A little over four years ago, I made a video called “Cutting vs Bulking” – Which
one FIRST for beginners?
And fortunately, that video got a lot of love, which I’m super grateful for all of you
wonderful humans for watching.
However, throughout the four years since making that video, I’ve been able to digest a bit
more information, observe the usual comments and questions I see about the topic, and sprinkle
in a bit more of that critical thinking juice that I oh so rarely use, and come to the realization
that this old video can use an update.
First, let’s explain a little bit about cuts and bulks, which I didn’t do that well
4 years ago.
Naughty naughty picturefat!
Both are dietary strategies based on calorie intake.
We all burn a specific amount of calories each day, known as our total daily energy
expenditure, or TDEE.
This includes all calorie-burning factors, like calories burned during rest, doing chores,
from digesting, and of course, during exercise.
And, yes, that includes your 10 pound calf raises.
We can somewhat estimate our TDEE using TDEE calculators.
When we figure that out, we can then decide to either go on a cut by reducing our calorie
intake, the amount of food we eat, below our TDEE, or go on a bulk by increasing our intake
above our TDEE.
“Cutting” on a regular basis would ultimately lower our weight and “bulking,” as you
might guess, increases our weight.
And, I think this is where the issue of the previous video starts and why I’m making
this new one now.
One of the big fitness misconceptions is that in order to build muscle, you need to gain
weight, thus you need to bulk, and in order to burn fat, you need to lose weight, and
thus you must cut.
And even though this IS a misconception I tackled in my video four years ago, I didn’t
really expand on it enough.
One critical point missing is that, just like it’s is a misconception that cuts and bulks
are needed for burning fat or building muscle, it is also a misconception that bulking and
cutting are the only options.
There’s actually a third and more superior option for beginners.
And that is: maintenance.
To be thorough, there’s actually quite more than just three if we’re considering slight
variations to these three options, but for this video, we’re going to focus mainly
on the general concept of maintenance.
And before we even do that, I wanna make it super duper clear that this is my personal
opinion.
You’re more than happy to have yours and I’m 100% positive that other creators in
the industry would disagree, and that’s cool.
But yes, maintenance, where you’re simply consuming calories equivalent to your TDEE.
And you probably guessed it, that means eating to maintain your current weight.
But with any nutrition plan, be it bulks, cuts, or maintenance, I always recommend to
include a decent amount of protein.
Generally, that would be about 1.6 grams of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day
starting out.
Now, in my older video, I ultimately said that cutting first for beginners is better
than bulking, and the first reason I gave is that it has a visual benefit.
Rather, when you cut, you end up looking better in the mirror.
That’s true but there’s no reason maintenance can’t do that as well.
Assuming that you are resistance training, which is also a requirement much like protein,
then doing so on maintenance versus cutting leads to greater muscle growth thanks to the
additional nutrients you provide to your body.
Also, since you’re not overeating, you’re preventing any fat gain and more likely, as
research has shown in beginners, you will burn some fat.
Also, being that you’re a beginner, you benefit from a thing called newbie gains.
It has been observed that “newbies” go through a phase early in their training where
muscle growth improves at a very quick pace.
This can allow you to build muscle effectively during a cut, but again, even more so during
maintenance.
Two other points I make in my older video is that cutting makes sense first because
much of the early development in training involves improving your technique and building
neural adaptations, both of which improves strength without necessarily building more
muscle.
Again, this applies to maintenance as well.
Also again, maintenance can provide more muscle, which should provide even more strength.
But even with all the jazz about maintenance being just as good, if not better than cutting,
thanks mainly to improvements of muscle growth, there’s actually two more important points
that take maintenance even higher in my recommendation.
The first is not having to lose or gain weight.
Your goal isn’t to see that number on the weight scale go up or down, which can cause
a lot of headache and demotivation if it doesn’t.
Sure, it might trend the wrong way sometimes and you will have to make adjustments, but
outside of that, weight ultimately plays a much smaller role in your plan.
That’s a win, a HUGE one more than people realize.
Mainly because, it leads to the next big point: adherence.
Any nutrition plan is pretty much useless if you can’t stick to it in the first place.
And cutting or bulking as a beginner isn’t exactly easy when you have so many other things
on your plate to figure out already, like programming your training, learning to prep
your meals, and wondering what supplements to take: have a video on that by the way.
So taking the difficulty of cutting or bulking out of your hands make things much easier.
And more importantly, the thing about bulks and cuts is that they’re just temporary
diets.
You can’t do either of them forever.
Like literally, you can’t gain or lose weight forever.
Unless your goal is to become a big-time bodybuilder or something similar that requires alternating
bulk and cut phases, then maintenance is something you can, and probably should do, the rest
of your life.
It’s a lifestyle.
Get enough whole foods, get enough protein, train regularly, and….
Eat just enough.
Doesn’t that sound great?
To reiterate, this advice is primarily for beginners, although more advanced folks are
more than happy to live a maintenance life, just know that your muscle gains might take
a bit longer.
And yes, this doesn’t apply to every beginner.
If it’s clear that it’s more important to your general health to either lose or gain
weight, then you should focus on that first.
But I’m willing to wager that the issue for most average-sized beginners is not that
they have too much fat on their frame, but rather they simply do not have enough muscle.
And Mr. Maintenance can help you with that.
If you enjoyed this video, please give it a bulky thumbs up and share it with your maintenance-loving
friends.
Subscribe for more and as always, don’t forget to get your protein!
MAKE NOTE IN VIDEO TO INCLUDE A PART TO RECOMMEND WATCVHING THE OTHER VIDEO FIRST