T Nation

Cutting to Bulking Adaption

Supplements and Nutrition
#1

I’ve been cutting for a while now, lost about 3 kilos in the past month. Hoping to lose 1 more over the next week and then start my bulk. Now, while I haven’t managed to find a specific article addressing the transfer from one state to the other I’ve read a lot of posts saying that it’s easy to gain unnecessary fat after cutting.

How should I prevent this? I’m following Dr. Berardi’s Eat Big (ie don’t mix carbs and fats), and try to minimise carbs after breakfast. Any advice or links would be appreciated; sorry about the thread if there’s been a similar one, couldn’t find anything!

#2

Transition.

cutting diet --> bulking diet

Break it up so that the transition takes 4 to 8 weeks.

Week 0: Cutting diet
Week 1: Cutting + 25% of extra calories
Week 2: Cutting + 50%
Week 3: Cutting + 75%
Week 4: Bulking diet

Main reason for the fat gain is that after a diet, your metabolism is slower and you have a bigger than usual appetite. So go at it slower and you should be fine.

If you really want to be specific, you could add carbs slower than protein and fat or cycle carbs in. It helps to eat clean foods during the transition. Also, you can start by adding more calories into your pre/post workouts meals and breakfast before adding calories into other meals.

#3

I can offer some practical advice, as I was in the same boat. I realized shortly after that I shouldn’t have bothered with cutting in the first place.

Watch the scale, watch your measurements (waist, upper arm, chest, quads, etc). Don’t be afraid to put on fat, but if you’re gaining much more then a few lbs a month, something may be up. Everyone puts on weight at their own pace, but you should be wary of putting on too much weight too fast - its not gonna be all muscle!

3 lbs a month is a fact that I see thrown a lot here. I personally have been gaining around 4-5 lbs a month and don’t look noticeably fatter.

If you think you are putting on too much fast, do some cardio. That’s preferrable to easing up on the eating, since you need to eat BIG to get big. I eat carbs all day long (except in the evening, after 7), protein all day long, and my fats. But that’s just what I do.

#4

Mafzal, your thoughts are solid; but, the one question I have is, would cardio change anything? It would increase my caloric expenditure, but to keep bulking, I’d just have to eat more for the day to stay in caloric excess, right?

Evilmage, I like your suggestion a lot, too. I will probably do what you suggested, and stay in caloric balance for a couple of weeks while ramping up my metabolism before I start bulking.

Does anyone know if it would be productive to go:

Week 0-1 : Stop cutting, +20% calories, caloric balance
Week 1 onwards: Decrease caloric intake, but continue cutting with a higher base metabolism

This seems like an interesting idea, and I realise everything is individual, but it’d be really great to get my metabolism up as it’s becoming increasingly difficult to lose weight!

#5

For me, when I feel like I put on too much fat - I just run for around 20-30 minutes. You can also do HIIT for 10 minutes (more effective I think)

And the fat goes down a little bit after that. It works for me. I still am in overall caloric excess overall for the week - but I lose some excess fat. So far I’ve only done cardio around 4 times total in my bulk that I’ve been doing since February.

#6

Just use a 4 week bridge and progressively step up the calories to your maintenance whilst adding in 3x30 min cardio sessions to help sort out insulin sensitivity. Perhaps CLA and green tea whilst you ween off of the stronger stimulants.

After 4-6 weeks of maintenance calories then I would use the simple format of adding 250 calories every two weeks… evaluate your gains and see if you need to add some more =]… or however you do your normal bulk.