I need your help: Cut first or just bulk?

[rasto81]

Hello.

This is my first post here. I see that there are many experienced and helpful people so I'd like to ask you for help.


I started training in April this year (after very very long time without doing anything for my body except of occasional sport), gained some strength and bit of muscles but had to take break in July after I injured my elbow. I never been strong, neither muscular and it is VERY hard for me to gain any weight at all.

Now I am just doing fullbody training at home every other day and will go back to gym next week and dont know if I should cut first and then try bulk clean or just bulk and cut down fat later.

I have no problem at all to loose some weight (actually if I dont overeat and eat clean I am loosing weight...) but I am afraid that I will loose even that small amount of muscles that I have... I know that my belly is kinda big but my arms and legs are thin and I dont want to be skinny even on chest anymore. I dont want to be huge, just have decent chest, arms and abs. Also I'd like to gain lot of strength especially to my back and legs because they are weak. So what should I do? Get rid of belly fat first and bulk or just bulk straight?

According to last bodyfat % test I had 21,9% of fat.


Here are some pics of me:

175cm/76kg/28 years

[koatliki]

Cut

[PBateman2]

Cut until you are 11-12%BF then clean bulk.

Keep lifting heavy and hard. Tight diet.

[csb5731]

I say cut too. You aren't super-fat or anything but it's not an ideal place to start bulking. No sense in getting fat-fat, stretching skin, or having to cut for most of a year following a bulk.

At your current bodyfat, you could probably lose ~15+ lbs before muscle loss even becomes much of a possibility, assuming you eating appropriately and lifting.

Yes, your arms and legs will probably shrink when you cut, which might alarm you, but it's going to be the fat that you are losing.

[Mattguy]

cut

[rasto81]

Thank you for feedback everyone. So I officialy admitted that I am fat and need to get that fat away .. so I am going for cut. That is something I never ever did in my life but I guess that it will be easy to me because I already lost 1lb just eating smaller dinner yesterday.. I just hope that I won't go down too fast so I will keep protein at 1g/lb and decrease calories by 500. I also plan to do full body 3x week starting tomorrow and abs in free days.

I will post pics of how do I progress later.

[OscarGortez]

you're the same height and age as me... I just weighed myself and clocked in at 189.6 ugh... I just wanted an idea of where i was at, i'll weigh myself again tomorrow morning, this is the fattest I've ever been. If YOU need to cut what's that say for me.

[rasto81]

you're the same height and age as me... I just weighed myself and clocked in at 189.6 ugh... I just wanted an idea of where i was at, i'll weigh myself again tomorrow morning, this is the fattest I've ever been. If YOU need to cut what's that say for me.

If you have enough of muscles and less bodyfat you actually may not need to cut..

I personaly dont feel like I have to decrease my weight bad but its true that my belly is getting out of control. I always had hard time to get some weight. I trained hard 4x/week, ate clean food (+whey & maltodextrine, egg protein with milk overnight) but couldnt get any significiant weight, also I felt like I dont have enough energy during training. So then I started ate everything (but not like there is no tomorrow) and finally gained some weight (3lbs in 2 months) but it was during time when I didnt train in gym (just occasionaly in home) because of my elbow so it probably went mostly to fat.

This time I will try to do it right so if its better to get rid of fat first I will do it. After seeing here pics of many guys of my height but with even less weight that are in much better shape I know that weight doesnt automatically mean muscles and I may actually look BETTER with 5kg less but more muscles and less bodyfat. I am just afraid that I wont have enough energy to train if I cut my calories down but gota try it first..

I have protein blend powder for morning, gainer with 35% protein as postworkout drink, set food plan with plenty of tuna, chicken meat, oatmeals and some rice to get enough carbs (Actually when I was doing my bulk diet plan most difficult for me was to get enough calories because I dont eat any sweets or fat foods (except of tuna)), and plenty of free time to train so I hope that it will work now.

[rasto81]

Ok So I cut down my calories intake to around 2400. I am loosing weight quickly (lost about 2,5 lbs in first 3 days already) but I feel very hungry all the time. Should I just eat more? Or should I accept that permanent hunger will be my friend during cut?

[hankst]

I don't want to rain on your parade, but you won't lose fat with 2400 kcal per day at your height / weight if you don't work out like a mother****er, lead a veeeeery active lifestyle, or are an extreme ectomorph (which, looking at your belly, you are not ).

The weight you already lost was a mixture of less food in your system, and lost water weight.

Stick to the 2400 kcal for now, and look at your progress over the next 3 weeks. If weight loss doesn't stall after week 1, you're good. If it does, you will have to decrease your calories further.

[rasto81]

I don't want to rain on your parade, but you won't lose fat with 2400 kcal per day at your height / weight if you don't work out like a mother****er, lead a veeeeery active lifestyle, or are an extreme ectomorph (which, looking at your belly, you are not ).

The weight you already lost was a mixture of less food in your system, and lost water weight.

Stick to the 2400 kcal for now, and look at your progress over the next 3 weeks. If weight loss doesn't stall after week 1, you're good. If it does, you will have to decrease your calories further.

Haha thank you for input.

It is interesting but I couldnt get any weight when I ate 3200 kcal per day and worked out 4x per week. Maybe my metabolism is so fast (or I wasnt eating enough protein) or I am just plain wrong counting calories

"The weight you already lost was a mixture of less food in your system, and lost water weight. "

Ok this sounds smart. You may be right. I'll keep calories at around 2400 and see what happens.

*going to starve again*

[hankst]

*going to starve again*

Don't worry, hunger will go away after some days. Just stick to it .

[rasto81]

Thank you Hankst.

I have 1 more question but dont want to start another thread:



It is bad idea of puting 20g of maltodextrine into postworkout whey protein drink during cut?

[hankst]

I don't see why you would use Maltrodextrin anyway, even during a bulk.. try to get your calories with "real" food.

[rasto81]

I don't see why you would use Maltrodextrin anyway, even during a bulk.. try to get your calories with "real" food.

I read that its good to have some fast carbs postworkout to increase insulin (which should increase protein syhthesis) and also to avoid my post workout whey being used as energy

[rasto81]

Here is my 30 days progress.

Weight down -3kg from 76 do 73.

I am doing Allpro's beginner routine and eating around 1900-2300 calories with 120+g protein.

I definitely dont want to go below 70kg so I will maybe do 1 more week and then slowly recomp.

Anyone can estimate BF% for me?

[ramage85]

Hello.

This is my first post here. I see that there are many experienced and helpful people so I'd like to ask you for help.


I started training in April this year (after very very long time without doing anything for my body except of occasional sport), gained some strength and bit of muscles but had to take break in July after I injured my elbow. I never been strong, neither muscular and it is VERY hard for me to gain any weight at all.

Now I am just doing fullbody training at home every other day and will go back to gym next week and dont know if I should cut first and then try bulk clean or just bulk and cut down fat later.

I have no problem at all to loose some weight (actually if I dont overeat and eat clean I am loosing weight...) but I am afraid that I will loose even that small amount of muscles that I have... I know that my belly is kinda big but my arms and legs are thin and I dont want to be skinny even on chest anymore. I dont want to be huge, just have decent chest, arms and abs. Also I'd like to gain lot of strength especially to my back and legs because they are weak. So what should I do? Get rid of belly fat first and bulk or just bulk straight?

According to last bodyfat % test I had 21,9% of fat.


Here are some pics of me:

175cm/76kg/28 years

listen my friend it is pointless you doing a whole body work out to gain muscle you are sending to much lactic acid to all muscles, you need to consentrait that acid in to your muscles the only way to do this is to only do 1 or 2 muscle groups a day but trust me i see no gain working out in the gym that way, it wasnt till i used my head ate right and isolated my muscles that they started to grow. do this and you will see results, and dont be scared to add wieght people can make things as complicated as they like but the hardcor fact is that if you are lifting more wieght week bye week you body has to grow