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