Cutting at the wrong time

Q

quadancer

New Member
I'm at workout 9 of my fives, here it is winter, and I'd like to cut a bit before doing a winter bulk. I've been eating just above maintenance, not really gaining much but strength, and some of that has been better.
I'm getting too fat to bulk for serious gains, so I'm thinking of doing this:
a.) Cranking up the Veggie soup with meat. Living mostly off of that and taking EFA's for fat.
b.) Continuing the fives, and if I plateau on an exersize, just to keep doing it at the last weight I hit.
c.) Reduce reps or weight if necessary, but keep hitting it hard as I can.
d.) Adding some cardio as I can.
This will all go for as long as I can keep up the workouts and through the deload, and then possibly a week of 15's.
I did the soup diet a long time ago, lost a pound a day and most of my muscle with it. But there was NO protein and no exersize. I want to crashdiet the weight off a lot smarter and then next cycle bulk harder, doing a 5x5 routine.
Opinions guys?
 
quaddancer, I posted exact results from doing this in another thread. Most people don't believe this is effective at sparing or even gaining muscle (except the ones that know me or that I train and design their diets...they do better than I do because they don't have my health issues).

People that try this are usually amazed at how well it works for them.

Depending on how "fat" you are go for 10 cals/lb...if you are 15% BF or more you'll have to adjust a little by eating 10cals/lb of LBM.

Macros:
Fat 60% of your calories
Protein 35% of your calories
Carbs - only from green veggies like green beans, broccoli, lettuce, brussels sprouts, asparagus, cabbage.

Think about it, you would eat sausage, eggs, ham, cheese, steaks, ground beef, porkchops, chicken, fish, cook with olive oil if you wish. Doesn't that sound like a tasty to take a 10%BF into contest shape in 6 or 7 weeks with a week or two at the end to carb load. A 15%BF into damn good shape ready to do some big eating? Anyone else will still improve a lot in only a couple of months.

Or you can just "lean bulk" throughout the winter and start cutting for spring in Feb, Mar, Apr. TCD in Feb, the the LCD in Mar, Apr and be ripped up by may.
 
I'm familiar with that sort of diet and know it works. Actually, it's close to the 'highfat' diet the BB rags were spoutin' about around ten years ago and sort of died out.

Here in Georgia, we start rippin' shirts off around march on the construction sites and in the parks, so I sort of plan around that. The diet I'm proposing you wouldn't need to really count cals...since you eat as much of it as you can stand! Generally, after your morning oatmeal and whey, three days of veggie soup and it starts to look like it's moving in the bowl!
sad.gif
I'm thinking that with meat this time it won't be so bad.
I'm going to try to figure out how much I'd have to eat to hit your caloric recommendations. Probably not as much as I think. My doc took me off of beef, because of my high cholesterol and I quit cheese two weeks ago.

I'm thinking about 3-4 weeks crash dieting and then a solid bulk. The only thing about it I don't like is that I'll be doing 5x5, and that's two experiments at once; harder to gauge results that way.
 
My doc tried the same thing with me 3 years ago when my cholesterol was too high.  Along with my high blood sugar, 2 year old wounds that hadn't healed, extremely high blood pressure, resting heart rate of 100-120...

Then I took it upon myself to ignore her, eat eggs, chicken, beef, pork, oily fish (mostly beef and pork to be completely honest), and of course all the greens I could hold.  Doc was not happy with my decision and promised to attend my funeral.

Within 6 months my cardiac risk factors were gone, my blood pressure was low normal, my blood sugar was low normal, my cholesterol had improved greatly, (bad kind low normal, good kind had gone up).  All DMII symptoms had dissappeared and I no longer had angina.

Now guess what my doc is doing to shape up a bit?  You guessed it...she don't call it the meat and eggs diet though.  She just says, "I've cut out sugar and starch" but is doing exactly what I did.

The soup thing will work too.  Is it that nasty cabbage soup that tastes so good for the first two days then starts making you want to vomit after that?

I made a "muscle soup" recipie for cold weather that I absolutely love for cutting or bulking with only a minor change.

Canned chicken broth (regular not lowfat).
Frozen bag of mixed veggies.
Chopped up onion.
Big chunks of chicken breast, steak, or whatever.
Crushed red chili peppers added to personal preference.

That's the cutting food.  To make it a bulker...add rice for some starchy, insulin spiking carbs.

Best of luck making it work for yourself by whatever means your body needs you to choose.  Don't lose too much muscle.  That stuff is just too hard to make.
 
MARCH??

You must be in south Georgia. I'm 5 miles from the Ga line and it's cold down there all the way as far as Atlanta at least until late April...or to me it is anyway.
 
<div>
(quadancer @ Nov. 27 2006,19:54)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">I'm at workout 9 of my fives, here it is winter, and I'd like to cut a bit before doing a winter bulk. I've been eating just above maintenance, not really gaining much but strength, and some of that has been better.
I'm getting too fat to bulk for serious gains, so I'm thinking of doing this:
a.) Cranking up the Veggie soup with meat. Living mostly off of that and taking EFA's for fat.
b.) Continuing the fives, and if I plateau on an exersize, just to keep doing it at the last weight I hit.
c.) Reduce reps or weight if necessary, but keep hitting it hard as I can.
d.) Adding some cardio as I can.
    This will all go for as long as I can keep up the workouts and through the deload, and then possibly a week of 15's.
I did the soup diet a long time ago, lost a pound a day and most of my muscle with it. But there was NO protein and no exersize. I want to crashdiet the weight off a lot smarter and then next cycle bulk harder, doing a 5x5 routine.
Opinions guys?</div>
although i would never recommend crash dieting,restricting your carb intake can really work wonders.

i cant take credit for this as someone on another site uses this technique(while using aas),so forget about the aas references.i have tried this naturally and it does work but not as well as gear obviously.
.

I have tried many different ways with my own body to find out which one suits me better and i prefer to cycle my carbs 3 low 1 high, this will create a very anabolic environment for muscle tissue to grow, the muscle receptors get highly excitable and upgrade and able to accept more glucose and because glucose levels are not full in the muscle the result is more deposited into the muscle when you start the cycle and increase the food,this environment builds muscle tissue very quickly, if this is done correctly and timed right when you start the cycle, growth is amazing, i feel priming is a must when considering any cycle but it does work and is ideal towards short cycling.

With the carb prime rotation process i follow 3 days low carbs(40% less than normal) 1 day high (15% higher than normal) You must have a basic stable diet which you have ran for afew wks before doing such a process, i feel this isn't to harsh on your muscle tissue and the 1 high carb day offsets any potential metabolic slowdown, which is extremely usefull in laying down metabolic boosting muscle or at least saving it. if this process is not done right you will lose muscle tissue so carefull planning is needed to hold on to all the muscle gains and only fat loss and putting your body into the correct environment is achieved, when any kind of priming is done an increase in protein/aminos acids will help to maintain the current muscle tissue, also GH would benefit in helping this process, the high carb/low carb rotational prime diet also upgrades the receptors cites on muscle tissue for insulin, this changes the body's ability to store carbs as glycogen in muscle tissue rather than fat. The priming works far better if its done over a longer period of time, your after burning unwanted body fat and maintaining muscle tissue and a slow reduction in carbs towards the cycle start, will create an ideal environment for huge muscle gains. Also the last 5 days to the run up to the start of the cycle should be low carbs (40%).
 
<div>
(vagrant @ Nov. 28 2006,08:44)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">MARCH??

You must be in south Georgia.  I'm 5 miles from the Ga line and it's cold down there all the way as far as Atlanta at least until late April...or to me it is anyway.</div>
Stack ten 2x4's on your shoulder and hump them up the drive into the house, build a wall, go to the garage and hustle the sheetrock on so you can unload your cabinets and haul them in to install them...

You'll TAKE that sweatshirt off!
biggrin.gif
 
Live north of The ATL...lol

Anyway....What is LCD, AAS, and all those other fancy abbreviations you guys are talking about. All i have heard of is ECA and that is a stack fat burner and can be rather dangerous if you don't know your limits.
 
LCD = Low Carb Diet
TCD = Timed Carb Diet
TKD = TCD
Carb Cycling = TKD and TCD (with weekly or biweekly cheat meals)
AAS = Anabolic Androgen Steroid
 
Icars: this might be what I'm looking for, but you need to clarify a bit. I get the fourth day bulking as a method of minimising catabolism, but is this article also not talking about gaining muscle on AA's while cutting? At least the idea would be better than me just staying on lowcarbs.

It gives me an idea for people doing maintenance...you could eat maintenance and go the 15% over that on the fourth day to slow bulk? Hmmm, food for thought.
 
Well...I believe a reduce calorie diet will work period.

I also believe it is a lot harder to loose muscle than we think.

I have done the perfect diet many times.

And as of last summer I was the leanest I ever been and I did it from eating whatever I wanted...basically fast food all day too.

Now I didn't have any health issues either to be honest it was easier b/c of the foods I was eating actually tasted very good and my hunger pains were never there...vs eating chicken breat and tuna all day.

So I would just say reduce your calories and go with it.

10 calories per pound of bodyweight is about exactly what I did and I lost tons of weight...maybe I did lose some muscle???....but I was way leaner!

If you want I will post my diet...but trust me I will get verbally assaulted for recommending it when you see it
laugh.gif
 
I'm ascribing to this as a 53 yr old...lower hormones, and it's easier to lose muscle and gain fat than it used to be. A lot. So for the second time in my BB world I will probably actually have to closely count food content. As I said, I'm also adding in some cardio as I can.
 
No johny I did not do any cardio whatsoever.

I went from 187 12.5% bf.

174 8 % bodyfat.

I looked Great and ripped with my shirt off....but with clothes on I looked a lot smaller???
rock.gif
 
Just for some ideas guys.

I am 6 foot tall

Arms were 17 inches at 187.

Chest was 44 inches, or 46 to 48 in a tuxedo measurement??? Not sure which one you count?

Waist 34 in pants.

At 174 I was 42 inches in Chest. 16 inches in the arms but they looked way better...and prob 31 inch waist.

So you be the judge???...not sure if you would call that a good cut?

My wife loved it...however I was feeling too small.

Remember I have got as high as 212 at 12.5% bf...and most of my weight is upper body...hell prob 90% of my weight is upper body b/c I didn't start training legs until about 1 year ago properly.
 
<div>
(Joe.Muscle @ Nov. 28 2006,20:42)</div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">No johny I did not do any cardio whatsoever.

I went from 187 12.5% bf.

174 8 % bodyfat.

I looked Great and ripped with my shirt off....but with clothes on I looked a lot smaller???
rock.gif
</div>
You lost about 3 pounds of muscle.


For a guy that weighs 157 and has a bf15%.........is it even worth cutting? I mean most of that LBM is my upperbody which is why I weigh so little. But should i just bulk till i gain a lot more muscle? Some people have said that.
 
Thats really intresting, reason i asked was my friend very recently went from 190 13%bf  to 180lbs 9%bf with no cardio atall (Which is a muscle loss of like 1.5lbs to 8.5lbs of fat - far better than his previous cuts especially at a bf% that low)

And you lost 10lbs fat and about 3lb muscle which again id say is very good when going down to 8% bf.

Perhaps cardio is one of the main ways people lose muscle during a cut, which makes things even more confusing for me
mad.gif

I read a study recently again by lemon from like 1980 that stated protein was used during cardio much more than people had assumed especially at lower glycogen levels.
Here: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez....7380688

Regardless i think after this cycle im gonna do a cut, rely on only lifting and diet for the deficit and see what happens.
 
Not sure if I lost 3 pounds of muscle?

Maybe I did.

But by my calculations.

To lose 1 % of bodyfat you have to lose 3 pounds of fat.

Therefor I had a total weight loss of 13 pounds.

Bf% went from 12.5 to 8.4 % to be exact.

So a differnce of 4 points in bodyfat.

Well to lose 4 points of bodyfat that equats to 12 pounds of fat.

I lost 13 pounds...so by my estimate if I am looking at this correctly.

I lost 13 pounds of fat and 1 pound of muscle?

Which is to be expected during a cut?

Now on average a normal trained lifter like myself at best in a calorie surplus will gain .25 pounds of muscle a week. This is at best.

I would argue to say under the best circumstances its hard to put on my than 7 to 10 pounds of muscle a year.

So theoretically I could put the 1 pound of muscle back on in 1 month which I think is do able just to coming off a cut and muscle memory.

Some will argue that you can put on more muscle than 10 pounds a year...I disagree.

LBM and raw muscle are not the same....unless of course you are a noob or are on the juice.
 
12.5% of 187 = about 23.3lbs fat and 163.7lbs LBM

8.4% of 174   = about 14.6lbs fat and 159.4lbs LBM

So its a loss of about 4lb LBM. But as you say not necessarily muscle, cutting carbs would result in a decent amount of that being water loss. Whenever i eat fast food the % of calories i get from carbs tends to go down and the % from fat tends to go up - add onto that the calories deficit.
Id think it would be better to base it on your initial weight maybe a week after you just started eating over maintenance again.
 
<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">For a guy that weighs 157 and has a bf15%.........is it even worth cutting? I mean most of that LBM is my upperbody which is why I weigh so little. But should i just bulk till i gain a lot more muscle? Some people have said that. </div>

Personally i think im gonna start bulking at much lower bf levels, mainly because i wanna have a nice looking body both when im bulking aswell as cutting. Plus ive read a lot about naturally lean people gaining more muscle vs fat when at lower bodyfat percentages like:
http://www.bodybuilding.com/fun/core3.htm (only place i could find the article)

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">As well, it seems empirically that once body fat gets to the 15% range or so for men, fat gains tend to accelerate during mass gaining phases. I suspect this is due to the development of systemic insulin resistance which causes calories to go into fat stores more readily. Keeping body fat levels below that may be helpful.</div>And by lyle again: <div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">At the opposite end of things is the still pervasive idea that gaining mass will be easier if you are carrying a lot of extra bodyfat. I personally think this was an excuse for old-time bodybuilders to eat like pigs in the off season. If anything, too much bodyfat will harm muscle gains in that bodyfat is the primary site where testosterone is converted to estrogen in males. In a sense, past a certain point, excess bodyfat will mean less testosterone and more estrogen which means more bodyfat.</div>

So it may be a good idea to keep bodyfat% under control regardless of how much you weigh if in the long run it leads to gains coming quicker.
Anyone else disagree?
 
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