Planning my cut - feedback appreciated!

katnoir1

Hi all,

Coming to the end of week 6 of my TDEE reset and looking to start a cut at the end of week 8. I know it's early, but I want to get the details sorted out before I get started to minimise the guesswork, and I'd love some feedback from anyone with experience!

A bit of background: I'm 5'5", 25 years old, approximately 130lbs (give or take a couple) and an approximate body fat of 20% (averaged using a few different methods). I practice intermittent fasting, fasting 16 hours every day and with one 24-hour fast a week. I currently exercise 5 days a week, mostly strength straining with some moderate to high intensity cardio. My TDEE (according to heybales' spreadsheet) is about 1880, and I have been averaging 1750-1850 calories per day (I'm a bit lax with measuring portions sometimes, so I like to have a little bit of wiggle room for error). My primary goal is to get down to 18% body fat, with a secondary goal of getting to 127lbs (to start).

My plan for my first cut is to average 1600 calories per day (~85% TDEE) for 7 weeks, then take a 1-week TDEE break. I'm currently calorie cycling, which I would like to continue, eating at a deficit 5 days a week (1450-1550, lower on fasting day) and re-feeding 2 days a week (2100).

Hope that's enough info. Any critiques would be great so I can have a plan in place before I get started

jerilynconn

I'd say a good plan as long as your deficit average doesn't drop below -15%.

heybales

Sounds like nice plan, avg weekly deficit is less than 15% as it probably should be since already at healthy BF%.

You're body is going to put up a fight going in to what it considers too low territory - so I'd expect water weight from stress.

I'd also confirm you got the exercise lined up in spreadsheet right. Sounds like a low TDEE estimate depending on how much time that exercise is. In which case the refeed days are still deficit, just not as bad.
Perhaps the cardio is brief.

In the fasting day right after lifting day when body is attempting to repair, or the day before a lifting workout?

katnoir1

A few people have said my TDEE seems low, but then I'm not a very big person, and aside from the workouts I have a desk Job and a fairly sedentary lifestyle. My workouts usually contain about 40-45mins of weights and 10-15mins if cardio. I can go over the numbers again though if you think I'm off.

The fasting is usually on a rest day following a rest day, so I'm not too concerned about recovery. Although that can change depending on what else I have on during the week.

heybales

So 42.5 x 5 = 213 min lifting weekly.
12.5 x 5 = 63 min high cardio weekly.

Nope, getting around 1777, so indeed not that high since not doing much body weight moving stuff anyway.

I will recommend though, at already reasonable body fat % and healthy body weight - losing fat and weight together isn't the way to attempt this anymore.

You probably would find more success eating at maintenance for getting the best lifting workouts possible, and just doing recomposition.

I'm not sure if the fast day is for reasons of weight loss or other, that could still be incorporated by eating more than maintenance on other days if you just wanted to keep it. Perhaps that means rest day prior to fast day, which is then recovery day to lifting day - you eat more, plus a little more each of the other days. Almost a bulk on those days.

But I really think you'd find better success all around with recomp and eating on average at maintenance.
Keep the weight, lose the fat, gain the muscle. It'll soon look like you are 125, so who cares what the scale says.

katnoir1

The fasting is for health reasons (I have a chronic bowel condition, so I let my system rest for a day). Lately I've even been doing up to 2 fasting days per week then compensating on other days, so I'm still maintaining. This means, as you say, almost bulk eating 5 days a week, which gives me quite an edge at the gym.

Hmm. I hadn't considered just going for recomp. Since I started the reset I've gained a lot of muscle it's true, but I'm pretty sure it's not all I've gained. I've lost quite a bit of definition and I feel like I've taken on a bit of a "puffy" look, hence wanting to cut. I thought the calorie cycling might help me make the best of both worlds - eating lots on training days for more muscle, and less on rest to create a deficit

heybales

The problem with recomp is the need to eat even more calories - and at some point the excess in the day will be more than your body can make use of for repair/rebuilding - so extra will be fat.

That's a difficult spot to be in - another fast day will just make it worse.

You'll be in perpetual diet - which isn't good either.

Because the workout days won't truly be able to balance out 2 fasting days if the idea is to maintain. Are those fast days at least separated by a few days?

But recomp goal would be better with that low BF%.

Does the 24 hr fast need to follow the midnight day we arbitrarily use?

Like what if you started on your rest day before workout day with fast at 2 pm. Do a breakfast/lunch on this day just to help recovery from prior day workout.
24 hr fast into workout day at 2 pm. Eat enough for your after-work workout (if that's when it is) to get a good workout.

If the rest days were spreadout - that would give 2 24 hr fast time periods, recovery food from prior day workout, and pre-workout food for a good workout.
And perhaps enough calories to average maintenance, but not all on the workout days so it's too much.

Yikes, did the math on using 1777 average TDEE, if on 2 rest days you could eat 700 cal breakfast/lunch, that's 2000 spread among 5 days - 400 more per day isn't bad, since the literal TDEE on that day is more anyway. 2177 could be doable.

Hey, at least you are doing lifting with smaller calorie burn than long endurance cardio or such with bigger for same time. Sorry to hear about problem, that's no fun when food can't be viewed as nice as it could be.

katnoir1

The fasting is on non-consecutive days, and generally goes from dinner to dinner, so it's not quite 24 hours. Generally it's from about 7:30pm to about 5:30pm the next night.
I'm following the PHUL strength program which structures the week as:
Day 1 upper power - 2000
Day 2 lower power - 2000
Day 3 rest (I usually do abs and very light cardio) - 800
Day 4 upper hypertrophy - 2000
Day 5 lower hypertrophy - 2000
Day 6 rest (sometimes yoga) - 1600
Day 7 rest - 800
So to fit the fasting in there, I usually fast on day 6/7 and/or on day 3. I've put calorie estimates in for what I'm planning for my cut. Averaged out over the week, that works out to 1600 per day. What do you think @heybales?

heybales

That's a very minor cut at least.

Just make sure you are getting great sleep in so no extra stress added to body from that.

Stress free life would be great too - but too late for that, huh.

Looks like nice program.

I'll bet when you come out of deficit, you'll still barely be able to notice the improvement to the lifting eating more. But you should still get some great workouts in during it too.

Great forethought - keep it up. Look forward to progress reports here. Make sure you include some for the workouts and measurements too that might be interesting.

katnoir1

Haha if only I could plan the stress in my life as well as I can plan meals and workouts, wouldn't that be lovely.

I've still got a couple of weeks of maintenance to go (4 at most), but I'll be sure to post progress.

Thanks for all of the enormously helpful input!!