For those of you who WANT this look, well the method is still the same.
Continuing to cut when you don’t have muscle to “strip” the fat from is just gonna get you skinnier or keep you skinny fat. If you are say 115-120 at 5’4-5’5, and still trying to “cut” to get to those last bits of fat, you will have to keep lowering your calorie intake more and more and risk losing any muscle mass you had in the first place.
The problem with these terms I have is that trying to lose even more fat and look “lean and tight”, when someone is at, or close to, a skinnier weight range is hard to do without any muscle. And that is one reason women get so scared about “bulking”. Its not like you can pre-program your food to go straight to your muscles (or your boobs!!). The problem with this is that more calories may mean more fat too. To add new muscle, you have to be eating more than you burn through regular living and exercising. You can get stronger and improve the “tone” of your muscle without adding NEW muscle. But first some definitions:Ĭutting: a focus on stripping away fat and lowering the body fat percentage to reveal cuts and definition in your muscles.īulking: eating more calories than you determine your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure) to be in order to feed new muscle growth and create a favorable environment for “growth” This is where my beef with the words “cutting” and “bulking” comes in. Either way, its not really practical for most of us chickies to focus on body weight at <10lbs. Those who approach the higher echelons of body composition can afford to get really picky. Of course if you have the time, patience etc to strictly monitor and calculate body weight and accurate body fat measuring that takes into account all variables, timing, averages etc, your “weight” might be one of those numbers, but like I said I am speaking from a more “normal” point of view. You are better off going by a goal “look”, size of clothes, and proper progress pics that can show body changes, even if the scale is not budging much. Lower than that, and the scale is not gonna help you out much due to the inaccuracy of real life bodyweight fluctuations and the whole muscle to fat ratio. That’s when scale numbers might be useful for a bit. I consider being greater than 15-20 lbs overweight significant enough “fat” to be lost so that a number on the scale will matter somewhat. THAT’S ME!! LOOK I CAN PINCH IT! Here’s what I mean. The problem I have with this is not for those that ACTUALLY need to lose fat because they are overweight or obese, but those who are low enough in weight to look “thin” or “skinny fat” yet still have those trouble spots that they want to go away. That basically means you calculate a calorie deficit in order to start that energy-in-vs-energy-out fat burning. Most everyone starts out going on a “cut”. Or maybe someone is not even “conventionally” fat (rolls or blobs), but squishy and carrying those extra pinches on places like our lower abs, back and under our butt.
This is great! For most of us who start a “diet” or exercise journey (I use the term diet here, as changing your diet habits, not necessarily going on a “diet”, if you know what I mean) because we have fat to lose or you just want to look better in general. They are calculating macros (how much protein/fat/carbs you eat a day), setting up calorie numbers, thinking about goals etc. With the facebook group I am a member of (Fierce, Fit, Fearless), many women are starting the lifting and diet journey as beginners. With the growing interest in women lifting heavy, getting lean and strong, and using intermittent fasting (Leangains or Eat Stop Eat etc) as a diet lifestyle, the words “cutting”, “bulking”, “recomping”, etc are becoming more common place. I am also addressing this from a purely female point of view. I bounced some of these “musings” off of a couple knowledgeble chicks (one who was a competitor) and it seems we are all on the sameish track. To those of you, who like me, stay “fit” as a part of life (not even because I work as a trainer), this may resonate with you. So if anything I say does not apply in that sense, I realize that my knowledge is limited to the more “normal” side of trying to look as awesome as possible and gain as much shapely muscle as possible, while getting strong as possible. I wanted to discuss this from my perspective, as someone who IS NOT a bikini/physique competitor. This one has been on my mind for awhile now, and moreso because of quite a few private messages and posts from different women. for months or years? Stop cutting, start eating a little more, and start lifting weight.Ī friend graciously allowed me to borrow his macbook pro, while mine is in the shop, so I can finally get around to getting some blog posts up about a list of topics I’ve been thinking about. Women: Have you been trying to lose those last 10 lbs.