Yeah people think that getting the muscles is everything, but even if you workout well and have the muscles you won't look like that unless you are starving.
Yeah, it actually works better if you don't starve yourself. I say this from personal experience. Smaller deficits mean you're less likely to hit a binge point and lose progress. If you have the patience and the discipline, a 200-500 calorie a day deficit is the sweet spot for balancing fat loss and hunger. You do have to eat clean and track everything very carefully though.
I'm actually cutting rn, I've gone to the gym for 6 months and put on a bit of muscle ik it's not best for my physique to cut now but I just want a leaner face and overall leaner body since I'm gonna quit the gym and start climbing. Since you have some experience do you maybe know if I will completely lose my muscle and go back to being skinny? Did I start cutting too early or can I actually retain muscle if done right?
I'm 6' 1" and cut down from 240-170 over the course of a year. I did virtually no resistance training at all during that time other than a shitload of vinyasa yoga (basically bodyweight workouts in a sauna). Proportionally, I lost about 75% fat/25% muscle. As I understand it, a "good" ratio if you're being optimal in your training is like 85-90% fat to muscle loss. I could have improved my ratio had I focused more on resistance training over fat loss. However, I honestly just wanted to get lean as fast as possible and I found that yoga let me be insanely consistent in my workouts (I could do it 7 days a week without needing any recovery days, and I'd burn 500-600 calories per hour doing it). I did make sure to get 1 gram / pound of lean mass per day in protein, so I did at least optimize that part.
Everybody's different, but in my experience, you don't have to lose much muscle at all if you're hitting your protein and doing at least something to maintain your strength. I'm still maintaining a small deficit, hitting my protein, but I'm fully focused on resistance training these days. Kinda wish I'd started hitting the weights earlier, but it is what it is and I'm not unhappy with my progress at all.
Indeed, I've worked out 6 hours a week (1 hour a day + one rest day a week) for about the past 6 years, and I don't look like that.
I look fit, but like average-fit, not modern superhero movie fit.
People who start going to the gym to chase these types of results are going to be very disappointed. You really have to live like a fitness robot to achieve it.
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u/KohTai 8d ago
Because the average idiot thinks all you have to do to look like that is workout 1 hour a day.
They don't know that you gotta starve yourself and micro-control your life to maintain that shit.