Best Damn Workout + 5/2 Diet to Improve Body Composition?

Hi CT. I know this is not a pharma forum so I won’t talk about any drugs here. BUt I am currently in PCT which is highly catabolic and cortisol levels are out of whack.
I remember reading one of your answers regarding that exact time and how one should eat and train ( heavy weights, less volume and caloric surplus) and I have been doing that for 4 weeks. Everything is great strength wise and I even set new PR’s, but damn I become fat, I added about 5 lbs of pure fat.

So, I was thinking in using the Best damn workout plan which is already low in volume in conjunction with 5/2 diet to create a certain calorie deficit only two days a week and to keep fat gain at bay.
In the fasting days I won’t be doing any cardio and I will have 1000mg of vit c 4 times a day to reduce cortisol level.

Would that be effective or do you think it is a reciepee to lose muscle mass.
Thank you so much for your knowledge.

That sounds interesting. But are you planning to use to 6 days a week frequency, if so it will not be a good idea to fast when you are hitting your muscles especially during PCT.
However, maybe you can do that if you use the 4 days a week variation, but still you might run into recovery issues.
I am curious what CT would recommend though.

That was going to be my question too. The Best Damn program is 6 days a week, although you can roll through the workouts 5 days a week.

But yeah, it is the ideal program for PCT and it should work as you planned.

I would consider adding phosphatidylserine to keep cortisol at bay too,.

Thanks CT.
Yes, I plan to use a 5 days per week variation and fast the other 2 days.
So, I should not worry about muscle loss if I am eating at a slight caloric surplus and high caloric intake on training days?

Thank you so much for your reply. Yes, I am going to use 5 days per week template of the program.

Well it depends on the state of your cortisol. When you are on a cycle cortisol cannot do its job properly at the muscle site because the androgens use most of the second messengers (what sends the signal to the nucleus of the muscle cell) so there is not enough left for cortisol to do its job properly.

The body adapts by starting to produce more cortisol. That will likely slow down your gains during a cycle. But since there is plenty of exogenous androgens comming in, you can still keep builfing muscle and in large part still inhibit the cortisol action.

At that point the body can adapt by increasing the sensitivity of the glucocorticoid (cortisol) receptors. Which means that you respond more strongly to cortisol. This is normally when a cycle stops working unless you increase the dosage.

But the problem is that those who do that will now adapt by increasing the number of glucocorticoid receptors.

The lifter who now stops his cycle will have:

*A higher cortisol production
*More sensitive glucocorticoid receptors
*More glucocorticoid receptors

In other words the body is now super responsive to cortisol at the muscle level. And THAT is what makes someone lose muscle post cycle. Even if you regain normal testosterone production, if your cortisol system is overactive, you will lose muscle.

So whether you will lose muscle or not depends on the state you were in when you stopped the cycle.

If you didn’t cause any adaptation to the cortisol system you should maintain most of your gains.

If you increased cortisol production you should be able to maintain fairly well provided that you use supplements to decrease cortisol and use a training method that will minimize cortisol production release.

If you increased glucocorticoid sensitivity you will lose some muscle, maybe even a lot, even if you do everything right.

If you reached the point of increasing the number of glucocorticoid receptors not only will you lose a large part of your gains, it will be extremely hard to gain muscle naturally in the future.

The step you reach depends on your severity of use (dosage, duration of cycle, type of compounds, age and your own physiology so it’s impossible for me to tell you what will happen.

Wow, that’s the first time I hear about this! Thank you so much CT , I really appreciate the effort you put on this forum to help us.
I guess the only way to know is to give it a go and see how things will work out, I hope it works though.
Thank you CT!

Yep… although there might be some symptoms that could give a clue about disregulated cortisol…

*Drastic drop in libido/erectile dysfunction
*Moodiness/low patience
*Significant water retention (huge difference in morning vs evening weight and definition)
*Weak immune system/easily getting sick

High in the morning and low in the evening?

Opposite

Very nice answer of a complex subject explained in an understandable way!