Bodybuilding Forums

I said over on another thread I might post some pictures of myself in the hope some of you guys can give me some advice on what you think I would be better doing in terms of bulking up or cutting fat.

Not sure if you can tell but look close and you can see I have a wrinkly lower stomach and alot of stretch marks from being overweight. I was 224lbs and I'm currently 146lbs, 5 foot 9 and 24 years of age. Should I continue to cut or add more muscle. Any opinions would be great, anything you want.

I no longer have the pics up but thanks for the advice guys

You have visible ab muscles so now is the time to build them up and get them to pop out along with the rest of the muscles on your body. You are definitely lean enough to focus on lifting and not worry too much about cardio, obviously your diet has worked up to this point.

I have a pretty good stomach but even if I squeeze my lower abs like that it won't look pretty either, that's just the first place fat gets stored and the last place it comes off for most men. When you are at the point you are you can let your diet keep the fat off for you and focus your workouts on building the muscle.

Remember you are still working out 4-5 times a week doing intense lifting and building lean mass, you will continue to lose fat without cardio so long as your diet allows you to.

First off, well done for losing so much weight - excellent achievement! You look in good shape so go for the muscle, watching your diet just as SurferX says.

Oh yeah, go for it. Eat a sandwich and go do some big deadlifts! That loose skin will take care of itself. Give it time.

Great job, you rule!

definitely start bulking. If you continue to cut, you will be a 130lb skeleton. I looked very skinny when i weighed 142lbs. Give yourself 10 weeks and you should be able to pack on 20lbs or more with MANS diet.

Thanks for the all the feedback guys You've all helped me to realize I now need to start focusing on adding muscle and stop concerning myself with fat loss, something I have always had trouble deciding on.

Does anyone think a higher carb diet like GLAD would be more beneficial if I want to focus on gaining as much muscle as possible or do you think I should stick with MANS like mykim0 suggests. I have used MANS with a short bulk a while ago and while on TSPA but I haven't ever felt like I had enough energy, maybe low carb just isn't for my body. The past 7-8 weeks on low carb have been kind of hard. For the majority of this past year I've used low carb, since december 08 but never felt like I got past the feeling of induction. Anyone else get this?

Thanks again to all of you

Are you making sure to eat plenty of fat on MANS?

If adding more fat doesn't help, why don't you stick to MANS on your bulk, and add carbs slowly until you get to the point where you have enough energy? Like, try adding 5 grams more carbs per day and see how you feel in a week. If still not having enough energy, add 5 more grams per day, and so on. Worth a try?

marochka_raduga wrote:Are you making sure to eat plenty of fat on MANS?

If adding more fat doesn't help, why don't you stick to MANS on your bulk, and add carbs slowly until you get to the point where you have enough energy? Like, try adding 5 grams more carbs per day and see how you feel in a week. If still not having enough energy, add 5 more grams per day, and so on. Worth a try?

To be honest I cant remember wether I was eating enough fat while on my last short bulk, becuase I always concerned myself with the fat loss I probably wasn't.

I'll be taking my stop week soon & when I start back up maybe I'll keep with MANS and do excatly what you say, make sure I'm getting plenty of fats and if that doesn't help I'll add more carbs slowly, maybe if I find I'm still not feeling good after getting up to 60g carbs max I'll think about changing to GLAD. Thanks for the advice.

WHO AM I wrote:

marochka_raduga wrote:Are you making sure to eat plenty of fat on MANS?

If adding more fat doesn't help, why don't you stick to MANS on your bulk, and add carbs slowly until you get to the point where you have enough energy? Like, try adding 5 grams more carbs per day and see how you feel in a week. If still not having enough energy, add 5 more grams per day, and so on. Worth a try?

To be honest I cant remember wether I was eating enough fat while on my last short bulk, becuase I always concerned myself with the fat loss I probably wasn't.

I'll be taking my stop week soon & when I start back up maybe I'll keep with MANS and do excatly what you say, make sure I'm getting plenty of fats and if that doesn't help I'll add more carbs slowly, maybe if I find I'm still not feeling good after getting up to 60g carbs max I'll think about changing to GLAD. Thanks for the advice.

I so far haven't tried MANS so cannot speak for that, but I am on a GLAD-type diet. The only advice I would give if you do try that is to really pay close attention to your measurements i.e. body fat and weight, and also your personal feeling of whether or not the gains in weight (because that happens, as planned!) are gains in muscle not fat. With GLAD I find you have to really stay on top of this and make adjustments if it's not working out after a week or 2, and then e.g. reducing the carbs a bit and upping the protein can be a good move to balance out fat/muscle gains. I have had some weeks where I make a bit jump in weight and strength but if I'm honest it might not all be muscle. So I make some adjustments to what kinds of food I eat and off I go again. So far it's all worked out that way, I'm the same body fat as when I started but with + 4-5kg muscle.

This advice of course differs from more 'traditional' bodybuilding diets where you eat, eat, eat and don't worry about gaining fat because you have a cutting phase coming up. I'm assuming in this your goal is to gain muscle without gaining fat!

Yes my goal is to gain muscle without the added fat gain, some is acceptable but in the past many carbs have meant my weight shoots up and alot of the weight was most likely fat. I would definatly watch my carbs more closely if I was to start GLAD and try and choose the lowest GI carbs. I'll mull it over but I may go & try MANS becuase the added benefit of not concerning myself with overeating with fat too much will be easier for me. I just need to watch my 3 biggest pitfalls, 1) eating nuts/nut butters they always send me off track
2) overeating in protein which in turn results in Gluconeogenesis
3) Keeping my carb-ups clean, when I say clean I just mean watch the fat and dont over do it, on TSPA I manage to do it but when I tried to bulk with MANS several months ago my mentality was 'well your bulking so eat as much as you like' & one day I went up to a ridiculous amount of carbs, I cant remember how many now but it's posted on the forums somewhere.

Thanks for the advice