I ended my last bulk earlier than the previous one because I honestly just didn’t like the way I looked. I wasn’t overly fat as I could still see the outline of my abdominal muscle if I flexed, but I was tired of eating so much food (yes, that is a thing) and feeling unpleasantly plump.
I was 183 lbs, so I assumed I’d need to drop maybe 7 lbs during a cut before I was ready to try another bulk. However, those first 7 lbs made very little difference so I carried on. I’m currently at 166 lbs for a 17-lb weight loss, and while I’m quite lean (sub-10% according to my Skulpt) I am continuing the cut. I’m now thinking I may need to get to 160 lbs before I’m satisfied. This is a bit shocking as I haven’t been that light in decades and it just feels like that’s too low of a body weight for someone of my height. But being present in my own reality, it’s quite clear than unless I’m willing to lie to myself and say this is lean enough, it just isn’t.
For men, a good place to get a quick visual estimation of how lean you are is to check the lower back. I have very clearly visible abdominal muscles, but the fat is plainly obvious on my lower back. The next place to check is the legs. I didn’t start seeing any clear separation in the quadriceps until the last couple of pounds. When flexed now, I see muscle I’ve never seen before and while that’s very cool and motivating and all that, the separation is still not as defined as I’d like it to be. The last place to check is the glutes. You’ll know you’re lean when there’s no fat on your ass, your quadriceps are actually living up to their name with all four muscles visible, and you don’t have a couple of inches of lower back fat above the belt line. This is still not contest lean by the way.
Most people deceive themselves on how much fat they’d have to lose to get in decent condition, under-estimating their current level of body fat and assuming an “easy” 10 pounds that they could take off whenever they felt the urge would do the trick. Let’s use the maths to see why that’s not correct.
This gentleman is quite muscular and a DEXA scan put him at 18% body fat. I don’t know his weight, but let’s ballpark it at 225 lbs. That would give him about 40 lbs of fat on his well muscled frame, and 175 lbs of lean body mass. Let’s assume he’s decided it’s time to get lean; whether for beach season, a photo shoot or just to start an effective bulk to try to add more muscle (a leaner person will have better nutrient partitioning when they add calories to try to build muscle. A fatter person who adds more calories will just get fatter). To get to 10% body fat, which is a nice goal to end a cut for purposes of prepping for another bulk, he’d have to lose 32 pounds. That’s a lot of fat loss. It’ll take months to get that weight off eating in a calorie deficit. Keep in mind that someone this muscular will look quite impressive at 10% body fat, where someone without as much muscle won’t dazzle anyone at 10%.
Here’s a 10% Dexa scan on a well muscled individual, which gives us an idea of how our 225-lb man above might look:
This is an easily achievable level of conditioning, and easily maintained. I’ve gotten to my current level of leanness without suffering or being hungry. If I decided I was satisfied here, I could just add some calories until my weight stabilized and maintain this level of conditioning indefinitely. I am not though, so the diet continues, if you can call what I’m doing dieting. I still eat peanut butter and chocolate, so I’m living the dream. Here’s a video I shot of my front squats yesterday using the new bar I ordered after breaking the Body Boss bar.
And some decline push-ups from today. As you can see, I’m pretty lean.
Joe's Blog 