Cutting Diet

Lance

New Member
I'm a little lost with this. Higher protein, lower carbs. 1g protein/lb, 25% or fats, rest carbs, b/c as long as the calories are lowered it doesn't matter, etc. Basically i'm a little lost with this.
 
Multiply your bodyweight by 10-12. Make sure you get at least 1 g/lb BW, 25-30% cals from fat, the rest carbs.
 
Yes.

Use the numbers you already know.

For cutting, I use my maintenance value (which is about 13-14xBW). For bulking I use 17-18xBW. It depends on your metabolism, you fat%, etc.

It's important to keep your proteins at 1 g/lb BW when you're dieting.

(And leave your HST program as it is. Add some cardio if you don't loose about 1lb/week. But you might already know this)
 
You should do a search for info about this. In the past there have been some great suggestions for strategies to lose bodyfat while preserving maximum muscle.
 
Yep, semajes, that's true.

Lance, here's one post I had printed :

Printable Version of Topic
-HS:Forum Home
+--Forum: Hypertrophy-Specific Training (HST)
+---Topic: How to lose fat and still maintaining muscles?:confused: started by neanderthalensis
Posted by: neanderthalensis on May 15 2003,2:31

Hi guys,I was on a bulking phase but now I want to lose my fat and still maintaining my muscle
mass.
How should I do it?
How many sets and reps I should do?


Posted by: mikeynov on May 15 2003,2:41

---------------------QUOTE BEGIN-------------------
Hi guys,I was on a bulking phase but now I want to lose my fat and still maintaining my muscle
mass.
How should I do it?
How many sets and reps I should do?
---------------------QUOTE-------------------

in terms of retaining muscle mass while dieting, the following are my thoughts/advice:

1) you need to create as strong of a hypertrophic stimulus as possible to maintain musclemass. instead of amounting to being an 'anabolic' signal, lifting while dieting serves more to be'anti-catabolic.' ie, observe principles of hypertrophy outlined by bryan, go HST.

2) that said, your recovery will suck a little compared to normal, so don't keep volume tooexcessively high, you don't want to burn out.

3) do not use 'high reps' and avoid 'low reps.' keeping weights heavy (relative to theconditioning of your tissue) will help you hang onto your hard earned muscle.

4) protein intake (according to bryan and others) is actually MORE important while you diet, getat least 1 gram per pound of bodyweight. also, TYPE of protein matters more while dieting, andtry to consume plenty of animal sources (and perhaps casein, eg the main component of HSN'sDriver).

5) keep calories reasonable, start conservatively, especially if you're going to be doing a fullbody program for the first time. the caloric expense of a given session of HST is pretty high. don't plunge them too low or you're asking for trouble.

6) if you're trying to go well below your set point for bodyfat, consider 'refeeds' periodically to help up some metabolic factors (eg thyroxine, leptin, even test to a small degree, etc). i'd recommend avoiding E/C/A (ephedrine/caffeine/aspirin compounds, eg metabolife,hydroxycut, xenadrine etc), though they are a viable alternative to speed up fat loss. even so, the main components of you successfully losing fat while maintaining muscle are to observe the principles of hypertrophy (and lift accordingly), get enough protein, and don't starve yourself. allowing a couple pounds of fat to come off a week should assure continued progress and maintenance of muscle tissue.

hope this was helpful...
 
Here is one easy and effective way to go, Very simply:

Forget macronutrients for the most part.

Step 1. Eat every 2 hrs from the time you wake up till the time you go to bed. Keep the meals small and sufficiant. A small bowl of bran flakes or a banana or orange, or 3 oz of chicken, protein shake, whatever. Every hour drink an 8 oz glass of water. By the end of the day you should end up well below mantainence levels. Increase cals slightly as needed.

Step 2. Eat huge on fridays, and on saturdays it less huge but still huge. From donuts to tex mex, doesn't matter. This will reset you for the next week and keep those nasty anti-fatburning hormones from becoming a nuscience. Its a free for all on these days, and for most people this will make fridays and saturdays easy to deal with. This load of food will have very little if any impact on your overall progress. Do this for about 6 weeks and tell me you haven't lost a crapload of fat, and I have huge doubts that you will have lost so much as an ounce of muscle.

Just 2 steps there, its best if you also keep good track of it all with Fitday, but if you're eating small meals like this you're pretty much automatically going to be ok. Fitday will let you determine what kind of meal to eat next. When cutting its not near as important to get ultra high protein as it is when you're bulking. As long as you get the before and after protein shake you're going to be fine and will not lose muscle. Feeding often is the biggest key to this meathod and makes it probably one of the most effective means of cutting fat. This is nothing new, but nobody seems to follow it since it is hard to keep eating when you work, thats why you keep nutri-grain cereal bars (much lower fat than granola) and/or bananas/oranges in the locker or desk drawer. Most work places have a water cooler, so no excuses there either.

I will continue to be an advocate of lowering the fat first before carbs. Saturated fat is the biggest enemy of all when trying to cut, this is easy to keep low when ignoring the low carb B.S. and hype. Low fat foods are more common and easier to store in a desk, and usually more nutritional over all.

Here's another tip when doin this, I tend to work out right after work (4pm) so this is where I shift from all the low fat carb foods to more protein based foods. Chicken is low fat, protein shakes are low fat normally. Somehow this seems to help if you start the day with carbs and end it with protein, but all in the end it probably doesn't do much of anything. So keep it simple, just follow the 2 steps above.
 
I was under the impression that protein was more important during cutting.

Also, does it really matter to eat every 2 hours? I personally like splitting my day into 5 meals, 4 hours apart. I mean, in the end, it's the calories that matter, right?
 
Yes and no. Not exactly. Its more like calories per hour or per meal is what seems to end up mattering. If you go by per day its not as efficient. Every time you eat your body decides what to do with any excess calories it can't use at that point, depending on what it is you eat and how quickly its absorbed...sugars being first. You want to give it just enough to burn for an hour or so. Otherwise its going to go to fat if you eat too much for a given meal. Once you reach the end of the day having eaten every 2 hrs you end up with fewer calories for the day than you burn, provided each meal is small. It is the most efficiant way to go. You could do it even more mathematically by dividing up the total number of calories you want to eat per day by 8 and stick around that number for each of the 8 meals. It sounds difficult but like I said, thats what nutri-grain cereal bars and fruit in the desk drawer is for. Just munch on that during the work hours.

Say you wanna eat 1700 cals for the day to cut, if you eat all of that in one meal you'll probably be hungry the rest of the day, on top of that, you'll most likely convert a lot of that to fat, although you'll start burning off that fat the longer you go w/o a meal, its just not as efficiant and you'll likely burn muscle in the process.

As for the protein, its important to get enough, but why get more than you need when you're trying to stay low in cals. The important points you want to get your protein is around work out time since that is when protein synthesis is the highest. You want 1g /lb when you're growing but I just dont see nor have I experienced any reason to get that much when cutting. So far I've been right. I stay around .6g /lb when cutting and do fine, I definately haven't lost any muscle yet doing it this way. On top of that I'm probably at my genetic max for muscle so growing while cutting is impossible for me.

The 8 meal a day thing isn't anything new, its been known for a long time that it is more efficiant and its cited many times all over the place. Whether there are studies linked to it, I'm not sure, I just know it works best and with all the experimentation that I've done over the past year, nothing seems to match up to it. So I've just fallen back on this tried and true meathod as inconvenient as it may seem.

So sure, 5 meals is fine, but not as efficient as 8.
 
It's not a false impression. Yes : protein intake (according to Bryan and others) is usually considered important while you diet. The usual recommendation is to take at least 1 gram per pound of bodyweight.

Not that Mindwraith is wrong. Or is he? ;)

The truth is that you can play around the values a bit : you just have to be aware of the effects. For example: I know I can go pretty low on proteins (around 0.6g /pounds BW) without loosing mass, but I also know that if I go under 1700 cal./day (when not training) I usually start loosing muscle mass at a pretty frightening speed...

Anyway : I've always had great success following the standard advice of 1g / pound of BW while dieting or Bulking (although I usually shoot for 0.8 when bulking... Actually : 1g on training days, because of pre/post shakes, and 0.7-0.8 on off days).

Voilà.
 
Ooooops. Mindwraith made it before me.

And I agree with pretty much everything you said Mindw. Yes 0.6g/pound of BW is actually not bad at all.

My protein powder bucket lasts longer...
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"Several small meals aren't as important as you might think. You can get the same benefit from eating meals that take a long time to digest (e.g steak, fiber, fat). "

-- Blade from the FAQ

It's killing me. So much contradictory information.
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Blade is right (of course... ;) ).

But you have to put what Mindwraith. is saying in context : it's basically a strategy for dieting, not for bulking. It's also a strategy to avoid counting calories. You eat often (so you don't feel too hungry even if your way below maintenance), and you drink plenty of water (so it fills your stomach, and it might also help a bit with thermogenesis...).

Anyway, the bottom line is : 1- caloric deficit (start with your maintenance value, or a bit less, if you're training at the same time, reduce if necessary), 2- enough protein (1g/ BW), and 3- training for muscle growth (HST). That's it. You can't really go wrong with that. I'm basically repeating what baby a said in the first place. How fun.
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[b said:
Quote[/b] ]"Several small meals aren't as important as you might think. You can get the same benefit from eating meals that take a long time to digest (e.g steak, fiber, fat). "
-- Blade from the FAQ

It's killing me. So much contradictory information.

Like Manic said, what Blade says there is right, but you have to realize most of the time Blade and Bryan are talking about bulking not cutting. Growing not shrinking. You can't go low fat/sat fat and eat steak. Unless you want to struggle with keeping the calories down. Save the steak for Friday and have a BIG one. The idea is to find out your minimum calories before you lose muscle and hover around there, this has taken me over a year to figure out. I count my calories but with the 8 meal a day thing its a lot easier and there's less reason to do so. For me, 1500 cals divided by 8 gives me about 180 cals to play with each meal. Most fruits and cereals are right at that amount. An entire can of tuna is right around that with lots of protein. 3 oz of chicken is close enough.

Personally with the Friday and Saturday binge eating I think so far, going lower than 1700 is quite possible to do w/o losing muscle. Its also 10 times easier to do by dividing up meals into 8. With coffee in the morning (especially after a 2 week caffine break prior) its even easier.

I'm rambling now but I think you get the idea.
 
6 weeks into this 8 meal a day meathod of dieting I nearly cut the time in half that it took to lose the same 5 inches off my waist when compared to my previous attempt with fewer meals and more calories. I definately enjoy my friday/saturday pigout fests every week. So glad to say that it definately gets you there a bit faster. Too bad I'll probably get that 5 inches back the next time I bulk. That said I should probably give some credit to claratin-D for appetite supression and allergy relief.
 
But Mindwrath, hasn't the theory that your metabolism is higher if you eat more often just that, a theory?

For instance, 3 big meals is the same as 6 small meals depending on the calorie amount, right? It's all about the end total?
 
Just for the record, while cutting i tried two different methods. Cutting wasn't allways cutting though, first i cut, then i was just maintaining it while fighting my failures (pig outs late at night
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) about 3 times a week. So i started trying lots of different methods. HST's suggested way, which was 1g protein/lb, 25% cals from fats (with good fats), and rest carbs. I also tried a way i was showed by Beverly International. 50/20/30 split between protein,carbs, and fats. I got cut and denser, but lost some muscle fullness. I'm thinking a high protein/med-high carb/and med-low fat is a great way to maintain, bulk. I'm starting to really question the importance of 1g/lb of protein, or more like 1.5. The extra protein seems to keep my diet very clean, very filling, and it like i said seems to clean me out for some reason.
 
i haven't done too many cutting diets, but for what it's worth i'll tell you what worked best for me. i had some pretty amazing results in only a few weeks time by just simply exercising more and more frequently. obviously your calories have to be at maintenance or slightly below and you need adequate protein. i did hst twice per day in an am/pm split on mon, wed, fri, and on the other days i did about 15-20 mins of cardio twice per day. i really think that having two workout sessions per day helped nutrient partioning quite a bit as well as kept my metabolism running high. i lost something ridiculous like over an inch around my waist during those 2-3 weeks (before a beach trip) while only losing a pound or two and no size on any muscle group.
 
forgot to add that besides eating a high protein amount (50% of calories), i also bumped up my calories from 2000 calories with the higher carb, 25% fats, 1g/lb of protein to 2500 calories at 50% protein, 20% carbs, and 30% fats. I was losing fat faster that way, definately tightening up and becoming muscular more dense, and feeling fuller (more satiatied) throughout the day.

So i was able to eat more, and have better results like this. Only problem about it was that protein sources of food are way more expensive than carb sources.
 
I dunno lance, I suspect its more like the end total per hour on average is more likely the way to go. Since your body doesn't just process everything at 10pm for the whole day, its a continual process that occurs all day long. I can't say for sure if this is the reason it works but I would think your body decides what to do with a meal depending on its size. If you eat over what you burn in the time it takes to digest then I would think part of that is more likely going to go to fat. Thus eating smaller meals would be wiser.

The only other thing it could be is that eating smaller meals prevents hunger on a lower calorie diet thus making it easier to stay consistant. Either way its just another way to go and for me, its the fastest way to go.
 
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