Changing your Meals from Cutting to Bulking/Bulking to Cutting
In the previous article, I talked about how to structure meals in your day based on what your macros are at the time. If you haven’t read that, take a look first:
This article will talk about how your meals and structure throughout the day will shift when you transition from one dieting phase to the next.
Background:
Most performance and physique based athletes go through what is called “nutritional periodization”. More or less, this is when athletes will cycle through periods of:
Cutting: a period of time of losing body weight that correlates with losing body fat
Maintenance: a period of time to maintain body weight and composition
Bulking/Massing: a period of time of intentional weight gain in hopes to gain muscle mass (along with some fat).
While training can slightly differ between the three phases, the main difference is obviously your NUTRITIONAL INTAKE.
In my experience, one of the most important dieting tools is the knowledge of how to seamlessly transition from one phase to another. While the main difference between these phases will be your MACROS going up or down, we must remember that Macros are NOT just numbers
Macros are actual MEALS that you will eat throughout the day. So the problem becomes that while you may know how to adjust the numbers, you also need to know how to change your meals.
the most important dieting tool
This TOOL is also useful for someone who does not track macros AT ALL! Adjusting meal plans or templates to go from cutting-maintenance-bulking can get you the same results as tracking macros.
You don’t need to track your food for it to have a caloric value and macronutrient composition.
In the rest of this piece I will talk about:
SMOOTH TRANSITIONS: why is this so important?
PHASE POTENTIATION: how cutting/bulking phases set each other up
PRIORITY SCALE SHIFT: how do certain food groups take more or less of a priority when changing phases?
smooth transitions
In This article, I talked about how you need to work with your body in order to have a successful diet. Part of the cooperation with your diet starts with not making radical changes that evoke higher levels of stress.
If you immediately change every meal, pattern of eating and lifestyle for your diet, your body will catch on very quickly. Your body will realize that something is going on and adapt towards regulating it back to what it likes.
Because of this, athletes can have a HARD time transitioning from one phase to the next.
How many times have you heard of an athlete who is scared to cut because they don’t want to give up bulking foods?
Or an athlete coming out of a cut who is having a hard time hitting their new maintenance calories?
One key🔑 to help with this is to make the phases not appear ALL that different from the previous. These subtle transitions make for easy, actionable tweaks to a current meal “template” that will take most of the stress out of the equation. The quicker you can transition and get in a rhythm with your new dieting phase, the sooner you can start devoting energy to things NOT related to “what am I going to eat today?”.
cutting
For finishing a cutting phase: This is valuable to keep in the habits learned while cutting and avoid unintentional weight rebound when you eat tastier foods again.
How often do you see someone complete a successful cut and then have little to no awareness of how to come out of the diet? The person then subsequently takes a step backwards in terms of their physique progression and long term sustainability.
bulking
For finishing a bulking phase: This is a valuable tool to reduce the fear of reduction in calories that happens when transitioning to a maintenance and/or cutting phase afterwards.
I have often seen people pull the plug early on cutting phases because of the stress and drastic life switch that accompanies with what THEY thought would be an appropriate way to transition.
2. phase potentiation
A sub point of smooth transitioning is the WILLINGNESS of the dieter to actually implement the changes needed.
What does that mean?
End of my Bulking phase. Bodyweight around 194-196 lbs.
To have AWARENESS and KNOWLEDGE of HOW to implement changes (what the basis of this article will be) is only one aspect of transitioning.
The other factor is for the dieter to be more willing to WANT to make those changes.
While some of this stems from a motivation to diet (more on this here), some “motivation” is more so CRAVING the change.
Let’s look at some examples.
Cutting:
An obvious one is that while cutting, you will more likely than not get your fare share of cravings for particular foods.
For me, it's usually some ice cream, donuts and sushi.
After a longer phase of cutting down, you initially want to EMBRACE the subsequent maintenance phase and/or bulking phase.
bulking:
On the other end of the spectrum, towards the tail end of most bulking phases, I will usually be in a position where I am heavily desensitized from the concept of dieting down.
Over time, I will have gradually included less and less dieting foods (veggies, low cal options, artificial sweeteners) and have been eating a fair share of meals I otherwise would not be wise to have when dieting (REAL ice cream, sushi, chinese food, donuts).
At the end of my diet I want to be in a position where I CRAVE the concept of dieting and lowering calories.
you will diet again some day
Therefore, smoothly transitioning from one phase to another is an important first step. The NEXT aspect is furthering that transition such that you desensitize from the phase you were just in.
If you are looking to gain weight, chances are you are looking to add muscle mass. That means at some point you will probably cut to get the fat off and see your hard work manifest. Therefore, it is important to remember while bulking that:
YOU WILL DIET DOWN AGAIN SOME DAY.
In the midst of a cutting phase. Bodyweight was around 182-183 lbs eight weeks in.
Much too often, especially with the popular rise of clean bulking, have I seen trainees run the mistake of NOT desensitizing from the aspect of cutting. This usually means:
Eating too many Filling foods in the offseason: This includes an unnecessary dosage of: vegetables, fibrous carbs, low calorie diet foods, artificial sweeteners
Not enjoying the luxury of flexibility: This can mean a plethora of things including: unwillingness to eat out with others, not rotating foods within food groups, tracking everything to the nth degree of accuracy for macro/calorie targets, not fitting in treats in your diet that would be unwise to put in when cutting.
Abusing caffeine intake: Caffeine is a valuable cutting tool to help with energy levels, performance in the gym and reduction in hunger. When not dieting, you do not need as much of it. In fact, it can hinder your perception of total fatigue throughout your training blocks.
playing the long game
I wanted to include this element of desensitization because it is a concept that is a variable that I took into account when making these recommendations. Not every suggestion was made with the mindset of “optimal transitioning within the phase” but more so a route to strive for CONTINUOUS ADHERENCE and PROGRESSION throughout your cutting, maintenance, and bulking phases in the LONG RUN.
Therefore, without any more delay, let’s dig into the actual practical recommendations of how to shift the priority scale when transitioning into and out of the various dieting phases.
3. priority scale shift
View these all as dieting tools. You NEED their effectiveness to work when you really need to.
Each topic will start with what to you need to do:
In the midst of dieting
The transition when NOT cutting
The transition from NOT cutting to CUTTING
Need a refresher on the Priority List?
Go to Section 2 of the previous article:
fruit/vegetables:
Regardless of phase, I normally recommend to get 2-6 servings of combined fruits and vegetables a day for my clients.
Cutting:
When cutting you will want to stay to the HIGHER end of the spectrum (4-6).
Towards the end of a cut you will be eating a fair share of vegetables each day within your meals. This is considering as you diet longer and longer, diet fatigue and hunger tends to build up.
cutting to not cutting:
When coming out of a diet, I recommend:
Diet Habits: Going out of your way to ensure you still carry over GOOD HABITS of fruit/veg intake until you start feeling less diet fatigued.
Include vegetables in the beginning and then when you feel better, slowly take them out.
Fruits > Veg: You can also start gravitating the 2-6 combined fruit/veg servings a day number to be slightly more fruit-centered.
This is because fruits tend to have more calories and taste better than vegetables. Therefore, its a way to keep food volume similar, but calories higher than when cutting.
Photo by Keenan Loo on Unsplash
Post-diet it is perfectly okay to dip towards the lower end of the ranges over time. If anything, make sure over the course of the week (5 out of 7 days), you stay towards the higher end.
When you are DEEP in a bulking or extended maintenance phase:
Low Food Volume: You do not want to have you Food volume super high. The logic is that after your bulking phase when you diet again, you don’t want to have to increase your F/V intake even HIGHER to adjust to the hunger on a diet.
The baseline minimum of a couple F/V will ensure that you are still getting in some of the benefits of the dense micro-nutrient composition of them.
Fruit Selection: Within fruits themselves, you can also alter your food selection to help get in more carbohydrates.
To do this you can start gravitating your fruit intake from berries/apples/oranges🍓 to bananas🍌 and grapes these are more insulinogenic.
Per 100 grams these fruits contain more calories meaning that they will be easier to eat when struggling to eat food.
Another strategy is to make smoothies or drink fruit juices to get in your F/V intake. They will be less filling in a liquid medium and will also take less time to prepare.
At the end of your bulk it is normal to be in a state where you are NOT eating too many vegetables and may even find it is harder to include a lot of fruits due to the satiation they cause.
starting a cut:
When starting a diet:
It is wise to keep F/V servings LOW TO START and then ramp up as the diet gets harder.
Fruits serve the benefit of fighting off cravings and being higher in food volume. Honeydew is one of the higher food volume fruits.
Dieting usually correlates with the potential to be slightly deficient in nutrients over the course of the dieting phase as well.
As the diet gets harder and harder, I recommend:
Potentially limiting fruit intake to only 1-2 servings a day. 2 fruit max per 100g of carbs.
This is because people will have the tendency to bump fruits very high in this period of time due to the above benefits. There comes a point to where eating too much fruit will spike cravings as well as effect gym performance due to fructose being stored more in the liver than muscle tissue.
In these cases it is better to gravitate the 2-6 combined servings number more towards vegetables.
During my dieting phases of 200g of carbs/day the only fruit I kept in was 100g of blackberries daily and included 4-5 servings of vegetables in addition to that.
Vegetables are the KING of Food volume and nutrient density and therefore, are even more valuable when dieting. In fact, deep into contest prep diets, which are extreme, you could be getting almost the entirety of your carbohydrate intake from vegetables.
FaTS:
cutting:
Deeper into a cut, you are more likely than not eating closer towards a minimum amount of required fats (0.3g/lb for example). With food selection, you will probably go out of your way to not include too many fatty options in your foods throughout the days.
CUTTING TO NOT CUTTING:
Photo by Taylor Kiser on Unsplash
Protein Selection: When coming out of a diet, an easy transition psychologically is to gravitate some protein sources to fattier ones slowly. This can mean eating more eggs instead of egg whites over time or even having fattier meats/fishes every now and then instead of chicken/turkey.
While dieting I will eat 99/1 lean turkey for dinner, but when coming out of dieting I will switch to eating more 93/7 turkey.
When eating out, I will have the flexibility to eat more foods like burgers and steaks😛 (which are still easy to track) instead of chicken all the time. The serving sizes of the meats/fishes can relatively stay the same, but will contain MORE calories and taste better.
Subtle Addition: Since fats don’t have high food volume, it's pretty easy to subtly add them back into your meals without it being too obvious (this is also a reason its very easy to overeat with them). Overall, the purpose is to make a lot of your normal dieting meals taste better! Some examples:
Adding half a serving of peanut butter (17g) into your oatmeal
Sprinkling some cashews or adding some dressing onto your salad
Using some cheese in your whole grain pasta
Over time, the increased fat intake will lead to more satiation and less cravings when transitioning out of the diet. It can be a hard transition for some because food volume sometimes ends up being DECREASED when coming out of a diet. Understand that an increase of fats in a controlled setting is better for your overall health, hormone production/sex drive, and psychological satisfaction/satiation.
Once in a comfortable state of maintenance or bulking, I think it is important to slightly gravitate to some foods containing saturated fats. Initially this may just mean eating a donut once a week. An important part of coming out of a diet is to desensitize yourself from the monotony of eating the same types of foods over and over. Being able to mix up fat sources in a controlled setting is an important way to get rid of diet fatigue.
STARTING A CUT:
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
Subtle Subtraction: The easiest way to reduce fat intake is to just start cutting your serving sizes in half.
If you eat 1 serving of PB/day with greek yogurt, start by only eating half a serving. You will still get a most of the psychological satiation as if you had the whole servings, but it will be 100 less calories.
Basically the opposite of what you would do coming OUT of a diet. For a temporary period of time you just need to be okay with making the tradeoff of taste for more friendly macros.
By doing this you will just end up eating less fattier foods and sprinkling on less and less fats to your finished meals.
Lower Calorie Options: As you get deeper into the diet, you can start opting for lower calorie options of common fat sources:
Cheese->Low calorie cheeses/spreads (laughing cow is my favorite)
Peanut butter-PB Fit powder
Higher calorie fatty ice creams->Brands with less fat->Diet Ice creams
Healthy Fats: Of course, because of nutritional minimums, you will still be eating SOME fat. Therefore, when you can, make sure you stray towards more of polyunsaturated and monounsaturated fats such as avocados, nuts, olive oils for example.
Training Window: As much as you can, eat minimal to no fats within 1 hour or two leading up to your training session.
Since your body will be more sensitive to food and carbohydrates, you want a higher carbohydrate response closer to training to optimize performance.
You want these fats when you aren't training to help regulate hunger/blood sugar so you don't get as hungry during the rest of the day.
I work out in the morning, so when I put fats closer to bed I find that my hunger and sleep quality end up being more predictable throughout my diet.
carbohydrates:
cutting:
Photo by Pille-Riin Priske on Unsplash
At the end of your diet, you will be eating a LOT of vegetables, some fruit and the most filling carbohydrate sources. For me, this usually includes more sweet potatoes and fibrous whole grain pastas, and beans. I will be eating minimal rice, tortillas, or non-whole grain pastas. I will rarely fit in highly palpable carb sources such as breads or sugary drinks.
cutting to not cutting:
Type of Carbs: As you transition to maintenance and then to bulking, you can first start by gravitating to less filling carb sources to meet your calorie needs.
An example is going from half a sweet potato->whole sweet potato-> white rice->larger serving of white rice as the months progress.
Doing this is a practical way to adjust food as you become farther and farther away from the diet. The important thing to remember is you should NOT be fitting in your super satiating carb sources all the time because they will lose their effectiveness for when you need them on a cut.
Peri-Workout Nutrition: Also, the biggest benefit is that you can also maintain a similar approach with keeping filling foods in, but can start nailing your pre-workout carbohydrate nutrition.
The biggest benefit of coming out of a diet for athletes, is increased performance. To maximize results in a non-dieting phase, you can start to add in higher GI carbs around your workouts.
For me, I like to start adding in cereal/whey protein as a pre-workout meal.
You can also sip on gatorade, dextrose or munch on some candy like skittles during your workout to get the benefits of fast acting carbs. As long as you have your baseline of good foods the rest of the day, you can fit in these other less filling foods.
This approach is very subtle as those foods are not filling and will still make it feel like most of your day is pretty similar to dieting, just with more calories.
80/20 rule: A good rule of thumb over time is the 80/20 rule. 80% of the time you want to eat nutritious whole foods and 20% of the time you can get away with enjoy foods you normally do not get to eat while not dieting. It can be a hard transition coming out of a diet to not feel guilty eating these foods.
Remember calories are king and if you fit it into your prescribed macros and stay consistent over time, eating these "bad" foods will provide a helpful psychological effect.
Photo by Ethan McArthur on Unsplash
starting a cutting
As mentioned above, you want to start off by hitting your fruit/veg intake each day. Then after that you want to select you carb sources primarily from filling foods. This means you ideally will be eating fibrous foods with good vitamins and less of the rices and the pastas.
Filling Carb Dosage: When you can, it's perfectly fine to still include less satiating carbs if you find hunger is not a problem. That way you can make progress on a diet and save the more satiating carbs for when the diet gets more intense.
If you come straight out of the gate eating the most filling carbs/high volume meals, you will have a hard time going up from there when your body gets accustomed to it.
Nutrient timing: When dieting, nutrient timing can play more of a role as your body will be more sensitive to an influx of carbohydrates. There is a tradeoff throughout the day on eating for hunger vs eating for performance.
As mentioned in the last section, having high GI carbs closer to workouts will help performance, but obviously will take up calories that may be spent later on the day on filling carb sources to help with hunger.
Protein:
cutting:
A dieting tool that is always valuable is a moderate to higher protein-centered diet. With my clients, we don’t necessarily increase protein intake throughout a diet.
cutting-> not cutting:
Overall protein intake should not change TOO much. In fact, it's one of the good dieting habits that you can always do with keeping in. That is in terms, of your daily intake. Too often I see people diet on higher protein and then go immediately back to low protein just so they can get in foods they wanted to eat.
If your daily protein intake stays constant, you will actually end up eating less from main protein sources. This is because of the overall influx of food will contain a good amount of trace proteins. An example of trace proteins are in something like pasta. If you have 3-4 servings of pasta, you can have up to 10-15g of protein from this source as opposed to a higher quality source.
Spacing: One thing to consider when not dieting is how you space your protein throughout the day. It makes sense to get in the habit of spacing out protein feedings now that hunger will not be as big of an issue compared to while dieting.
This is to get a more consistent pulse of muscle protein synthesis throughout the course of the day by breaking your protein feedings up
This tool is especially useful if you find you are struggling to eat adequate protein/calories coming out of a diet.
Food selection: In terms of food selection, this was covered a little bit in the fats section. For adherence and relaxation from rigid structure, it is good to start including fattier protein sources every now and then to give yourself a break from the monotony of lean proteins. For examples:
egg whites->eggs
chicken->turkey/beef/steak
talapia->salmon
diet ice cream(w/protein)->normal ice cream (w/o protein)
starting a cut:
Lean protein sources: When dieting it is important to stick to mainly lean protein sources with minimal fat. These will be the least in calories/g of protein and will satiate you the most per calorie. If you choose to include fattier protein sources on a particular day, sub out a serving of fats to compensate for calories.
Hunger vs performance: There is also a tradeoff between protein spacing throughout the day in regards to hunger levels and muscle mass retention. For the most part, muscle will be retained through consistent resistance training and hitting a daily protein requirement.
In a calorie deficit, there is more of a risk for rates of protein breakdown to be higher than levels of protein synthesis. To combat these effects, it is beneficial to work on protein timing as recommended in the previous section.
The only time I would NOT recommend this route is if the smaller meals throughout the day makes you less full. There is some truth that perhaps eating less frequently throughout the day is better for calorie control and adherence with the diet.
Try both routes to see as this point is only in the slight minutia of what will constitute adequate resourcing of protein while dieting.
Other dieting tools
At the tail end of your diet, there is a good chance you will be calling upon MOST if not ALL of your dieting tools to guide you through the last stretches. Within that include some other dieting tools in which I will go over now:
Caffeine:
Photo by Nick Hillier on Unsplash
At the end of my cutting phases, my caffeine intake will be at its peak.
This is simply due to its effects in:
Combating hunger
Providing energy for my workouts
Keeping me focused at work.
The problem with this is that our bodies work up a TOLERANCE to caffeine over time.
CUTTING->NOT CUTTING:
Because of this it is wise to taper off caffeine intake when NOT dieting. I see a lot of people who struggle to eat when not dieting and spin their wheels staying too lean. It is important to remember that extra food provides Extra Energy.
Therefore, when not dieting, you do NOT NEED to keep caffeine as high because you should be getting energy from the food you are eating.
The last thing you want is for caffeine to be extremely high in the peak of an offseason phase and then have to bump it up even HIGHER when you hop into a deficit again one day. Excess caffeine in the offseason can also be an indicator that you are overly fatigued with your training and you may need to focus on your recovery modalities a bit more.
STARTING A CUT:
For this same logic, we also need to remember than when dieting, do NOT initially bump caffeine up out of fear. Assess you energy and hunger levels as you progress through the diet. If you can progress as much as possible without needing higher levels of caffeine, then you can SAVE your caffeine intake in reserve for when you really need it.
Artificial sweeteners/diet foods:
CUTTING:
Towards the end of cutting phases, “diet” foods or artificial sweeteners can be a really clutch tool to help prevent overeating of their calorie dense counterparts.
As my cuts will progress, my cravings will reach a point where I really do crave something sweet. For me, I like to keep it simple I will chew on gum (maybe a piece a day) and then occasionally have calorie free monsters instead of my normal pre workout.
In the past, I overdid it with these tools. I would use calorie free sweeteners in all of my waters and go through a pack of gum a week. Therefore, I learned that when you START a diet you should probably keep these tools at a minimum so when you really need them you can use them to their full effectiveness.
NOT CUTTING:
And while these tools can be valuable at certain points in your non-dieting phases, they should slowly be reduced coming out. You should transition to eating either the calorie versions of the diet foods or different types of foods all together.
A good chunk of diet foods actually serve as a healthy lifestyle habit for most and you may never have to fully rotate them out. For example, making protein pancakes is something that can always be used. But when in a comfortable state of reduced diet fatigue, feel free to eat normal pancakes for once as a psychological break.
This also ties into the next point.
Flexibility/Treats
The reason that a lot of people like to use a lot of these other dieting tools when IN a diet is because it could potentially be their way of holding on to things that remind them of not dieting. If you are constantly eating diet ice creams, protein pancakes, and calorie free sweeteners on a diet, then perhaps you did not fully take advantage of being able to eat them when NOT dieting.
At times this can stem towards a lot of factors, but one I often see is when people eat “too clean” in their non-dieting phases. When you are not dieting, you should go out of your way to relax and get out of the rigidity of the diet structure. To reiterate a point from earlier, if you are a physique or strength oriented athlete, the chances are that the cutting phase you did will NOT be your last.
Take advantage of Food flexibility:
Slowly transition from diet foods -> tasty non diet foods. For me, I like to start including old treats at 1 or 2 a week. I’ll stick to just eating cereal and ice cream right out of a diet instead of trying to fit in every treat under the sun that I didn’t get to enjoy when I was not dieting.
I find this is overwhelming and a shock to the body with all the decisions and novelty it is then presented with.
Over time, it will be easier for me to eat these treats. I’ll even go out of my way to have things that are just really no good for my calorie targets that day. Towards the end of longer bulking phases I will be sick of eating out and will crave that structure again.
Tracking:
Take advantage of your tracking habits (if you chose to do so) when coming out of a diet. Being mindful of your intake still is a good way to be less stressed when you start to eat more food, perhaps eliminating the fear that you are pissing away all your diet success.
Over time, it could be wise to have days of what I call “relaxed tracking”. Maybe instead of religiously tracking and weighing food, you have a ballpark estimate in your head or you just keep an eye on protein and calories. This can be very person dependent. In the past, I always kept in a pretty rigid tracking routine, but I also found I got pretty burnt out with this and did not need that level of meticulousness.
Events:
The one thing that this usually goes hand in hand with is events/seeing people.
I was able to stay on track on a vacation in Boston while cutting. I attribute this towards the practice of approaching these type of events when NOT DIETING and the skills I learned then in a stress-free period of dieting.
Social Currency: Food is a BIG social event and in reality, it's what can really set people back or even prevent them from ever getting started on their dieting goals.
The best year round dieters are the ones who know how to handle events.
No, they aren’t the ones who always SKIP events. They are the ones who excel best when in their own environment AND can adapt when presented in other ones.
Pay it Forward: As you get more experienced, go more and more out of your way to “pay it forward” to people you perhaps had to turn down when dieting. Go out to dinner, go to the bar, go to social events with food.
Remember the principles and remember the habits that you got there.
Of course, this issue is immensely more complex than this one paragraph. But I’ve chosen to put it here only as a reminder to those who KNOW they should not be as meticulous.
Not everyone has the luxury to do that right away and because of that, it is an evolution of how far you can ‘dim” your dieting switch when not dieting. Understand that it could potentially take a while to feel normal and do things you normally did when not dieting.
It takes, time, patience, and reflection of each situation to get to that point. It IS possible, you just have to slowly dim things back. Some people DO need to be more rigid post diet and for a good period of time because they don’t have enough diet “maturity”. This is one thing I make sure to help my clients figure out. The baseline of flexibility and rigidity they need to use in both periods dieting and not dieting to get the results you want.
Getting to a point where you dieting switch is very dim is an ideal place psychologically to start a diet. If you practice eating out and going to social events when NOT dieting, it will make you 10x more comfortable to do them WHEN dieting. And therefore, serving as the last link to make you cutting and non-cutting phases as smooth of a transition as possible.
conclusion:
I hope the tools provided here are helpful for you to transition easily from one phase to the next.
Nailing your nutrional periodization year round is away to MAXIMIZE the nutrition side of the equation. For Strength AND Physique athletes, this is a way to get the most bang for your buck and be EFFICIENT in each phase of nutrition and training.
Being able to master the art of transitioning your meals from one way to another is also important for Skipping phases as well.
Say you end a cut and want to go straight into bulking. You can easily transition a little quicker
If you go from Maintenance phase into a more aggressive mini-cut.
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