Hey guys, 40 year male here. The picture on the left, I was 191-192. I am now 165 pounds. I did a One Meal a day diet since January 7th of this year and ive lost a lot of fat. My waist is at 33.5 and I started at 39-40. I feel absolutely amazing and my lifts have actually gone up. I track all my lifts, I follow a Mike Mentzer approach, I train 3 days a week and then the other days im doing more mobility work and just keeping myself moving. Im wondering if I should stop my cut and start to introduce more food into my regiment. My goal was to do a 3 month long cut but im wondering if im looking too skinny now. When I look at myself in the mirror, I am happier then ive ever been. I’ve never looked this good. Just kinda curious what you guys think should be my next move
First, huge congrats on the work and the results.
Second, I think this is your answer. Who else are you doing this for? What do you want to do next?
Seconding @TrainForPain . Why ask us what we think you should look like? Like, don’t get me wrong: I’m a total catch, but you don’t need to change how you look for my sake. Go look the way you wanna look.
I only ask because I am 5"11 and Im wondering at what point is a good time to end the cut? I have added reps to my lifts and I have not lost reps or weight in any of my exercises. Im thinking to stop at 160 and start introducing more food to gain some size on my arms. My arms right now are at 12.5" and I would really like to gain some size there
The weight of your body is really inconsequential to the answer: it’s the composition of your body that matters. If you’d REALLY like to gain some size, then you’re going to need to eat more food as part of your training.
What was your typical one meal?
Its typically as much food as I can eat possible. I made some skirt steak tacos yesterday with about almost 1 pound of meat and had 7 of them. The day before I have a 10 ounce rib eye with 8 smaller chicken sausages and 3/4 cup of rice. Things like that. I try to feed as much protein as possible
For me, when I’ve satisfied 1 of 3 criteria:
- I’m slightly leaner than I wanted to be
- I have stopped losing fat without drastic measures (plummeting strength, etc)
- I can’t freaking take it anymore
I’d also recommend you don’t go straight into gaining a bunch of weight when you are ready to transition. See if you can work your food up and gain some strength (and, slowly, size) without getting crazy. You want to hold the leanness; not just see it once. When you find you really stall doing this, you can decide if you like where you’re at or if you’re willing to gain some fat to gain some muscle.
Thank you for this reply, this is kinda what I was looking for. I’ve been lifting for 20 years but its usually i start for 3-4 months and then my motivation fades and I stop after like 6 months. I’ve done this now 100s of times. The one time that is different this time is I decided to get lean and now I cant believe how good I look. Im usually at 180-190 and after going for months and months and seeing no results because I have so much fat on me, I tend to fade. I love this new me and I want to keep this, and I appreciate your reply because I just wanted to make sure I am not overthinking it. I have not gotten to the stage where I hate the cut, I still feel a lot of energy, my workouts are great, I power through them. There are some times that I get hungry but its manageable
You’re in a great place to continue aging gracefully. I’m 41 and longevity is more important than ever. That means carrying a reasonable amount of mass which is much different when I was 25-35 and always wanted to get bigger. If you’ve been doing this 20 years, then we’re probably close to the same age.
I recommend adding food with the goal of maintaining your weight (if you’re happy with where you are). Your body will need time to adjust and make this your new “normal”. Don’t ruin your progress by wanting to grow too soon. You’ll refill your fat cells and won’t like the results. If you asked me to tell you what to do, I’d say try to get through the summer at your current weight. Keep crushing workouts and see how your body responds.
I understand you want bigger arms. Add extra arm training to make sure they’re getting plenty of work (or keep doing it if you already do that). And as stated above, congrats on your accomplishment so far. You look great!
Thank you for the replies, guys. They mean a lot to me. My plan is to hopefully get the V Shaped Ab look, I plan on going to 160 and stopping there. I want to maintain 160-165. I love my look right now and if I can continue to slowly gain some muscle from here, that would be ideal. This is gonna sound stupid im sure but my dream is abs and the vein in my arms. Thats honestly it. Thats what ive always wanted to see of myself and I am almost there. You can see the vein, I just think I need to continue this pace and it will show up more sooner or later.
The first time I achieved a six pack was way back in 2006 and I followed The Abs Diet. The diet was simple, but it also emphasized training abs in a way that would make them grow. For example, instead of doing crunches forever, do 3x10 with a heavy dumbbell on your chest or a weight behind your head. Train them just like you would your biceps. If they grow, they’ll stand out more. It also has the added benefit of not causing you to be hungry all the time because you’re growing a muscle instead of cutting more fat.
Train the crunch movement, train the hip flexors (hanging and lying leg raise type stuff), and train the obliques hard. And don’t forget about our lower back to keep everything balanced and working together.
My approach would be to decide if I’m lean enough to accept minor fat gain as I go back to muscle growth, and if yes I would still wait a bit. I would not cut more nor eat to gain for a couple months or longer but maintain.
In my opinion you begin to reset your baseline by doing this and can avoid a yo-yo scenario. After a few months I would add in a few hundred calories per day utilizing macros that work for me and go from there.
I would suggest eating. You look great in the first photo, imo. I would want to add wait to that first photo, as in Muscle, and I would recommend 2 leg days a week to catch up.
We may have different goals. I dropped to 168 pounds at one point (I am 6 feet tall) and I felt great but was being blown over by the wind…literally. I wanted to get my muscle mass back, lost almost 60 pounds to get to 168 with the intent of bulking back up once I killed most of my fat. Got down to 9%, now sit around 12%.
good advice on using weights to train your abs. Crunches will only take you so far from my experience. Really started seeing the results I wanted when I started using weights.
I need to hit the lower back more.
I always find my arms deflate pretty quickly when I cut and then blow back up when I increase the carb intake again. I think it’s just part of cutting to lose quite a bit of arm size. If you decide to just try and maintain for a while, I think you’ll be surprised how much you can eat and not put on any fat. My build is very similar to yours and I dropped from 200 down to 160 last year on a 2300/day average, and I had to eat north of 3500 to start putting weight back on. I’m almost 10 years older than you. Great job! It takes a lot of hard work, discipline and commitment to get thru a cutting phase like that
Well here is an update so far. I have decided to add in one more meal per day so now I eat around 1pm and 7pm. I have not gained any weight at all and i feel absolutely incredible. I have started doing lots of Ab exercises with weights and I think its re ally showing. Im around 163-165 right now and this is by far the best ive ever looked. Thank you for the kind words, it meant a lot. All of my family memebers were very negative towards my cut saying I lost too much and I don’t look good but I know what I did was right and the easiest thing to do is gain weight again. Im in Mexico right now and I am one of the only ones with abs here so I think im doing something right
You look fantastic dude.
Haters gonna hate
All of my family memebers were very negative towards my cut saying I lost too much and I don’t look good
Dude you look incredible. Keep it up.