Cutting and Bulking Strategies Overview

cutting and bulking both of them come with their own challenges in today's episode we're going to talk about the biggest challenges that come along with trying to cut or trying to bulk uh Justin's been on a Perma bulk as whole yeah it's living it man he's said cut what's that what's a cut what's a cut sounds like jealousy over there you know all right first all jokie side like uh I think it's important to Define cutting and bulking and now a lot of people would say cut cting is the is is trying to lose weight bulking is trying to gain weight but I like to be more specific cutting is trying to lose fat bulking is trying to gain muscle um now I know there's there are rare cases where people are trying to gain body fat um in the case of uh you know where you have somebody who's too lean right or they're just not healthy um and there may be times when people are trying to lose muscle although um I don't necessarily understand the reasoning maybe you're a pro bodybuilder and you want to get down to a more manageable body weight nonetheless uh generally speaking cutting is losing body fat and bulking is getting muscle the reason why I want to Define that is because um as we get into the challenges the weight part often times becomes uh one of the big issues a lot of people trying to lose weight they don't really have that kind of discretion in terms of like I just want to lose body fat you know specifically they just want to lose overall weight well also anybody who is trying to build muscle is virtually also bulking I mean you have to be in a calorie Surplus in order to build muscle that's right and the term bulk is exactly that and I'm glad you clarify that because I think what comes with the the term bulk seems to be this you uh you know people also uh think of it as like a like a like a bulking up and getting big and massive and it's like it's just a bunch of size meatball yeah it just sounds that way and I think it's been a turnoff especially for a lot of my female clients yes to tell them we're going to go into a bulk cuz they go I don't want to look bulky that's not what I want but it's like well yeah but if we're going to try and build muscle which we agree we both you want to build muscle right we have to be in a calorie Surplus and in order for us to do that uh we're in a bulk so that's really what it is and that includes the the female client that I had that just all I want to do is just build my butt I'm happy with everything else I want to keep my waist aside I want to build my well guess what that's a muscle if we're going to build that we're going to grow that we need calorie Surplus which means we need to be in a bulk and that's what virtually what that is right so so in order to bulk or gain muscle you know Adam said calorie Surplus that means you're eating more calories than you're burning um and what your body will do if you do all the things right is it takes those excess calories and then turns it into new tissue right new muscle and then a cut is the opposite you have to take in less calories than you burn there's no way around this by the way now it's an oversimplification in terms of diet and exercise and how the things you eat um and how they affect your behaviors and all that stuff and your health so I know it's an oversimplification this is where you get the argument you'll get some people who say calories in versus calories out uh you know is not real or doesn't work or is false it's just not true um you have to to to lose any kind of tissue or to get your body to burn off any kind of tissue um you have to be burning more either at rest or through it or both then you're consuming and then again to gain your body can't just create tissue out of thin air uh that would be magic it needs um extra energy to do so so that would be consuming more calories um than you're burning now why would somebody want to do either one well the the the number one reason would be uh for aesthetic purposes that's the just the the number one I'm not saying this is the best reason I'm just saying it's the most common reason right the most common reason why somebody would want to lose body fat is to try to look better um and the reason why someone will't want to gain muscle also is to look better but there's other reasons as well right um cutting could be simply for health purposes um to improve maybe blood lipids uh or blood pressure or to improve Mobility reduce inflammation bulking could be simply to improve athletic performance or strength or even Health in some cases people who undereat a very poor health yeah they need more energy they need more more nutrients um uh and sometimes either one of them can be used for the opposite goal so in other words somebody may say I want to lose a bunch of body fat but then you look at their what would be called their maintenance calorie uh um number which would mean the amount of calories that they consume to stay the same weight and it's already so low and you go wow okay your body's running on so low calories because you're inactive and because you've you know quote unquote slowed your metabolism down through your lifestyle I think what we should do first is bulk to try to gain some muscle to speed up your metabolism so we have a higher place to cut from and then cutting sometimes this is less popular than what I just said can be used to help somebody with a bulk when you get somebody who's been Force feeding themselves for so long and their body uh just kind of becomes in you know loses sensitivity to extra calories they're burning everything off they don't feel good they're stuffing themselves hey let's go on a shortcut resensitize your body and work with your uh your psyche a little bit help you give you a little break before we go back in a calorie Surplus so it's not as cut and dry as cut if you want to lose fat bulk if you want sometimes use either one to help with the other uh with the other goal yeah today's giveaway on YouTube is Maps split if you want to enter to win leave a comment below this video the first 24 hours we drop it subscribe to this Channel and turn on notifications if you win we'll let you know in the comment section by the way this episode is brought to you by a sponsor seed this is the world's best probiotic hands down if you want improve digestion better nutrient assimilation better skin in some cases probiotics have been even been shown to improve mood seed is the place you want to go so go to seed.com mine pump use the code 25 mine pump for 25% off your first month's order of seeds daily symbiotic also we have a sale this month map split the one I just talked about that one's % off and the sexy athlete bundle of programs is also 50% off if you're interested click on the link at the top of the description below all right here comes the show now let's get into some of the biggest challenges now these challenges really revolve around a lot of them revolve around the psychology um or the psyche that ha that you have to contend with when you're doing um either one um the first one and this is true for both cutting and bulking has more to do with the feeling okay so uh either feeling fat right because I'm in a calorie Surplus or feeling small because I'm in a calorie deficit now somebody who uh and this this really applies to people who have struggled with either being overweight or being underweight for a long time so if you let's say struggle with being underweight you're skinny you're maybe you know what would be labeled as a hard Gainer and you're always trying to gain weight you're always trying to build muscle always trying to gain weight always trying to build muscle and then you do this for years and years and years and you've added weight to your frame but now you're like you know maybe I should get a little leaner I want to reveal more definition in my body or maybe you've just you this insecurity's pushed you to the point where your body Fat's actually a little too high you like okay I think maybe I'll try a cut and then you go into a calorie deficit and all of a sudden you feel small and it Taps into your insecurity oh my God I don't feel has filled out my shirt my muscles don't fill my I'm losing muscle I'm not getting uh you know I'm be small and then you you you you jump out same thing with the person who maybe is was overweight most her life and is always dieted dieted dieted and you're you're like okay um we need to build some muscle which means we need a calorie Surplus you put that person a surplus and now they feel fat oh no I got to get out of this I don't like the way it feels that's a tough one to get around I I think this is um one of the ones we did not list on here I want to make this clear cuz I know someone's going to say it afterwards is uh consistency right is obviously uh we're assuming this person is consistent with doing this that that trumps everything right if you're not being consistent with either diet cutting or bulking you're not going to have you're not going to have success and it's going to make it a challenge right figuring out that okay they're they're consistent this is by far the number one deterrent or uh you know Pitfall for the client that's following a plan is it almost always Taps into that insecurity regardless of what side you're on if you're on if you're the side that has been obese your your whole life and you ask that person to bulk uh they already feel super scared of of that just like the skinny person does feel if you put them in a cut and being skinny and so it almost always will challenge that insecurity one way or another and I think what ends up happening is a lot of times that's when people give up I know it from speaking from experience my entire journey I come from a place of the skinny kid who couldn't build muscle who who tried so hard to bulk bulk bulk forever the first time I decided oh I'd reduce calories for a little bit I bailed on it so quickly because I totally overestimated the muscle I was probably losing and I didn't like the way I looked within the first couple weeks because I wasn't filling out my shirts and so I would completely divert or leave or quit and so I think this happens on both sides of the aisle more often than not and I would label this as the greatest challenge when you're putting somebody either through a cut or a bow yeah so to give an ex I'll give some some personal examples right so um and I have a lot of these but I you know had a client who came to me who had lost a lot of weight on their own now they were at one point very overweight um I think they lost maybe 80 lbs on their own and then they came to me like look I got this extra you know 25 PBS to go and I want to get rid of this 25 lbs so I looked at their diet what they were currently eating I looked at their routine and I said okay here's a deal um you're already eating really low calories I don't remember what the calories were but let's just say it's, 1500 calories you're eating 1500 calories a day you're exercising five days a week um we need to speed up your metabolism we need to bur we need to build more calorie burning Machinery we need to build some muscle and and and in order to do that I have to increase your calories now once we build that muscle then we can cut your calories again but now because you're burning more calories we're not going to have to go down you know below 1,00 calories to get you to lose that extra 25 pounds so in the meantime uh for the time being we're going to have to put you in a bulk now here's somebody who lost 80 pounds it took them over a year and a half to do so and they hear what I'm saying it sounds logical they're like you know what you're right I'm working out a lot I'm plateaued I don't want to eat 1,000 calories I'm at at 1,00 what I do go down th000 calories and I'm not going to lose 25 pounds going down to a th000 I'd have to go even lower which doesn't sound feasible at all okay I'll do that with you and so we did and they were very challenged with the feeling of feeling fat of building muscle or feeling their muscles fill up with maybe more fluid a little bit more glycogen from extra you know the carbohydrates we eating they didn't they they was really a scary feeling for them because for them they were like oh my God like I fought this for so long and I'm going to go back to where I was before and it was a constant coaching uh process a lack of experience lack of awareness of how that all kind of plays out and this is why even when we're kind of coaching the coaches it's really about forecasting that for that individual so they can have some kind of idea of like their this vision of getting through those psychological barriers because you're going to face your insecurities in any of these Journeys you're you're going to have to face your insecurities uh and that's a that's a really hard thing for people to understand when it's like well I'm doing the right thing I'm here I'm doing the work but it just doesn't feel like I'm getting what I want out of it but you know that's just a hurdle that you have to work through I can't stress that point enough that when I figured this out how common this was uh that we all have some sort of an insecurity and that it it rears its head in at one stage of this process right in your fit in your overall health fitness journey you'll probably have a chance to be in either one of these multiple times and when you do you're going to be challenged with it my ability as a coach and a trainer to communicate that to the client before it reared its head was the difference of that client being successful totally if I didn't in early years when I didn't know how to do that or that it wasn't that I needed to do that um almost always that client failed almost always yeah for whatever reasons or whatever example they they they did not succeed in it whereas if I could just communicate that the success rate was 10 times uh more likely than if if I hadn't done that so it's so important for coaches and trainers to understand that and it sounds like this it sounds like okay you know I'm I I'm glad you're agreeing to what we need to do here's what it's going to feel like as you do this this metabolism boosting bulk to build lean muscle to set us up better here's what it's going to feel like you're going to feel bigger you're going to feel like you're getting fatter you might see your weight go up even a little bit um but that's part of the process expected and it's going to challenge you but you got to stay with the process because at the end of it we're going to get you the place you want to get to now on the flip side the the person who feels small that I can I can attest to myself I was like you Adam I was a skinny kid and um I was always trying to bulk always trying to bul well at one point and I was did it really effectively and I got my body fat percentage up a lot higher than I than I I probably should have and I was also getting some some inflammatory issues and stuff like that so I had to kind of reverse down and I remember remember you know week two or three oh my God I'm getting smaller oh I'm losing muscle and wanted to freak out and reverse out of it and I had to be I had to ignore those feelings to keep uh pushing through it actually took me several attempts in order to do so because for me my insecurity was being skinny feeling small was the thing I had to contend with whereas with other people it's feeling the feeling of fat next is the hunger or the feeling of feeling full now this is an interesting one right somebody who's chronically dieting who's always in that diet stage who used to be obese um you know eats low calories like they start to get this is somebody who starts to get used to just kind of being hungry and eating very little you put them in a reverse diet or you put them in a bulk and and bump their calories to try and be build lean tissue and now their portion size is increased and they're like oh yeah I don't like the way this feels I feel like I'm eating so much food in fact I would get this all the time from clients I feel like I'm eating so much food and i' say hold on and wait burst hold on weight hold on weight now on the other side the kid or the person who was always skinny and always bulking now they're trying to to cut they eat you know something that's satisfying but to them that's not normal because normally I eat until I can't breathe anymore and that's a challenge I think I supposed to eat uh more food in fact you went over you went through that recently yeah Adam with your current uh you know experiment with the G no I mean it's it's I'm still going through it I mean uh I recognized it just recently in the gp1 and I'm still noticing that I have these underlying uh uh underlying behaviors embedded in my old insecurities around my portion size and for so many years have trained myself to eat two times the meal size well what I know that we teach all the time is that as your lifestyle changes your your your calorie maintenance caloric intake changes too like I'm I have uh significantly less muscle on me than just 5 years ago I'm less active than what I was 10 15 years ago and because of that I should change my calories but my behaviors and habits have still been trained around this double portion size and so and I've become comfortable with the feeling of fool so comfortable with it that it's weird to eat half the food and feel like oh I actually feel satisfied I feel fine I don't feel hungry at all but oh my God I have trained myself to push beyond that for so long that I have to now retrain how I feel just eating half of that yeah so if you've been like constantly battling with your weight and you've been eating low calorie for a long time and overtraining and you've heard some of our other podcasts and and you are convinced like okay now I see I need to speed up my metabolism I need to bump my calories eat more protein lift weights maybe stop exercising as much as I currently do get my metabolism to speed up and then you you go and you try all right I'm going to increase my calories by 500 and I'm going to eat uh more protein and then you go do it like oh my gosh this feels like way exhausting too much food I don't like this feeling cuz you're used to feeling so empty uh all the time and again vice versa so uh that's a very tough psychological Feeling by the way all of these are challenging until you start to get comfortable with them and then what you find is that okay I I I I see what's happening but really gets challenging especially that first uh month or so next up is has to do with the scale the scale is a tool it's got some value but by itself it doesn't tell you much at all it tells you total mass and that's it okay to use this the same example that I've used for for decades with people it's a silly one but I'll tell people who want to lose weight so badly they don't care I'll say well cut your leg off and then they always laugh because of the absurdity at what I said but it points to ex the the inaccuracy of the scale it's just measuring weight you know there was one comedian one time did a bit about it and he says that what he does for his diet is he gets he holds his cat when he gets on the scale and he starves his cat so the weight on the scale goes down so the scale lies because if you're really if you're going You're trying to cut your calories and you were always that and you're you're insecure about getting smaller seeing the scale go down oh that could really freak you out and then reverse you do that you do that that bulk to try to speed up your metabolism you step on the scale You See It Go Up 3 pound it could be water weight it could be hydration this often happens when you go from really low calories to actually eating enough to build muscle all of a sudden you'll gain three lbs of or four lbs of just intra muscular fluid which is good it actually makes your muscles Fuller makes them more more more toned and sculpted and the whole thing but the scale went up oh my God I'm freaking out I'm getting fatter the scale is the enemy when it comes to this stuff unless you combine it with other metrics that allow you to parse out what the weight is is it lean mass is it fat Mass yeah the reason why this is so important is there's a scenario uh with the same person who let's say is trying to reduce body fat where they have tremendous success and the scale went down 5 lbs and they had tremendous success and the scale went up 5 PBS that same person with the same goal of trying to reduce body fat the scale could go down 5 PBS and it be successful it could go down 5 lbs and it be unsuccessful it could go up 5 lbs and be successful and go up 5 lbs and be unsuccessful so there is a scenario of the scale going up or down let me let me explain that cuz you some people might be like what are you talking about so here here the successful you're trying to lose body fat you lose 5 PBS on the scale it's 5 PBS of body fat success or you get on the scale you lose five pounds but it's five pounds of muscle mass fail in fact your body fat percentage went up now because the current body fat you have is now a greater percentage of your body weight and then again you're trying to gain weight uh and the scale goes up five pounds is a you know is it 5 pounds of fat or muscle or the person who's trying to get leaner you can gain if you're trying to lower your body fat percentage and you lose zero pounds of body fat but you gain five pounds of muscle you're leaner right your body fat percentage just went down so that's how much the scale can lie to you and you need to understand that because a lot of people will will set their mood will set their whole day and the success of what they're doing based on what the scale said and will ignore how they feel their performance and what is actually such an emotional response too in oh yeah with clients when they're feeling so good and they're energized and they're stronger and you know even their their clothes on certain levels like fit them are really good but they step on the scale and it's that increased and and it just immediately just shuts all those other signals off and it's that's why it's just been such an opponent to um the whole process itself in in terms of just like getting on board and being positive all the way through it's it's one of those that like you say can fluctuate you could have a good positive measure of it or you could have a negative measure of it depending on you know what's going on with your body and I think what's important to knowe because I'm sure when s broke down what I was explaining even deeper and explained the scenario where somebody could lose five pounds on the scale and it be all muscle I'm sure there's people listening going like oh yeah but I mean that's probably rare actually it's very common it's actually super common that the scale Moves In what the client thinks is the right direction but it negatively impacts them or that the scale moves in what they think is a positive direction but it actually negatively impacted us meaning there's a lot of times where and and that's because clients have a tendency to over overdo either way right so if they are their goal is to build muscle and they know they need to be in calorie Surplus all of a sudden their calorie Surplus is a th000 calories every single day and they probably only needed about 200 calories at most every single day in order to do that and that because they added so so much more yeah the scale went up 5 lbs the direction they thought they wanted to go but they put on four fat and one of muscle and so they could have just put on one of muscle that's right and so and the same thing is the true in the opposite direction where somebody they just want to lose 80 lbs so bad and so they cut their calories dramatically and the scale goes down 5 pounds and they're like yes moving the right direction but they find out four pounds of it was muscle and only one pound of it was fat well why was it well that's because they cut so dramatically they reduced their calories so low and probably hitting macro targets like protein and overtrain the body and yeah it lost weight it was catabolic but it lost as much or more muscle which is not the direction we want to go this happens all the time it not only do it happen I mean the studies will show this right just people who die it will lose a good 30 40% of muscle uh on the diet um unless you combine it with strength training um and you know a high protein uh intake so I mean you again using myself as an example when I was a kid trying to gain weight at all costs uh I would actually gear my myself or direct myself towards foods that caused water retention this is how how much I I I tied everything to the scale it's like oh I gain more weight at the end of the day if I eat pizza you know as if Pizza is like this magical muscle ability no just made me hold water because it was so high in sodium um in in carbohydrates which will make you hold water and I would do that I would literally gear myself towards these foods that would make me the heaviest at night and really when I look back as an adult like well these are all foods that bloated me yeah and that's why I I went towards them and it didn't put more muscle on me it actually made things uh much more challenging now if you combine the scale with consistent body fat testing and you look at performance and you look at metrics like how you feel then you get a much more complete picture but if it just becomes about the scale or if you put the scale above body fat percentage and you put it Above Performance and you put it above uh you know metrics in terms of how you feel uh now you're in real problem because when I look when I list all those things out the scale is actually less important um than all of those body fat percentage being more important being much more accurate telling you what's going on performance is way more important how you feel is way more important the scale is actually at the bottom of all of those metrics in combination with those though and put in the right order it can be valuable unfortunately people typically just use a scale and value it above everything else all right next up is how people work out people make a huge mistake in particular when anytime almost anytime somebody goes on a a diet to lose body fat they also simultaneously increase the amount of exercise that they do or bump up the volume oh yeah this is a big mistake because if you're currently working out now let's say you're working out now about four days a week your strength training four days a week and you're doing a good job you're like okay I think this is a sweet spot I'm getting good results I feel good now I'm going to go on a diet to get leaner and you know what I'm going to do I'm going to add like two more days of running to my routine to help me lose weight lower reduce calories means you have less nutrients and less resources for Recovery the last thing you should do to increase the amount of training uh volume or training damage that you put on your body in fact one of the smart things to do when you go on a cut is reduce your training volume in fact you could take I could take any athlete with their current training volume that's perfect and I could drop their calories low enough to make whatever they're doing overtrain them that's a fact I could do that with anybody right you can make anybody overt train even if they're doing The Perfect Workout by bringing their calories lower well and also considering all the methods possible to preserve muscle so focusing a little bit more on strength training which is something that I think it sounds kind of obvious but it I I still see just the the common denominator of people just going straight for cardio when they're cutting down because it's it for them it's overall energy expenditure and so that's that's the common thought is like how can I just burn calories and how can I burn it down like I need to burn the fat off when in fact you need to preserve the muscle cuz that's what we're trying to keep uh and and then also you know replace your body with your composition mainly being muscle it's to Fat this is so common it's still prevalent in the professional level of competing which is in the the the sport of building physiques which is crazy to me yeah you still I mean I remember seeing my competition like this like I I mean when you a lot of the pros would go in the same gym and work out so you see everybody's kind of routine and what they're doing you know how many weeks they are out from a show and so it's pretty good idea to get or it's pretty easy to know that because you have a show that's coming up say in town and you know that that's what everyone's prepping for so I know what phase they're all in and you would see this like okay everyone's transitioning we're four weeks out from show and I see them ramping up intensity I see them ramping up cardio like crazy I'm like what I know you're in a super low calorie diet right now like what are you doing like you're only going to sacrifice you you've already put this body in this like permanent catabolic state so it's going to be eating way like you pushing it harder than what it was used to being pushed when it was fed even more is most certainly going to result in you losing muscle too slowing your metabolism down and you bringing a a less a lesser physique than what you already currently have so it's it's super common if it's common there where these they're supposed to be the elite in that in the arena of bulking and cutting and you're still seeing it happen so you most certainly see it in the average person in the gym now if you're going to increase volume the time to increase it appropriately is when you go into calorie Surplus now you have extra resources and energy to heal recover and adapt from the extra training now this doesn't mean you should always increase your volume when you're bulking or the amount of training you're doing when you're bulking it just means if you do you should probably do it when your calories are higher definitely not when you drop your calories all right lastly this big mistake and I know Adam you wanted to add this one I'm glad we did is overcorrecting yeah this one is is huge I think this one comes in combination with the scale or with the first one which is pairs well with your first point the feeling because normally what ends up happening before someone just fully abandon ship and quits the program or quits what they're doing is they overcorrect first they first freak out because the insecurity point you made uh whether that either side whether it's oh my God I'm too skinny so then you ah start to eat a bunch to fill back out better temporarily and you mess up the diet or the other is true you all of a sudden feel like oh my God I'm I'm getting fat when you're just filled out and then you cut your calories and ramp up cardio the next day so I I would say one is number one point number one most common and then I would say this is the second most common and it's because of the first one it causes this over yeah so I like to use this visual right you're driving on a road and it's wet it's raining and the car starts to slide a little bit to the left and so you jerk the steering wheel to the right now you spin the car completely out or flip the car right that's not how it works if you are moving in the wrong direction a slight adjustment is appropriate but people tend to overcorrect when they see one measurement or one way in or one thing that doesn't look like it's moving in the right direction so what do they do oh I've been doing this bulk trying to build muscle oh my God the scale went up four pounds I'm going to fast for 24 hours or I'm going to cut my calories way down just overcorrect or vice versa um what you should do is wait until you get at least two or three consecutive measurements that show you're moving in a direction or not before you change direction overcorrecting is almost never uh a good idea yeah I had a rule for myself and my clients when competing was that you we we needed to have at least two to three check-ins that were moving in the negative Direction before we would adjust course just because so I in so many situations I have seen a check-in that we were doing say weekly or bi-weekly in and oh wow it looks like we you know didn't gain any muscle we didn't lose any B fat we kind of plateaued a little bit right here and then the next week all of a sudden we see this great positive response like oh wow shoot we put on a pound or two pounds like that's awesome like or vice versa if we're going the other direction right I'm trying to cut and that person sees no body fat percentage gone down you know at one check-in and then the next check-in it's still maybe there and then the third one all of a sudden we're now we're moving right so um I always wanted to see at least two or three of our check-ins which would be your measurement circumference body fat and and scale using all those metrics and going okay is it not moving in the right direction okay let's check let's see if it's that way on the next yeah water water weight can make it go up or down it could be a fluke it could be the measurement itself often times these measurements especially body fat tests you have a stressful week you have a stressful holding extra water you had a day where you're just a higher in sodium the day before and then all a sudden you drank two extra glasses of water the next day I mean there's a there's a lot of different things especially when you're paying attention and you're tracking this stuff and you are checking in doing body fat every week to two weeks like that's a very small our change when we're talking about body composition is very small and incremental and so having a day being able to measure it accurately in a week is very difficult tough very very tough so always give yourself a couple check-ins before you you course correct now look we have a guide on how to lose body fat it's free you can find it at mind pump free.com you can also find all of us on Instagram Justin is at mine pump Justin I'm at M pump Toano and Adam is at mind pump Adam [Music]

cutting and bulking both of them come with their own challenges in today&#39;s episode we&#39;re going to talk about the biggest challenges that come along with trying to cut or trying to bulk uh Justin&#39;s been on a Perma bulk as whole yeah it&#39;s living it man he&#39;s said cut what&#39;s that what&#39;s a cut what&#39;s a cut sounds like jealousy over there you know all right first all jokie side like uh I think it&#39;s important to Define cutting and bulking and now a lot of people would say cut cting is the is is trying to lose weight bulking is trying to gain weight but I like to be more specific cutting is trying to lose fat bulking is trying to gain muscle um now I know there&#39;s there are rare cases where people are trying to gain body fat um in the case of uh you know where you have somebody who&#39;s too lean right or they&#39;re just not healthy um and there may be times when people are trying to lose muscle although um I don&#39;t necessarily understand the reasoning maybe you&#39;re a pro bodybuilder and you want to get down to a more manageable body weight nonetheless uh generally speaking cutting is losing body fat and bulking is getting muscle the reason why I want to Define that is because um as we get into the challenges the weight part often times becomes uh one of the big issues a lot of people trying to lose weight they don&#39;t really have that kind of discretion in terms of like I just want to lose body fat you know specifically they just want to lose overall weight well also anybody who is trying to build muscle is virtually also bulking I mean you have to be in a calorie Surplus in order to build muscle that&#39;s right and the term bulk is exactly that and I&#39;m glad you clarify that because I think what comes with the the term bulk seems to be this you uh you know people also uh think of it as like a like a like a bulking up and getting big and massive and it&#39;s like it&#39;s just a bunch of size meatball yeah it just sounds that way and I think it&#39;s been a turnoff especially for a lot of my female clients yes to tell them we&#39;re going to go into a bulk cuz they go I don&#39;t want to look bulky that&#39;s not what I want but it&#39;s like well yeah but if we&#39;re going to try and build muscle which we agree we both you want to build muscle right we have to be in a calorie Surplus and in order for us to do that uh we&#39;re in a bulk so that&#39;s really what it is and that includes the the female client that I had that just all I want to do is just build my butt I&#39;m happy with everything else I want to keep my waist aside I want to build my well guess what that&#39;s a muscle if we&#39;re going to build that we&#39;re going to grow that we need calorie Surplus which means we need to be in a bulk and that&#39;s what virtually what that is right so so in order to bulk or gain muscle you know Adam said calorie Surplus that means you&#39;re eating more calories than you&#39;re burning um and what your body will do if you do all the things right is it takes those excess calories and then turns it into new tissue right new muscle and then a cut is the opposite you have to take in less calories than you burn there&#39;s no way around this by the way now it&#39;s an oversimplification in terms of diet and exercise and how the things you eat um and how they affect your behaviors and all that stuff and your health so I know it&#39;s an oversimplification this is where you get the argument you&#39;ll get some people who say calories in versus calories out uh you know is not real or doesn&#39;t work or is false it&#39;s just not true um you have to to to lose any kind of tissue or to get your body to burn off any kind of tissue um you have to be burning more either at rest or through it or both then you&#39;re consuming and then again to gain your body can&#39;t just create tissue out of thin air uh that would be magic it needs um extra energy to do so so that would be consuming more calories um than you&#39;re burning now why would somebody want to do either one well the the the number one reason would be uh for aesthetic purposes that&#39;s the just the the number one I&#39;m not saying this is the best reason I&#39;m just saying it&#39;s the most common reason right the most common reason why somebody would want to lose body fat is to try to look better um and the reason why someone will&#39;t want to gain muscle also is to look better but there&#39;s other reasons as well right um cutting could be simply for health purposes um to improve maybe blood lipids uh or blood pressure or to improve Mobility reduce inflammation bulking could be simply to improve athletic performance or strength or even Health in some cases people who undereat a very poor health yeah they need more energy they need more more nutrients um uh and sometimes either one of them can be used for the opposite goal so in other words somebody may say I want to lose a bunch of body fat but then you look at their what would be called their maintenance calorie uh um number which would mean the amount of calories that they consume to stay the same weight and it&#39;s already so low and you go wow okay your body&#39;s running on so low calories because you&#39;re inactive and because you&#39;ve you know quote unquote slowed your metabolism down through your lifestyle I think what we should do first is bulk to try to gain some muscle to speed up your metabolism so we have a higher place to cut from and then cutting sometimes this is less popular than what I just said can be used to help somebody with a bulk when you get somebody who&#39;s been Force feeding themselves for so long and their body uh just kind of becomes in you know loses sensitivity to extra calories they&#39;re burning everything off they don&#39;t feel good they&#39;re stuffing themselves hey let&#39;s go on a shortcut resensitize your body and work with your uh your psyche a little bit help you give you a little break before we go back in a calorie Surplus so it&#39;s not as cut and dry as cut if you want to lose fat bulk if you want sometimes use either one to help with the other uh with the other goal yeah today&#39;s giveaway on YouTube is Maps split if you want to enter to win leave a comment below this video the first 24 hours we drop it subscribe to this Channel and turn on notifications if you win we&#39;ll let you know in the comment section by the way this episode is brought to you by a sponsor seed this is the world&#39;s best probiotic hands down if you want improve digestion better nutrient assimilation better skin in some cases probiotics have been even been shown to improve mood seed is the place you want to go so go to seed.com mine pump use the code 25 mine pump for 25% off your first month&#39;s order of seeds daily symbiotic also we have a sale this month map split the one I just talked about that one&#39;s % off and the sexy athlete bundle of programs is also 50% off if you&#39;re interested click on the link at the top of the description below all right here comes the show now let&#39;s get into some of the biggest challenges now these challenges really revolve around a lot of them revolve around the psychology um or the psyche that ha that you have to contend with when you&#39;re doing um either one um the first one and this is true for both cutting and bulking has more to do with the feeling okay so uh either feeling fat right because I&#39;m in a calorie Surplus or feeling small because I&#39;m in a calorie deficit now somebody who uh and this this really applies to people who have struggled with either being overweight or being underweight for a long time so if you let&#39;s say struggle with being underweight you&#39;re skinny you&#39;re maybe you know what would be labeled as a hard Gainer and you&#39;re always trying to gain weight you&#39;re always trying to build muscle always trying to gain weight always trying to build muscle and then you do this for years and years and years and you&#39;ve added weight to your frame but now you&#39;re like you know maybe I should get a little leaner I want to reveal more definition in my body or maybe you&#39;ve just you this insecurity&#39;s pushed you to the point where your body Fat&#39;s actually a little too high you like okay I think maybe I&#39;ll try a cut and then you go into a calorie deficit and all of a sudden you feel small and it Taps into your insecurity oh my God I don&#39;t feel has filled out my shirt my muscles don&#39;t fill my I&#39;m losing muscle I&#39;m not getting uh you know I&#39;m be small and then you you you you jump out same thing with the person who maybe is was overweight most her life and is always dieted dieted dieted and you&#39;re you&#39;re like okay um we need to build some muscle which means we need a calorie Surplus you put that person a surplus and now they feel fat oh no I got to get out of this I don&#39;t like the way it feels that&#39;s a tough one to get around I I think this is um one of the ones we did not list on here I want to make this clear cuz I know someone&#39;s going to say it afterwards is uh consistency right is obviously uh we&#39;re assuming this person is consistent with doing this that that trumps everything right if you&#39;re not being consistent with either diet cutting or bulking you&#39;re not going to have you&#39;re not going to have success and it&#39;s going to make it a challenge right figuring out that okay they&#39;re they&#39;re consistent this is by far the number one deterrent or uh you know Pitfall for the client that&#39;s following a plan is it almost always Taps into that insecurity regardless of what side you&#39;re on if you&#39;re on if you&#39;re the side that has been obese your your whole life and you ask that person to bulk uh they already feel super scared of of that just like the skinny person does feel if you put them in a cut and being skinny and so it almost always will challenge that insecurity one way or another and I think what ends up happening is a lot of times that&#39;s when people give up I know it from speaking from experience my entire journey I come from a place of the skinny kid who couldn&#39;t build muscle who who tried so hard to bulk bulk bulk forever the first time I decided oh I&#39;d reduce calories for a little bit I bailed on it so quickly because I totally overestimated the muscle I was probably losing and I didn&#39;t like the way I looked within the first couple weeks because I wasn&#39;t filling out my shirts and so I would completely divert or leave or quit and so I think this happens on both sides of the aisle more often than not and I would label this as the greatest challenge when you&#39;re putting somebody either through a cut or a bow yeah so to give an ex I&#39;ll give some some personal examples right so um and I have a lot of these but I you know had a client who came to me who had lost a lot of weight on their own now they were at one point very overweight um I think they lost maybe 80 lbs on their own and then they came to me like look I got this extra you know 25 PBS to go and I want to get rid of this 25 lbs so I looked at their diet what they were currently eating I looked at their routine and I said okay here&#39;s a deal um you&#39;re already eating really low calories I don&#39;t remember what the calories were but let&#39;s just say it&#39;s, 1500 calories you&#39;re eating 1500 calories a day you&#39;re exercising five days a week um we need to speed up your metabolism we need to bur we need to build more calorie burning Machinery we need to build some muscle and and and in order to do that I have to increase your calories now once we build that muscle then we can cut your calories again but now because you&#39;re burning more calories we&#39;re not going to have to go down you know below 1,00 calories to get you to lose that extra 25 pounds so in the meantime uh for the time being we&#39;re going to have to put you in a bulk now here&#39;s somebody who lost 80 pounds it took them over a year and a half to do so and they hear what I&#39;m saying it sounds logical they&#39;re like you know what you&#39;re right I&#39;m working out a lot I&#39;m plateaued I don&#39;t want to eat 1,000 calories I&#39;m at at 1,00 what I do go down th000 calories and I&#39;m not going to lose 25 pounds going down to a th000 I&#39;d have to go even lower which doesn&#39;t sound feasible at all okay I&#39;ll do that with you and so we did and they were very challenged with the feeling of feeling fat of building muscle or feeling their muscles fill up with maybe more fluid a little bit more glycogen from extra you know the carbohydrates we eating they didn&#39;t they they was really a scary feeling for them because for them they were like oh my God like I fought this for so long and I&#39;m going to go back to where I was before and it was a constant coaching uh process a lack of experience lack of awareness of how that all kind of plays out and this is why even when we&#39;re kind of coaching the coaches it&#39;s really about forecasting that for that individual so they can have some kind of idea of like their this vision of getting through those psychological barriers because you&#39;re going to face your insecurities in any of these Journeys you&#39;re you&#39;re going to have to face your insecurities uh and that&#39;s a that&#39;s a really hard thing for people to understand when it&#39;s like well I&#39;m doing the right thing I&#39;m here I&#39;m doing the work but it just doesn&#39;t feel like I&#39;m getting what I want out of it but you know that&#39;s just a hurdle that you have to work through I can&#39;t stress that point enough that when I figured this out how common this was uh that we all have some sort of an insecurity and that it it rears its head in at one stage of this process right in your fit in your overall health fitness journey you&#39;ll probably have a chance to be in either one of these multiple times and when you do you&#39;re going to be challenged with it my ability as a coach and a trainer to communicate that to the client before it reared its head was the difference of that client being successful totally if I didn&#39;t in early years when I didn&#39;t know how to do that or that it wasn&#39;t that I needed to do that um almost always that client failed almost always yeah for whatever reasons or whatever example they they they did not succeed in it whereas if I could just communicate that the success rate was 10 times uh more likely than if if I hadn&#39;t done that so it&#39;s so important for coaches and trainers to understand that and it sounds like this it sounds like okay you know I&#39;m I I&#39;m glad you&#39;re agreeing to what we need to do here&#39;s what it&#39;s going to feel like as you do this this metabolism boosting bulk to build lean muscle to set us up better here&#39;s what it&#39;s going to feel like you&#39;re going to feel bigger you&#39;re going to feel like you&#39;re getting fatter you might see your weight go up even a little bit um but that&#39;s part of the process expected and it&#39;s going to challenge you but you got to stay with the process because at the end of it we&#39;re going to get you the place you want to get to now on the flip side the the person who feels small that I can I can attest to myself I was like you Adam I was a skinny kid and um I was always trying to bulk always trying to bul well at one point and I was did it really effectively and I got my body fat percentage up a lot higher than I than I I probably should have and I was also getting some some inflammatory issues and stuff like that so I had to kind of reverse down and I remember remember you know week two or three oh my God I&#39;m getting smaller oh I&#39;m losing muscle and wanted to freak out and reverse out of it and I had to be I had to ignore those feelings to keep uh pushing through it actually took me several attempts in order to do so because for me my insecurity was being skinny feeling small was the thing I had to contend with whereas with other people it&#39;s feeling the feeling of fat next is the hunger or the feeling of feeling full now this is an interesting one right somebody who&#39;s chronically dieting who&#39;s always in that diet stage who used to be obese um you know eats low calories like they start to get this is somebody who starts to get used to just kind of being hungry and eating very little you put them in a reverse diet or you put them in a bulk and and bump their calories to try and be build lean tissue and now their portion size is increased and they&#39;re like oh yeah I don&#39;t like the way this feels I feel like I&#39;m eating so much food in fact I would get this all the time from clients I feel like I&#39;m eating so much food and i&#39; say hold on and wait burst hold on weight hold on weight now on the other side the kid or the person who was always skinny and always bulking now they&#39;re trying to to cut they eat you know something that&#39;s satisfying but to them that&#39;s not normal because normally I eat until I can&#39;t breathe anymore and that&#39;s a challenge I think I supposed to eat uh more food in fact you went over you went through that recently yeah Adam with your current uh you know experiment with the G no I mean it&#39;s it&#39;s I&#39;m still going through it I mean uh I recognized it just recently in the gp1 and I&#39;m still noticing that I have these underlying uh uh underlying behaviors embedded in my old insecurities around my portion size and for so many years have trained myself to eat two times the meal size well what I know that we teach all the time is that as your lifestyle changes your your your calorie maintenance caloric intake changes too like I&#39;m I have uh significantly less muscle on me than just 5 years ago I&#39;m less active than what I was 10 15 years ago and because of that I should change my calories but my behaviors and habits have still been trained around this double portion size and so and I&#39;ve become comfortable with the feeling of fool so comfortable with it that it&#39;s weird to eat half the food and feel like oh I actually feel satisfied I feel fine I don&#39;t feel hungry at all but oh my God I have trained myself to push beyond that for so long that I have to now retrain how I feel just eating half of that yeah so if you&#39;ve been like constantly battling with your weight and you&#39;ve been eating low calorie for a long time and overtraining and you&#39;ve heard some of our other podcasts and and you are convinced like okay now I see I need to speed up my metabolism I need to bump my calories eat more protein lift weights maybe stop exercising as much as I currently do get my metabolism to speed up and then you you go and you try all right I&#39;m going to increase my calories by 500 and I&#39;m going to eat uh more protein and then you go do it like oh my gosh this feels like way exhausting too much food I don&#39;t like this feeling cuz you&#39;re used to feeling so empty uh all the time and again vice versa so uh that&#39;s a very tough psychological Feeling by the way all of these are challenging until you start to get comfortable with them and then what you find is that okay I I I I see what&#39;s happening but really gets challenging especially that first uh month or so next up is has to do with the scale the scale is a tool it&#39;s got some value but by itself it doesn&#39;t tell you much at all it tells you total mass and that&#39;s it okay to use this the same example that I&#39;ve used for for decades with people it&#39;s a silly one but I&#39;ll tell people who want to lose weight so badly they don&#39;t care I&#39;ll say well cut your leg off and then they always laugh because of the absurdity at what I said but it points to ex the the inaccuracy of the scale it&#39;s just measuring weight you know there was one comedian one time did a bit about it and he says that what he does for his diet is he gets he holds his cat when he gets on the scale and he starves his cat so the weight on the scale goes down so the scale lies because if you&#39;re really if you&#39;re going You&#39;re trying to cut your calories and you were always that and you&#39;re you&#39;re insecure about getting smaller seeing the scale go down oh that could really freak you out and then reverse you do that you do that that bulk to try to speed up your metabolism you step on the scale You See It Go Up 3 pound it could be water weight it could be hydration this often happens when you go from really low calories to actually eating enough to build muscle all of a sudden you&#39;ll gain three lbs of or four lbs of just intra muscular fluid which is good it actually makes your muscles Fuller makes them more more more toned and sculpted and the whole thing but the scale went up oh my God I&#39;m freaking out I&#39;m getting fatter the scale is the enemy when it comes to this stuff unless you combine it with other metrics that allow you to parse out what the weight is is it lean mass is it fat Mass yeah the reason why this is so important is there&#39;s a scenario uh with the same person who let&#39;s say is trying to reduce body fat where they have tremendous success and the scale went down 5 lbs and they had tremendous success and the scale went up 5 PBS that same person with the same goal of trying to reduce body fat the scale could go down 5 PBS and it be successful it could go down 5 lbs and it be unsuccessful it could go up 5 lbs and be successful and go up 5 lbs and be unsuccessful so there is a scenario of the scale going up or down let me let me explain that cuz you some people might be like what are you talking about so here here the successful you&#39;re trying to lose body fat you lose 5 PBS on the scale it&#39;s 5 PBS of body fat success or you get on the scale you lose five pounds but it&#39;s five pounds of muscle mass fail in fact your body fat percentage went up now because the current body fat you have is now a greater percentage of your body weight and then again you&#39;re trying to gain weight uh and the scale goes up five pounds is a you know is it 5 pounds of fat or muscle or the person who&#39;s trying to get leaner you can gain if you&#39;re trying to lower your body fat percentage and you lose zero pounds of body fat but you gain five pounds of muscle you&#39;re leaner right your body fat percentage just went down so that&#39;s how much the scale can lie to you and you need to understand that because a lot of people will will set their mood will set their whole day and the success of what they&#39;re doing based on what the scale said and will ignore how they feel their performance and what is actually such an emotional response too in oh yeah with clients when they&#39;re feeling so good and they&#39;re energized and they&#39;re stronger and you know even their their clothes on certain levels like fit them are really good but they step on the scale and it&#39;s that increased and and it just immediately just shuts all those other signals off and it&#39;s that&#39;s why it&#39;s just been such an opponent to um the whole process itself in in terms of just like getting on board and being positive all the way through it&#39;s it&#39;s one of those that like you say can fluctuate you could have a good positive measure of it or you could have a negative measure of it depending on you know what&#39;s going on with your body and I think what&#39;s important to knowe because I&#39;m sure when s broke down what I was explaining even deeper and explained the scenario where somebody could lose five pounds on the scale and it be all muscle I&#39;m sure there&#39;s people listening going like oh yeah but I mean that&#39;s probably rare actually it&#39;s very common it&#39;s actually super common that the scale Moves In what the client thinks is the right direction but it negatively impacts them or that the scale moves in what they think is a positive direction but it actually negatively impacted us meaning there&#39;s a lot of times where and and that&#39;s because clients have a tendency to over overdo either way right so if they are their goal is to build muscle and they know they need to be in calorie Surplus all of a sudden their calorie Surplus is a th000 calories every single day and they probably only needed about 200 calories at most every single day in order to do that and that because they added so so much more yeah the scale went up 5 lbs the direction they thought they wanted to go but they put on four fat and one of muscle and so they could have just put on one of muscle that&#39;s right and so and the same thing is the true in the opposite direction where somebody they just want to lose 80 lbs so bad and so they cut their calories dramatically and the scale goes down 5 pounds and they&#39;re like yes moving the right direction but they find out four pounds of it was muscle and only one pound of it was fat well why was it well that&#39;s because they cut so dramatically they reduced their calories so low and probably hitting macro targets like protein and overtrain the body and yeah it lost weight it was catabolic but it lost as much or more muscle which is not the direction we want to go this happens all the time it not only do it happen I mean the studies will show this right just people who die it will lose a good 30 40% of muscle uh on the diet um unless you combine it with strength training um and you know a high protein uh intake so I mean you again using myself as an example when I was a kid trying to gain weight at all costs uh I would actually gear my myself or direct myself towards foods that caused water retention this is how how much I I I tied everything to the scale it&#39;s like oh I gain more weight at the end of the day if I eat pizza you know as if Pizza is like this magical muscle ability no just made me hold water because it was so high in sodium um in in carbohydrates which will make you hold water and I would do that I would literally gear myself towards these foods that would make me the heaviest at night and really when I look back as an adult like well these are all foods that bloated me yeah and that&#39;s why I I went towards them and it didn&#39;t put more muscle on me it actually made things uh much more challenging now if you combine the scale with consistent body fat testing and you look at performance and you look at metrics like how you feel then you get a much more complete picture but if it just becomes about the scale or if you put the scale above body fat percentage and you put it Above Performance and you put it above uh you know metrics in terms of how you feel uh now you&#39;re in real problem because when I look when I list all those things out the scale is actually less important um than all of those body fat percentage being more important being much more accurate telling you what&#39;s going on performance is way more important how you feel is way more important the scale is actually at the bottom of all of those metrics in combination with those though and put in the right order it can be valuable unfortunately people typically just use a scale and value it above everything else all right next up is how people work out people make a huge mistake in particular when anytime almost anytime somebody goes on a a diet to lose body fat they also simultaneously increase the amount of exercise that they do or bump up the volume oh yeah this is a big mistake because if you&#39;re currently working out now let&#39;s say you&#39;re working out now about four days a week your strength training four days a week and you&#39;re doing a good job you&#39;re like okay I think this is a sweet spot I&#39;m getting good results I feel good now I&#39;m going to go on a diet to get leaner and you know what I&#39;m going to do I&#39;m going to add like two more days of running to my routine to help me lose weight lower reduce calories means you have less nutrients and less resources for Recovery the last thing you should do to increase the amount of training uh volume or training damage that you put on your body in fact one of the smart things to do when you go on a cut is reduce your training volume in fact you could take I could take any athlete with their current training volume that&#39;s perfect and I could drop their calories low enough to make whatever they&#39;re doing overtrain them that&#39;s a fact I could do that with anybody right you can make anybody overt train even if they&#39;re doing The Perfect Workout by bringing their calories lower well and also considering all the methods possible to preserve muscle so focusing a little bit more on strength training which is something that I think it sounds kind of obvious but it I I still see just the the common denominator of people just going straight for cardio when they&#39;re cutting down because it&#39;s it for them it&#39;s overall energy expenditure and so that&#39;s that&#39;s the common thought is like how can I just burn calories and how can I burn it down like I need to burn the fat off when in fact you need to preserve the muscle cuz that&#39;s what we&#39;re trying to keep uh and and then also you know replace your body with your composition mainly being muscle it&#39;s to Fat this is so common it&#39;s still prevalent in the professional level of competing which is in the the the sport of building physiques which is crazy to me yeah you still I mean I remember seeing my competition like this like I I mean when you a lot of the pros would go in the same gym and work out so you see everybody&#39;s kind of routine and what they&#39;re doing you know how many weeks they are out from a show and so it&#39;s pretty good idea to get or it&#39;s pretty easy to know that because you have a show that&#39;s coming up say in town and you know that that&#39;s what everyone&#39;s prepping for so I know what phase they&#39;re all in and you would see this like okay everyone&#39;s transitioning we&#39;re four weeks out from show and I see them ramping up intensity I see them ramping up cardio like crazy I&#39;m like what I know you&#39;re in a super low calorie diet right now like what are you doing like you&#39;re only going to sacrifice you you&#39;ve already put this body in this like permanent catabolic state so it&#39;s going to be eating way like you pushing it harder than what it was used to being pushed when it was fed even more is most certainly going to result in you losing muscle too slowing your metabolism down and you bringing a a less a lesser physique than what you already currently have so it&#39;s it&#39;s super common if it&#39;s common there where these they&#39;re supposed to be the elite in that in the arena of bulking and cutting and you&#39;re still seeing it happen so you most certainly see it in the average person in the gym now if you&#39;re going to increase volume the time to increase it appropriately is when you go into calorie Surplus now you have extra resources and energy to heal recover and adapt from the extra training now this doesn&#39;t mean you should always increase your volume when you&#39;re bulking or the amount of training you&#39;re doing when you&#39;re bulking it just means if you do you should probably do it when your calories are higher definitely not when you drop your calories all right lastly this big mistake and I know Adam you wanted to add this one I&#39;m glad we did is overcorrecting yeah this one is is huge I think this one comes in combination with the scale or with the first one which is pairs well with your first point the feeling because normally what ends up happening before someone just fully abandon ship and quits the program or quits what they&#39;re doing is they overcorrect first they first freak out because the insecurity point you made uh whether that either side whether it&#39;s oh my God I&#39;m too skinny so then you ah start to eat a bunch to fill back out better temporarily and you mess up the diet or the other is true you all of a sudden feel like oh my God I&#39;m I&#39;m getting fat when you&#39;re just filled out and then you cut your calories and ramp up cardio the next day so I I would say one is number one point number one most common and then I would say this is the second most common and it&#39;s because of the first one it causes this over yeah so I like to use this visual right you&#39;re driving on a road and it&#39;s wet it&#39;s raining and the car starts to slide a little bit to the left and so you jerk the steering wheel to the right now you spin the car completely out or flip the car right that&#39;s not how it works if you are moving in the wrong direction a slight adjustment is appropriate but people tend to overcorrect when they see one measurement or one way in or one thing that doesn&#39;t look like it&#39;s moving in the right direction so what do they do oh I&#39;ve been doing this bulk trying to build muscle oh my God the scale went up four pounds I&#39;m going to fast for 24 hours or I&#39;m going to cut my calories way down just overcorrect or vice versa um what you should do is wait until you get at least two or three consecutive measurements that show you&#39;re moving in a direction or not before you change direction overcorrecting is almost never uh a good idea yeah I had a rule for myself and my clients when competing was that you we we needed to have at least two to three check-ins that were moving in the negative Direction before we would adjust course just because so I in so many situations I have seen a check-in that we were doing say weekly or bi-weekly in and oh wow it looks like we you know didn&#39;t gain any muscle we didn&#39;t lose any B fat we kind of plateaued a little bit right here and then the next week all of a sudden we see this great positive response like oh wow shoot we put on a pound or two pounds like that&#39;s awesome like or vice versa if we&#39;re going the other direction right I&#39;m trying to cut and that person sees no body fat percentage gone down you know at one check-in and then the next check-in it&#39;s still maybe there and then the third one all of a sudden we&#39;re now we&#39;re moving right so um I always wanted to see at least two or three of our check-ins which would be your measurement circumference body fat and and scale using all those metrics and going okay is it not moving in the right direction okay let&#39;s check let&#39;s see if it&#39;s that way on the next yeah water water weight can make it go up or down it could be a fluke it could be the measurement itself often times these measurements especially body fat tests you have a stressful week you have a stressful holding extra water you had a day where you&#39;re just a higher in sodium the day before and then all a sudden you drank two extra glasses of water the next day I mean there&#39;s a there&#39;s a lot of different things especially when you&#39;re paying attention and you&#39;re tracking this stuff and you are checking in doing body fat every week to two weeks like that&#39;s a very small our change when we&#39;re talking about body composition is very small and incremental and so having a day being able to measure it accurately in a week is very difficult tough very very tough so always give yourself a couple check-ins before you you course correct now look we have a guide on how to lose body fat it&#39;s free you can find it at mind pump free.com you can also find all of us on Instagram Justin is at mine pump Justin I&#39;m at M pump Toano and Adam is at mind pump Adam [Music]

Transcript for:Cutting and Bulking Strategies Overview

Transcript for:
Cutting and Bulking Strategies Overview