My main goal the past year has been weight loss. Went from 204 to 144. I'm just now starting to transition into a muscle oriented goal but also want to start from a good base. I want to get down to 10% so that when I start eating at a surplus, I'm not in the 20's for BF. I'd like to get to 10, then bulk up to 15 to 20, then cut back down to 10. I'm all ears to a difference of opinion since I'm new to this though.

If you get to 10% then bulking to 15% is plenty. No point in adding too much fat.

Pfffft. Yeah, its dropping carbs and sodium that magics away the fat, not the dbol and clen. Carbs and sodium are short term competition cuts, not a viable long term solution

Ever been 4% bodyfat? I have, by manipulating carbs. You're an idiot.

Also, dbol bloats you like a mother ****er, why do you think it's called a "bulker". That's the opposite of what you're talking about. You're an idiot twice.

Sodium has nothing to do with fat. That's just water weight. Idiot three times.

Please, feel free to return when you educate yourself.

you're completely missing the point of my post. The reason why Bodybuilders can do all of the things you're advocating at once is because they're advanced trainees with loads of supplementation along the way. Im not saying they're doing Dbol and Clen at the sametime, but im saying they do cycle substances like these to achieve their muscular, cut look. Preaching a major drop in cals with increased cardio and no off days all at once to a novice trainee is stupid. But you're right, im the triple idiot because you hit 4% once.

You seem to have the misconception that you just take anything, eat like crap, and get results. Trust me, thousands have tried and they have not because everything is 85% nutrition. Ouija only mentioned that cutting down body fat is not as hard as many make it out. Lower your Calories (correct), do more cardio (to encourage fat being used as fuel and to get rid of it), more protein (correct), and good fats (encourage healthy cholesterol levels). The funny part is that you mentioned that Lyle Mcdonalds rapid fat loss before he posted anything. Lyle Mcdonald can write a guide and he can claim that he came up with this concept but this is what bodybuilders have been doing for decades. In fact this was how Vince Gironda had bodybuilders diet back in the day to lose body fat and prepare for a show except that it has become a standard to eat more greens and vegetables for fiber purposes and nutrient intake.

Not sure why you mention dbol because dbol will not help you lose fat. Dbol is not used a lot now a days since there are better options, and if it is used then its usually for a month or so. Clen can assist you to get fat but that is all it does. It doesn't really help you lose any greater amount than what people did when ephedra was legal. You can also take t3 but then again, all it does is help you get you from maybe 9% to 3-4%. You can combine all of this and eat like **** and you won't look great.

By the way, many natural bodybuilders have and still are getting to low percentage body fat by keeping a consistent diet and barely deviate from them. It takes them longer but they can get the same result as well. Look in my friend list and there is a guy named Sirlukas, a natural bodybuilder and he got that low in just 3-4 months by eating clean food and using the methods I highlighted above. Many bodybuilders use agents to get low because they need to do it as fast as possible since this is actually their job, and sometimes they get really fat from eating like pigs.

no, im not neglecting the hard work that body builders do. My original point, was to take one half of a bodybuilders training/diet regime and neglect the other half does not give a total picture of what they're doing. It would be akin to me saying "I got ripped doing this style of training" whilst neglecting to mention my deficit

To say that If OP does the cardio and trains 6-7 times a week with loads of cardio neglects why they're able to do that, because they're advanced trainees who supplement their training (which OP is not). Im not saying Oujas style of training wont work, i was more nitpicking his example because i was in a bad mood.

The point with Dbol, isnt that they're taking it on a cut, its that they take steroids and also cutting agents in cycles to get where they are, like i said, its about the total picture, not half of it.

Im ducking out of this thread now, as im throwing it totally off topic. Apologies to OP

They don't always look rip, you are seeing too many magazine covers. Most of the year most amateur and pro bodybuilders are bulky and just carry a lot of volume. about 9-12 weeks they start cutting from as much as 25% 29% to 4-6 percent with the help of agents. Like I said, they are agents and their diet has to be clean as hell. A lot of the reasons why they may gain a lot of fat it could be due to a high usage of insulin, or eating extremely high calories during the bulk period. A natural bodybuilder can stay at 15% and if he does everything right he can get to 4-5 % in 9-12 weeks. Cutting down from 25% to 3-4% in 9-12 weeks can be unrealistic without the use of agents. If a pro bodybuilder were to stay in within 15% he could realistically go down to 3-4 percent if he does everything right without the use of any agents. They do however use gear to prevent muscle loss during the cutting phase, and other gear to encourage vascularity and hardness. At that point they are more concerned about not being bloated, and are not concerned about using anything to gain muscle. So their usage of AAS is only meant to preserve muscle. A natural bodybuilder will lose some muscle and sometimes a lot depending on how they eat and train.

To make matters short, proper dieting naturally and unnaturally will yield the same results without drugs. For unnatural bodybuilders they use things to preserve muscle but other than that the use of agents such as clen/t3 are used for them
to catch up from large fat gain deficits. It only helps them about 10-15%, the rest is the diet. The process to burn fat never changes regardless of what we take. I can tell you many who have used t3/clen gotten bad results with no diet.

Forget my last question. Lets get your opinion on this. I googled bodybuilding cutting diet and the following page came up:

http://www.simplyshredded.com/layne-norton-the-most-effective-cutting-diet.html

Without going into all the math, by his suggestion, my macros should be as follows:

Pro: 180g - 46%
fat: 50g - 29%
carb: 101g - 25%

re-feed once every 6 to 12 days

My current macros look like this:

TD = training day
RD = rest day

pro: TD-29% RD-33% 144g
fat: TD-35% RD-33% 64 to 76g
carb: TD-35% RD-33% 145 to 172g

Now I usually end up getting more like 180 g of protein and 50 grams of fat which fit more into the macros above. Do you think I should follow the article's suggestions or keep doing what I'm doing?

@ Foxy and Wolf - Agents aside, what does a bodybuilders cutting diet look like? What do they eat that allows them to lose so much BF in 9 - 12 weeks? I'm assuming very high protein, what do they do with fats/carbs?

Honestly a diet that is high in protein, lower carbohydrate, and moderate fats. Bodybuilders love eating oats, and is sometimes the most favorite carbs. They avoid starchy carbs like potatoes, carrots, and anything that is high glycemic during this phase. They want to encourage lower glycemic levels through the day so some prefer to have their carbs early in the morning after weights if they lift early. Some things have evolved over the years.

They also do a lot of cardio, sometimes 45 min to 1 hour fasted and 30 min after weights.

The natural bodybuilder ends up shredding weight extremely fast but at the same time losing muscle so that is why a true natural event you will notice the guys smaller than they should be. That is not the case for the bodybuilder who is not natural, he diets the same but may shred weight faster because he may be taking agents that raise his body temperature, increase thyroid output, and etc that actually may eat muscle as fuel so they take AAS that are less androgenic, more anabolic, and that help to preserve mass without bloating them. Last thing they want is to bloat because they work hard days before the even to shred as much water off their body as possible.

To answer your question, bodybuilders don't use different methods to diet than what you seen out there. Everything is the same man. Chris Davey went through Lyle's Mcdonalds extreme fat loss at some point and that is very close to how bodybuilders diet. They eat dark greens, lean meats because fattier meats may add more calories to a deficit. Makes it easier to balance calories and add other nutrients that you need, and eat anywhere from 80-150 carbs. Just a matter of preference really.

Chris is right, stick to what is working so far but don't let water weight deceive you. Some people can diet with little cardio, and others need it more. Measure your results based on what you are doing and if it helps you keep consistency then keep your diet simple. You can get creative like Chris if you want but that may not work out for people who get so stressed out about figuring out what they want to eat. Most people should know what they should eat and Chris happens to be one of them.