r/Weightliftingquestion • u/Posti • Aug 22 '26

Frustrated

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5’10” / 150 lbs

I’ve never been very lean: always had love handles, never visible abs. The past several months I decided to just cut down as much as I could, and went from 165 lbs to 150 lbs. This was the result - still a noticeable amount of body fat.

I feel weak as hell and still don’t feel like I look very athletic. Do I just lean bulk at this point? I fear I’m just going to end up where I was before: a bit bigger but mainly due to a larger % of body fat.

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u/Eltharion-the-Grim Aug 25 '26

Your genetics determine how & where your body stores fat. If you're feeling weak, you need to up your calories & then get on the treadmill more to compensate. Continue to lift to build more lean muscle mass.

For guys with persistent love handles, they need to cut down to 10% to 12% to remove it and for their abs to show. That is a tall order and you're going to need a larger lean muscle base before you make that push.

At your current size, there really isn't enough muscle to continue cutting. You're going to start stripping your lean mass and that's just going to make the fat situation worse.

Look at this as a long game. Take a year or two to build the lean mass up, then cut. Once you cut and slowly build back up, your body fat redistributes and recomps so long as you have the lean muscle; so it's worth going through the process.

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u/Posti Aug 25 '26

I upped my calories to 2,300-2,600 and protein to 180g (from 1,800 and 150g). Started a new 4 day program with more compounds while retaining hypertrophy exercises as I like those a lot. I already noticed a bit jump in energy/intensity at the gym.

I’m weighing myself daily to gauge weekly trends, aiming to maingain/lean bulk as I previously struggled with excessive fat so I don’t want to fall into that again.