3 months bulk, 1 month cut

[Zteps]

To maintain reasonable leanness year round, is it ok to bulk 3 months, cut 1 month, bulk 3 months, cut 1 etc?

It seems more reasonable also to cut a bit at a time than go on a 3 month cut towards summer.

Is there a downside to this?

[Cronos1247]

I wouldn't set exact time constraints on your bulking & cutting cycles. Just watch your BF % and when you think you're getting too fat, start a slow cut. Just watch your body fat, most people bulk until around 15%. I intended on doing a short bulk, that turned into 8-10 months long just because I took my time adding size.

[fat2fit4real]

If I manage to ever completely finish cutting instead of getting bored and sabotaging myself to >15% bf my plan would be to bulk for 6-9 months and cut for 2-3. As much as I'd love a cut to only last for 1 month so I could just straight up starve myself to have it actually only last 2-3 weeks it really doesn't seem optimal. I'm certainly no expert though.

[drummerguydw]

It is possible to use that strategy, a lot of people don't like setting such strict time restraints though, I like to cut until I'm happy with my leanness then bulk until I feel I'm a little to chubby, I don't use exact bf percentages really, I like to stay athletic though, so I never let my bf get too high, I was at 20% for a while and that felt way too high, now I'm cutting down to 10-12% range

[Waldo56]

3 months bulk, 1 month cut works great

It can further be compressed to 2 months bulk, 2 weeks cut.

[Shandlar]

Or stretched out a bit to 20 weeks bulk, 6 weeks cut. Can get two cycles a year in that way. Gotta be really good with your bulk to be able to get the fat off in only 6 weeks though.