Progress: Mini Cut Week #1

For anyone looking to build muscle, it's important to spend some amount of time in a caloric surplus eating more calories than you're burning. Unless you're overweight, an extreme beginner, or taking steroids, you're not building significant amounts of muscle AND burning significant amounts of fat. Natural athletes are best served by picking either one goal or the other: building muscle or losing fat. Distinct bulking phases (eating in a caloric surplus) or distinct cutting phases (eating in a caloric deficit) are used to accomplish these goals.

The goal of bulking is to maximize muscle gain while minimizing fat gain. Some fat gain while building muscle is expected and necessary, but it's important to keep from getting outright fat for obvious health reasons, and for competitors, to facilitate getting into contest shape quicker/easier. When it comes to dieting, the goal is to maximize fat loss while minimizing muscle loss.

So this is a long intro to today's post about mini cuts. A mini cut is a short but aggressive dieting phase to mitigate some of the fat gain from bulking so that body fat levels do not get too high. Being quick (1-4 weeks tops) and then getting right back to bulking calories, we can afford to diet harder without too much worry of the metabolic adaptations that occur while dieting (ie: changes in hormones and deceases in energy expenditure via both non-exercise associated thermogenesis [NEAT] and exercise associated thermogenesis [EAT]). Refeeding, if desired, can help to minimize these issues. After the mini cut, the quick reintroduction of food works to relieve any adaptations as well.

I was planning on waiting a bit longer for a mini cut, but I started to feel sickly full and was having trouble getting in enough food each day. I was waking up in the morning still so stuffed from the day before that I couldn't even think about breakfast. I decided to listen to my body and take a mini cut.

Here's week 1 progress:

Bulking macros were 150 g. protein, 330 g. carbs, 70 g. fat. I dropped my macros for this mini cut to 145 g. protein, 145 g. carbs, 33 g. fat. Although sometimes I have been reducing my protein to 120 g. while upping my carbs to 170 g., just depending on how I'm feeling. Yes, these are poverty macros. But I also wanted to let my diet take care of the deficit without having to incorporate any cardio. So zero cardio on this mini cut because I don't particularly enjoy it or need it. The point here is to be aggressive, losing fat very quickly, so that I can get right back into bulking and back into building a better package for my next competition. 

I'm down an average of 2.02 lbs. in the first week, although some of the weight is definitely water. I'll likely continue for 1-2 more weeks... But leaning more towards 1 week. :) Haha. 

Training in a surplus and training in a deficit are two totally different animals. I am so loving feeling strong and knowing that I'm growing during this improvement season that I really don't have any desire to diet for very long. After only one week, I'm already ready to be back to bulking, eating a ton of food, lifting heavy as shit, and setting new PRs.