Bulk or cut? - never lifted regularly and last time ~2 years ago.

[NorseDane]

As the title says - never been lifting regularly for more than 3 months at a time max. However, i've been running for the past 5 months consistently and now i plan on implementing strength training into my life as a routine.

My current stats:
78 kg's (172 lbs)
184 cm's (6.03 feet)
32 years old.

Now my question:

What is your opinion on me cutting or bulking first? Ive read different takes on this and the answer seems to depend on what bodyfat percentage i start out at. I find it difficult to determine this exactly however.

You can see my current shape in my bodyspace under progress pics.

Those are both taken on today with different lightings.

Bulk or cut?

[SuffolkPunch]

When you see different opinions, that's a good sign that the decision probably isn't crucial.

I usually prefer most people who aren't very overweight to start with muscle gain because it's the thing that will take the longest and the thing you need to do most of. Cutting without building muscle first might make fluffy people look better fairly quickly but you can't usually just keep going and get to a physique with muscle definition without a lot of muscle gain first.

You should know that you don't need to pile on weight when gaining muscle "Bulking" is really only for very underweight people.

You could start eating at maintenance and aiming to make progressive overload on a program like Fierce 5... as long as you can stick to the planned increases, you will be hopefully building muscle. Use small increases in calories if progress starts to tail off.

[Benny9087]

Don’t worry about being too “fat” cause you’re not at all