edickson76 Member

If your surplus is 250 calories then trend looks fine, 1 pound over 2 weeks. If your surplus is 500 calories then you need to increase. Agree with above comment that your workouts are sub-optimal. A proper beginner program would be more beneficial.

If you've gone 2 weeks in surplus, you could just go one week more at maintenance and then dive into an aggressive mini-cut of 4 weeks. From a practical standpoint, you could plan out all meals each week. That way there's no way you can lie to yourself about whether you have room for a beer or donut or whatever is tempting…

I ended my cut Friday or maybe it was Saturday morning at breakfast. Comparison photo from November 2017 and Saturday is below. I weigh .5 pound less now than November, but allowing for margin of error I'd call it the same weight. I can't tell much difference between the two aside from lower BF% and less rounding of my…

My original plan was 4 weeks, then a refeed, then another 4 or 5 weeks of cut. Social events have interfered with that plan. "Refeed" day first weekend, then Memorial Day BBQs (more refeed...er surplus) after week 3. That had limited my progress so I was trying to stretch the cut out to 6 weeks and refeed this week.…

Cut for almost 6 weeks. Last week was not good. Easily the least fun I can recall having in the gym. I finished my workout last Tuesday in the worst mood, just depressed by how fatigued I was, how low my reps were, and how much sweet, sweet muscle I suspected I was losing. I started eating at maintenance on Saturday and…

Apologies to everyone other than @sardelsa who might be sick of this discussion. For anyone who is still following along but wondering what MRV and MEV are...MRV is maximum recoverable volume and MEV is minimum effective volume. There is a good discussion of these concepts in "The Volume Roundtable" episode on Jeff…

It makes sense, if one takes Menno's approach, which is to keep building muscle while in a deficit. Then, of course, volume would be the main driver of building that muscle. I don't know enough physiology to know if sending signals to the body to build more muscle is the same or different than signals to retain muscle.…

Thanks for posting that! Much appreciated. I'm aware of the newer research on volume as the primary driver of hypertrophy, but I haven't seen any research on volume as the primary driver of muscle retention during a cut. Is there such research, or is this a hypothesis based on the known hypertrophy research?

You can retain muscle while cutting if you keep the intensity (=weight on the bar) at the same amount, even if you reduce volume (=total # of reps) and frequency (=# of times you do that lift per week). So, to answer your question, no, I don't run the same program when cutting. I have cut my volume by 1/3, which just means…

Splurged last night on pizza and beer. Refeed day?!

The length of a cut depends on your current BF% and your goal BF%, and of course, your own body. For you, at 205 lbs. 19% BF, going to 15%BF, you should expect to lose around 12 pounds. I'm working off an assumption that you will drop 2 pounds of muscle while losing 10 pounds of fat. You can get a better ratio if you have…

If you haven’t adjusted your calories since setting them at 203 pounds, start there. Otherwise you are pretty close to maintenance right now.

I normally go 2 weeks at maintenance between transitions. Just finished a very lean bulk (about 100 calorie surplus per day). So, since the surplus was so low, I'm doing only a week of maintenance before cutting.

I don't recommend mass gainers. Mostly they are crap with sugar on top. Half pound of muscle per week is doable in optimum conditions. But, set your expectations lower and note also that muscle gain is not linear. You aren't going to see an additional pound on the scale each week. For reference:…

Looking like you gained mainly muscle then, so long as you have been progressively increasing the resistance. You can do that by increasing weight or by increasing reps (as you have done on pushups). On the non-pushup exercises, if you have been regularly adding weight and have difficulty reaching the 15 reps, sounds fine.…

Thanks for sharing the data. And congrats! I agree that is a resounding success!

Can't be sure whether that is a good/normal result, as your lifting program is not specified. You say you aren't lifting heavy. That's fine. But you need to sufficiently stress your muscles in order to produce muscular adaptation. What that means, for example, is, if you are using a 5lb. dumbell to do squats, you need high…

An update to this thread, specifically as to frequency. I recently came across an experiment done by the Norwegian powerlifting team. Results: 6 days per week frequency superior to 3 days per week frequency. Here is a link to Menno Henselman's discussion: https://bayesianbodybuilding.com/norwegian-frequency-project-stats/…

If you like the way you look, then you don't need to lean bulk. If you get to a point where you want more muscle, Lyle MacDonald recommends 19-24% body fat for women before bulking. You could also just eat at maintenance or slightly above and slowly recomp.

Talk to your doctor as Trigden said. Read through those threads that psuLemon linked. I'd also recommend bulking for beginners in the sticky at the top of the forum. That's all background info so you can understand what is going on when you bulk. As for dealing with the adderall suppressing your appetite: drink calories.…

PHUL (https://www.muscleandstrength.com/workouts/phul-workout)is an upper/lower split program. Let's take it as an example. I wouldn't characterize it as simply adding some isolation work onto a full body program. Rather it is the addition of other compound lifts. Instead of just doing squats and deadlifts for lower body…

Just have to remember to eat everything and remember what you have and haven't eaten yet. Recently I created a few meals, mostly interchangeable. That in combination with planning out a week of meals made things easier in terms of hitting calorie and macro goals. Also easier to track in the app by selecting a meal instead…

Looked pretty awesome to me. :)

@quiksylver296 that is awesome. I didn't see a post on how the meet went, though. Should I be asking?

@Steelpit202 that is pretty light for 5'7. I'd try the slow bulk route to build up more muscle and then try again to cut off the belly fat in mid to late spring.

Another check-in. My PT approved some lower body work, and I decided to just finish the cut and accept less than stellar gains on my legs. I could still lose a pound or so, but I'm going to run only a slight deficit for the rest of the week and call it good. Despite numerous injury setbacks (none from lifting), I've made…

Ideally yes increase calories as you gain; however your calorie goal is an estimate and you are probably estimating portion sizes. So, much safer from a fat gain perspective to wait until your gains slow noticeably before increasing calories.

I understand your affinity for following the advice of a guy with the same body type who has had success. You are young, and if you simply go to the gym consistently and progressively increase the weights, you will see positive results. There is no magic approach that really works. If you want to lose weight, eat…

Advice: get a new trainer. 1. This guy thinks lean bulks require low carbs. No support for this in the literature. No idea where he got this. Sounds like bro science. The splits that @psuLemon gave you are accurate and supported by the literature. 2. You already don't trust his nutritional advice or you wouldn't have…

Thanks for posting this @psuLemon. I'm surprised no one else has commented. I've had this experience, but I have never generalized from it. Nice to know I'm not alone. I recall someone else posting a link to another article written on muscle gains during recomp (or slow cuts), but can't remember the thread. It was an…