More Difficult: Bulking or Cutting

Which do you guys think is more difficult?

If you mean diet wise, then cutting.

It is, however, more difficult to add muscle than it is to lose fat, many threads before discussing this just do a search if you want.

i’ve never tried to cut in my life so i’ve no idea.

sorry for the pointless reply

Adding a significant amount of muscle while not getting fat. Having the mental fortitude to stop spinning one’s wheels in an attempt to get hyooge and ripped all at once, sit down, eat enough to grow, and realize for a few years you’re gonna look like crap (small and weak) until you acquire enough muscle to warrant dieting down and showing it off, is tough. Once you’re there, cutting is a breeze. You’ve got the muscle, you’ve done the hard part.

Cutting is much more difficult. Dieting is not. But proper cutting is. When bulking, you train hard, eat plenty of good food, rest, and you grow. When you are cutting everything must be dialed in perfectly: food, training, rest. It’s very hard to get everything perfect and train with the requisite intensity so that you lose no muscle while on a caloric deficit.

Rest demands increase, and burnout becomes more of a concern. Cutting’s harder because everything should be the same as bulking[except perhaps volume] but you are doing it on a caloric deficit. It takes its toll on the body. It also takes real committment to be that disciplined with diet.

It takes many years to build up appreciable amount of size and at most four months to get pretty lean. Eating less or doing a lot of cardio does suck but to me eating 6-10 times a day and dreading the next meal day in and day out is WAY harder.

I think it tends to depend on your body type. Endos usually say cutting, while Ectos usually say bulking. Personally I tend to think that proper cutting is more difficult because you have to balance so many different factors and get it all right in order to strip fat instead of muscle.

^ i know what you mean, i was on a calorie restriced diet for a while and all i could think of was how sweet itd be once i could eat however much i wanted, but now its like as soon i get done cooking and eating and sit down for 5 minutes im back to cooking and eating again, that and its definately tougher on the wallet to bulk.

We had this discussion just a few months ago. Search.

It came down to the fact that for some it’s easier to bulk and for others it’s easier to cut.

Man I wont go into detail but I say it comes down to diet. During bulking you can have several cheat meals, while cutting you can’t have any.

If you have a sweet tooth like me cutting drive you up a freaken wall. Cutting out carbs alone sucks…but then anything sweet as well, ahhhh.

Haha i’m cutting down b/c I have hit the upper limits of my weight class for PL and I swear if I see another chicken breast, egg, or plain steak I’m going to scream.

Oh and by cutting I mean serious fat loss not just dieting. I cut out carbs and a lot of fats. Its protein and veggies and that’s about it. Looks like I’ll come in nicely at 181 though, then it’s bulk time!

We indeed did discuss this to death a couple months ago.

Biologically speaking growing muscle is a much more resource intensive process not even counting the actual external work. It isn’t even close.

Barring actual pathology, losing fat is relatively easy for anybody who really wants to. Getting VERY lean is a different story and is more difficult and tricky.

By any accepted scientific standard, again assuming no pathological conditions, synthesizing lean mass is much more difficult than burning off adipose stores.

How this presents itself subjectively to the individual can be as varied as the individuals. In other words the fact that some people find it personally more difficult to lose fat, which is much rarer in reality than many believe, has nothing to do with the actual physiology. Most people who will declare how much easier it is to build muscle have a very miniaturized view of what building muscle means.