I’ve been bulking for a while and wondering at what point should I cut? I’ve put on a bit of body fat but still want to get bigger. Concerned I might have put on too much fat though. I’m 5’11 and weigh 185 lbs. According to body scanning machine I have 21% body fat which feels too high. Do I keep bulking or start cutting?
Terribly inaccurate things. I wouldn’t make a decision based on a number. What does the mirror tell you and how do you feel?
4 Likes
When you start feeling too fat, it’s time to start cutting.
Pro tip: run a 2-week minicut to extend the duration of your bulk and capitalize on the nutrient partitioning rebound.
2 Likes
Personally I feel I can afford to gain more before I start worrying about cutting. Just seeing the figure 21% seemed far too high for my liking!
On a 2 week mini cut do you reduce calories to the same extent as a normal cut? Only difference being 2 weeks or is there anything more to it than that?
I would argue to go a little steeper.
Traditional cut being 0.5-1%BW/wk fat loss target, I would aim for 1.0-1.5%, only for the two week period. If natty, probably safest not to go over the 1%BW per week.
2 Likes
From the look of you, you seem more to be around 15-16% than 21%.
Is it too high? Well, it depends on you… specifically:
-
How do you feel at that level of body composition?
-
Have you successfully lost a good amount of fat in the past? That’s important because if you know for sure that you can diet the fat off because you’ve done it, it’s less of a problem to gain some fat in the process of building muscle.
-
Has your progression (from a muscle-building and strength-gain perspective) been significantly better because you are eating a lot?
For me, the three main reasons to try to lose some fat before keeping on with the muscle mass phase are:
-
The way you look pisses you off an even decrease your motivation (that’s always the main one for me)
-
You have never successfully dieted off a significant amount of fat. In that case it’s always risky to keep adding fat that you are not sure of being able to lose.
-
You don’t feel like you are progressing any faster than with a more normal nutritional intake.
I like the idea of a mini-cut like @Andrewgen_Receptors mentioned, sure because it can make you lose a few pounds of fat without affecting progress too much.
But also because it can help you reveal how much fat you have actually gained. See, when you are in a significant caloric surplus you tend to retain a bit more water which can blur away some definition and makes you look fatter than you are.
Typically, even during after the first week of a mini-cut you drop a good amount of water which helps reveal your true level of leanness.
The one aspect where I disagree somewhat with @Andrewgen_Receptors is the rate of weight loss during a mini-cut.
a 1 to 1.5% loss in body weight is certainly a good average target if you do a 4-6 weeks minicut as this level of loss for that period should not lead to metabolic adaptations or muscle loss.
BUT in the first week of a mini-cut you will tend to lose a lot more WEIGHT than 1.5% because you can drop a good amount of water and intramuscular glycogen. I personally lose 5lbs the first week of a fat loss phase which is above 2% of my body weight.
If you want to avoid going above 1.5% and you drop like 2.5% of your body weight the first week you might think that you need to increases calories and that might lead to not losing much fat the next few weeks.
Furthermore, if you are planning on doing a 2-3 weeks minicut, I believe that you can be a lot more aggressive as there is almost no chances of causing any damage in that short of a period. But that’s me: I prefer to diet for the shortest period possible while getting the fat loss that I want.
If you want to be more conservative, you can stick to a 1 - 1.5% drop per week… except for the first week. Start adjusting only after the second week.
9 Likes
And once you are done with your mini-cut, you can implement “control days” during your mass-gaining phase. Or “reverse cheating” as I call them.
A cheat day is when you have a day with significantly more calories (and even some “bad” foods) while dieting down.
A reverse cheat day is the opposite: during a phase of significant caloric surplus you can have one day of low calories/low carbs (almost having only protein), ideally on an off day. To reduce weekly fat gain,
5 Likes
I stopped using those bio-impedance devices when a pro hockey player that I trained, who was super lean (veins on his abs) tested out at 15%.
Myself, I have tested at 16% in the morning and 8% in the evening of the same day due to higher hydration level.
We can see the outline of your abs and obliques, there is no way that you are 21%
4 Likes
This is a fair critique. I recommend the 1-1.5% target because it’s likely we already know what our TDEE is, and IMO it is easy enough to adjust diet to target this level of deficit.
As you said, a fair bit of weight will be dropped in the first week due to glycogen loss - a variable that is hard to account for unless we are watching calories/macros.
I’m probably doing a poor job of explaining it here, but my intent was to aim for 1-1.5%BW loss in bodyfat per week, which we can only hope to aim for via adjusting calories to suit. In doing so, we know that the trainee will lose more bodyweight than bodyfat, but keeping caloric target in mind should help us with the metric that matters most here.
I hope that explanation makes sense - I should have explained it better in my other post.
1 Like
I agree. The problem is that if he doesn’t have access to a very reliable way to evaluate body fat (i.e. dexa or underwater weighting), it is very hard to know how much fat is lost weekly.
1 Like
BTW, I do agree with your idea. We are essentially arguing sementics.
2 Likes
I’ve never cut before as never really needed to so a mini cut sounds like a good idea to start.
How much calories would you expect to drop? I typically eat around 3500 calories a day. I think about 3000 seems to be about my maintenance amount. Would dropping to 2500 be too much? Or is that ok so long as I keep protein content high?
Your mirror test you posted looks good. I do not know what constitutes bodyfat that is too high, though I know my mirror test tells I am certainly too high. But, you look good. If it feels high, cut your calories (obviously). Cardio is often frowned upon, but 1000 skips of jump rope a few times a week is pretty efficient. Or blasting a Tabata set on an Airdyne. Good Luck!
1 Like
Well, 2500-2750 would be a good level for a normal but (slower, longer). I’d probably go with something like 2250 with high protein since a mini-cut is going to be only 2-4 weeks long.
2 Likes
I’d go lower, a lot lower.
1.5% bodyweight loss a week would make ~2.8lbs/week (2.8lb is around 1.5% of your body weight) absolutely fine. This is pretty standard for people who do aggressive mini-cuts at around 20%
Even being safe losing just 1% a week would be 1.85lbs lost a week. Pick somewhere in the middle and lose over 2lbs a week.
I’ve twice lost 10-17lbs (gotta account for water weight) in 4-5 weeks whilst maintaining my strength and sometimes even progressing in pulls. Your presses may decline a little due to less stability gained from the calorie surplus. It’s not actual muscle loss though and the strength comes back pretty quickly. Your relative to-weight strength will have skyrocketed.
2 Likes
I’m quite surprised you’ve recommended even that high. Is this because it’ll be easier to sustain for the duration of the mini-cut? I went from around 3000cals to 1600/1700 during my mini-cuts and didn’t notice an effect on my training until maybe the start of the 5th week when I lost 2 reps on something, but I’d already planned to come out of it anyway. 4 weeks seemed to be my limit and my body let me know when to stop. Hazarding a guess I went from around 22% down to 16%ish. That is speculation with no maths or bodyfat testing involved.
My next mini-cut won’t be quite as aggressive as my body fat isn’t as high.
I feel this is the peril of chasing a percent body fat number. What is the value of the number? Is it a measurement to make decisions going forward? Or is it just bragging rights?
The beauty of competing in bodybuilding is that a percent body fat number is absolutely meaningless. All that matters is what you look like on stage, regardless what percent body fat you measure. The judges never ask what your percent body fat you achieved for the competition.
I used the skin fold test, because all I was looking for is progress. It is very inexpensive. Note: it is not the precise percent body fat calculated that is important, it is whether the millimeters measured is dropping. As I dieted I looked to have fewer millimeters of skin fold. (I used 4 parameters to adjust my diet: Scale Weight, Strength, Skin Fold Millimeters, and the Mirror) The mirror will tell you when you get as well defined as you want to be, not some percent body fat test.
This is a measurement horror story. Speaking Six Sigma speak, this is a failed Gage. You have more variation in the gauge than you do part-to-part. That measurement method fails badly. If you don’t change percent body fat, your body fat measurement should have very little variation when repeating the measurement.
Once you get proficient at skin fold measurement it has reasonable Repeatability. (It is best to have another person do your measurements due to the location of some of the sites. If at all possible use the same person, as Reproducibility can contribute more measurement variation.)
I agree completely. But the number is still meaningless, even when it is your precise percent body fat. The mirror still rules.
1 Like
Have you noticed any decrease in strength or progress in any exercises you’re using?