On your journey to your best body possible, you're going to have to do some bulking & you're going to have to do some cutting. When you do your cutting, you MUST achieve a net calorie deficit (more calories burned than consumed) each week if you're going to make any actual headway on the fat loss front. I discussed this in detail on this page.
What I did NOT discuss in detail on that page was how large your calorie deficit should be each week.
How many more calories should you be burning than you're consuming?
You might be thinking "as many as is humanly possible, right?"
I like where your head's at but let's dissect that...
AGGRESSIVENESS
In a vacuum, aggressive dieting phases (that is dieting phases that result in far more calories burned than consumed) are a good idea. You get to spend less time in a calorie deficit than you would with alternative, less aggressive approaches. But here's the kicker:
When we enter a cutting/fat loss phase, our primary objective is weight/fat loss. DUH! But...that's not our ONLY objective...
Our secondary objective when we enter a cutting/fat loss phase is muscle retention!
What good will it do us to lose all our fat if we just look like a skeleton at the end???
Well, as long as we don't lose too much fat were probably better off being skeletal than we are being a blubbering elephant.
But, if we can, we definitely want to keep all or as much of our muscle as possible even when losing fat.
So, we want to be aggressive but we don't want to be so aggressive that we start to hemorrhage a high percent of skeletal muscle each day/week in order to continue to survive.
MUSCLE LOSS
A good rule of thumb is to aim for somewhere between .5-1% of your total bodyweight lost per week.
This means if you weigh 200 pounds, you'll want to aim to lose 1-2 pounds per week.
This means if you weigh 150 pounds, you want to aim to lose .75-1.5 pounds per week.
Usually, if you lose faster than 1% per week, you are probably at increased risk of muscle loss (sans obese individuals who can go as high as 1.25 or maybe even 1.5% per week).
On the flip side, if you lose slower than .5% per week, you probably aren't preserving muscle at any higher a rate and you are potentially costing yourself FUTURE muscle (because if you just sacked up and got the fat loss phase over you could get back to a surplus where you stand a much better chance to grow)!
While this rule of thumb ranges works pretty well, I like to give these more specific ranges to people so their rate of loss can fit their context:
1-1.25% of total bodyweight lost per week if > 20% body-fat
.75-1% if 15-20%
.5-.75% if 10-15%
.5% or less if < 10% body-fat (you should probably stop cutting now)
SUSTAINABILITY
Here's the thing
What I did NOT discuss in detail on that page was how large your calorie deficit should be each week.
How many more calories should you be burning than you're consuming?
You might be thinking "as many as is humanly possible, right?"
I like where your head's at but let's dissect that...
AGGRESSIVENESS
In a vacuum, aggressive dieting phases (that is dieting phases that result in far more calories burned than consumed) are a good idea. You get to spend less time in a calorie deficit than you would with alternative, less aggressive approaches. But here's the kicker:
When we enter a cutting/fat loss phase, our primary objective is weight/fat loss. DUH! But...that's not our ONLY objective...
Our secondary objective when we enter a cutting/fat loss phase is muscle retention!
What good will it do us to lose all our fat if we just look like a skeleton at the end???
Well, as long as we don't lose too much fat were probably better off being skeletal than we are being a blubbering elephant.
But, if we can, we definitely want to keep all or as much of our muscle as possible even when losing fat.
So, we want to be aggressive but we don't want to be so aggressive that we start to hemorrhage a high percent of skeletal muscle each day/week in order to continue to survive.
MUSCLE LOSS
A good rule of thumb is to aim for somewhere between .5-1% of your total bodyweight lost per week.
This means if you weigh 200 pounds, you'll want to aim to lose 1-2 pounds per week.
This means if you weigh 150 pounds, you want to aim to lose .75-1.5 pounds per week.
Usually, if you lose faster than 1% per week, you are probably at increased risk of muscle loss (sans obese individuals who can go as high as 1.25 or maybe even 1.5% per week).
On the flip side, if you lose slower than .5% per week, you probably aren't preserving muscle at any higher a rate and you are potentially costing yourself FUTURE muscle (because if you just sacked up and got the fat loss phase over you could get back to a surplus where you stand a much better chance to grow)!
While this rule of thumb ranges works pretty well, I like to give these more specific ranges to people so their rate of loss can fit their context:
1-1.25% of total bodyweight lost per week if > 20% body-fat
.75-1% if 15-20%
.5-.75% if 10-15%
.5% or less if < 10% body-fat (you should probably stop cutting now)
SUSTAINABILITY
Here's the thing
