Roundhouse Kick your Cutting and Bulking Diets to the Curb…forever
I know I probably just shocked you when you read the title of the blog. Immediately your mind went to… “HOW DO I LOSE WEIGHT THEN!? HOW DO I PUT ON MUSCLE THEN?!” or even “THIS GUY IS AN IDIOT” , in which case you probably are going to stop reading the post right… and move on with your day. If you are curious continue reading.
Let Me Explain Why
First, when you are a beginner on a fitness journey you are not built like a bodybuilder underneath the layers of fat mass you have accumulated the past years of not working out for whatever reason. Yes, our bodies will always have muscle on them ( like those anatomy diagrams show), and it will be under the layers of fat mass but in no way is a perfectly sculpted rock hard body just sitting under there waiting for the winter layers to go away….SORRY.
A Limited amount of lean body (muscle) mass underneath those layers of fat.
However, we want to believe that underneath we look like some variation of this guy below without trying, all we need to do is lose the fat and we will be good.
We all have goals and have heard about using cutting/bulking dieting to reach goals the fastest and tried it at least once (myself included) . Let me ask you a question… “Where did we hear about this? and why did it seem so right?”
The answer is from Amazing Marketing from companies with a product in weight loss (HCG diets would be a good example) which then gets to magazines/other media like the internet, and also the common Myth that seems to stay around year after year. Then Amateur Bodybuilders, Athletes and Gym-goers are the unfortunate dealers of this information to friends and family. It is not their fault though. There is some validity in increasing/reducing your caloric intake to acquire some weight gain/loss, but the reason it fails to help you reach your goals is because it often works with extreme short-term situations, and leads to YO-YO diet cycling for most people who try it. Which simply means you will at some point lose the progress and results you gained and actually end up worse then when you started.
The Cutting Phase is usually associated with under eating and a very low caloric intake; no carbs, tons of cardio, high repetition weight training and limited time off for recovery. This will end up leading to weight loss of both muscle and fat. So if your goal is to see more muscle tone why would you want to lose muscle in your dieting? Wouldn’t you want to keep it and even build more? Along with the muscle loss you will have some side effects of the diet itself…feeling groggy, lethargic, tired and HUNGRY; craving food you have been depriving yourself from. Plus you are doing all of this activity which is going to make you want more food as it is, by default. Then when your cutting is done what happens…all hell breaks loose and you are back to eating everything which will soon become your bulking phase.
The Bulking Phase is usually associated with over eating, tons of proteins and fats, of course those carbs because lets face it; your on a bulking phase…you are trying to put on weight, no cardio, lifting moderately heavy a few times a week. What ends up happening is weight gain but you might gain some muscle but a lot of that weight will be added storage…Fat weight. So, the scale goes up 30 pounds in 3 months and you think you just gained 15–20 pounds of pure muscle from your bulking phase (because you’re realistic and couldn’t have gained 30 pounds of pure muscle. When in reality you might have gained 3–5 pounds of pure muscle mass and 25 extra pounds just for kicks and giggles…Unfortunately.
The reason you hear about those professional bodybuilders doing bulking and cutting diets to lose weight before competition is because they literally have PLENTY of muscle on them (years of training) and can afford to lose a few pounds of muscle on their diet. Jay Cutler, as pictured above, is 5 foot 9 inches and weighs around 270lbs…IN COMPETITION WEIGHT; coming down from an off-season of around 300lbs. His off-season weight is not 300 pounds of messiness and not working out and then miraculously a ripped 270lbs 6 weeks before the competition. Same goes for those females who don’t want to have the bat-wing arm, sagging butt bikini bottoms etc. Even if you are relatively small to begin with, you lack muscle mass to have that nice muscle “tone look” you would like to have without “bulking up like a man from weight training.” If you want to have good muscle tone you need to have…wait for it, Muscle.
While their bodies do change drastically from their off-season to in season looks, year to year they tend to look the exact same with minor detail changes.
So, do you think the best thing for you to do is to try and follow the exact plans they say they use in the fitness magazines and websites when you need to make monumental life changes in your world to change your physique by the end of the journey? You need to make life changes that will steer you clear of losing all the progress you have made. Once you reach whatever your goal is do you really want to lose it all just because you were lazy and decided to call it a Bulking phase? It was hard work, why not keep those results or try and better yourself with a new goal.
THE NEW SOLUTION to Reach your GOALS
(In no particular order after #1 and #2)
Make SMALL Steps….Small steps lead to habits and habits lead to unconscious behaviors and unconscious behaviors lead to CONSCIOUS and UNCONSCIOUS LIFESTYLE CHANGES!
Prioritize your goals: whats more important…looking beach season ready like your goal states or think of the excuses you are going to have to tell anyone who asks you why you never reached your goal?
Only Monitor your caloric intake
Create a diet that you can sustain for a long time
Do not deprive yourself of stuff you really want (you’re just going to have it anyway maybe not right now but soon enough)
Make smart food choices
Monitor your exercise
Progress your workouts
ASK FOR HELP if you do not see the results you want
K.I.S.S.= Keep It Simple Stupid
LIFT WEIGHTS
EXERCISE OFTEN
I know it might be hard to break habits and create new behaviors so I will leave you with this from Albert Einstein.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.
Originally published at fitletes.com
Thanks For taking the time out of your day to read.
If you enjoyed it then I hope you follow, It would really mean the world to me.