Adarq.org

Interesting discussion and a complete mind fuck for anyone who has has ever been skinny and has tried to add muscle. I know I sound like a fanboy but I like this article when talking about how low you need to go bf% wise.

http://anthonymychal.com/2013/02/clean-bulk-fail-6-you-dont-understand-the-solid-base/

This link is in the article too but has some more varied pictures on different bodyfat levels.

http://anthonymychal.com/chaos-bodyfat/

In my personal experience I've been guilty of swinging too much on this. I've been around the 12% and wanted to cut further and then the next week when I'm cutting and losing strength and muscle I freak out and start going back the other way. It's a great recipe for going round in circles.

Quote from: Coges on August 06, 2014, 11:23:38 pm

In my personal experience I've been guilty of swinging too much on this. I've been around the 12% and wanted to cut further and then the next week when I'm cutting and losing strength and muscle I freak out and start going back the other way. It's a great recipe for going round in circles.

Easy to explain this coges. The first thing is when you're cutting serously you'll eventually start to burn off IMTG fat. This is the good fat that sits inside muscle, intramuscular triglyceride. This makes muscles look flat, lifeless and empty. So you think oh noes, im losing muscle, better panic and stop cutting. No, that's just an overreaction. The 2nd thing is, prolonged dieting will eventually fuck you up in terms of over-training. So being smart about it, knowing when to layoff the cardio (which for some reason we always wanna do on a cut but it might not be necessary on a decent caloric deficit). Training  2x a week might be the sweet spot. Train hard, but reduce frequency.  Give your body enough days to rest between sessions.

Oh yeah in my case it's all mental in terms of feeling too lean like I'm losing size and wanting to swing back the other way too quickly. I have not had consistency of diet or training in the past so that's my biggest hurdle. I've got the training going along nicely atm, just need to bring the diet in too.
I don't think I've ever been overtrained though and personally wouldn't be too concerned about that. When I don't exercise frequently I'm far worse with my eating so for me personally that would be horrible.

My main point, and that of the article, is that people overestimate how low they need to go bf% wise before doing the clean bulk. As you mentioned the prolonged cut is an overall mind fuck and not great for strength, muscle mass, hormone balance, etc. 

What i was getting at is that we sometimes think we're getting weaker but all it is, is a lack of adequate rest. This is especially the case while dieting because we can't train the same as we're used to. Coupled with not looking like you lift when you are cutting (carb depleted muscles, loss of IMTG etc) you can easily convince yourself you've got to stop cutting because you're losing muscle/strength when these are just illusions.

Good point. I haven't been on a cut like you're doing. When I was -500cal I never experienced any real issues though.

I dont think it's realistic that most people overestimate their cutting duration. If anything most are likely  to say, im too skinny now, better stop cutting, even those those are just artefacts of diets that you will look and feel small/weak especially on the tail end of a longer cut. For example, i'd love to tell myself, damn, i'm 78kg, better stop cutting, im probably at least 10% bodyfat now! But in reality i know i have enough cutting ahead of me that it would be a mistake to end cutting. It's okay and good to take breaks between stints of dieting. Last time i made the mistake of cutting too long - this time i'm taking a much more cavalier approach, bigger deficits to get thing out of the way asap. I'll be taking diet breaks in between to avoid problems with prolonged dieting (mood, hormones, etc).

I think most people stop for the wrong reasons (losing size) but still believe they need to go further which fucks up the whole process.
I admire your dedication but couldn't do what you're doing myself. I would near kill myself if I got down that low in weight.

@chisM, coges, entropy:
Good points and discussion. The key to all this is ( imho ) don't obsess and over analyze.  Keep it simple, study the basic principles, follow a well structured plan that includes those principles, let it all fall in place.

@raptor:
I know you hate counting kcals, but you can't cut if you don't count. It doesn't have to be a decimal point precision count though.
Go roughly. You are 185/85kg, you burn around 2000 without working out, so eat around 1500-1800 on rest days, 1800-2000 on workout days. Google 'food-name plate calories' for your ordinary menu choices and you will find about how much each thing has. And that is all to it.
EDIT: Hm, you can do it in another way. Don't count shit. Reduce the portions you eat. Don't reduce the protein sources, only the carbs/sugars/fat. For example when eating meat with rice, eat half the rice of the normal portion. When you attack nutella, eat half the box instead of all. Try to have a consistent plan ( same foods each week ) so you can have the same caloric income every week. Keep this for 2-3 weeks, see what happens to weight, readjust ( eat a bit more if you lost too much, eat some less if you didn't lose enough ). You'll find a nice balance fast and easy that way and never count shit.

@chisM, coges, entropy:
Good points and discussion. The key to all this is ( imho ) don't obsess and over analyze.  Keep it simple, study the basic principles, follow a well structured plan that includes those principles, let it all fall in place.

V true.

@raptor:
I know you hate counting kcals, but you can't cut if you don't count. It doesn't have to be a decimal point precision count though.
Go roughly. You are 185/85kg, you burn around 2000 without working out, so eat around 1500-1800 on rest days, 1800-2000 on workout days.
Google 'food-name plate calories' for your ordinary menu choices and you will find about how much each thing has. And that is all to it.

You need to count to begin with but once you have an idea of what foods equal what you can pretty much eat around what you know. I have a base amount of food I eat pretty much every day and then just vary the carbs and fats depending on whether I train or not. Makes eating pretty simple.

Body composition measurements:

Net morning weight : 82.4kg / 181.6lbs , same with last time, ties season low!!!
Waist : 86cm / 33.85'' ,  new all time  , broke the 34'' barrier 

Online bodyfat estimation : 15%
BI scale bodyfat estimation : n/a
AVERAGE bodyfat estimation : n/a

Previous:

Net morning weight : 82.4kg / 181.6lbs
Waist : 86.5cm / 34.05'' ,  new all time 

Online bodyfat estimation : 15.4%
BI scale bodyfat estimation : n/a
AVERAGE bodyfat estimation : n/a

Woah, it is working.
Same weight but smaller waist. Maybe water ( or whatever ) retention because i cant see how my bodyfat dropped and my weight is the same, you don't add muscle while sitting on your butt and dieting every day.
I look leaner too. Abs are now 2-and-a-half-pack in the morning, cuts more visible in shoulder muscles, bicep veins a bit more visible, vmos and back kinda more toned too.
Still, gonna go entropy style and say that to be truly lean ( not 10% or anything close to that, just typical lean looking, legit 13-14 ) i should be below 80, probably closer to 75. And there we have a problem because i don't want to be that light, not to mention that my clothes wont fit me.
We will see, carrying on as i am for now, IF FTW!!!!

Why you don't want to be that light?