where does cardio come in?

theredcliche

I'm finishing up my last month of Chalean Extreme and I've been eating at a 250-600 calorie deficit for quite a while. I don't know why I was eating at a deficit when I want to build muscle. I guess in my head, it's because I have a layer of flab over my muscles that I want gone, but cutting my calories obviously isn't working. I've decided to focus on heavy lifting and upping my calories to build muscle, then cutting later to get rid of the last bit of fat covering all my hard work. Anyway, does this sound like a reasonable plan? If so, I'm eating at my TDEE all the time, but I'm wondering where cardio comes into play. Once I finish CLX, I want to move on to Stronglifts but I'm not sure if I should incorporate cardio 2 days/week. And just to make sure I'm correct on this, when I calculate my TDEE on Scooby's website, that includes all my exercise and activity for the day so if my TDEE is 1950, I should eat 1950 and do a reasonable amount of exercise (200-250 cals) therefore netting around 1700? Thank you guys! This forum is SO informational and helpful!

heybales

I'm finishing up my last month of Chalean Extreme and I've been eating at a 250-600 calorie deficit for quite a while. I don't know why I was eating at a deficit when I want to build muscle. I guess in my head, it's because I have a layer of flab over my muscles that I want gone, but cutting my calories obviously isn't working. I've decided to focus on heavy lifting and upping my calories to build muscle, then cutting later to get rid of the last bit of fat covering all my hard work. Anyway, does this sound like a reasonable plan? If so, I'm eating at my TDEE all the time, but I'm wondering where cardio comes into play. Once I finish CLX, I want to move on to Stronglifts but I'm not sure if I should incorporate cardio 2 days/week. And just to make sure I'm correct on this, when I calculate my TDEE on Scooby's website, that includes all my exercise and activity for the day so if my TDEE is 1950, I should eat 1950 and do a reasonable amount of exercise (200-250 cals) therefore netting around 1700? Thank you guys! This forum is SO informational and helpful!

You say cutting calories wasn't working for quite a while, how long?

You mean no loss of inches and weight?

Then you really didn't have a deficit.

You can actually eat at maintenance if happy where you are at weight wise, and slowly trade fat for LBM, maybe even some muscle if starting to lift. Talking less than a lb a month trade.

But you can actually eat at a slight true deficit and still trade, but lose more fat.
But if willing to take the increase in weight and some fat to gain LBM/muscle faster, then not a bad plan eating more than TDEE.

Don't actually need cardio, unless you want it for heart health, which isn't bad.

Just make sure the cardio is counted in your TDEE, and that if done the day after lifting it's not so intense as to add it's own load of stress to muscles trying to repair and grow. Kill the repair process, just wasted your workout.

And if you do the cardio the day before, confirm it's not tiring you out from lifting heavy the next day. That's harder to see, because there is difficulty in lifting a weight because it's heavy and you are overloading the muscle correctly, and difficulty because your muscles are just plain tired from previous day.

When you can compare a rest lifting day to a lifting day with cardio prior, you'll notice usually.

Also, if you are following your plan, than TDEE should include exercise. But to grow, you'll need to eat more than TDEE.