Cut

Up your protein OP, I like to get 1.25g per lb when cutting.

I try as much as I can but some days I still find myself going 40% 40% for fucking carbs from shit like yoghurt and veges and mushrooms and fruit and shit

How long have you been lifting? If nothing is there, then well nothing will be there. What body fat percents are these ranges do you know

I'm also cutting OP. How big of a deficit are you eating at? Are you getting enough protein?

You need to keep pushing it on all your lifts. If you let yourself go down in weight, you WILL get smaller.

2 Years now

500 cal deficit and yeah I usually do get enough protein most days

>most days
There's your problem. Eat enough protein every day and take creatine. I'm also taking HMB but that might be a meme.

stop doing a shit ton more cardio

eat 1g/lb protein

train with higher volume so you actually have muscle

Yeah this is the thing I haven't been doing is eating 1g of protein per lb, just been trying to eat more of it compared to the other macros

Wouldn't doing the cardio burn the fat off faster though?

at the expense of cutting into your recovery, sure

keep cardio in for conditioning but don't use it to create a calorie deficit, do that with your diet

you want the primary stressor on your body in a caloric deficit to be weight training, not cardio

also post lifts and routine (it's important, trust me) and i'll see if anything is wrong with it

actually i should qualify this - you can use cardio to create a calorie deficit, but relying solely on cardio to create a deficit is usually a poor use of limited recovery resources

Op see these
Also the only study I read that is done on caloric deficits on athletes says it's better to eat 2.3 to 3.1 grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass.

IE if your lean body mass is 150lbs (68kg). You'll be eating 156-210 grams of protein. It's sorta hard to do that while under a serious cut, so it's better to do something light.

1g/lb seemed to be more than enough on a 1000 cal deficit in my experience

different deficits might work better for some, I know 500 is the standard but for me it never worked very well, too slow and it made my lifts stagnate anyway

I bumped it to 1000, cut in half the time, and my lifts didn't suffer any more than they did on 500

This is wrong lol

you should try to maintain the level at which you lifted on your bulk, when things get harder, don't lower the weight, lower the volume.

there's two schools of thought on cutting

the lyle mcdonald school of thought - lower volume, keep intensity

the mike israetel school of thought - keep volume as high as possible

dropping volume drastically on a cut has always made me lose strength, but keeping my volume up and taking the momentary hit to the weight on the bar has worked much better and i've been able to stay within a few pounds of my usual working weights

on my recent cut i've been able to gradually turn the volume up a bit in places, and actually ended up hitting some tiny PRs (i've never PR'd on a cut before in any capacity)

>5'10
>78kgs (170lbs)
>if i cut i look skinnyfat
>if i bulk i get too fat

this is a shitty place to be

the smart thing to do is cut to 10-12% bodyfat, and then bulk to ~15%, cut to 10-12% again and repeat the cycle

this way you are always just weeks away from leanness, no major cuts that stagnate your lifts for months on end, and you get all the positive hormonal benefits a low bodyfat gives you (or maybe a better way to say it is you don't get the negative effects a high bodyfat gives you)

just suck it up and cut until you see abs

>just suck it up and cut until you see abs
Not always the best advice

I was 5'8" 140lb with a 5RM of 140 for squat when I finished cutting (started out fatty)
I still had crazy love handles and no muscle definition. If I went to ab range, I would have needed to be ~125lb I think which is Auschwitz mode

Yeah it's fucked. I assume I'm somewhere between 16-19% BF

I look normal except I got a bit of a gut and chubby face

How long would it take to drop 7% BF?

>Caloric intake should be set at a level that results in bodyweight losses of approximately 0.5 to 1%/wk to maximize muscle retention. Within this caloric intake, most but not all bodybuilders will respond best to consuming 2.3-3.1 g/kg of lean body mass per day of protein,
jissn.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1550-2783-11-20

You are not doing anything wrong, you are just fat and have a severe case of delusion. You see one tiny line that might be muscle (but probably isn't) and think you have "filled out"

and? you would have been a lean 125 instead of a fat 140, and you could have then bulked for that much longer before you were out of the optimal range

bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/general-philosophies-of-muscle-mass-gain.html/

"Males should be ~10-12% body fat before even considering going on any kind of ‘bulk’ (fatter trainees can usually gain some muscle while losing fat with a basic recomposition plan; this is beyond the scope of this article)."

bodyrecomposition.com/muscle-gain/initial-body-fat-and-body-composition-changes.html

^talks about p-ratio (you gain less muscle, more fat in a hypercaloric environment as you gain bodyfat)

anything by Lyle or Alan Aragon is top-tier nutrition information, highly recommend you look into their articles

depends how much you weigh and how aggressively you want to cut and how disciplined you are

>falling for the natty lifting meme

I did too for about three years. You'll never actually look as good as you'd hope. Even if you do hit the 10%bf range, you'll be back to weak as fuck.

Once you do your first 500testE cycle you'll realize you've just been wasting your time on training beforehand.

Everyone gets flabby when they cut.

You have to ride it out until you get legitimate lean, then you'll suddenly no longer look flabby anymore.

It's a process, the process takes longer the higher your bodyfat is.

Builtfat > Flabbyfat > Leanfat > Lean > Shredded

>tfw just finished my babys first test e cycle and now im doing PCT

lost all my motivation to lift natty. every week i get weaker and look worse

once you go roids you cant go back

You'll never look as good as you'd hope on gear either.

Genetics > Drugs > Diet > Routine.

Genetics is always number 1 because your genetics determine if you will actually look aesthetic or not with all that extra muscle mass on your frame. The fact is most people still look like dog shit even when they go beyond natural muscular limits.

Genetics are cancer, literally.

Assuming you lose no muscle whatsoever and your estimations are right

Neither of those are very likely (gauging bodyfat is really difficult)

Just keep lifting heavy and you'll retain most of the gains.

yeah thats why i say between 16-19

16 at best 19 at worst

i dont know if i want to cut down to less than 70kgs

I just shaved my head egg bald for the first time ever. Bald men should never be that skinny

You haven't figured out that, that's how it is for naturals.

Here's what you do if you want to drop weight and put on or maintain muscle.

Eat less food
Be more active
Make damned sure you get enough protein to help maintain your muscle
Do some kind of resistance training(can be calisthenics, weight lifting of any kind, kettelbell shit, a sport)
Do some kind of aerobic activity like swimming or basketball or anerobic activity like hiit, sprints, tabata etc.

That's all.
It will fucking suck to cut and keep active like that. But once you're down to about 13-15% as a guy you can easily eat at maintenance and go above or below that while keeping active/exercising to maintain.

>It might slow down your cut from the water weight

You don't cut with the intent or purpose of losing eaterweight, so how the heck would it slow down anything?

Bodybuilders are on assloads of gear though.
That does not work for the average natty.

>fuck ton of endurance cardio while cutting

No wonder you lose your gains. Stop the cardio and just eat at a deficit.

Do you have any evidence to support your numbers then?

>high volume
>cutting
CRASHING THIS TEST WITH NO SURVIVORS

>protip: you overestimate your tdee and in reality you are on a 500 calorie deficit

Stop cutting and bulking so often

Do longer periods

Find out with multiple TDEE calculators your TDEE. Eat at that number -15% of your calories, with higher proteins (1g/lb) and either low carbs or low fats (i prefer low fats because its easier to manage hunger, but it's really a matter of personal preference.)

For training, aim to mantain your strenght with all your will. At a deficit your body must be forced into preserving muscles, and when you train with heavy weights you Force him to do so in order to not get crushed by the weights.

You should lose little strenght or no strenght at all' while cutting.

Aldo HIIT in off days helps a lot

Remember ti adjust your TDEE once you plateau for more than 2 weeks or when you Lost 4lbs or more.

>cut
>look like shit with belly
>bulk
>moon face
>natty lifting

Same here Bud

>1.25 grams per lb
>210 grams of protein

jesus fucking christ Veeky Forums

Probably not cutting for long enough, not eating enough protein or you have no mass.

This
Veeky Forumstards are always trying to make excuses
no patience at all

cutting and starting to do high volume = bad idea

cutting and training with high volume when you are already adapted to train with high volume = good idea

i cut at 1000 deficit for 9 weeks and lost ~20lbs, this averages out to about 2lbs a week lost with some minor fluctuation

Candito claims you can recomp instead of cut: youtube.com/watch?v=GIX-RyorgkQ

What do you think?