Bulking and Cutting: The Big "When"

When should I bulk? When should I cut? Is it time yet...?

Ah, the big "When." Tough questions - how lucky are we that answers are governed by a strict set of rules and regulations then? Take bulking, for example. To bulk, consensus dictates a certain degree of leanness. 10-12% body fat is a range often given. 

Depending on the expertise of fellow fitness enthusiasts however, 10-12% body fat may not be enough. As of writing this, someone asked if 11.6% was low enough to bulk. The question was posed in a question thread where such concerns are regularly voiced - indeed, it's a very common dilemma. To ease the decision, inquiries and consultations with various experts and men of wisdom takes place. 

Unfortunately, even the fine experts of LG Patreon can't settle the matter.  According to one respondent, 11.6% body fat is not low enough to bulk. According to another, it is low enough. 

And since no one knows what the fuck they're talking about, I'm here to shed some light on the matter.

Personal Experience

My greatest asset is lived experience -  I’ve been through everything you have and then some. More importantly, I’ve conquered every issue you’re dealing with now, and dealt with every problem you’re about to deal with in the future. But The Big When is a question that has always escaped me. 

So why was I never concerned with this question in the first place? Probably because I was dieting for the better part of the first decade. But also because it never made sense to ask someone else’s opinion on something so subjective as the aesthetics you aspire to. 

In my younger and delusional days, I wanted to be shredded. All year long. Specifically, I wanted to be able to see the lowest set of abs clearly, without skin folding over the lower part upon flexing. Based on personal experience, that’s achieved around 6% body fat. 

These days, I’m more mature and honest with myself; 10-12% body fat is the sweet spot. The perfect compromise between lifestyle and aesthetics. Besides, if I venture into the single digits, my limbs become stringy looking, and my face gaunt and, well, uglier. 

But how do I decide where to go and what to do? The mirror, of course. But is that really enough? Yes, because the rules that people use to make these decisions are bullshit. 

Debunking Nutrient Partitioning

People argue a certain degree of leanness should be achieved before bulking on the basis of nutrient partitioning. The leaner you are, the greater the muscle gain, or so the theory goes. 

What people don't realise is that this phenomenon is part of a self-regulating system governing survival in times of famine. Yes, plenty of muscle is gained upon re-feeding a starved POW with 5% body fat. Without any weight training whatsoever, roughly 70-80% of the weight gained initially can be attributed to lean mass. 

What's conveniently ignored in this equation is that 70-80% of the mass lost in the later stages of starvation is muscle as well. And the 70-80% muscle gained upon refeeding, matches the amount lost with great precision. There is no study to spell this out for you, but a good reading of George Cahill's work will set you straight. 

Put differently, the accelerated muscle loss seen at low body fat is compensated by an accelerated rate of muscle gain upon refeeding - resulting in a zero sum game, and a perfect demonstration of the brilliant survival strategy our body uses to combat famine. 

I discuss this system briefly in my book: 

“...Body fat protects against muscle loss by degrees of abundance. More fat equals more fat loss and vice versa. Same holds true for muscle. The more of it you have, the more of it your body wants to spend. This is in fact a brilliant strategy for survival, evolutionary selected for since time immemorial. 

For the average person, death by starvation occurs after loss of one third of total muscle mass. By this point, the body starts catabolizing heart tissue, resulting in death. A similar fate awaits those who fully deplete their fat stores. 

Since death occurs in both situations, the best survival strategy is therefore to make sure these fuel stores, protein and fat, are depleted at the same time. This means that once you’re lean enough, it’s impossible to lose only fat. And if you’re very lean and very muscular, you will largely burn muscle at a certain point. “

A rough and unedited passage, but it gets the message through. So please, enough of this bullshit about nutrient partitioning as an argument to get lean. 

The favourable gains seen in the initial stages of refeeding at low levels of body fat has nothing to do muscle gains accumulated through weight training. And yes, I admit to spreading this nonsense around like everyone else before I knew better. (Wanted it to be true myself.)

If anything, getting too lean compromises long term results, judging by significant reductions in testosterone; studies show dieting from 13-14% to 4-5% body fat leads to a  70-80% drop in testosterone. That's not a trivial amount. (1, 2)

In all likelihood, this follows the rule of dose-response; the leaner you get, the harder the drop in testosterone. What remains to be determined is the point at which testosterone is affected. * 

Through testosterone however, we find the only scientifically sound guideline worth using to dictate the big "when."

* From personal experience, I believe it starts once you enter the single digits. I say this knowing it takes about a month of dieting before I notice a change conceivably related to lowered testosterone levels (I.e. Morning wood, less attention to women, etc). 

Testosterone and Body Fat

It’s well known that weight loss in the obese improves testosterone levels. (3,) Obesity is defined as >30 BMI. Therein lies the problem. To my knowledge, no study has used body fat percentage as proxy while examining effects of weight loss on testosterone. It’s a problem because BMI is rather useless for people like us. Plugging in my numbers, for example, yields a BMI of 28.9 at 186 cm and 100 kg (10-12% body fat). 

(By the way...Fact that obese patients are prime candidates for testosterone shows everything wrong with people and pharma. Instead of fixing the reason they have low testosterone in the first place - diet and lifestyle - doctors are happy to just prescribe testosterone.)

So while getting ripped to reap benefits of nutrient partitioning is broscience,  it does make sense to not bulk if you’re fat. But while our definition of fat is 15-20% body fat, the national American male average is 28% body fat with a median around 22%. (4)

While the average American male shouldn't serve as the standard to emulate, these figures does bring a more realistic perspective for those who feel fat at 15% body fat. It's worth mentioning that George Bray, one of few no-bs experts on diet and obesity, considers 8-20% body fat a healthy range, and that’s two points lower than the often cited 10-22% healthy range given by the American Council on Exercise.

At the end of the day, what can we make of all this? 

Summary 

• The big when of bulking and cutting is not a hard science, so stop treating it as such. 
• Don’t ask someone else if you should bulk or cut - look in the mirror and ask yourself. The decision is yours and entirely dependent on where you want to take your physique. 
• To think that you're going to be better off bulking at 10% body fat than 15% body fat is complete and utter nonsense. If anything, bulking at very low body fat will likely produce worse results due to the effects of low body fat on testosterone. 
• The only scientifically based argument applicable in the decision making process relates to obesity; in people with at least 30% body fat, weight loss favourably alters the hormonal milieu, making cutting strategically wise. 
• Cutoff points remain to be determined. 

 - It’s known that weight loss improves testosterone levels in the obese (<30% body fat). It’s not known at which percentage point testosterone continues to improve. 

- It’s known that dieting from 13-14% to 4-5% body fat causes testosterone to drop by 70-75%. It’s not known at which percentage point testosterone levels begin to decline. Pinpointing these numbers are complicated by study design; don’t expect an answer any time soon (if ever). 

• My personal recommendation is to live your life in the 10-20% range; this advice is an amalgam of personal experience and science as it stands. Time spent below or above this range may compromise results by affecting testosterone unfavourably. Downstream effects of this hormone involve everything conceivably related to body composition, such as muscle growth, metabolic rate and motivation to train.

That's all folks. Enough with the When-bullshit going forward.