After 4 months of heavy lifting, I would like to "cut". Advice appreciated.

drewlfitness

I've gone from a very out of shape 268lbs, to a much more in shape 235lbs, over the course of 4 months. I have basically been doing "Arnold's Blueprint", lifting heavy weights, 5 days a week.

Within the last 2 weeks, I have calmed down with weights, and have been more cardio. I've lost probably 5lbs in the last 2-3 weeks, probably as a result of this.

I would like to get down to 220-225lbs, and am wondering if now that I've gotten my main muscle groups back into shape, if now might be a good time to do way more cardio, and only do "maintenance" lifts a few days a week, in order to increase my time to get my goal weight. BUT, and this is my main question, I am wondering if this might really screw up my muscles, i.e. body burning muscle weight instead of fat weight.

Anyone who has successfully been through the "lifting heavy" phase and then "cutting" phase, I would love to hear how you did it. Did you focus more on cardio? Did you continue eating at a deficit? Did you switch to doing only "maintenance" lifts? Or, did you not do any of the above, and instead just continue lifting heavy, eating at a deficit, and slowly lose .5-1lb a week...? (but I would still like to know overall thoughts on my idea of increased cardio and only doing "maintenance" lifts even if this is what you did).

Thanks.

vismal

Doing tons of cardio and doing less lifting is exactly the opposite of what you want to do. You have been cutting this entire time. Cutting = calorie deficit = losing weight. That's what you've been doing. You want to continue to lift heavy during your cut (calorie deficit) to maintain your muscle mass. Cardio simply adds to caloric deficit. Diet is the major factor in driving weight loss.

drewlfitness

vismal wrote: »

Doing tons of cardio and doing less lifting is exactly the opposite of what you want to do. You have been cutting this entire time. Cutting = calorie deficit = losing weight. That's what you've been doing. You want to continue to lift heavy during your cut (calorie deficit) to maintain your muscle mass. Cardio simply adds to caloric deficit. Diet is the major factor in driving weight loss.

Thanks. That's what I had a feeling about...I'm simply attracted to the doing more cardio option because the weight seems to falls off more quickly.

I'm thinking that instead of lifting heavy 5 days a week, I might switch to 3 days a week of heavy lifting, and 2-3 days of dedicated cardio. If I really think that cardio increases my weight loss.

I understand cardio basically just adds calories back to my day. So, basically if I like eating, then I should do cardio...

Thanks for reply. Just curious if anyone changes much when they are "cutting", but sounds like the answer is to change nothing (keep lifting and consuming a deficit NET calories)

vismal

Yeah, cardio is simply deficit padding. If you are in a 500 calorie deficit per day, and add 2 days where you burn 700 calories via cardio each session, you effectively increased your deficit by 200 per day.

drewlfitness

vismal wrote: »

Yeah, cardio is simply deficit padding. If you are in a 500 calorie deficit per day, and add 2 days where you burn 700 calories via cardio each session, you effectively increased your deficit by 200 per day.

Wait....if I burn 1400 calories via cardio, I only should be adding 400 back? Which is less than 25%...

drewlfitness

drewlamonte wrote: »

vismal wrote: »

Yeah, cardio is simply deficit padding. If you are in a 500 calorie deficit per day, and add 2 days where you burn 700 calories via cardio each session, you effectively increased your deficit by 200 per day.

Wait....if I burn 1400 calories via cardio, I only should be adding 400 back? Which is less than 25%...

Oh wait I understand what you are saying. Increase my weekly deficit by 200, which comes out to 1400.

DeguelloTex

drewlamonte wrote: »

vismal wrote: »

Yeah, cardio is simply deficit padding. If you are in a 500 calorie deficit per day, and add 2 days where you burn 700 calories via cardio each session, you effectively increased your deficit by 200 per day.

Wait....if I burn 1400 calories via cardio, I only should be adding 400 back? Which is less than 25%...

If you really burn 700 per cardio session twice a week, that's 1400 calories. Spread over 7 days, that's 200 per day.

richln

A lot of cardio can hurt your strength training progress by reducing your recovery capability. A lot of people cut successfully with little or no cardio. The only thing I change during a cut is reduce volume (less total sets/reps).

ninerbuff

Keep lifting heavy and reduce your calorie intake. Cardio to burn a little more if you like.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

livingleanlivingclean

richln wrote: »

A lot of cardio can hurt your strength training progress by reducing your recovery capability. A lot of people cut successfully with little or no cardio. The only thing I change during a cut is reduce volume (less total sets/reps).

I often do the opposite...

Not sure why you'd replace lifting days with cardio.... I'd reduce food, perhaps add cardio but keep lifting

vismal

livingleanlivingclean wrote: »

richln wrote: »

A lot of cardio can hurt your strength training progress by reducing your recovery capability. A lot of people cut successfully with little or no cardio. The only thing I change during a cut is reduce volume (less total sets/reps).

I often do the opposite...

Not sure why you'd replace lifting days with cardio.... I'd reduce food, perhaps add cardio but keep lifting

Reducing volume (Set/reps) and frequency (times lifting per week) while keeping intensity (weight on the bar) as high as possible is what you want to be doing in a deficit. Your body has impaired recovery because you aren't fueling it with enough calorie to maintain. Increasing volume/frequency might seem like the way to maintain lean mass, but it isn't. Reducing those things in order to maintain intensity is what you want to be doing. Maintain strength at all costs. If that means less set/reps per workout, so be it.

arb037

The advice you have been given is spot on. Keep lifting heavy, but also make sure you are eating 1g / lbm in protein to ensure you maintain muscle mass.
Continue eating at a deficit, add cardio to manipulate deficit if needed or desired. For me its easier to cut calories, especially following Ketogenic diet, where hunger is suppressed.
Almost forgot to mention, you should change up your cardio from steady state to HIIT. HIIT has been proven to be wayyyy more effective at fat burning ( in much less time).
Think of the body difference between a marathon runner ( no muscle) to a sprinter ( very muscular). The long steady state cardio ( especially fasted) will tend to burn LBM.

drewlfitness

Ok I think I'm making more sense of doing cardio (in my mind). Doing cardio gives my already existing caloric deficit an extra boost, to cover for any days that I may have slightly gone over my limit.

As for being worried that the actual type of cardio that I do being super important to avoid "losing muscle", I actually think that as long as I'm still lifting heavy (as usual), 3 days a week, and as long as I'm getting lots of protein, which I am thanks to protein shakes, that the "type" of cardio I do isn't a major factor.

I'm not running half marathons during these 3 days of dedicated cardio that I do each week. Instead, I'm doing 20 minutes on 3 different cardio machines (stair master, bike, uphill brisk walking on treadmill). If I were doing cross country training, I would surely lose muscle...only makes sense running for hours every day that muscle mass would be lost. That's not what I'm doing though. I'm lifting heavy 3 days a week, eating 40% protein, and doing 60-80 minutes of cardio split between a few different cardio machines. If I do end up losing a little muscle, that's fine actually, as I attempt to "slim down". I of course do not want to lose a lot of muscle though. If doing the cardio that I'm referring to results in my body shedding 5% of muscle, while at the same time I get down to my goal weight, then I'm probably okay with that.

My fear when I started this 4 months ago was becoming "skinny fat". I've been takling that by lifting heavy, while maintaining a caloric deficit. The "extra cardio" I'm interested in doing now would basically just be an added boost to my caloric deficit.

Unless there is scientific research saying that ANY cardio will result in massive lossage of muscle, then doing the 60+ minutes of cardio spread across three different cardio machines is what I would like to do.

drewlfitness

Oh and regarding HIIT, I've practiced doing some of that on elyptical, by selecting "interval" training, and making the "rest" interval at a much lower level than the "hard" interval, giving me the effect of HIIT (I hope).

It's not bad, I can do it for 20-30 minutes, but it's a much larger pain in the *kitten* than the 20 minutes spread across three different machines I mention above.

Sued0nim

vismal wrote: »

Doing tons of cardio and doing less lifting is exactly the opposite of what you want to do. You have been cutting this entire time. Cutting = calorie deficit = losing weight. That's what you've been doing. You want to continue to lift heavy during your cut (calorie deficit) to maintain your muscle mass. Cardio simply adds to caloric deficit. Diet is the major factor in driving weight loss.

This

Huge amounts of this

With knobs on

Sued0nim

drewlamonte wrote: »

Ok I think I'm making more sense of doing cardio (in my mind). Doing cardio gives my already existing caloric deficit an extra boost, to cover for any days that I may have slightly gone over my limit.

As for being worried that the actual type of cardio that I do being super important to avoid "losing muscle", I actually think that as long as I'm still lifting heavy (as usual), 3 days a week, and as long as I'm getting lots of protein, which I am thanks to protein shakes, that the "type" of cardio I do isn't a major factor.

I'm not running half marathons during these 3 days of dedicated cardio that I do each week. Instead, I'm doing 20 minutes on 3 different cardio machines (stair master, bike, uphill brisk walking on treadmill). If I were doing cross country training, I would surely lose muscle...only makes sense running for hours every day that muscle mass would be lost. That's not what I'm doing though. I'm lifting heavy 3 days a week, eating 40% protein, and doing 60-80 minutes of cardio split between a few different cardio machines. If I do end up losing a little muscle, that's fine actually, as I attempt to "slim down". I of course do not want to lose a lot of muscle though. If doing the cardio that I'm referring to results in my body shedding 5% of muscle, while at the same time I get down to my goal weight, then I'm probably okay with that.

My fear when I started this 4 months ago was becoming "skinny fat". I've been takling that by lifting heavy, while maintaining a caloric deficit. The "extra cardio" I'm interested in doing now would basically just be an added boost to my caloric deficit.

Unless there is scientific research saying that ANY cardio will result in massive lossage of muscle, then doing the 60+ minutes of cardio spread across three different cardio machines is what I would like to do.

Sounds quite a sensible approach

Just be very careful what you log as a calorie burn ...if your estimate of 700 calories was related to 20 mins HIIT that would be a massive over-exaggeration of burn. If it's the 80 mins cardio it's a little more believable

drewlfitness

ninerbuff wrote: »

Keep lifting heavy and reduce your calorie intake. Cardio to burn a little more if you like.

A.C.E. Certified Personal and Group Fitness Trainer
IDEA Fitness member
Kickboxing Certified Instructor
Been in fitness for 30 years and have studied kinesiology and nutrition

Yep, that's what I've been concluding here. Thanks.

MirandaD0313

My boyfriend is a personal trainer and he gained almost 20 pounds from his bulk last winter. Since spring he started to eat healthier. Usually when he cuts he prepares his main meals so they're there ready to eat whenever he wants. When snacking he stays very low on his fats and will only eat maybe almonds as his fat source. He is also doing lots of cardio whether in the gym or outside playing soccer.

Fujiberry

The advice here is spot on. However, I would be careful of being in too large of a deficit. Losing 30 pounds over the course of 4 months is already very quick progress. I've also seen that program a while ago. It's no joke, and I would be worried about your ability to recover.

drewlfitness

Fujiberry wrote: »

The advice here is spot on. However, I would be careful of being in too large of a deficit. Losing 30 pounds over the course of 4 months is already very quick progress. I've also seen that program a while ago. It's no joke, and I would be worried about your ability to recover.

Appreciate your concern, but I really should be fine. The main reason being that I have actually been eating quite decent amounts this entire time! Consuming about 2900 calories a day, which came out to about 2200 NET calories after logging exercise. If I had been consuming something very low (starving myself), over the last 4 months, then yeah my "recovery" wouldn't look very nice. But instead, all I've basically done is turn my body back into a calorie burning machine that it used to be, as well as better eating decisions, basically being aware of fat/carb/protein makeup of everything. I plan to continue lifting weights forever. I actually used to lift all the time, but about 4 years ago I decided to stop lifting, and started to drink way more alcohol, and pretty much let the stress of working at a job take over my life. Fast forward 3-4 years and I was weak, overweight, tired all the time (though I definitely still get plenty tired from lifting, but that's a "good" tired), and de-motivated ALL the time. So I decided to get back to my old self.

Also, when I stopped lifting weights, I had no idea how much it would affect me. I thought that I could simply do cardio 3 days a week. But that did nothing, literally nothing. I've done a bit more research into the science of actually getting in shape/losing weight as well as how lifting weights (or simply doing resistance training) is so important. That combined with tracking EVERYTHING I eat, and following correct macro setup, has got me much closer to where I want to be.

Once I reach my goal weight, the only thing that might change is I probably won't track every single thing I eat, but lifting weights and doing the "correct" things to stay in shape will be something I continue to do forever. You could even say that I'm "stopping" now, but nothing would change, because I'd continue doing what I'm doing in the gym, and simply continue making better more conscious decisions when it comes to eating.

After all, I was already going to the gym and doing pointless cardio, the only thing that has really changed is what I do at the gym, and I probably do spend a bit more time in the gym as well :-). Also, I still do cardio, but it's far more effective when I have weights included throughout the week, and correct eating habits. Before, cardio was simply a heart workout, but did not do anything to my physical appearance, though I wasn't eating well either so that had to do with it too.

Before: March 20th, 2015 (268 lbs)
After: June 1st, 2015 (244 lbs)

I'm a bit more lean, and slightly more muscular in certain areas since June.