding some significant muscle mass. I agree with you that a maintenance diet is overlooked and rarely suggested (everyone is either cutting or bulking) however, i also feel many may eat maintenance and not account for exercise, still ending up in a significant deficit, spinning their wheels.
Most people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Maintenance for an athletic person will almost always mean a slowly and steadily increasing caloric load, and if you’re holding any amount of body fat this will almost always result in a positive shift in body composition.
[quote]AEhrat wrote:
ok for all the people who have probably sat in their computer chair all day and freaked out about this thread all day chill out. i have gone from 201 from 205 with body fat staying the same ive always found putting on muscle was rather easy im a college athlete who just finished playing so it was my first time to really put up big weight everyday and not have to be careful with my shoulder and only reason i was considering cutting was to get that really tight skin look so bricknyce you can slow your roll big guy[/quote]
Yet another person who can’t learn simple PUNCTUATION!!!
See those things??? They’re called exclamation points! It emphasizes emotion!!!
[quote]forbes wrote:
[quote]AEhrat wrote:
ok for all the people who have probably sat in their computer chair all day and freaked out about this thread all day chill out. i have gone from 201 from 205 with body fat staying the same ive always found putting on muscle was rather easy im a college athlete who just finished playing so it was my first time to really put up big weight everyday and not have to be careful with my shoulder and only reason i was considering cutting was to get that really tight skin look so bricknyce you can slow your roll big guy[/quote]
Yet another person who can’t learn simple PUNCTUATION!!!
See those things??? They’re called exclamation points! It emphasizes emotion!!![/quote]
Apparently he’s in college but didn’t pay much attention in a basic English class.
Did this guy ever hear of capitalization of the first letter of the first word of a sentence; periods; semicolons; hyphens; commas; and dashes?
[quote]atg410 wrote:
Most people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Maintenance for an athletic person will almost always mean a slowly and steadily increasing caloric load, and if you’re holding any amount of body fat this will almost always result in a positive shift in body composition.[/quote]
I don’t understand.
[quote]atg410 wrote:
Most people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Maintenance for an athletic person will almost always mean a slowly and steadily increasing caloric load, and if you’re holding any amount of body fat this will almost always result in a positive shift in body composition.[/quote]
what the hell are you talking about? Maintenance is enough cals to MAINTAIN your current weight. its not a “slowly increasing caloric load”… Its not an increase in cals
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]atg410 wrote:
Most people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Maintenance for an athletic person will almost always mean a slowly and steadily increasing caloric load, and if you’re holding any amount of body fat this will almost always result in a positive shift in body composition.[/quote]
what the hell are you talking about? Maintenance is enough cals to MAINTAIN your current weight. its not a “slowly increasing caloric load”… Its not an increase in cals[/quote]
Ok, I’m going to try this one more time.
There seems to be a trend in which people with out much experience or appreciable muscle mass believe that in weight lifting their diet must always be at one polar extreme or another. “bulking” or “cutting”. “bulking” seems to always involve a ridiculously large caloric surplus that they will a)rarely actually eat and b)don’t really need. “cutting” seems to involve the exact opposite state.
I’m using the term maintenance to suggest the middle ground between the two terms referenced above.
What I am advocating is eating to your given energy requirements, not excesively lower or higher than that. Yes, maintenance would typically mean eating to maintain weight. I’m not talking about weight. I’m talking about energy expenditure. Eating to support a given output.
If you are doing this shit right then energy expenditure should always be increasing. Therefore the calories needed to support your daily caloric needs will increase. No planned surplus, no planned deficit. Eat to support a given output.
I don’t know how much clearer I can make it. If 99% of the people who sign on to these boards asking how they should eat just ate the amount of calories neccesary to support their daily activity, and progressively increased that daily activity (increasing input to match output) they would see good, consistent results and we would see a lot less “I fucked my cut up and now I’m a bag of bones” and “I fucked my bulk up and I can’t see my dick anymore” threads.
Make sense? It does to me. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last few months. It works.
I’m not saying that this is going to pack on slabs of muscle. Like I said in the thread in the BB forum, if you want to gain weight you need to eat a surplus. I’m not denying that. Denying that would be denying basic thermodynamics.
What I’m saying is that if you do not have a goal that is dependent on reaching a particular scale weight, why choose between strategies that emphasize reaching a particular scale weight? Even if you do have a goal that is dependent on reaching a particular scale weight, I think that MOST people (I didn’t say most bodybuilders, I said most people) would be happier with their end results if that surplus or deficit was small.
I’m really at a loss as to why this is such a controversial concept, but just try to step out of your own subjective position for a minute and think about the difference between an eating strategy focused on scale weight and an eating strategy focused on energy expenditure. I’m not the first person in history to propose this idea.
[quote]atg410 wrote:
[quote]gregron wrote:
[quote]atg410 wrote:
Most people don’t know what the fuck they’re doing. Maintenance for an athletic person will almost always mean a slowly and steadily increasing caloric load, and if you’re holding any amount of body fat this will almost always result in a positive shift in body composition.[/quote]
what the hell are you talking about? Maintenance is enough cals to MAINTAIN your current weight. its not a “slowly increasing caloric load”… Its not an increase in cals[/quote]
Ok, I’m going to try this one more time.
There seems to be a trend in which people with out much experience or appreciable muscle mass believe that in weight lifting their diet must always be at one polar extreme or another. “bulking” or “cutting”. “bulking” seems to always involve a ridiculously large caloric surplus that they will a)rarely actually eat and b)don’t really need. “cutting” seems to involve the exact opposite state.
I’m using the term maintenance to suggest the middle ground between the two terms referenced above.
What I am advocating is eating to your given energy requirements, not excesively lower or higher than that. Yes, maintenance would typically mean eating to maintain weight. I’m not talking about weight. I’m talking about energy expenditure. Eating to support a given output.
If you are doing this shit right then energy expenditure should always be increasing. Therefore the calories needed to support your daily caloric needs will increase. No planned surplus, no planned deficit. Eat to support a given output.
I don’t know how much clearer I can make it. If 99% of the people who sign on to these boards asking how they should eat just ate the amount of calories neccesary to support their daily activity, and progressively increased that daily activity (increasing input to match output) they would see good, consistent results and we would see a lot less “I fucked my cut up and now I’m a bag of bones” and “I fucked my bulk up and I can’t see my dick anymore” threads.
Make sense? It does to me. It’s what I’ve been doing for the last few months. It works.
I’m not saying that this is going to pack on slabs of muscle. Like I said in the thread in the BB forum, if you want to gain weight you need to eat a surplus. I’m not denying that. Denying that would be denying basic thermodynamics.
What I’m saying is that if you do not have a goal that is dependent on reaching a particular scale weight, why choose between strategies that emphasize reaching a particular scale weight? Even if you do have a goal that is dependent on reaching a particular scale weight, I think that MOST people (I didn’t say most bodybuilders, I said most people) would be happier with their end results if that surplus or deficit was small.
I’m really at a loss as to why this is such a controversial concept, but just try to step out of your own subjective position for a minute and think about the difference between an eating strategy focused on scale weight and an eating strategy focused on energy expenditure. I’m not the first person in history to propose this idea. [/quote]
So it took you all that explanation to say, “If you want to maintain your weight as you increase your activity, you’ll have to eat more.”
OK, I got it now.
And with that said, you are right - most people don’t know what they’re doing.
I happen to be someone who is eating a normal diet and losing some fat because of running. I don’t give a shit about “cutting” or “bulking” at this point but actually have the uncommon goal of wanting to be slender.
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
So it took you all that explanation to say, “If you want to maintain your weight as you increase your activity, you’ll have to eat more.”
OK, I got it now. [/quote]
Basically. The point I am trying to make is that a very good option for many people would be to constantly increase activity and constantly increase caloric input with the goal of eating enough calories to support that increased activity but not a large surplus.
Eat good foods and lift weights.
that is all you need to do, everything else will fall into place…worry about the other details after a few years lifting.
[quote]atg410 wrote:
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
So it took you all that explanation to say, “If you want to maintain your weight as you increase your activity, you’ll have to eat more.”
OK, I got it now. [/quote]
Basically. The point I am trying to make is that a very good option for many people would be to constantly increase activity and constantly increase caloric input with the goal of eating enough calories to support that increased activity but not a large surplus.[/quote]
It also took John Berardi TWO FULL ARTICLES on here to say the same thing.
And the OP got on my case for answering his question!
How polite!
He asked if he should bulk or cut, then I said I don’t see a need to cut while being pretty darn lean if the goal is to get bigger - a reasonable answer.
And the thing I love about this fitness world is that noobs, amateur hobbyists, dilettantes, new jacks - whatever term you prefer - talk about things oh-so lightly and casually.
Example: “I gain muscle easily.”
Oh yeah, tough guy? If you do stuff so easily, what the heck are you doing on here asking us for help and then getting on our cases when we provide IMPERSONAL answers to your inquiry? After all, because building muscle easily requires great genetics AND hard and SMART (eg, good program and diet) work, you shouldn’t need much help in going for either building muscle or losing fat.
[quote]atg410 wrote:
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
So it took you all that explanation to say, “If you want to maintain your weight as you increase your activity, you’ll have to eat more.”
OK, I got it now. [/quote]
Basically. The point I am trying to make is that a very good option for many people would be to constantly increase activity and constantly increase caloric input with the goal of eating enough calories to support that increased activity but not a large surplus.[/quote]
When you say “increase activity”, do you mean “lift heavier weights over time”?
Because if so, I agree…eat to support the training, not the other way around.
[quote]Proud_Virgin wrote:
[quote]atg410 wrote:
[quote]Bricknyce wrote:
So it took you all that explanation to say, “If you want to maintain your weight as you increase your activity, you’ll have to eat more.”
OK, I got it now. [/quote]
Basically. The point I am trying to make is that a very good option for many people would be to constantly increase activity and constantly increase caloric input with the goal of eating enough calories to support that increased activity but not a large surplus.[/quote]
When you say “increase activity”, do you mean “lift heavier weights over time”?
Because if so, I agree…eat to support the training, not the other way around.
[/quote]
Right, lift heavier weights over time. I also mean increase physical activity during the 90% of the day not spent in the gym. Athletes don’t look athletic because they get in a few sick workouts a week, they tend to have multiple, often conflicting demands on various energy systems. If you want to look like an athlete, you should structure your own training to include these sorts of demands. Progressive weight lifting + sprints + sled drags + low intensity hiking, walking or running etc. Eat enough food to support the activity, get enough sleep to recover.