Today marks the ending of my recent seven-weeks-calorie-cut. I had my focus on building muscle roughly from April to Novemver 19 and I was pretty happy with my results, gaining a fair bit of strength and muscle. Throughout these eight months, I gained a total of 9 lbs with an estimated caloric surplus of 200 calories per day and alot of strength training, consisting of three times FB Strong, two times FB Flex and a couple of self-made routines in between, each combined with a little extra focus on my core muscles.
Well, like I said, at the end of this phase I had made quite a bit of gains, but it was clear that a certain amount of the weight gain was not muscle, but body fat. Nothing critical, but still I decided to take a little intermezzo over December/January to get rid of these extra pounds and see how my body feels and looks with more muscle on equal body fat as before. So from the beginning of December I began to eat on a deficit of 500 calories for the first six weeks and of 250 calories for the last week. I still kept doing strength training and kept the protein in my nutrition high, but I changed my workout routine a bit, doing FB Low impact (with some modifications) in December and starting FB 30 round 1 (the only program on my list that I had never finished) in the new year, both together with my wife. I kept up the special core focus, since it just felt amazing to me. I tried to stay kinda disciplined throughout the process, also restricting alcohol to one night getting really drunk with a friend I hadn't seen in a while and three beers on new years eve, All in all I had seven days on which I ate and/or drank alot more than on the other days: This one time drinking with my friend, two days around Christmas, one day at new years, and three arbitrary days in between when I just got pretty hungry. This sometimes happens on a prolonged caloric deficit, and my solution is always: Eat untill you're not hungry anymore! One day every week or every other week doesn't trow me back at all. Even if I overeat by 2000 to 3000, I am still somewhere between maintainance and a small deficit for the week as a whole. :) I also don't do fixed "cheat days" or anything like that. I just eat when I'm hungry. And well, I just don't consider this "cheating". Just pointing this out, because there are quite some people around who start blaming themselves and doubting their whole approach after a day or two like this.
By the end of this cutting phase, my weight has dropped by almosty 5 lbs (not 9 as I originally wrote... that would have been losing the whole weight I gained the year before, which would have made me pretty sad x) ). I am really happy with the visual results and the drop in strength was not too big either. Also it's really cool that the relatively lean version of myself is now almost 5 lbs heavier than last spring. Guess that's the netto gains of last year's strength training. Pretty motivating for the building phase to come now! :)
p.s. Non scale victory: Looking decent in crop tops! Rejoice, Rock 'n Roll soul! :D
Cutting the calories for seven weeks - results
Today marks the ending of my recent seven-weeks-calorie-cut. I had my focus on building muscle roughly from April to Novemver 19 and I was pretty happy with my results, gaining a fair bit of strength and muscle. Throughout these eight months, I gained a total of 9 lbs with an estimated caloric surplus of 200 calories per day and alot of strength training, consisting of three times FB Strong, two times FB Flex and a couple of self-made routines in between, each combined with a little extra focus on my core muscles.
Well, like I said, at the end of this phase I had made quite a bit of gains, but it was clear that a certain amount of the weight gain was not muscle, but body fat. Nothing critical, but still I decided to take a little intermezzo over December/January to get rid of these extra pounds and see how my body feels and looks with more muscle on equal body fat as before. So from the beginning of December I began to eat on a deficit of 500 calories for the first six weeks and of 250 calories for the last week. I still kept doing strength training and kept the protein in my nutrition high, but I changed my workout routine a bit, doing FB Low impact (with some modifications) in December and starting FB 30 round 1 (the only program on my list that I had never finished) in the new year, both together with my wife. I kept up the special core focus, since it just felt amazing to me. I tried to stay kinda disciplined throughout the process, also restricting alcohol to one night getting really drunk with a friend I hadn't seen in a while and three beers on new years eve, All in all I had seven days on which I ate and/or drank alot more than on the other days: This one time drinking with my friend, two days around Christmas, one day at new years, and three arbitrary days in between when I just got pretty hungry. This sometimes happens on a prolonged caloric deficit, and my solution is always: Eat untill you're not hungry anymore! One day every week or every other week doesn't trow me back at all. Even if I overeat by 2000 to 3000, I am still somewhere between maintainance and a small deficit for the week as a whole. :) I also don't do fixed "cheat days" or anything like that. I just eat when I'm hungry. And well, I just don't consider this "cheating". Just pointing this out, because there are quite some people around who start blaming themselves and doubting their whole approach after a day or two like this.
By the end of this cutting phase, my weight has dropped by almosty 5 lbs (not 9 as I originally wrote... that would have been losing the whole weight I gained the year before, which would have made me pretty sad x) ). I am really happy with the visual results and the drop in strength was not too big either. Also it's really cool that the relatively lean version of myself is now almost 5 lbs heavier than last spring. Guess that's the netto gains of last year's strength training. Pretty motivating for the building phase to come now! :)
p.s. Non scale victory: Looking decent in crop tops! Rejoice, Rock 'n Roll soul! :D