I truly believe this is what its all about: 2 steps forward, 1 step back
Also increments, if you set a target weight thats 30 lbs away and eat sloppy to get there, your composition will suffer more so than compared to a target that is 10 lbs away, hell sometimes even 5 lbs seems so far away.
Besides taking a brief respite from big eating helps you cleanse, when I gain weight my carb intake is huge and my fat intake isn’t as clean, I can only handle several weeks worth of eating big before my blood feels thick and my energy levels dip. Keeping it clean, and bringing back in those vegetables you didnt have stomach space for, even for just a week can fix up your anti-oxidants, lower cholesterol, and keep insulin sensitivity high, all while ensuring your body comp stays tight.
And this is true even for people who don’t have aspirations of breaking 300lbs, even smaller mesomorphs with fast metabolisms and little frames will still be scraping for single pounds once you fill out around the upper 100’s. Albeit diet vs body comp is much more forgiving on us meso’s; I’m rarely in double digit body fat.
To digress a bit, I think the past few decades have taught many people to vilify food. What could be refered to as good ol’ home cooking is considered by most people to be junk. Everyone was trying to find reasons for people getting fat, people demonized fats, first trans fat, then saturated fat, then processed carbs, then any carbs at all, and now the scrutiny falls on the industrialized modes of food production so people are frightened of all HFCS and thinks like that ‘pink slime’ farce. But more than anything else the office is whats making people fat, the food not so much, especially considering that highly active individuals have a different set of rules than the sedentary. Its all about bodily flux.
Of course I’m not trying to disregard the past few decades of scientific enlightenment. We DO understand more about bodily assimilation of nutrients and their systemic impacts and we DO have years worth of statistics to draw upon for long term indications of dietary problems, but you aren’t about to feed the world with organic farms, not happening. I prefer realistic over optimal.
Besides I’m sure plenty of us have been scolded that what we are doing is not healthy. I would disagree but in a sense thats not a false statement depending on how you define health. We aren’t about to outlast that rural chinese woman who has been living on soybeans and rice for the last 100 years. We chug preworkout and push heavy weights around. We willingly engage in activities that are inherently dangerous, that wear out our joints and ligaments and stress our hearts and veinous systems. AAS has the risk of cardiac hypertrophy and some are even initiators of certain types of cancer, although the health risks of AAS aren’t exactly contended.
But hey the star that burns twice as bright burns half as long, yeah?
To sum up, I suppose if its a personal preference to stay lean thats ok, but I think too many people are afraid to eat what they need to actually get where they want, especially if they are being steered away from that approach by research and citations intended for experienced professional competitors.