Currently, I am in a cut. I try not to overeat. Eating enough protein and more than TDEE-500kcal. Sometimes my calorie deficit is larger than 500kcal, especially if I go cycling or hiking. On those days, I simply add another protein rich meal consisting of Tofu and some vegetables, just to get enough calories out of fear to lose muscles. Do I have to do that?
When is an aggressive cut good? Only if you need to get to a certain weight for a competition?
I can not find any primary or reputable source, only blog posts about it.
Edit: this sounds good https://macrofactor.com/cutting-calculator/
With energy deficits smaller than about 500 Calories per day (which would equate to losing about 1 pound or 0.5kg per week), subjects (on average) were able to experience a bit of body recomposition (losing fat, while gaining a little muscle). With deficits larger than 500 Calories per day, subjects tended to lose lean mass, with the rate of lean mass loss increasing as energy deficits grew
Meaning, avoiding an aggressive cut is advisable if you don’t have to get below a certain weight
My own experience is that when doing lots of cardio a deficit of more than 500 calories total in the day didn’t feel difficult or bad as long as I ate after my workout. However, I made sure to always eat a bit more the day after a cardio/large deficit day to balance it out. I also workout in the evening so having a large breakfast instead of trying to eat a lot in the evening made more sense. My advice would be to stick to max 500 cal deficit on average, but don’t stress about 100 more or less day to day.
It’s a slightly different scenario, but there was also a study into why athletes develop symptoms of REDs and they found that not only total calorie consumption was important but also the timing. Where athletes that often had deficiencies of over 400 calories for more than 4 hours after their workout had more issues. This suggests you want to spread out your deficit more evenly across the day and always fuel during and after a workout even in a cut.
I eat on the same day and you eat the following day. Is that correct? Eating on the next day sounds like having a small deficit on day 2 and a large deficit on day 1. Is that fluctuation really equivalent to smoothing it?
That study sounds nice. Thx, for sharing.
I think what I’m trying to say is that your body does not work in 24h intervals. So if you did a big bike ride yesterday you still need a bit more food today for recovery, even though today you are having a rest day. Therefore, I would allow a slightly larger deficit on the day of the ride, so I could have more food (less deficit) the day after and still maintain my average.
Lets say I did a 2000 calorie ride. I would have eaten slightly more before (300 extra), 600 during and then a larger meal afterwards (700 extra). I’m still left with 400 calories from my ride for a larger breakfast the next day. This is all on top of my base meals. In my calorie counting app it would look like a 900 calorie deficit one day and 100 calorie deficit the next, but in terms of recovery and refuelling it makes more sense (to me). That said… when in a stage of doing huge bike rides I usually keep my cut to 200-300 calories max per day because it is really easy to make a mistake in fuelling and bonk during a cut.
It’s what the people at MacroFactor wrote. The more aggressive the cut, the more muscle you lose. This depends on your age, training age, hormone levels, and individual variations.
As an aside, there’s limited benefit to trying to match caloric intake to expenditure on a day to day basis; wearables are terrifically bad at correct estimates. https://macrofactor.com/wearables/ Better to track weight and intake over time and reset your expenditure on a weekly basis, or so. Unless your hike or cycling is a marathon or a couple hundred km. If you’ve hit the protein goals and it’s set appropriately, shovel some extra carbs in. Protein is expensive and when your body needs carbs (like after a big ride) it’s pretty much a waste as it’ll get converted to carb anyways.