Hi Jordan, I have been cutting for 16 weeks now and although I have made some good progress, it is much slower than I would have anticipated. I started out at 77.3 kg @ 16.7% bf, and I am now around 71.6 kg @ 13.5% bf, and I want to get down to around 12% bf before doing a long and slow bulk (The reason I want to get to 12% is because I don’t want to be in a constant bulking/cutting cycle every 6 months, so I am planning to bulk for around 16 months but I don’t want my bf % to get too high). According to my scale, on average I have been losing 0.35 kg in weight p/w and have been losing 0.20 kg of fat p/w, which seems very slow to me considering what I often see online of people who say they lose 0.5 kg p/w. I am currently eating ~1800 calories, and my macros are ~145g protein, ~140g carbs, ~68g fat. I thought about eating less but as it is I am already struggling with hunger, and according to my scale I lost 1.65 kg of muscle (an average of 0.1 p/w), which seems like a lot to me, and I am worried about losing more muscle if I get my calories lower (Some of this may be in part because during the cut I haven’t been able to squat properly due to a hip injury). Any advice on where to go from here, Jordan?
Hey Nick,
Thanks for the post. Looks like you’re losing 0.1kg LBM per week and 0.25kg FM per week, or pretty close to a 25/75 split between LBM and FM, which is what we see reflected in the literature on average.
I think if you want to lose weight faster you’ll need a bigger deficit- more conditioning or less calories. I think the difference between 12% and 13.5% BF is negligible in terms of long term bulk outcomes, so I’m not sure that matters.
It sounds like adherence is becoming difficult and it might be a good idea to end the cut now (or have it ended for you dude to adherence issues). I also would have your protein higher than it is right now during a period of weight loss, e.g. 2.5g/kg BW or so.
-Jordan
Okay, thank you very much Jordan.
I haven’t seen much convincing data that the 25/75 ratio significantly changes based on adiposity levels.
Hi Jordan, I ended up continuing my cut, but I am having trouble with it. in the past 4 weeks I went down from 71.6 kg to 70 kg, though my BF% has stayed the same at 13.5%. I have had a couple of injuries that are unrelated to the gym and I haven’t been able to train consistently so that may have a part to play in this, although I would have expected my BF% to go down since I am on about a 500-600 calorie deficit (I am on 1700 calories p/d, and to be honest, I haven’t been doing cardio as I believed that being in a big enough deficit would be enough to lose fat.
So, I have 2 questions about how to go from here:
1.I wanted to know whether I should stop the cut here like you originally suggested or if I should keep going with it and maybe change something about the way I’m doing the cut?
2. When I do end the cut, how long should I take to get up to maintenance calorie intake and should I have a period of maintaining my weight or should I jump straight back into a bulk?