BULK FIRST!!!
Weight-loss for the Long Game
“Grant, I have been bulking all my life, can you not see that I am already overweight??”
Look, I get it, everyone wants to get in the gym, and go straight away to losing a bunch of weight, and getting lean…
What if I told you, going on that calorie restrictive diet was actually going to lead you to a bad place long term?
Let’s paint a picture…
Say you weight 230lbs, and you would like to weigh 190lbs. So you decide to start hitting the gym 5 days a week, and you go on a diet. So immediately you begin to cut calories to 1500 a day (even though you had no idea how many calories you ate before).
One of two things are going to happen with this approach… I have seen it time and time again…
It is so restrictive, and difficult, that ultimately within 1 to 2 weeks, this individual quits because they cannot sustain this, and they begin to binge, and then return right back to their normal way of living, worse off than when they started.
They see some quick weight-loss results, so they stick with it for a little while, they may lose 20lbs, or maybe even 30. But here is the deal… they just look like the exact same version of their fatter self, just slightly smaller. They didn’t actually change any body composition. Then they start to burn out, and once again, feel as if they have nowhere to go, and eventually quit. Leading to weight gain back, and often more weight gained back than when they started.
Lets take a wiser approach…
You weigh 230, and you want to eventually weigh 190, and be JACKED AND LEAN
This is when we begin to play the long game…
You start slow, hitting the gym 2x per week lifting weights, and making a more conscious effort to up your daily step count.
While you begin this, you start to be conscious of your food choices, and begin tracking your calories, to get a baseline of what you’re eating each day… most people are all over the place, so you likely are as well. One day you eat 1500, and one day you eat 3800 calories.
This is where a bulk first comes into play…
You start high. Let’s say your average calories tracked over 5 days ended up being 2700 calories.
So let’s go ahead and set your caloric intake to 2800, and set a protein goal of 1g per lb of desired bodyweight, and make sure we are being consistent every single day.
This consistency will lead you to be getting better overall nutrition, actually fueling your body, and lead to overall better metabolic health. This will also allow you to go to the gym fueled, make strength gains, and begin to get addicted to the gym.
This is when the compounding effect comes into play, and we play the long game.
Keeping the calories higher, we begin to build muscle, and feel so much better, we start hitting the gym more, going on walks more, and sleeping better.
During this time we may not see a ton of weight-loss, but we certainly will begin to see body composition change. We also are gonna be building a rocket ship of a metabolism during this phase. (this phase usually needs to last longer than people want it to)
Now when we decide to cut calories, we can keep our established habits, and slowly cut calories (strategically), while keeping protein high, and you will see the fat you are wanting to lose drop right off, and underneath will be a totally different physique than you have ever had before!!
After this weight-loss phase, it is also important to go back into a maintenance phase, or even a bulking phase again, to continue to support a health metabolism.
More Calories In = More Calories Out
Less Calories In = Less Calories Out
Wherever you take your food, your body will slowly follow…
Nothing good happens fast… Play the long game
If you need help with recommendations specifically for you, I’d love to book a call!
-Coach G
Shoot me a Text 7406414516