Not surprising, really, considering it was initially designed by bodybuilders to prepare for competition. If you want to reveal the muscles you’ve spent time building and get rid of the excess body fat you picked up along the way, the cutting stage will help you do that. The cutting part is more about aesthetics. Your body doesn’t have what it needs to do the process properly. Building muscle whilst in a calorie deficit is pretty much impossible. It’s very, very difficult to build muscle and lose weight at the same time.
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It’s not always enjoyable and certainly isn’t sustainable.įirstly, the most efficient way to build muscle is by being in a calorie surplus. You’re sticking to a strict diet schedule and regular workout routine.
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There’s a lot of hard work and dedication involved in bulking and cutting. What are the benefits to the bulk and cut? It’s also important to keep providing your muscles with a strong stimulus of weight training to encourage the body to retain muscle mass. Cutting is about sensible weight loss with a controlled calorie deficit that will result in a lean, healthy physique. Starvation or over restriction is not the way to go. For this reason, it’s essential to cut correctly. For most people, maintaining their hard-earned muscle during this period of losing weight is critical. For example, the abs might be there, but you need to ‘cut’ the fat to see them. Doing lots of weight training will help build the muscle, but without reducing the amount of body fat you have through a caloric deficit, the muscle definition won’t be revealed. Lowering body fat is an essential part of cutting. So this exact figure is going to depend on the individual. We all need different amounts of calories according to our height, age, metabolism, and activity level. You can also increase the amount of cardiovascular exercise you do to burn calories. Again, 500 calories a day is a common deficit. You need to consume fewer calories than your body needs to maintain your current weight. When you’re cutting, you need to create a caloric deficit. The result? You can see those abs very clearly. You’ve probably heard of bodybuilders getting ‘cut’ or ‘ripped’, which means having very high muscle definition and minimal fat. It’s what happens after bulking, to lose the excess bodyweight gained alongside the new muscle mass. That’s why, when bulking, you tend to put on more weight in general, which is a mixture of muscle and fat.Ĭutting involves reducing your calorie intake below what’s needed to maintain your weight to lose body fat. In reality, that’s a lot of protein and the easiest way to achieve it will be by eating more food, protein, and therefore calories than you would usually.
#BULKING AND CUTTING GUIDE PLUS#
When bulking, you need enough protein to do all your everyday bodily functioning, plus extra for building muscle. Your body also needs protein to do lots of other things. It’s more about maximising the amount of good quality protein you consume to give yourself the best chance of repairing and rebuilding the exercise-induced muscle damage you do in the gym. However, bulking isn’t quite as simple as eating as much fast food and processed food as you like.
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Sound easy? If you like eating and weight training, it’s a process you might find relatively straightforward and enjoyable. The extra calories you take in go towards gaining muscle, and usually some fat too. The next step is to increase the intensity of weight training to build muscle. A usual surplus would be around 500 calories more per day. Bulking requires you to take in more calories than you burn. Most people want to build muscle, but it can also mean gaining fat. Simply put, bulking is when you intentionally put on weight, usually in the form of muscle, to bulk up. So take a look at our guide to the bulk and cut. If you’re new to the scene, you might have heard the terms’ bulking’ and ‘cutting’ being used but have no idea what they mean. The fitness world brings a lot of jargon, especially around weight training.