Want to start cutting

[ryannap2203]

31/W

I go to the gym 4X/week & have a pretty solid and productive exercise plan(my friend made it for me & he is a gym bro haha). I weigh 182 & I have been 184-185( I lost around 55lbs +/- since I started March 2022. I have a progress pic somewhere on my profile under “posts”) for like 4 months. So, im guessing it’s safe to say that I’m losing fat and turning into muscle?? I’m not knowledgeable in exercise science so feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.

I now want to make a concerted effort to lose weight. My goal is to be around 150. So, I’m a devout vegan obvs & I would appreciate some tips, advice, recs, etc; I want to actually SEE my abs eventually

Thank you all in advance

 

[jibs]

@ryannap2203 I’m just finishing one—I think the most important thing is to continue strength training while cutting. Losing a little muscle is inevitable but it won’t be too apparent in your lifts as long as you don’t cut too fast. I commented on a similar post here, hope there’s something helpful in there.

 

[student101]

@ryannap2203 To go along with everything everyone said. I think its important to know when youve been cutting too long. So i tell my clients if your weightloss stalls AND your workouts get worse then its time for you to run a maintence phase for 1-4 weeks depending on how long it takes for you to get back to normal workouts.

Basically if your weight stalls and workouts suck its a sign that youre detraining because the stimulus of losing weight has been run too long.

 

[opova]

@ryannap2203 hi, i disagree with a lot of the posts on here for several reasons. I'll say that first, fasting as a cutting methodology is not necessarily efficacious, Renaissance Periodization has a good video on this, but it's generally better for maintenance of skeletal muscle to eat overall fewer calories than to go a day a week (or 2, as someone suggested) without eating. fasting absolutely reduces your recovery, which in turn lowers your ability to work hard in the gym. Second, others have recommended that you lift 2/3 days a week and take up cardio. I think this would be a mistake. At 2/3 days of lifting a week you're going to at best maintain skeletal muscle, but chances are you'll still lose mass working out so little. you should and need to be doing cardio, as it will help you increase your TDEE, and provide hormonal/muscular benefits (e.g. an hour of low intensity cardio will help with insulin spikes after eating). I would recommend doing an hour of low intensity cardio in the morning, then doing your lift later in the day. Someone recommended you do strength training while on your cut, which is interesting. If you lift for strength I can see this, but you shouldn't change up your program drastically on a cut. If you're using a program with a focus on hypertrophy, the way you'll adapt it is by modifying the volume slightly on a cut. Don't suddenly incorporate oly lifts or something. Someone else recommended a loss of 2lbs per week, which is straight up drastic. Cutting 2 lbs per week will result in a greater loss of muscle than a progressive 1lbs per week loss.

1) find out your TDEE
2) increase your low intensity cardio
3) maintain intensity in your workouts, perhaps slightly lowering your volume.

That's all you need. seriously.

 

[ryannap2203]

@opova ok thank you. I have a UB/LB 4 day split & I don’t do cardio as much as I did when I was heavier; I was super focused on losing weight back then lol.

And you say that I should lower volume? As in the total number of reps that I do for a given exercise? Most of my exercises are 8-10reps a set. So I should do maybe 6-8? Or 5-7 a set?

 

[opova]

@ryannap2203 you want intensity to stay the same, and in the early stages of your cut you don't want to change your rep range or your sets total. However, as you deplete your glycogen stores, like after the first 2 weeks of your cut, you need to make changes. Let's say your workout consists of 8 sets of about 8-14 reps. in which case, you don't necessarily want to lower your weight or your reps for the first sets, but you might do 7 or 6 total sets instead of 8. That way, you can maintain that same weight, keep the same rep ranges, but you have less energy, making you exclude 1 or 2 sets.

instead of 8 sets of 10-12, do 6 or 7. same intensity, same effort, just 1 less working sets. If you do drop sets, drop the weight slightly more

 

[ryannap2203]

@opova Woah, 8 sets!? Who does that?? That’s excessive

 

[opova]

@ryannap2203 Not 8 sets per exercise haha, 8 sets total. So let's say your upper day involved 3 sets of pull ups, 3 sets bench, 3 sets of arm exercises. You might instead do 2 sets bench and 2 sets arm exercises instead of 3

 

[ryannap2203]

@opova Ahhh ok got it. Thank you for all of the advice.

 

[misty2009]

@ryannap2203 So to successfully cut, you need to consume less calories than you're expending. Use this handy website to calculate how many calories you need to consume daily to get to your target weight: https://www.fatcalc.com/bwp

Good luck!

 

[dawn16]

@ryannap2203 Fasting is by far the greatest weight loss tool.
Fast twice a week and do cardio after about 12-18 hours fasted and watch yourself drop bodyfat like a machine. It’s really amazing.

 

[worriedmom1968]

@ryannap2203 Do a two or even three day split that captures the major muscle groups, and the rest of the days hit cardio. One rest day a week. Aim for hitting under your TDEE with healthy foods and lots of protein (2g per kg of body weight is a good goal for cutting, 1.5g for any other scenario).

Whether you’ve been building muscle underneath the fat loss depends on what your diet and lifting regimen have been, but as you get closer to 20-30% body fat it will become more apparent whether you’ve gained muscle or not, and what your eventual ideal body weight would be at the end of the cut.

 

[opova]

@worriedmom1968 at 2/3 days in the gym the best case scenario is maintenance of skeletal muscle. I think that's far too little volume for most people. I agree with you about cardio, but if op is already in the gym 4 days a week, reducing their volume like this makes their TDEE even lower, and the cut even harder.

 

[worriedmom1968]

@opova That’s fair! But I didn’t take their comment as they’re necessarily lifting 4 days a week, simply that they’re in the gym 4 days a week. Some of that could already be cardio.

 

[jamesalbright]

@ryannap2203 Track your weight and adjust your calorie intake to where you are losing up to 1-2lbs a week.

If you hit a wall then you need to look at reducing more calories or increasing your cardio - usually best to increase cardio at that point.

 

[opova]

@jamesalbright 2 lbs a week is a lot. a milder weight loss per week will definitely help maintain more muscle

 

[jamesalbright]

@opova Assuming this person is a beginner and doesn't have much muscle and is trying to lose 30lbs, 2lbs a week is fine.

 

[sonnybaker]

@ryannap2203 I’m on a cut at the moment, and I’m trying to fast one day a week (36 hour fast) while eating maintenance calories every other day. I found in the past with cutting that when reducing my daily calorie intake I just stagnate after a few weeks, I believe it’s due to metabolism slowing as your body adapts to reduced calories. I’ve done some fasting before and read a lot about it; after 16-20 hours your body increases fat burning while also increasing HGH (human growth hormone) and while there are not a lot of studies yet, there are good indications it might lead you to lose fat while at the very least maintain muscle mass. I’m down about 5 pounds (over a month) and my lifts in the gym are the same, some even progressing so it’s looking like a much better way to do things for me… and it feels much better to be hungry one day a week rather than 7.

 

[opova]

@sonnybaker obviously different things work for different people but fasting is pretty antagonistic to recovery. there's good research that indicates overall lowering of calorie intake is better for muscle maintenance on a cut than fasting because of this.