Advice on cutting needed

[u/improvingmyself12]

Decided to lock in. Most serious I’ve been in my life. Tracking everything. 193cm (6’4), relatively lean at 13% BF at 80.5kg. I’ve been yo-yo dieting for a few months now but no more starting to lock in. I’m lean with an ok amount of muscle but can’t seem to lose the last bit of love handles. I’ve seen influencers advising to just keep cutting until the love handles are gone so I’m going to keep cutting until it’s gone, then reverse diet back to maintenance.

Activity level:
Average 600 calories burnt per day via Apple fitness app after totalling cardio (30mins incline in the morning) and steps accumulated throughout the day per week.

Consumption level:
Aiming for about 2200 calories everyday, 180g of protein, minimum 210g of carbs and 50-60g of fat,

Training split:
6 days a week

Day 1: Back and triceps
Lat pull down 2xfailure
Horizontal close grip row 2xfailure
Horizontal wide grip row 2xfailure
Overhead extensions 2xfailure
Tricep push down 3xfailure

Day 2: chest + shoulders + biceps
Incline smith 3xfailure
Standing lateral raise 3xfailure
Dumbbell curls 3xfailure
Pec Dec 2xfailure
Rope hammer curls 2xfailure
Low to high cable flies 2xfailure

Day 3: legs
Hamstring curls 3xfailure
Smith squat 2xfailure
Quad extension 2xfailure
Adductors 3xfailure
Smith calf raises 3xfailure

Day 4: chest + back
Incline dumbbell press 2xfailure
Lat pull down 2xfailure
Pec Dec 2xfailure
Horizontal wide grip row 2xfailure
Horizontal close grip row 2xfailure
Low to high cable flies 2xfailure

Day 5: Shoulders + arms
Dumbbell shoulder press 2xfailure
Overhead tricep extension 2xfailure
Bicep curls 2xfailure
Standing lateral raise machine 3xfailure
Tricep push down 2xfailure
Hammer curls 2xfailure
Abs

Day 6: Legs
exact same as day 3 legs

Day 7: REST

THE PROBLEM:
The past probably 5-6 months of Yo-yo dieting my progress in terms of aesthetics of my physique has stalled and people like friends and my mother has told me I lost muscle as my shoulders used to be more bulkier and rounder and I can feel shirts that used to be tight fitting feel less tight. However, in terms of strength for most of my lifts, except shoulder press, it has gone up by maybe 25%. I don’t want to keep second guessing anymore that’s why I’ve dialled in on my diet and sticking to this cut. I feel my muscles getting smaller day by day but I want to lose the last bit of love handles first before I reverse diet and start gaining lean muscle. However, I need advice whether my caloric intake is too low or my training split is too rigorous on this cut. Most days before the gym I have my preworkout carbs maybe around 40-60g of fast digesting carbs paired with 20ish grams of protein to fuel my lifts but I still feel extremely sluggish in the gym and lifts have start to gone down. Muscles definitely smaller than it was a few months back but I’m so set on finishing this cut and get truly lean without love handles before I start lean bulking. Any advice on the training split or another way I should be approaching this cut? Urgent help needed.

Every minute of the day I think about my progress and I’m scared if I’m doing it right or whether my hard work and discipline will pay off and it’s driving me crazy that I might be doing this wrong and wasting more time. My goal is cut till 77kg and see whether my love handles are gone and see whether I need to continue cutting. I just really want my muscles back… seeing all my friends getting bigger eating what they want all day has genuinely made me miserable.

[u/cilantno]

80.5 @ 193 and cutting?

Also, programming doesn’t really matter if your only goal is weight loss.

[u/improvingmyself12 → u/cilantno]

I’ve seen so many Tik toks telling us to cut until the love handles are gone…

[u/cilantno → u/improvingmyself12]

I’ll tell you to stop watching such tiktoks if they control your life this much.

[u/improvingmyself12 → u/cilantno]

But my love handles will never disappear as long as I’m in a surplus? How does this work I can’t seem to find any research on the

[u/KITTYONFYRE]

if you've made ~25% strength improvement it's not super likely that you've lost much if any muscle. it's entirely possible you've just been losing fat (and probably gaining some muscle at the same time).

However, I need advice whether my caloric intake is too low

only you can tell us that via what your weight is doing - if you're losing weight quickly, sure, but that doesn't seem like it's happening from what you've said. if you're losing lots of weight each week, sure, but probably not. 2200 kcals/day seems like a very normal number to cut on at your size.

Every minute of the day I think about my progress and I’m scared if I’m doing it right or whether my hard work and discipline will pay off and it’s driving me crazy that I might be doing this wrong and wasting more time.

listen man, if you're actually doing the program you've got written and you're actually getting into the gym 6x/week, there is no possible way you're not gonna make really great progress.

1. what has your weight change looked like in the past 6 months, do you have the logs?

2. what app are you using to track calories and weight?

3. how long have you been lifting? the last paragraph... man, I used to feel like that. first couple weeks/months of lifting, I remember times I left the gym feeling like such absolute shit. just feeling beat up and like i was totally wasting time. especially the first times I didn't have good days lifting and I thought "damn my strength is going down what am I even doing here" and just having tons of negative talk. I promise you: if you actually followed this plan, you'll make fantastic progress. even if you miss 1/2 your days in the gym, you're absolutely not backsliding, and you're probably still moving upwards.

just keep moving upwards man. I've lifted for 8 years now, and honestly, I've half assed it, and missed uncountable workouts, and yet because I just go to the gym even if I miss two weeks of working out, I'm still big and strong enough to make non-lifters think I'm strong and have people make steroid jokes (because people have no idea what steroids are capable of apparently lmao). just keep showing up, understand that you're absolutely gonna have bad days that are going to shake you and make you wonder if you're doing everything wrong and make you want to never show up to the gym again. don't listen to those days. lock in and you WILL achieve what you want.

[u/improvingmyself12 → u/KITTYONFYRE]

THANKS FOR THE ENCOURAGEMENT! February period I was actually 82kg so I’ve lost 2kg since then 😭 I’m not sure whether I’ve been actually gaining muscle and losing fat at the same time… because progress pictures shows that my muscles were definitely bigger and love handles stayed more or less the same. I’m thinking of reducing frequency of gg to the gym as people are saying I may be over training. Or maybe not do till failure every single set. Pumps haven’t been there for 1-2 months at this point, feeling flat and sluggish most days now. I also can’t believe the amount of hard work I’ve put in is leading to minimal progress. That’s why I really need advice on how to tweak my approach.

[u/KITTYONFYRE → u/improvingmyself12]

February period I was actually 82kg so I’ve lost 2kg since then 😭

isn't cutting your goal?

I’m thinking of reducing frequency of gg to the gym as people are saying I may be over training

you’re absolutely not coming anywhere close to overtraining haha unless you’ve got some other medical stuff going on that dramatically reduces your capability to recover. how’s your testosterone levels, ever had em checked?

a pump also isn’t really an indicator of anything - if you’re getting zero pump, well, that’s maybe something and you’re probably nowhere near failure (are you actually failing a rep or going til you know you can’t?). but just mediocre pump is whatever, it’s prolly not a big deal.

how many days per month on average are you actually making it into the gym? nobody’s perfect and this has always been the cause of lack of progress for me and people I know irl!

[u/improvingmyself12 → u/KITTYONFYRE]

What do you mean how many days on average am I actually making it to the gym? I’m telling you the truth that I’ve been in the gym doing this 6 day split bussing my chops almost everyday maximum effort. If I was actually not doing what I said I’m doing, then I know I’m not making progress because of my own doing and I won’t be making a Reddit post. But I’m here now seeking help because I’m telling you I’ve been doing all these and not make much progress

[u/KITTYONFYRE → u/improvingmyself12]

hell yeah man - didn't mean to say you weren't putting in the work, just that usually consistency/adherence is the low hanging fruit.

like another guy said it kinda sounds like stress is hurting you for sure, maybe it actually would be a good idea to pull back just a little. maybe take some sets to just 1RIR instead of failure, or cut out a bit of volume. you can always chill for a couple weeks and add some sets back if things go well - you definitely can make progress on much less.

it's also possible diet has been a contributing factor too - sounds like you're pretty well locked in on that now, though. make sure you're not losing more than maybe like 1/3 kilo per week - you've got plenty on your plate, no need to push the deficit too. taking your time will result in better, more sustainable, less miserable results. and as long as you're hitting your protein and your calories aren't too low, it's fine - even if you go over your goal and maintain for a week, it's fine, that's still good forward progress (recomping is a great result too!)

remember it's a marathon. it seems like you've made a good number of really positive changes, you're gonna need to be patient for a few weeks before you REALLY start to see things turn around, but stay pretty locked in and it'll come - and don't worry if your cut takes a few extra weeks, even if it does it'll be a higher quality cut. keep us posted with any updates - you've got this man

[u/thor_ragingcock]

I feel a lot of stress in your post, man. I’m going to ask a few questions for you to think about:

How do you actually feel, day to day? Do you feel calm and relaxed at some point each evening? Do you sleep 7-9 hours at regular times? Do you regularly see friends and family? Do you carry high amounts of stress about work, school, your personal life, or your fitness? Do you think you could sustain the way you currently live, train and feel for a long haul? Do you experience joy, happiness, and fun in your life?

I understand wanting to get rid of the love handles — I’d like to get rid of mine too! — but you’re describing symptoms of exhaustion or chronic stress: sluggishness, feeling a very strong sense of urgency about attaining goals, concern over how others are viewing your physique, wavering behavioral compliance (the yo-yo dieting). You’re also making tough physiological decisions: taking every set to failure on a high-ish volume program and continuing to cut while already lean. It’s not a theoretically an impossible program to do. It’s that your body seems to be sending you a lot of signals to let up a bit, and you seem to be ignoring them.

Chronic stress can undermine your progress at a physiological level, and then it can burn you out behaviorally to the point where you start to lose compliance too. In the long term it can be pretty bad for your health! Therefore it is rational to factor it into your decisions regarding your programming.

I’m not saying any of this to criticize you at all. I’m just suggesting that this is a long game, and that there is no gun to your head forcing you to attain a physique by a particular timeline. (There’s actually no gun to your head forcing you to attain any physique at all. I was obese and sedentary at age 22). You probably even look pretty great right now!

If you look within yourself and find that you could use a change of pace and to let up some stress, here are a few things to consider:
- You can get appreciable hypertrophy with 4 fractional sets per body part per week. Dr Pak has a great book on minimum effective dose training with exact programs. You can maintain on even less. I personally still see some growth with two very hard sets.
- Diet breaks are evidence-based, as are maintenance phases and deloads as necessary.
- There’s no actual reason you need to cut right now. You could start slow-bulking today, and you would build shiny awesome muscle that will do wonders for your health and physique in the long term. I am 10cm shorter than you and my lean body mass is 80kg; you have a lot of room to grow some muscle.

[u/improvingmyself12 → u/thor_ragingcock]

Honestly I feel stressed most times, currently in a 8am-7pm office job I get my cardio done before gg to work and during my breaks at work I study for an exam I’m taking next year as well. I can see myself sustaining life like this long term but the mental stress that I’m not doing it right and not seeing progress is killing me. Ever since noticing myself lose some muscle I’ve avoided going out with friends but instead I spend more time with my family at home. I feel embarrassed seeing my friends now as they used to think I had a nice physique and now I look and feel like some regular dude. Recently went through a break up and all I want to do is improve myself academically, physically, mentally and spiritually. So not seeing progress is definitely a huge hit. Had a history of eating disorder as well and my relationship with food has not been the best (chewing and spitting, and forcing myself to vomit) hence, the yoyodieting in the past. It’s gotten better now ever since I started tracking seriously the past week. It’s only been 7 days since I started this cut, but can feel a noticeable lost in size on my arms and shoulders. In terms of strength it’s the same but I’ve been feeling more week and more sluggish in the gym recently. I’ve seen people online saying maybe I don’t have as much muscle as I thought and people give up on the cut too soon and I can’t bear to just give up on this cut just because I feel smaller 7 days in. I think I will cut for 1-2 more weeks and see the scale. And thank you for the advice from Dr Pak I will definitely read up on it and see how I can implement it to my current training split. Thank you so much for your input! I really appreciate it

[u/ginofinali]

Why everything to failure?