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No, you are the Doyen of Ausbb [MENTION=3627]Goosey[/MENTION];
 
It's personal preference.

Every body is different, but I think I can gain more muscle at higher caloric intakes, and definitely love the food. The downside is that you also gain more fat.

It all comes down to the ease with which you can lose the fat. Dieting is harder for some people than others for many reasons.

I think age is also a factor. Generally it's easier for older people to put on fat than younger roosters.

It comes down to:

-What sort of condition you want to maintain

-Whether having to lose the extra kegs you may put on at higher cal levels is worth having to lose it later. To stay leaner you can't avoid having to exercise some dietary self control.

For your average punter who doesn't want to get cut and for whom muscle mass isn't the priority a happy medium is easily attainable.

I've done both. For me atm I will be trying to stay at the leaner end of the spectrum, for a while at least. It's a lot easier to lose 6 or 7 kegs than 15 or 20. I would guesstimate current BF% to be single digits.
 
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Yes age is certainly a factor. Don't wanna bulk too much past 30. That's when it gets harder to lose.

People with lower hormone levels should avoid bulking like the plague too.
 
And don't forget, geared lifters can definitely use the higher calories, it's likely to be put to better use by the body, and cutting can be made much easier and less catabolic by the addition of certain compounds. So geared lifters could probably benefit much more from a defined 'bulking/cutting' periods than natural lifters.
 
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I hesitate to call it 'bulking' and 'cutting' as really it's just a matter of where on the spectrum of caloric intake you feel most comfortable/get the most benefit.

Conceptually you could say a 5/10 on the 'bulking'(caloric intake or surplus) scale = a 5/10 on the 'how hard/long you will have to diet scale'.

A 10 on the 'bulk' scale = a 10 on the 'cut' scale.

A 3 on the 'bulk' scale = a 3 on the 'cut' scale.

It depends on what you think works best for you.

N.B.

The 'scale' is just for illustrative purposes nitpicking kunce.
 
What works best is to try to bulk muscle tissue in the winter and in the summer months we try to cut.

But for the average dude, which is all of us except for the 1% we need to be vigilant.

we always talk about the competitive bodybiulder using a method which is some turbo charged wiz-bang method, I think this is amusing

speaking of the 1%, that's what it is, "bodybuilders" are a weird lot.
 
i now try to keep in range 88-92kg. this allows me a period of surplus calories to aid training, but also a quick period to lost any added fat. I also use waist measurement as guide of when to cut back a bit.
 
From someone who has yo-yo dieted for years and now find themselves at 125-130kgs - I would suggest not to follow the old school hardline of cut and bulk - I did this for along time and yes I got results (to a degree) but long term I now believe it nearly destroys your ability to eat "normally" as you always catching up on band-aiding your bulking and cutting possible mistakes - i.e eating to little, eating to much etc.

I believe to gain more muscle you need to eat more, and to drop bodyfat you need to eat less - that is fairly straight forward.

But going from one extreme to the other is not healthy - i.e eating 5000,6000+ calories on a bulk and then maybe dropping to lets say 2000, 3000 calories on a cut - just doesn't long term workout.

I am in no position to say what is good, what is bad at the moment - but I can say from experience from being an extreme cutter to extreme bulker long term I would suggest not to do it.
 
Competitive BBers still apply the traditional bulk / cut to the max, but for the mere mortals like me, its on a smaller scale, no more than get a little full and puffy during the winter and burn the fat off for summer.
The reason for that is an average kunce like me will need 2 seasons not one to diet back down.
So I think in sense many of us still do the bulk/cut thing but it's a lot more subtle.
 
Competitive BBers still apply the traditional bulk / cut to the max, but for the mere mortals like me, its on a smaller scale, no more than get a little full and puffy during the winter and burn the fat off for summer.
The reason for that is an average kunce like me will need 2 seasons not one to diet back down.
So I think in sense many of us still do the bulk/cut thing but it's a lot more subtle.


Yea that's right - there is still merit to "cutting"/"bulking" but you need to maybe make it more into "phase" eating where your slowly increasing calories or decreasing over time and not to one extreme or another which alot of the old school methods are based on.
 
Competitive BBers still apply the traditional bulk / cut to the max, but for the mere mortals like me, its on a smaller scale, no more than get a little full and puffy during the winter and burn the fat off for summer.
The reason for that is an average kunce like me will need 2 seasons not one to diet back down.
So I think in sense many of us still do the bulk/cut thing but it's a lot more subtle.

I reckon you'd find natty lifters are bit more conservative compared to their geared counterparts.
 
Please clarify.
Well since they are "Unassisted" they think they need to eat more to compensate for not being assisted.
An enhanced athlete can still make gains on less since they have greater ability to be Nitrogen Positive..
 
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