It works exactly the opposite for me… and I’m pleased with that
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It helps to keep things moving for sure, but that stuff fills me up like crazy.
Even though its a bit of a no-no, I was using it as a food substitute for a while. The problem I ran into with that was when I needed energy and needed to hit the gas throughout a day, I had nothing. Energy level was flat.
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That’s a good point, it definitely coats your stomach a little.
I probably should have, but it wasn’t worthwhile to do so at the time. It’s a strength/muscle building program that probably isn’t best done during a deficit.
I considered this, but I need more experience cutting before I can feel comfortable ‘trusting the process’
I’ll take a look
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I think being a fatass for years has broken my nutrition sensors, so I don’t know if I can trust myself to eat only what my body needs - but this is certainly something I would like to get into. I think, for now, that I need a more quantitative process than trusting my body. It works very well for you and others too, I just don’t see myself having the capacity at this time.
I’ll have to give this some thought - I don’t think I need anything like this, but I’ll see after some research.
I cut for 6 months during the first half of last year (240bw down to 215). By the end I really felt like shit and was ready to be done. So I just knew the cut was over for now.
So like Dr. Mike said, it was time for maintenance. I started eating more, trying to stop the weight loss. But I guess that just stimulated my metabolism because I started losing more weight (215 to 212).
It took like 6 weeks of eating extra to figure out how to eat enough to maintain 215. At first I looked like shit, skinny from the cut with full guts from eating more. Like a snake that just ate a rat. Then I started to fill out and look better. It was cool.
After that it was like 12 weeks of smooth sailing. I could eat pretty normal, maintain body weight and make smooth progress in the gym. I wasn’t thrilled with the idea of 1:1 cut to maintenance, but it almost happened naturally. It was like 18 weeks, into mid December, before I could eat enough to start gaining.
For training, I mostly lifted 3 times per week during the cut. Then I ran that up to like 4 times per week during the maintenance phase. I also started walking the dogs like twice as much during maintenance.
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Well that’s the thing: you need to UNDER recover first so you can find out what that’s like. I find that, whenever I introduce this idea, lots of folks have never actually allowed themselves to eat so little that they underrecover. Most folks are in a CONSTANT state of “overrecovery”. It’s how we have an obesity epidemic.
From there, if you’re training hard enough, it will be a race to eat enough to recover. Limiting food options helps. It’s one of the big reasons I don’t do carbs. Go do 10x10 squats and then try to eat enough steak and broccoli to recover for 10x10 deadlifts in 7 days. You’ll be exhausted just from the eating.
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@Voxel thanks for the tag! Haven’t been on here in a while, but @Andrewgen_Receptors I’m happy to offer any insight. I haven’t competed since 2017 but I still train every day, have consistent nutrition and live the bodybuilder lifestyle.
My .02 on maintenance - if you’re constantly “bulking” and “cutting” (most people don’t know how to do either very effectively) you’re never really giving your body a chance to settle and maintain anything. I think if you’re eating properly (REALLY eating properly), and training hard you can still slowly put on lean muscle, and will also be able to hold on to that muscle longer, compared to cutting too soon. There’s nothing wrong with maintenance, and I think the constant “bulking and cutting” is not ideal for the vast majority of folks out there, at least after a while.
If you’re talking about low energy, low motivation to get in the gym, also consider the following:
-Do you need a break from the gym for a couple weeks? (yes, it’s ok, you’ll be fine.)
-Do you need to change your routine to something more enjoyable that can still help you accomplish your goals?
-Anything else going on outside of the gym and the kitchen that’s affecting your mind, mood, etc.? If so, changing training won’t help and you gotta get that sorted out.
Now if your arms need to come up, how are you training them and training in general? If you’re doing PPLx5-6 plus rest pause you’re probably not getting enough time under tension to really grow as much as you would with a better variety of rep ranges and more of a bodybuilding style training plan. More info would be helpful.
Just my opinion, that’s highly unlikely unless you have a serious underlying medical condition or got insanely lean for way too long, like 3-4% body fat and kept yourself in the caloric basement and/or too much cardio, which it doesn’t sound like.
Here’s the real, most important question when it comes to maintenance…are you weighing your food every single day? WEIGHING? Not guesstimating or putting in an app, weighing everything you eat?
If the answer is no, then you really don’t know what your maintenance is, or if maintenance really works. This is where most people screw up anything really, bulking, cutting, maintenance, whatever. Only after consistently weighing your food and sticking to your plan, whatever that is, for a few weeks of relentless consistency will ACTUALLY tell you what’s going on.
Hope this helps!
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For a very long time I didn’t believe in cutting/bulking phases, so really I just
‘recomped’ for most of my time lifting. I also didn’t really count macros or anything for most of this time, I just made sure I ate a good bit of protein and not too much carbs (I still wound up fatter than I wanted to be, hence the current cutting phase). I have been reformed and will be doing proper cut, bulk and maintenance cycles in the future though.
Up until about December, I was doing traditional PPLx5-6 with either squats, deads or incline bench on their respective days. All ‘hypertrophy’ work was done in a bodybuilding fashion, but the weights I was lifting for most things were pretty mundane considering the muscular development I had/have, so I switched to something more aggressive in terms of weights (DC-training, or DC-inspired at least). My training log has most of my details, but admittedly my training has been all over the place the last few weeks… have been struggling to feel like my training is productive, so consistency is a current issue.
I think a good method to get into soon would be Fortitude training, and I would like to get that together sooner than later; this certainly makes me feel like I’m having program ADHD (I do) while finding a program I enjoy working though.
I agree, but I don’t have a good explanation why being around 1,000cal daily deficit isn’t yielding weight loss. This could be a hormonal thing, considering cortisol can backfill water-weight in where fat used to be, but I have no objective means to measure that either. I’ve never been super lean, nothing close to stage lean either - the best I could offer is having a visible 6 pack while weighing about 175lbs… certainly nothing that would have effected my metabolism.
There is some literature to suggest that steep caloric deficits for extended periods of time will result in adaptive thermogenesis - so the cut becomes less effective, but nothing to this scale.
Yes. I weigh my food as accurately as I can, and I weigh it raw. Food is logged via MFP and I attempt to use the most accurate macros available (some MFP entries have bogus macros). This being said, I was certainly losing steam on my cut and also losing interest in logging food, so in the last month or so of food logging (before posting this thread), my entries were likely ~90% accurate… I’m aware that makes the entire process subject to scrutiny. Regardless, this is why I started a maintenance phase about a week ago.
With this short break from the cut, I’m hoping to regain some motivation to diet and consistency in my training. When I feel I’m mentally ready to get back on the cut, I intend to make my food measurements and training as accurate as possible, probably only 2 weeks at a time so it’s more mentally appealing.
When you say this, are you speaking from personal experience or common sense? If you have maintenance advice from experience, I’d be grateful to follow along.
Did you start at 1000 cal deficit and haven’t changed at all?
I had been adjusting down calories roughly 50cal per 5lbs lost, so I started at 2,200cal/day and adjusted down to about 2050cal per day after I’d lost 15lbs or so. It wouldn’t be super uncommon for me to be over target by 100cals or so, but still, it would have been somewhere in the realm of 1,000cal to 800cal deficit daily.
So it sounds like:
- you started off too aggressive. Maybe -500 would’ve been better, and
- you’re adjusting wayyyyy too slow. TBH I can’t remember ever going more than 3 weeks with same calories before weight loss stalled, and I had to adjust.
To answer your questions though.
- I actually don’t ever do a maintenance phase or a bulking phase in a traditional sense. I’m either doing a full cut or my weight is slowly drifting back up. How slowly is entirely up to how diligent I’m being with marching my calories back up.
- Aggressive cuts with no breaks has always worked best for me. I find taking a break always leads to the exact scenario you’re in now. And once I hit the end of my cut I reverse diet at a snail’s pace. I’m talking ONE day per week I add 50g of carbs. So that’s adding 200 cals after seven weeks! I reversed myself from 2200 to 3100 cals over several months and gained maybe 8lb back and landed a nice recomp and have abs for the first time in my life at bodyweight of 195
- I only stop cutting once I reach my desired level of leanness. I really hate being hungry all the time, so see no point of maintaining. If I’m gonna be suffering anyway, I’ll just keep the fat loss momentum going.
- I change training a little during fat loss. Compound movements become more a priority and I’ll usually incorporate some time component on accessory work like EMOM circuits in my trade log.
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