So I’ve been bulking for a while and I’m currently eating 4,000 kcal a day with more than 400 g of carbs.
I accumulated quite a bit of work and I’ll be entering week six of my program. After that, I’ll take a back off week (both because the author of the program suggests to after six weeks and because I’ve come to feel that I need it) during which I plan on not going to the gym at all (I’ve never done that in two years actually).
My question Is, should I decrease calories a bit during this week like, say, to 3,500?
My goal is hypertrophy but I’m thinking that eating that much while not training at all could make me gain some unnecessary fat. How do you approach your deload weeks?
well, first off, it’s only a week, so in the big scheme of things, it probably doesn’t matter much what you do.
You need to consider why you’re taking the week off, though. It’s a recovery week. Proper recovery requires sufficient hydration, rest, and caloric intake to heal your body. So for me, that would mean I would want to continue to eat like I always do. If you put yourself at a caloric deficit at all, you aren’t going to reap the full benefits of the recovery period. Take this week to do EVERYTHING you can to prepare yourself for the next training block.
Yeah I was thinking of just staying at a slightly lesser surplus, not dipping into a deficit.
So 3,500 kcal instead of 4,000, which should still put me in a surplus.
But yeah, I’m probably better off staying at my current intake. If anything, I might lower carbs and increase fat a bit keeping the same calories although I generally find it harder to eat lots of fat than lots of carbs.
This may not be particularly palatable to you, but when I’m trying to add fat in my diet, I’ll literally just eat slices of butter, or spoons of oil, a couple times a day. It works well for me because it’s not going to fill my stomach up the way extra protein and carb calories tend to. And, well, butter is delicious. Get good oil if you’re going to go that route. I’ve got some avocado oil that I like, and an EVOO oil that’s infused with truffle. Coconut oil is good too.
I think flip covered this and also has italian truffle infused butter apparently. Gonna double up on the answer anyways to practice my typing.
Deload/Recovery/Back-Off is to allow your recovery to catch up, for fatigue accumulated through hard overloading training to dissipate etc. Think of calories more or less as you’re recovery abilities so less calories = less recovery ability (tho sleep, minimising other stressors etc. are also important and you should also up these).
Think of fatigue as one car racing another car recovery and their relative speeds as the rate you accumulate fatigue and your recovery capacity. Pre deload your fatigue car is out in front so you back off training and it slows down. The recovery car catches up and might pass it if you aren’t that fatigued in the first place and you’ll be maximally fresh for the next training cycle. If calories are dropped the recovery car doesn’t go as fast and overall the resulting fatigue/recovery is gonna be worse for it.
