How to reach from 20% to 12% BF while I don’t have a lot of muscle mass

You have to look in the mirror and decide what you're happy with. Your abs already look visible to me. I would hazard a guess you're maybe about 15%, or slightly above. Which is really, no a bad place to be.

Tom and the others are correct.

Home scales are poor at estimating bf %. And while I'm no expert, you don't look anywhere near 20% to me. Probably more like 15% which is ideal to be maingaining. As Tom said, a small surplus is what you want. If you've been losing weight at 1800, work out what your maintenance is, and a small surplus to that. As Tom said, 200. So e.g. if you've been losing 0.5 pounds per week at 1800, that's a maintenance of 2050, so go up to about 2250. With the training you're doing, you shouldn't gain much fat, and if you feel you are, just back off back to maintenance for a few weeks.

Your protein amount is good, unless it's from lower quality sources. Are you vegan? If so, you may need more.

I agree with Tom, I'd question your programming. Are you lifting to near failure? Tracking your progress and increasing reps and sets? Focusing on compounds?

About 20++🤣 plus a couple of kilos of famine resistance reserves! 🤯 Same height thought!

As to the op: I don't think anyone is questioning your personal effort. And you've indicated you've put in a lot of work. So yes, programming letting you down would be a valid question/concern

Obviously genetics also play in this. And we are all conditioned to seeing fake/ enhanced/ edited/ constructed pictures and pharmacologically assisted influencers who have prepped, carb loaded, dehydrated and oiled up for the shot.

xMidox wrote: »

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

Tom and the others are correct.

Home scales are poor at estimating bf %. And while I'm no expert, you don't look anywhere near 20% to me. Probably more like 15% which is ideal to be maingaining. As Tom said, a small surplus is what you want. If you've been losing weight at 1800, work out what your maintenance is, and a small surplus to that. As Tom said, 200. So e.g. if you've been losing 0.5 pounds per week at 1800, that's a maintenance of 2050, so go up to about 2250. With the training you're doing, you shouldn't gain much fat, and if you feel you are, just back off back to maintenance for a few weeks.

Your protein amount is good, unless it's from lower quality sources. Are you vegan? If so, you may need more.

I agree with Tom, I'd question your programming. Are you lifting to near failure? Tracking your progress and increasing reps and sets? Focusing on compounds?

Thanks a lot for your kind response, I get my protein mainly from chicken, red meat and eggs and whey protein.
I train regularly and I push to faliour, I am sorry are you questioning my training program because you don't see much muscle on me or what's the reason you are questioning this?


And can you please advise me if it is ok to maybe push a little further on cutting phase so when I do bulking and in case I gain some fat along the way I don't feel fat and don't lose sight of abs again? sorry if the question sounds stupid heheh

When adding muscle you will also add SOME fat, that is a given, how much depends on how close you can come to JUST over maintenance calories.

You’ll lose sight of your abs unless they were really well developed and you are not in that category.

Concentrate on muscle gain with minimum fat gain and forget about abs for awhile or you’ll spin your wheels yo yo-ing back and forth.

You grow abs in a slight calorie surplus just like any other muscle so take this building period to hit abs with weighted exercises along with the typical things like windshield washers, etc. when you come back to cutting you’ll have abs that will show a lot easier.

Btw, studies have shown bro split is sub-optimal. Greater frequency is more effective, so 2-3 times per week per muscle group.

Theoldguy1 wrote: »

PAV8888 wrote: »

Timing of meals may be an issue too. While for most of us dealing with substantial weight loss total Calories are "all" that matters, when you're dealing with top performance some attention to pre and post exercise and night/rest feeding may be of value.

To be honest, nutrient timing around exercise, for 99%+ of the population is majoring in the minors and a waste of effort. Is there evidence there is some benefit, sure but considering most people don't have their nutrition and training dialed in perfectly timing is just a distraction. This person isn't training for top performance (no dig to the OP as again only a small percent of the population is).

They can measure the distance to the Moon to a few millimeters, but the vast majority of us are good saying it's about a quarter million miles away.

This post is about body composition, weight training and diet, so nutrient timing is relevant, but I agree for the vast majority, just trying to figure out their calorie deficit is enough of a task without worrying about that. If someone is trying to achieve a certain goal then understanding and implementing those principles that are advantageous for that goal is certainly better than just winging it, and contrary to popular believe it doesn't have to be perfect.

Nutrient timing on a lean bulk means protein every 3 or so hours and going into the gym with a good supply of glycogen. That is 99% of it.

Actually in terms of nutrition the op did state he eats up to 5 meals so he does appear to split his intake through the day ... so probably another non issue.

Seems that the "only remaining" issues are the leanness of the bulk... and the program and then the OP will be rocking!

xMidox wrote: »

Retroguy2000 wrote: »

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Do you mind going into detail on your lifting program? How many days, what exercises, sets and reps?

That’s an example of the full body day, I have also should, back with biceps and back with triceps and legs day, I can post them also but they are pretty similar to the number of sets and intensity of the full body workout

That's a good upper body (plus deadlift) workout. As a nitpick, I'd choose cable fly's instead of db fly's. Much better tension curve. And I'd do shoulder lateral raises instead of rear delt fly's, since the former isn't getting much work and the latter already got work with the wide grip rows.

Assuming you're going to near failure (1-2 reps in reserve) on most sets and maybe to failure on the final set, then I see three main issues:

First, as I said the bro-split has been shown to be sub-optimal. More frequency is better. For example you have chest there, and then it sounds like you don't touch chest again for a week even though it's ready to be worked again two to three days later.

Second, total weekly volume. As a non-newbie lifter, your weekly volume target should be about 15 sets per part. It reads like you're doing just 6 sets of chest and that will be very minimal growth.

Third, you mention you've been cutting for a couple of years. That is of course sub-optimal for muscle growth. It's not impossible, but it's far from ideal. You should know what your maintenance is. Go a couple hundred calories above that.

To sum up, increase your calories and dump the bro-split. If you're going to the gym four times then something like Chest+Back, Lower+Shoulder Press+Arms, Chest+Back, Lower+Shoulder Press+Arms. If you're going three times, then three full body workouts with 5 working sets each of squats (or deadlift once per week), chest, back, shoulders and something for harms like seated leg curl if you did deadlift, or RDL if you didn't. Same applies with U/L/U/L, do deadlift on one of those L days, otherwise squats.

PAV8888 wrote: »

I'll ask a different question: how much time have you spent at maintenance, how much time gaining, and how much time losing weight over the past 10 years? Do you have a previous history of being significantly overweight?

First of all: use a weight trend app. It de-emphasizes immediate weight aberrations while still capturing longer term trends and inflection points. Why use one?

Because if you can clearly see your weight changing on a daily basis you are going too fast! If your weight change is "lost in the noise" of normal fluctuations then you are going slowly.

Maybe people can comment on that and have different opinions; but I see the food as a support that enable optimal growth. Not as a goal to stuff you into a bigger size as soon as possible.

And just enough food to be on the plus side of maintenance does provides that support without encouraging extra fat accumulation beyond the necessary.

Even the "couple of hundred cals" a day = about a kg a month that are advocated, i.e. a pace of 2lbs a month is difficult to see through the normal everyday fluctuations.

But how much time will 1kg a month (the 200 Cal a day) give you at a mostly anabolic state before you are starting to think about reducing weight again? 4 months? 6 months? Is that enough time?

So I would advocate for even slower... aiming for ~150 Cal overage long term... bringing you up by only 1 to 1.5lbs a month i.e. coming up in the 0.5kg to 0.75kg per month range.

Giving you more time to build while at the + side of the caloric equation, even if it is a really small plus

If you like 150 extra calories a day vs 200 that's fine, but to me it's majoring in the minors. Remember in the US (believe the poster is non-US) calorie labels can vary +/- 20% of actual calories so 150 vs 200 is not material.

My point would be, keep calories the same or slightly increase. Eat mostly clean foods, which the poster claims to be doing, and actually work out. Based on his comments, I'm not sure if he has actually worked out on a regular basis for an appreciable period of time.

I would suggest eating as I mentioned above, get a program where major muscle groups are targeted at least twice a week (3 would be fine) emphasizing compound movements. Workout on a REGULAR basis, i.e., missing a training session should be rare. Come back in 6 months and reassess.

Good luck.