Should i keep bulking or cut

These are strategic periods of weight gain and loss, respectively. While these strategies are fairly common, you may wonder about the specific upsides and downsides of bulking and cutting, and whether they are even necessary at all. This article explores the ins and outs of bulking and cutting, including some pros, cons, and recommendations for doing them.

A bulk is a period of eating in a strategic calorie surplus. The goal is to gain weight, primarily due to increased muscle mass. People most often combine bulking with high intensity resistance training to help boost their muscle and strength gains. You can accomplish this in a tightly controlled fashion, which people refer to as a clean bulk , or with a more liberal approach, often called a dirty bulk.

A bulk is a phase of eating in a strategic calorie surplus. The goal is to gain muscle and strength. You may also gain some fat during bulking. A cut is a period of eating at a calorie deficit as a means to lose body fat while maintaining as much muscle mass as possible. While resistance training continues to play a role during a cutting phase, you may not be able to lift weights with the same intensity as you can during a bulk. Bodybuilders and athletes often implement a cutting phase following a period of bulking, or leading up to a competition or their competitive season.

A cut is a period of eating at a calorie deficit with the goal of losing body fat and maintaining muscle. When starting a bulk, the first step is to determine your maintenance calories — the number of calories you need to maintain your weight. Various online calculators can help you estimate this number. For example, a pound kg man of average size would add around — calories to their daily intake 1. Meanwhile, a pound kg woman of average size might add about — calories 1.

From there, aim for a daily protein intake of 0. The rest of your daily calories are made up of carbs and fats, though this depends on your preference 1. You may find it helpful to track your daily intake using one of several smartphone apps.

Weigh yourself regularly to track your progress, shooting for a weight gain of 0. A bulking phase can last anywhere from 1 month to over 6 months or longer, depending on your goals.

To start bulking, add a given number of calories to your typical daily calorie intake. You can determine how much to add with a quick calculation. The goal is to promote a weight gain of 0. This will help stimulate fat loss. An average active man needs about 2, calories per day to maintain weight, whereas an average active woman needs around 2, calories 2. That said, weight maintenance calorie needs can vary substantially due to body size, genetics, and activity level.

To stimulate weight loss, a general rule is to consume calories below maintenance. While it was traditionally thought this would help you lose approximately 1 pound 0.

Typically this includes a lot of unhealthy junk food. With a dirty bulk, a lot of the weight gained will be from fat, which will not help your situation if you are skinny fat.

The most effective and efficient way to do this is to eat in a controlled caloric surplus. Implementing cardio can help ensure that any unwanted body fat is burned, improve heart function which will allow you to train harder and lay down more muscle, as well as increase your calorie consumption potential. However, if we are only doing cardio and a lot of it without any strength training, we will not be able to build new muscle mass, which defeats the entire purpose of a bulk.

We wrote an entire article on whether you can get stronger training once per week. The main points are:. Regardless of whether you can train once a week or six times a week, you need to ensure that your workouts involve high-intensity, high-volume protocols. Your training program should focus on the whole body and incorporate compounded exercises. You will also want to make sure your diet is made up of clean food for the most part. Include high quality protein sources chicken, steak, salmon , carbohydrate sources oats, potato, yams and fat sources avocado, olive oil, nuts and seeds.

If you are obese, you will want to put yourself in a caloric deficit but continue to priotitize weight training to build muscle. Make sure you are following a progressive weight training program to ensure muscle growth. If you are new to working out and are at a healthy body weight, you should bulk first. The younger your training age, the quicker you are able to build muscle and therefore you should take advantage of this with a caloric surplus. This will make it much easier for you to cut body fat after the bulk, as you will have a lot more muscle mass compared to if you started out by cutting.

Maggie Morgan is a level 1 PN certified nutritionist who specializes in sport, exercise and performance nutrition, a strength training coach, and an elite level athlete. Maggie has competed in bodybuilding, and is an international-level powerlifter. Currently undertaking her Masters in Counselling Psychology, Maggie is not only able to lead others in strength and aesthetics through her personal experiences and scientific nutritional foundations but additionally by addressing the psychological and behavioral implications of exercise and nutrition.

Helms, Eric R, et al. Longland, Thomas M, et al. Skip to content. Weight Lifting. What Causes Skinny Fat? I went deeper into these concepts in this post , where I covered why you should get lean before you start bulking. Building a fair amount of muscle takes time, especially if you want to do it naturally.

Sure you might look smaller, especially in clothes for a while, but trust me, staying lean is worth it. Does it go towards fat storage or towards building muscle?

In males this would be greater levels of free testosterone in the bloodstream, which has been shown to have powerful nutrient partitioning effects more muscle, less fat.

Another hormone that affects nutrient partitioning is cortisol , which has the opposite effect to testosterone more fat, less muscle. It seems that the fatter we get, the worse the ratio of testosterone to cortisol get.

In other words, cortisol goes up and testosterone goes down with increased body fat percentage. Lastly, our hunger hormone Leptin seems to affect how effectively we can build muscle as well.

The way Leptin works is that it senses two things; body fat percentage and the amount of food consumed. Leptin reduces appetite when body fat percentage and food intake is high, and increases appetite when body fat percentage and food intake is low.

What this does is subconsciously placing the individual at maintenance calories, sometimes even below. In other words, a strong environment of muscle building resistance will be built up in the body if the body fat percentage gets too high. Which explains why bulking and cutting is so powerful. All humans have a bottom body fat percentage limit to where their body can still remain healthy and functional. This is also known as our biological set point.