Dieting question #2?

[ttboyy2k]

If a person's soul perpose is to get cut or ripped one must eat below maintanance level of calories. When this happens doesn't tetosterone levels decrease? I know from experience my appetite increases while dieting and my mood decreases. Dieting is definately no fun. Tetosterone is anabolic, so if one's tetosterone levels decrease, wouldn't this put that person in a catabolic state? The more muscle one has the more he/she burns more calories daily. So this must make it easier to loose fat. Is it possible for one to gain muscle mass or at least maintain current LBM levels while reaching the single digit body fat range? Maybe like using a zig zag diet approach, eating more on workout days and less on off days. Also, I choose to workout without steroids at least until I hit a major plateau that HST can't even get me over. But for those on steroids like all the big time pro's, when it comes time to cut up, they loose muscle too along with fat. Do they quit taking the roids during their cutting phase?

 

[imported_edziu]

Boy, that's a lot of questions and topics mixed into one post. Check out the FAQ and the old posts in this forum to get a lot of answers. I'll give up a little bit:

No, people don't stop steroids or HST (whatever they're doing) when cutting. (Though steroids users may change what they're taking; they usually try to be on the most anabolic stuff during heavy lifting, and then on other drugs to prevent muscle loss when coming off or when cutting.)

The exercise (with or without drugs) is a muscular growth stimulus.

If you increase calories and have a muscular growth stimulus, you will put on mostly muscle, and a little fat.

If you increase calories and have no growth stimulus, you will put on mostly fat, and a little muscle.

On the other hand,

If you decrease calories and have a muscular growth stimulus, you will lost mostly fat, and a little muscle.

If you decrease calories and have no growth stimulus, you will lose fat and muscle.

So the muscular growth stimulus is something you want to keep up, regardless whether cutting or gaining.

Yes, testosterone goes down as you get very lean, and it goes down with very low calories. So does your energy level (due to metabolism) and often, your mood (psychological and physiological factors). Your exercise can help keep these up, as can refeeds. (Search on refeeds and read the faq.)

As far as the single digit body fat range: when you get down there, it's extremely difficult to gain muscle while losing fat. In that range, you need to focus on muscle-gaining cycles where you accept a little fat, and fat-loss cycles where you accept a little muscle loss. If your sole purpose is to get ripped, you may still want to undertake SOME gaining cycles so that you can be ripped with your current musculature. But this is not really as much of a problem when your bodyfat is up in the middle or high teens. If you bodyfat is up above the 20's, it's irrelevant; you can probable gain muscle and lose fat at the same time readily.