I’m 6’4’', 34in waist, 200lbs, 19% BF and want to cut down to 12-15% long term (6-12 mo). I’m a beginning intermediate in terms of my lifts.
My long term plan is to interleave hypertrophy and strength phases (no peaking as I’m not a competitive lifter or athlete).
I gathered already that cutting is better done during hypertrophy phases.
But over long periods of time I have a choice of either doing slow bulk & cut OR recomp until I hit some lower BF % (say 15%). Which one is more optimal long term? From my research and personal experience, during an aggressive cut I’m losing about 80% fat, 20% muscle. I suppose a slow bulk could be up to 80% muscle and 20% fat. Not sure how efficient recomps are?
Any insights appreciated! Again, I’m not a powerlifter so I’m ok trading some strength gains for lower BF %.
It’s been a solid 2 months, went up to 215 lbs body weight and a few % more body fat. Since I’m above 20% BF and strongly prefer to get below 14%, my plan is to cut for the next 3 months while running a hypertrophy program.
My maintenance is around 2650 calories and my last few weeks were around 1-2 lbs gain/wk.
Jordan, can you advise how I should go about cutting down my calories? I would like to be aggressive at around 2-2.5 lbs weight loss per week (1000-1250 calorie deficit per week).
How about something like this?
week 1: 500 cal deficit
week 2: 700 cal deficit
week 3: 900 cal deficit
week 4: 1000 cal deficit
weeks 5-8: 1000 cal deficit
weeks 9-12: 1250 cal deficit
Does above make sense? Can I cut my calories faster?