Cutting or Maintain?

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crystalsizer96
crystalsizer96 Posts: 9 Member
in Health and Weight Loss
I'm 5'4 and 125lbs but unsure on how much I should be eating? Body fat is roughly 18-20% but I don't have visible abs.The picture shows 6 weeks between coming off a lean bulk vs cutting by 150-200 calories. I don't really want to lose weight but want to see my abs? Also don't have a target weight for mfp so it's hard to calculate calories. (I have around 1700 or 1800 currently). Thanks

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  • sardelsa
    sardelsa Posts: 9,812 Member
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    Based on your stats and current leanness, I would probably recomp. It can take time and patience. You could cut a bit more and run another bulk. But that depends on how comfortable you are doing that. What kind of progress have you made pre-bulk to now?
  • Cassandraw3
    Cassandraw3 Posts: 1,214 Member
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    MishMashMisha wrote: »
    Not an expert by any means, so take my advice with a grain of salt.
    But you look pretty lean to me, so if you still cannot see visible abs, you may need to build more muscle there. How long was your bulk?
    Maybe some more knowledgeable folks will chime in.

    I would second this. What kind of program are you currently running?
  • tcunbeliever
    tcunbeliever Posts: 8,219 Member
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    On average, women need to get down to about 12% body fat to have visible abs.

    10-12% is also the average essential fat line for women.

    This is why some women will have health problems from being underfat (such as loss of period, hair loss, brain fog, etc.) before getting to a point where they have visible abs. It mostly depends on your individual body and the pattern of fat storage for your body. If you store fat in your abs you may never get to the point where you can have visible abs. If you store fat in other areas, then you might be able to get there but it will require reducing body fat from where you are now.

    If you don't want to lose weight but you want to change your body composition, then recomp is the thing for you, but it's usually very slow and requires a great deal of patience. You basically eat at maintenance and do a progressive lifting routine to build muscle while metabolizing fat at the same time. A few bulk/cut cycles may be faster, or something like Leangains where you are calorie cycling.
  • alexmose
    alexmose Posts: 792 Member
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    Following
  • mom23mangos
    mom23mangos Posts: 3,070 Member
    edited April 2019
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    IMO it doesn’t look like you have the muscle base. I’d third recomping, or at max dropping another 3lbs or so. You didn’t mention what you do for exercise and how long you’ve done it.

    To both @tcunbeliever and @sardelsa’s point, a female can have visible abs at 15-18ish range, but that’s usually people who don’t store fat in their abdomen. So their upper body may be at 10-12% and lower body at 20+% to average out to 15-18.

    Edit - when I had my DEXA, my android fat was 7% and gynoid 23%. Someone who had that reversed would likely never see abs. Just like I’ll likely never see leg definition.
  • crystalsizer96
    crystalsizer96 Posts: 9 Member
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    Sorry I've only got round to seeing this! I'd like to thank you for taking time to reply as this has really helped. Reading these comments makes a lot of sense and I'll try a recomp. I bulked for about 6 months or so which isnt long but by not doing so, im more happy with becoming leaner so a recomp fits well. I'm currently doing an Upper/Lower Split 4 days a week and been training for nearly a year and a half.

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