[quote]eatliftsleep wrote:
Yes and just so all your other hormones can stabilize and your body can get used to that weight and what it takes to maintain that weight.
A 2 week cut I feel is too short and you may not experience what you are hoping in such a short time frame. what’s the rush?[/quote]
If I ended up going from 155 to 163 (without water weight) during the cycle, 5% of fat by body weight would be 8lbs. If I were to take in 300 calories less than maintenance each day, that’s 300 x 14 = 4200. 4 HIIT sessions would be at least 2000. 8 training sessions, focusing on higher reps should be at least 3600. In total that’s 9800 calories shed/avoided; as I understand it, 3500 equates to 1 pound, so I would have got rid of around 33% of the way there. It would then take a couple of weeks for the test levels to approach baseline and once they’re back I could look at continuing the process, but with much slower and steadier progress.
If the struggle for the body maintaining the gains is influenced by the overall weight, and not just the extra muscle it has to support, this strategy should prove effective, as the fat loss would offset some of the muscle gain.
I would like to achive 10% body fat by the end of May or early June - have a few trips abroad planned and want to look good on the beach. This cycle won’t finish until a month tomorrow, or if I extended 2 weeks as above, 6 weeks tomorrow. In either case, I imagine it would take at least 3 weeks before hormones normalise and I would want to commence a cut. So, if I don’t go down this route it would mean that best case situation, I start cutting in the last week of May, I wouldn’t cut as hard due to catabolic concerns, and I would only have about 3 or 4 weeks to get in to as good shape as possible. As I would be taking it slower I probably wouldn’t be able to achieve in those 3 or 4 weeks what I would in the 2 weeks.
However, thinking about it, once the extra 2 weeks on are done, I would think that for the next week I could keep the training there, but with calories at less of a defict - maybe 100 below maintenance - burning another lb. The following week as the test levels are getting lower, I could bump the calories to maintenance but keep the exercise, which would be another 0.75lb. In theory, this should have got rid of between 4 and 5lbs before test drops below supraphysilogical levels, which should drop me to around 12% - no abs, but sure would look a lot better.
The thing I want feedback on though, is whether test/test and anavar can completely stop atrophy while running at such deficits?