Hello Jordan, I hope the holiday season is treating you well and with many gains.
I have been on quite a journey for myself the past couple of years with lifting and strength. For personal, and a little professional, reasons I am looking to cut weight and reach a lower body fat. Then hopefully make some rad size gains after a maintenance phase.
I have always been roughly 210-195lbs my teen/young adult life, I always wanted to have this superhero-physique look. Yet never reaching it. I knew what I would look like at 185lbs, but I knew I could be leaner AND stronger. So I am striving for 170 by the end of all this. And of course I feel there is a lot of nuance in how I’ve gotten to 182lbs right now and continuing the progress, safely and healthily. (Skip to TL;DR)
Okay, back in March I began a cut and finally managed to get the factors right (literal years of yo-yo dieting and bad habits). I started at 191 pounds at Target (always on my feet and moving around), and ate 180g of protein, 170g of carbs, and ~50g of fat. I lost weight steadily until I weighed 180lbs in September and my friend and I started The Bridge as our rack and weights came in for the home gym!
Nothing changed, I was working, I was lifting with a barbell again, then for whatever reason I bumped my carbs up to 180-200g and I plateaued (Jeez I wonder why). Naturally gained a little weight back and was ~184lbs plateaued(/@maintenance?).
I watched one of your lectures about macros/nutrition and plugged my numbers into the BMR formula (I’m 22, 5’8.5, at the time 185 lbs) and by mid October I cut calories again, 185g protein, 112g carbs (bumped it to 125 because that’s pretty low), and 30g fats. Then I lost the regained weight and was sitting at 178lbs.
After thanksgiving, my birthday, and now Christmas (unsuccessfully trying to stay loyal to my macros) I’m weighing 182lbs this morning. Super long winded and if you read it I really appreciate it, but really my question is:
TL;DR. After a prolonged cutting phase, should I stop my cut
and enter a maintenance phase or keep pushing through to achieve my goal of 170lbs?