Cutting season

hatrickpatrick

Hey, first time bulker here, starting to look ahead to summer and think about cutting - like many first time bulkers I've managed to make huge strength and size gains over the last 6 months but sadly have also managed to create a fairly impressive (in its own right) spare tyre to go with them

Just wondering how long do people tend to set aside for cutting, bearing in mind that you obviously have to take it relatively slow to avoid sacrificing the gains you've made? Should one begin now, or is 4-6 weeks enough?

This is of course a very newbish question, I am fully aware of this before even posting it so of course trolling me is unnecessary, though probably unavoidable

LuckyLloyd

What weight were you when you began? What do you weigh now?
Did you track bodyfat %?
Did you track your caloric surplus in detail? How many calories per day over did you aim for?
What were your lifts before you began? What are they now? Or how else did you track progress?

Most importantly:

What's your goal? How much performance are you willing to sacrifice for aesthetics and vice versa?

I'm sure someone could give you good feedback if they knew all of the above.

conzy

You can actually calculate how long it will take to get to your desired level of leanness.

1-2 lbs a week can be sustainable in the beginning as you get leaner the amount you lose per week will need to decrease,

4-6 week is way too short.. You say you have a "spare tyre" lets say you are 90kg and 20% body fat, to get to 10% bodyfat you need to lose 9kg of fat.

Lets say for the first 4 weeks you lose 0.8kg a week thats 3.6kg
Then for 4 weeks you lose 0.55kg that another 2.2kg
Then for 2 weeks you lose 0.4kg thats another 0.8kg
Then for 3 weeks you lose 0.3kg thats another 0.9kg

Now you have lost nearly 7.5kg and you are getting towards 10% but you are already 13 weeks cutting and have a few more to go.

You cant bulk for 6 months and expect to lose the fat in 6 weeks Its going to be a long steady process too or you will sacrifice all those gains!

runawaybishop

My cutting diet tends to look the same as my bulking diet except I eat less spuds and don't have a 9pm snack. It works out that i cut out about 500 calories a day out of my 2.6k normally (so roughly 20%). That drops about 1lb a week so you can gauge the time you'll need from there. 3 months would be a decent time frame to see results.