Rules of thumb for cutting

[quark]

I've been watching videos on cutting.

Greg Nukols: divide your current bodyfat percentage by 20. Aim to lose this percentage of your weight per week. For example, if you're 200 pounds and 30% bodyfat, 30% / 20 = 1.5% and 1.5% of 200 is 3 pounds. 3,500 calories represents about one pound, so to lose one pound you'd need to eat 500 fewer calories per day or burn 500 more or some combination.

Beyond this level, research shows you are not able to burn additional fat. If you want, you could have a smaller caloric deficit and lose less.

Eric Helms: about 80% of caloric deficit should come from less food and 20% from more cardio or other exercise.

When estimating calories from exercise, remember that you have a basal metabolism. Don't just look at how many calories doing something burns, figure out how many more calories it burns than you would otherwise burn

If you do too much cardio, you'll start looking like an endurance athlete.

Everyone: Decrease fats and carbs, not protein.

These are rules of thumb, not hard and fast laws of the universe applicable to everyone.

[tdood]

I shoot for 40g protien a meal (to make sure I’m getting enough, and for enough bcaa)

I try to go 3-5 hrs between meals.

[augeleven]

Greg Nukols: divide your current bodyfat percentage by 20. Aim to lose this percentage of your weight per week. For example, if you're 200 pounds and 30% bodyfat, 30% / 20 = 1.5% and 1.5% of 200 is 3 pounds. 3,500 calories represents about one pound, so to lose one pound you'd need to eat 500 fewer calories per day or burn 500 more or some combination.

so Nuckols suggests a person being 1500 calories a day in deficit for the above individual? ouch

Beyond this level, research shows you are not able to burn additional fat. If you want, you could have a smaller caloric deficit and lose less.

do you mean the 500 calories a day, or the 1500 calories a day?

[quark]

@augeleven He said the maximum fat you can burn is the calculated percentage of bodyfat per week. Have a look at his video and see if you have another interpretation.

[augeleven]

Thanks @quark. I get it now, I guess I was unsure when you mentioned the 500 calories a day deficit. When I read your post I thought you meant there is no point in going lower than 500 calories. Thanks for the the clarification

[DCM]

Greg Nukols: divide your current bodyfat percentage by 20. Aim to lose this percentage of your weight per week. For example, if you're 200 pounds and 30% bodyfat, 30% / 20 = 1.5% and 1.5% of 200 is 3 pounds. 3,500 calories represents about one pound, so to lose one pound you'd need to eat 500 fewer calories per day or burn 500 more or some combination.

This sounds good in theory, but presupposes that people can get regular and accurate bodyfat percentage readings in the first place. Would the Navy method be good/accurate enough, I wonder? Otherwise you might end up putting an unnecessary hurting on yourself, or tread water.

[Savs]

tdood is dropping some programming advice in another thread. viewtopic.php?f=3&t=1589
I just want to include the link here for when the forum grows so large many people won't have time to read and keep up with all the threads.

[omaniphil]

Greg Nukols: divide your current bodyfat percentage by 20. Aim to lose this percentage of your weight per week. For example, if you're 200 pounds and 30% bodyfat, 30% / 20 = 1.5% and 1.5% of 200 is 3 pounds. 3,500 calories represents about one pound, so to lose one pound you'd need to eat 500 fewer calories per day or burn 500 more or some combination.

This sounds good in theory, but presupposes that people can get regular and accurate bodyfat percentage readings in the first place. Would the Navy method be good/accurate enough, I wonder? Otherwise you might end up putting an unnecessary hurting on yourself, or tread water.

I'm not even sure it sounds good in theory. I'm around 265lbs, and probably in the 30-35% body fat range. This advice would have me dropping about 4lbs per week which seems to be an insane rate. At that rate I'd be shedding lean body mass at the same rate as fat loss. I'd lose so much strength doing that.

[quark]

I suppose a more precise way of summarizing Nuckol's message is that the maximum amount of fat you can metabolize is given by the formula. Losing more than that will result in losing muscle in addition to fat.

I don't know if you'd lose much lean body mass if you stay below the target level while eating properly with good programming. Maybe you would and maybe you wouldn't, depending. There may be cases where it's not practicable to reduce calories (or increase energy expenditure) enough to hit the target loss rate, as you'd have too low a caloric intake to maintain basic function.

Again, this is a rule of thumb, not a law of the universe.

[Mugaaz]

Greg Nukols: divide your current bodyfat percentage by 20. Aim to lose this percentage of your weight per week. For example, if you're 200 pounds and 30% bodyfat, 30% / 20 = 1.5% and 1.5% of 200 is 3 pounds. 3,500 calories represents about one pound, so to lose one pound you'd need to eat 500 fewer calories per day or burn 500 more or some combination.

This sounds good in theory, but presupposes that people can get regular and accurate bodyfat percentage readings in the first place. Would the Navy method be good/accurate enough, I wonder? Otherwise you might end up putting an unnecessary hurting on yourself, or tread water.

I'm not even sure it sounds good in theory. I'm around 265lbs, and probably in the 30-35% body fat range. This advice would have me dropping about 4lbs per week which seems to be an insane rate. At that rate I'd be shedding lean body mass at the same rate as fat loss. I'd lose so much strength doing that.

I'm also around 265 / 30~%. I know of no possible way to lose 4lbs a week. Years back when I was over 300lbs and doing Lyle McDonald's RFL, I still never lost over 3lbs per week. Event 3lbs happened only a couple times before it dropped below that.

[omaniphil]

Greg Nukols: divide your current bodyfat percentage by 20. Aim to lose this percentage of your weight per week. For example, if you're 200 pounds and 30% bodyfat, 30% / 20 = 1.5% and 1.5% of 200 is 3 pounds. 3,500 calories represents about one pound, so to lose one pound you'd need to eat 500 fewer calories per day or burn 500 more or some combination.

This sounds good in theory, but presupposes that people can get regular and accurate bodyfat percentage readings in the first place. Would the Navy method be good/accurate enough, I wonder? Otherwise you might end up putting an unnecessary hurting on yourself, or tread water.

I'm not even sure it sounds good in theory. I'm around 265lbs, and probably in the 30-35% body fat range. This advice would have me dropping about 4lbs per week which seems to be an insane rate. At that rate I'd be shedding lean body mass at the same rate as fat loss. I'd lose so much strength doing that.

I'm also around 265 / 30~%. I know of no possible way to lose 4lbs a week. Years back when I was over 300lbs and doing Lyle McDonald's RFL, I still never lost over 3lbs per week. Event 3lbs happened only a couple times before it dropped below that.

Its possible, just painful. I did the Velocity Diet (a PSMF) a couple of years ago. Went from 260lbs down to about 230 in one month. Got noticeably weaker though. Would not recommend.

[TimK]

Its possible, just painful. I did the Velocity Diet (a PSMF) a couple of years ago. Went from 260lbs down to about 230 in one month. Got noticeably weaker though. Would not recommend.

I mean, you could have lost at a pretty middle-of-the-road rate like 1.5lbs and it would have taken you 20 weeks to lose those thirty pounds while conceivably maintaining strength. So I guess the question is where your strength/lean body mass was 4 months after that cut? As someone who spent 6 months last year cutting at a reasonable rate attempting to keep as much strength as possible, I have wondered whether it wouldn't be easier psychologically to just to take the drastic approach for a short period of time and then get into a surplus and start massing again.

[Hanley]

6 months last year cutting at a reasonable rate

I'd go totally insane.

[Savs]

6 months last year cutting at a reasonable rate

I'd go totally insane.

I was possibly already insane, but now in addition to that I'm constantly pissed off. I've only lost ten pounds and have another ten to go, at about - 1.5 to 2 lb a month. It fucking blows. I can't start the MM, and there are a few niggling injuires. My neck hurts like a motherfucker, and I'm sure I didn't do it benching. Something's a little tweaked somewhere in my abz, and I don't know how that happened either. Thanks for listening, assholes.

[Mugaaz]

Greg Nukols: divide your current bodyfat percentage by 20. Aim to lose this percentage of your weight per week. For example, if you're 200 pounds and 30% bodyfat, 30% / 20 = 1.5% and 1.5% of 200 is 3 pounds. 3,500 calories represents about one pound, so to lose one pound you'd need to eat 500 fewer calories per day or burn 500 more or some combination.

This sounds good in theory, but presupposes that people can get regular and accurate bodyfat percentage readings in the first place. Would the Navy method be good/accurate enough, I wonder? Otherwise you might end up putting an unnecessary hurting on yourself, or tread water.

I'm not even sure it sounds good in theory. I'm around 265lbs, and probably in the 30-35% body fat range. This advice would have me dropping about 4lbs per week which seems to be an insane rate. At that rate I'd be shedding lean body mass at the same rate as fat loss. I'd lose so much strength doing that.

I'm also around 265 / 30~%. I know of no possible way to lose 4lbs a week. Years back when I was over 300lbs and doing Lyle McDonald's RFL, I still never lost over 3lbs per week. Event 3lbs happened only a couple times before it dropped below that.

Its possible, just painful. I did the Velocity Diet (a PSMF) a couple of years ago. Went from 260lbs down to about 230 in one month. Got noticeably weaker though. Would not recommend.

It wasn't possible for me. My calories couldn't go any lower. I could have done more cardio, but the amount required to up your weight loss by an entire pound per week is insane, and not real productive for body composition. There is a huge individual variation on this stuff. There are dudes who drop a 1lb a week at 3500 calories a day, then there is the opposite side of the spectrum. That diet was successful for me, but it took way, way longer than advertised by most people online.

[tdood]

I think if you’re pretty big and fat you can lost pretty quickly, but man, 3lbs+ is a serious crash diet. 1.5-2 lbs is fast enough for me. I’ve done a lot of dieting the past 15 months, with a 6 month break, and am down 45+ lbs. it sucks and I’m not thinking about going Into a deficit till 2019. I want to PR everything.

[Stenson]

Psychologically it's much easier for me to do 8-10 week cuts at a bigger deficit. My hunger levels seem to be about the same whether I'm on a 300 calorie deficit or a 800 calorie deficit. But about 8 weeks in I just hit a wall, every time.

[Mugaaz]

But about 8 weeks in I just hit a wall, every time.

I've experienced that as well. If you're going to require a lengthy period of weight loss, I think there needs to be some planned breaks in there. Not for sanity purposes, but just pure efficacy. I haven't seen much compelling info about what is ideal, but I'm going to be doing between 6-8w on, followed by 2w off. Off period needs to be controlled, with specific macros to hit. Don't turn it into "eat all the crap possible" for 2 weeks diet break.

[GrizzlyAdam]

Greg Nukols: divide your current bodyfat percentage by 20. Aim to lose this percentage of your weight per week. For example, if you're 200 pounds and 30% bodyfat, 30% / 20 = 1.5% and 1.5% of 200 is 3 pounds. 3,500 calories represents about one pound, so to lose one pound you'd need to eat 500 fewer calories per day or burn 500 more or some combination.

Whelp. According to this, I should be eating 665 calories per day. I know I need to lose a lot of weight, but...

[Savs]

But about 8 weeks in I just hit a wall, every time.

I've experienced that as well.

Me too. I've been thinking a lot about this, and it's too bad I don't know more about it. The body just does not like losing weight, especially the last ten pounds. I feel really lethargic. To conserve energy my body just wants to do nothing. So it's this vicious cycle where I have to reduce calories further, the body slows down more, I reduce calories more; I up the coffee intake to even get to the workout, and since that's in the evening I now can't fall asleep because I had coffee late in the day, so I'm even more tired the next day so have more coffee.

I don't know. I have to get this done now, though, because the older I get the more difficult it's going to get. That's pretty much all I know.

ETA: I wonder if at the end you can't lose more fat by just cutting calories, lifting a little bit, and sitting on your ass the rest of the day. I mean, you can, but you can't while holding on to most of the muscle. (???) Recently (maybe five years ago) I worked construction (doing some demolition and framing) for a while (to renovate some space off campus for a small company), and I ate as much as I wanted and dropped 20 lb down to a bodyweight of 175 lb (I'm averaging 199 lb right now at 5'8").