If I’m not mistaken Dan Duchaine claimed that your metabolism starts to slow down after ~3 weeks of dieting. The author of the ABCDE diet claimed that the body loses inefficiency to drop fat after two weeks of dieting. (Not to say you cant lose fat after the above listed periods of time, but efficiency!) Keeping this in mind; what have your personal experiences been? What are your methods around it? Do you diet for short periods of time (4 weeks) then resume maintanance calories for a few weeks? Or do you diet straight for ex:12 weeks? All input would be appreciated. - IF you are using illegal substances while dieting dont forget to mention it:) Thanks
I just finished a 12 week cutting cycle and kept calories at about 1000 under maintanence which I think is productive with all the great supplements now available. I alternated the old original MD-6 with zenadrine, old T2, Androsol, among other supps and came off with Tribex, M, and Methoxy and had great results. However, I remember losing a great deal of fat and getting down to an easy, very lean 6%, a number of years ago before a lot of legal supps were available by alternating calories every other day for about 3 months. I would eat around 1200 calories one day followed by 1800-2000 the next day and then repeat. The fat came off slower but steadily and got incredibly lean over a period of about 3 months. And I seemed to stay incredibly lean for a long time after - absolutely no rebound effect. But with all the great supps now available, we all want quicker results which are now possible.
I never diet for more than 4 weeks in a row, but I’m also more concerned with maintaining muscle mass than with being ultra lean. Nevertheless, I can still diet down to 6% BF or so, since I never get much higher than 9 or 10%.
Would it be better to do 4 weeks of cutting and then 4 weeks of bulking instead of longer periods of cutting and bulking?
How about hours? Actually your body’s metabolism varies throughout the day, depending on what you are eating. What the author of ABCDE diet was talking about is how long it takes for your body to adjust to a major change in calorie, like cutting them in half (not to mention that very few people had very much success with the diet). In short yes your metabolism does change, but with a slight decrease in calories it can be kept to a minimum, (espicially with some of the supplements out their like T-2 pro) also with an E+C supplement you can more effecitively burn off fat and spare muscle during your calorie deficient time. Check out the Bernardi articles and Q&A’s, he goes quite indepth about this topic.
I remember Duchaine saying that it takes 5 days of relatively high carb consumption to kick start a metabolism slowed by dieting. I don’t know if this theory has been disproven or not, but anytime I tried it I gained fat back quickly. Maybe if it were done with Berardi’s p+c and p+f meals it would be more successful. I find that if I diet with low carbs and no cardio for about 4wks. and then add cardio once the fat loss stops, I can extend the fat loss for another 2 or 3 weeks.