I’m a newly commissioned 2nd lieutenant in the Air Force and I want to get big and strong. I’m a 5’11 male with a 32-33 inch waist, 183 pounds, approx. 18-20% body fat. I’ve got some muscle mass and I scored pretty well on my last fitness assessment (94.5 out of 100), but I feel like I’m teetering on the edge of skinny-fat. I know the normal skinny-fat solution for most people would be to get big and strong first and then diet down to lose the excess body fat, but the max allowable weight for my height and age in the Air Force is 197 and my waist can’t go above 35 inches or I start losing points off the body composition portion of the fitness assessment. I don’t have a lot of room to work here.
What’s the best solution here? Train with a novice program like Starting Strength or the Barbell Medicine Beginner Template while eating at maintenance calories? Do the program on a small calorie deficit? Or, don’t do the program and diet down to 160-165 and then do the novice program properly to get big? My concern with that third one is losing the little bit of strength gains I got doing Starting Strength the first time this summer while I was losing weight, or having to start back up at a much lower working weight than I started with the first time.
I should also mention, I’m headed to my first duty station this weekend and while I’m there I have to attend mandatory PT 3 times a week, which should be 30-45 minutes of calisthenics and PT.