2 Months Difference - Weight Loss

Training and building muscles does not always require bulk cycles and you don't have to wait till you lose weight to start training.

At a pound less than your pictures it would be a bit early for a bulk. Even in 8lbs I am not sure you would be at the 12% or so fat level that seems to be considered more optimal for bulking.

Recomp or switching to a slight deficit while training can still work at either of the two weight levels.

maybe you will find this page somewhat useful? https://rippedbody.com/body-fat-guide/

The 12% comes from bodybuilding.com where a 4-pack is suggested

I also happen to think that a bulk is not a great idea for someone who has lost a considerable amount of weight. They are, in my opinion, better off stabilizing into maintenance and physique improvements are less important than avoiding regain.

You don't know, ahead of time, what weight you will be when you hit a certain fat percentage.

You might be able to guess when you're a few points away but 12% is the fat % of a pretty lean guy.

Nothing is stopping you from hitting the gym hard and using energy reserves to fuel muscle growth. It can only help lead you closer to your desired results.

In a previous post I linked you to a site that does have pictures of people and estimated percentages of body fat.

In the meanwhile... at what weight level will you be within normal/healthy BMI for your height?

It would be quite unlikely to find someone with extremely low levels of body fat who is above normal bmi. Possible... but definitely it would be an outlier.

Do you believe the OP in this thread is near 12% or will be there by the time he loses another 6 to 8 lbs?

If you were showing the "old" picture and asking if that's a position to bulk from, the answer would be: yes, it is a much better position to bulk from than your current picture.

I am far from an expert (and a few of them do exist around here), but it has to do with "partitioning" and how the surplus is more likely to be allocated depending on your level of lean-ness when you start.

In a reverse way think of it this way. When I was well over 200lbs and losing weight my initial dexa scans (because hey, I was curious and I could) were coming back with 8:1 even 10:1 fat to lean mass loss rates. I mean this is beyond excellent, right? As I approached normal weight this slowly changed to 4:1, 3:1, even 2:1. There are situations (usually has to do with how deficits are applied and how lean the individuals were at the start) where people could see 1:1 fat to lean mass loss or even 0.5 to 1.

The math still works because the individual at that point may have a lot more lean mass than fat mass available to lose.

So (and I could be wrong, as I said, this is not something I've looked much into) but "partitioning" has to do with this: the tendency of the body to preferentially add one type of tissue over another at various levels of leanness

At your current weight you may find yourself adding a lb and 75% of it will be fat with only .25 being lean mass (and only a fraction of the lean mass being actual muscles). At the weight of the "old" picture, a lb could well have meant either 50-50 lean mass to fat, or even 66% lean mass to 33% fat. Obviously a preferable thing to do if you're trying to add muscles!

So we come back to what you should do.

I walked into a New Balance Flagship store when I was 280+lbs to get some walking shoes. Everywhere I turned I kept seeing scrawny sickly looking tall spindly staff people who obviously were under-fed because of the crazy amount of running they were doing. **kittens** they were SCRAWNY: who the heck would want to look half starved like them?????

I've now been at the top end of "normal" weight, maybe even tipped a few months into the absolute bottom of overweight (so BMI 23.5 to 25 and no-where NEAR as lean and healthy of a young buck as you were in your seven year ago picture), for going on a bit more than 7 years. So think of me about 7 years ago at where you might be in about 10lbs or so (absent deliberate exercise) which is AN off the cuff estimate of when your tummy would be relatively empty of stored fat--but still having spots with some fat around (again this is absent exercise, just weight reduction)... Think on the links and envision ~20% not 10% fat level pictures

A few years at that level and SURPRISE: the people at the store look NORMAL. Lean for sure. But NORMAL. Not scrawny.

PERSONAL OPINION: no mincing words: you're comparatively healthier looking in the old picture than in the new picture. If you don't see it I would suggest the totally not impossible situation of having a bit of body dysmorphia or perceptual challenge to see one's-self as other people would view them COMPOUNDED by the fact that all of us are used to seeing people around us who are bigger because it IS the current "norm".

MOVING ON TO WHAT TO DO to meet YOUR goals as you defined them with a tiny hint of what I would also feel to be the correct move for you (but you're not exactly paying for the advice so there's that): Bulking would be a bad idea as it will add too much fat for the lean mass. You have sufficient energy reserves to increase mussle without the need to add the extra energy from the bulk.

It's time to dust off the gym clothes and do everything you would be doing if you were bulking in terms of your training program. There is zero reason to be saving that for later.

At the same time, to ensure performance and optimal results as per what you seek, I would set myself to maintenance MINUS (-250 to -500 range), with the aim of --once the initial 2/3 lbs from water weight due to increase in exercise are removed from the equation -- achieving a real result in the half a lb a week in terms of long term reduction (so achieving a real -250) while working the muscles as much as you can.

So if your preference is to stay the size you're at and build muscles, and assuming you're below BMI 27 (while the population level risks increase between 25 to 27 that's not at a super earth shattering level, so the argument that a lean bmi 27 person is potentially better off than a less lean bmi 25 person does work for my brain) ... then there you go: time to start working on all this!

I would also dare to suggest that weight stability or LOTS of time at a non increasing weight would be of benefit to you long term.

Being weight stable for the 7 years would have been a lot healthier for you than increasing from your old picture to past your current picture and then down again. Pure health talk. Not muscles!

I'm sure others will chime in!