I’ve decided to cut and lose a few pounds, just for some background info, I’m 5’10" 180 lbs and ~14% BF. My problem is that my maintenance calories for the past few weeks has been around 4500. I’ve been keeping track of my calories for the past few months because I’ve been bulking, and once I hit 180, I stopped gaining weight with that amount of calories. So I’ve decided it’s time to cut, then re-evaluate how much calories I need.
My question is this, what should my macros look like considering my maintenance calories are around 4500? I’m guessing anywhere from 3500 - 4000 calories with less carbs, more protein + fat but I don’t know.
[quote]Peter Noto wrote:
I’ve decided to cut and lose a few pounds, just for some background info, I’m 5’10" 180 lbs and ~14% BF. My problem is that my maintenance calories for the past few weeks has been around 4500. I’ve been keeping track of my calories for the past few months because I’ve been bulking, and once I hit 180, I stopped gaining weight with that amount of calories. So I’ve decided it’s time to cut, then re-evaluate how much calories I need.
My question is this, what should my macros look like considering my maintenance calories are around 4500? I’m guessing anywhere from 3500 - 4000 calories with less carbs, more protein + fat but I don’t know.[/quote]
do your initial agressive drop of 500
Personally I would do a C/P/F : 45/30/25
that way I could reduce from carbs.
or maybe 35/35/30
and reduce across the board every time you do a drop but this makes less sense to me
If you have no time limit on how long your cut is going to be
every drop after your initial drop should be as low as possible.
I gotcha, so if I was going to do the 45/30/25, drop around 5% carbs each week or each couple of weeks? Also workout-wise, would just reducing rest periods be sufficient to lose fat, or do I have to do cardio? I ask this because I don’t really have time both to lift and do cardio monday through friday.
[quote]Peter Noto wrote:
I gotcha, so if I was going to do the 45/30/25, drop around 5% carbs each week or each couple of weeks? Also workout-wise, would just reducing rest periods be sufficient to lose fat, or do I have to do cardio? I ask this because I don’t really have time both to lift and do cardio monday through friday.[/quote]
wouldn’t reducing rest time mean more time to do cardio in the end? just sayin
[quote]Peter Noto wrote:
I gotcha, so if I was going to do the 45/30/25, drop around 5% carbs each week or each couple of weeks? Also workout-wise, would just reducing rest periods be sufficient to lose fat, or do I have to do cardio? I ask this because I don’t really have time both to lift and do cardio monday through friday.[/quote]
I wouldn’t go in with the mindset of making drops every X amount of time. Make drops in calories when your weightloss stalls.
Aim to lose .5-1 lb a week and at max 2 lbs a week
if you do lose 2 or more lbs a week I wouldn’t sweat it as long as strength is still decent.
Imo the longer the cut the better you’ll maintain your muscle
plan cheat meals every X amount of days
this doesn’t necessarily need to be every week
as you get leaner these may become more frequent though
[quote]Peter Noto wrote:
I ask this because I don’t really have time both to lift and do cardio monday through friday.[/quote]
Your workouts should be basically the same whether you’re cutting or bulking to try to ensure minimal muscle is lost, maybe you can make minor changes but try to keep things pretty consistient.
Cardio is an effective tool for fatloss. With that being said it probably won’t need to be done every day unless you are getting close to single digit ( I dunno, never been single digit )
I’ve lost 40ish lbs over the past year and I average 2 days of HIIT a week post workout (15 minutes 60 seconds spring 120 seconds walk on treadmill)
Currently I have a month off from school so I added 2 days of LISS AM walking cardio on top of the 2 HIIT days I already do to get a head.