2817: Should You Bulk or Cut First? (Most People Get This Wrong)

0:00Hi, I'm Chandler Garcia. As a PICU nurse and global health advocate, I've cared for women and children all over the world, from Costa Rica to Egypt to Kenya and beyond. And no matter where I go or how tough the conditions get, I always wear my figs. These scrubs are lightweight, breathable, and super soft, perfect for long shifts in any environment. They've got pockets in all the right places, the fit is flexible, and they're durable through every admission, surgery, and post-op. But it's not just about the scrubs. Another big part of what I love about FIGS is when they say they're committed to supporting healthcare workers all over the world, they mean it.

0:35I recently joined them on an impact trip to India where I worked in triage, caring for babies in a mobile clinic. My FIGS aren't just what I wear. They're part of the impact I want to make. Wherever my work takes me, FIGS helps me show up ready to make a difference while looking and feeling my best. Get 15 % off your first order at wearfigs.com with code FIGSRX. That's wearfigs.com, code FIGSRX. If you want to pump your body and expand your mind, there's only one place to go. Mind Pump. Mind Pump. With your hosts, Sal DiStefano, Adam Schaefer, and Justin Andrews.

1:13Adam Schafer:You just found the most downloaded fitness, health, and entertainment podcast. This is Mind Pump. Today's episode, should you bulk? Should you cut or should you do a recomp right now? How do you know which one you should start with? Which one is right for you? By the way, we have a reverse dieting one-on-one guide. It breaks it down for you. So you know when to add the calories, how fast to add the calories to do an effective reverse diet to set you up for an effective cut. And it's 50 % off. It's$23.50. You can go to mindpumpreversediet.com. Use the code diet50. This episode is brought to you by a sponsor, Organifi.

1:51Adam Schafer:They make organic supplements for health, wellness, fitness, muscle gain, and fat loss. And you can get 20 % off. Go to Organifi.com forward slash Mind Pump. That's O-R-G-A-N-I-F-I dot com forward slash Mind Pump. Use the code Mind Pump for the 20 % off discount. All right, real quick. If you love us like we love you, why not show up by rocking one of our shirts, hats, mugs, or training gear over at MindPumpStore.com? I'm talking right now. Hit pause. Head on over to mindpumpstore.com. That's it. Enjoy the rest of the show. All right. You're wondering if you should go on a bulk, a cut, or just recomp your body.

2:29Adam Schafer:How do you know when it's the right time? That's what we're talking about in today's episode. Let's do it.

2:35Sal Di Stefano:I've shifted my opinion on this over years. And I would say almost always, just because I believe there's always an exception to the rule,

2:47Adam Schafer:but almost always i'm gonna bulk somebody out the gates almost always it leads to the other ones

2:54Sal Di Stefano:yeah yeah well so even like like even if you like imagine the person who someone thinks that like what they think is probably the exception the rule you're a hundred pounds overweight uh you haven't worked out you're eating mcdonald's also that it's like you can't

3:11Adam Schafer:possibly be telling me you're going to bulk that person yeah and i i would say yes but then i think

3:16Sal Di Stefano:there's some nuance to explaining what that looks like totally but i i would say yes i would i would bulk them first totally well before we go further though uh for us non like bodybuilder types explain to me the difference of of recomp you know between the bulk and cut all right so let's

3:34Adam Schafer:we'll start with we'll explain the first two and they get to recomp uh so bulking is the process of trying to gain. Typically, it's muscle. Usually, people don't want to bulk to gain body fat, but it's try to gain. A cut is the attempt or process at which you're trying to get leaner. And a recomposition is... Like maintenance. Well, you're trying to recomp, meaning change your body composition. I'm going to get leaner and build some muscle.

3:59Sal Di Stefano:Right, right, which would be like trying to do Goldilocks zone. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that would be a good way to say it, too, is Goldilocks zone or, you know, stay at maintenance. Too hot, too cold. Which I thought it was It's like whenever I heard that term, I thought I was referring to like a reverse dieting or something.

4:13Adam Schafer:Well, reverse dieting, which we'll get to, would be a bulk, right? This is where you're trying to eat more to try to build. But so here's where people typically start. Should you bulk, cut, or recomp? It depends on your goal. This is what people would say. You're trying to lose weight, then you go to cut. You're trying to gain weight, you go to bulk. Recomp, that's just you want to kind of get leaner and build muscle at the same time. Not quite. Not quite. Right. That's not a determining or the determining factor that you should consider on whether or not you should be on a bulk cut or recalculate.

4:46Adam Schafer:I think there's a few other things you need to consider. And I think this is kind of where you're going, Adam, which is, okay, you want to lose weight, but do you have runway to go on an effective cut? In other words, is your basal metabolic rate or is your metabolism, to put it loosely, is it burning hot enough to where I can bring your calories down, but I have room to go down to take you to a place that you can sustain? In other words, just to paint the picture, you're overweight and on average every day you're inactive, but on average every day you're eating 2 ,000 calories a day and you want to lose 50 pounds.

5:24Adam Schafer:Well, in order to lose 50 pounds, you might think, oh, just go down to 1 ,500 calories or 1 ,200 calories. You could do that, but you would plateau very quickly. You might get 10 or 15 pounds off your body, but now you're left with another 20 pounds or something to go. And now you're at 1 ,200 calories, and you can't really go down from there. You go below that, and you're feeling really bad. You're not getting adequate nutrients. Proteins and fats aren't adequate, and it's not sustainable. so that's one of the big things to consider is uh do i have runway we just had a live caller this

5:57Sal Di Stefano:morning female uh weighed 167 pounds and she wants and was 5 11 yeah uh was complaining of like carrying a body fat in her stomach area we talked we must talk to her about a bunch of other things for a good 10 minutes before i finally asked her do you track calories and you know where are you at right now and you know i wish i would ask her that the first two minutes because we would have got to the conclusion way faster she's eating 1600 calories like there's no way i'm taking that person on a cut from you know 5 11 167 pounds she'd be miserable and she was active yeah and active won't move the needle yeah training moves a lot of steps works a a a physical job uh yeah no way like and and that's more common than not where people have have kind of plateaued this is kind of looks like, to be honest, it does kind of look like a recomp moving into a bulk.

6:53Sal Di Stefano:What do I mean by that? So let's take the example of the obese person who's over 100 pounds of weight, overweight, right? And let's just, they're sedentary. They have never worked out or haven't worked out in a very long time. Eat fast food, predominantly junk food. So I thought, what I tell them is like this, we're going to eat whole foods. I want you to hit 180, 200 grams of protein or whatever like that a day. And so naturally what happens is that person who was eating fast food and stuff like that, they might have been at high, high calories. Like they might have been at really high calories and that's what got them there.

7:31Sal Di Stefano:And I tell them to eat whole foods, 200 grams. And I tell them to eat as much as possible. And they think it's, they feel like it's a bulk. But it actually controls the calories a little bit. And so it actually ends up being more like a -

7:41Adam Schafer:And the higher protein bill. Right, right.

7:43Sal Di Stefano:It ends up being kind of a recomp. But then what I quickly want to do is as soon as we start building muscle and then their appetite starts to increase, I want to feed it. And even though that person needs to lose 100 pounds, the signal that I'm looking for first is, oh, my God, this is too much, which is normally what this happens. This happens all the time with someone like this that's that overweight. And then you get them to change their diet from processed junk food to whole foods. They think the food is just way too much and they can't fathom how is this possible. I'm over 100 pounds and I can't eat all the food you're telling me to eat.

8:16Sal Di Stefano:And it's like, yeah, it's because you're eating whole foods and you're eating protein first. And so I don't want to just stay there. I could just stay there and they'll probably just keep losing weight. But I actually want to build muscle. I want to build metabolism. I want to build that runway you're talking about because maybe what that looks like at first is like 2 ,800 or 3 ,000 calories on this 300-pound person. And I actually prefer them to be more like 35, 4 ,000 calories. And then we have -

8:40Adam Schafer:We need a lot of room to lose 100 pounds. Yes. You need a lot of room to go downward in calories to cause – and by the way, if you get your calories – the lower your calories get, the more likely it is that your body will try to pare muscle down to adapt. So if you go from 4 ,000 to 3 ,000 calories, it's a 1 ,000-calorie drop, and let's say your body is burning 4 ,000. Let's say you've got a really humming metabolism. You're losing body fat at 3 ,000 calories. and if you're strength training, muscle loss may be minimal or not at all. But you take someone who's at 2 ,000 calories and you cut them down to 1 ,000 calories, same calorie deficit, same type of individual wants to lose weight.

9:20Adam Schafer:Those calories are so low, the body is really trying to adapt quickly to it and it's paring muscle down. And so the odds of muscle loss and a slower metabolism are much higher. So the easy answer here for a bulk would be I want to build muscle. There really is no, someone comes to me that wants to build muscle, we're going to put you on a bulk. We're going to try and eat more calories than we're burning. We're going to try to eat a high-protein diet and lift weights. That's an easy answer right out the gate. It's like there's almost no situation. I mean, I could pull some if I really think hard where someone comes to me and says, I want to build muscle.

9:56Adam Schafer:And I said, we're not going to put you on a bulk. Yeah, we're going to go cut first. Yeah, that doesn't make any sense. Maybe gut health issues or something else. But somebody's coming and wants to build muscle, easy bulk, easy bulk. Everybody else, I would agree with you, Adam. I think that the direction to go, even if you want to cut, is to move in a direction that boosts metabolic rate to set us up for sustainable fat loss. Because the problem isn't fat loss. I know that's what everybody thinks the challenge is when they want to lose weight. Like the hard thing is to lose weight. But if you actually look at the data, it's easier to lose the weight than it is to keep it off.

10:31Adam Schafer:The keeping it off part is actually the problem we don't want to look at. In other words, we need to look at this problem and really consider the keeping the weight off part of the problem and make that the most important thing we consider. Because that's the issue. That's the challenge. The weight loss isn't the challenge. It's challenging, but when you look at the data, there's a percentage of people that lose the weight. There's actually a decent percent of people that lose a significant amount of weight when they really put their mind to it, but the majority of them gain it back. The vast majority of them gain it back.

11:03Adam Schafer:And so if you look at all the people that attempt, almost all of them gain the weight back. A percentage lose the weight, but almost all of the ones that lose the weight gain it back. So that's the thing we need to focus on the most. And so giving ourselves runway with a hotter metabolism, which means more muscle, which gives us more flexibility and more calories in the cut, is the way to go. because to put it simply, is it easier for somebody to lose weight eating 2 ,500 calories or eating 1 ,500 calories, right? Obviously, the 2 ,500 calories. You don't feel like you're starving yourself all day long.

11:40Adam Schafer:It's a way better strategy.

11:42Sal Di Stefano:If you go the other way, then that person almost always, even if you're highly motivated at first to restrict and lower calories for this cut, the inevitable happens where you start that slows down the process of you losing weight starts to slow down and then and the cravings are going like crazy and you've been just white knuckling it for weeks on weeks and maybe you're down five or seven pounds but it's like it's now it's moving really slow it is so hard for that client versus the client who i flipped the the model on its head and i'm like hey i want you to eat you hungry i want you to eat again just choose these types of foods and let's really focus on getting stronger.

12:27Sal Di Stefano:Let's not worry about the scale per se right now. Don't worry. I know you came in. The goal is to lose 100 pounds. We're going to get there. I promise you. But let me build that metabolism up. Let's build some muscle on your body and it'll make that process so much easier. When you do it this way, it's crazy how much easier it is for the client to adhere to that long-term. In fact, I like this conversation because there's controversy in our space around it And there's typically controversy in the newer, young, educated trainer who's just gone through their courses, certification, and is reading just the science.

13:01Sal Di Stefano:I'm very familiar with what law of thermodynamics looks like in that calories in versus calorie out. And that's exactly how I thought as a trainer when I first started was like, oh, this really overweight person is eating too many calories. Move more, eat less. I'm going to cut their calories down, and I'm going to move them more. That's the law of thermodynamics, and that will lose weight. And it would lose weight initially. and then we get to a point where that slows down so what do i do ramp up the intensity or ramp up their movement more cut their calories some more and then eventually this person is eating 1900 calories training three to five days a week strength and doing cardio outside of that and they're just like feel like they can't eat anything outside of the perfect diet that i've given them and that almost always eventually failed even the ones that i got to the goal failed later on they put the weight back on and so it's just it's a failing strategy although that's what we're taught the quite the so someone might be listening and thinking well what if i just cut first and then do

14:02Adam Schafer:what you're saying right what if i just because i want to lose this way and i get it i get it i get the urgency uh you finally got the motivation you've been dealing with this for a while right You didn't gain 60 pounds overnight. It took a little bit of time. And you've thought about it a lot over the last however many years. And now you're finally motivated enough to really do something about it. And so you're like, look. They want to channel that. I want to get the weight off. Like I finally am going to do something about it, you guys. Why don't I just lose the weight doing what you're saying the wrong way, which is just I'm just going to eat way less because I feel motivated.

14:37Adam Schafer:Work my way back. And I'm just going to work out. and when I lose the weight, then I'll do what you're saying. Then I'll do this slow increase of calories and I'll try to build my, I gotta get the weight off first. I gotta get the weight off first. Well, I'm here to tell you, first of all, that is a strategy. So I'm not gonna say that's not a strategy. That is a strategy, but it's harder. It's actually harder than what we're saying. It's way harder. What we're saying is easier. It's an easier strategy. Now the challenge with what we're saying is the fear around it. The psychological challenge.

15:07Adam Schafer:Total, like, okay.

15:08Sal Di Stefano:One's a really physical challenge, physiological challenge. Cutting calories really low and moving a ton, physiologically and psychologically is difficult.

15:18Adam Schafer:Initially, it doesn't feel that way, but it'll be.

15:20Sal Di Stefano:The other one isn't as hard physically, but it's definitely as challenging psychologically.

15:24Adam Schafer:It is initially. So initially, what you're going to find with the first approach, which is just cut, and then I'll worry about building later, is initially because you're motivated, it actually feels great. that's like i'm doing this i'm eating my whatever chicken breast and rice or my paleo diet whatever the heck you're doing white knuckling it or my shakes and initially you're losing weight 10 pounds 15 pounds let's go let's keep going oh yeah i'm gonna get to that 60 pounds and then i'm gonna reverse and i'm not gonna worry about that and then at some point months later after you've plateaued because you will when you're frustrated you're like oh my god i lost the first i lose 60 pounds the first 25 you know i did it now i'm like stuck here like what's going on i'm not eating much everybody i'm working out like crazy motivation fades because it will and then you're done you're over and by the way this is probably what you've done before you've probably followed this the rebound the yo-yoing that's right this is where all that kind of tends to happen and and you know this because you know you've done it you've done this two or three or five times in the past over the course of however long you've ever tried to lose weight.

16:32Adam Schafer:So it's not going to work again. I hate to break it to you. And it's actually harder because it doesn't work. What we're saying initially is hard because you're telling me that I'm just going to eat high protein and feed myself and lift weights and not worry about the scale. And initially with that motivated state of mind, it is going to feel frustrating because you might step on the scale. It's more delayed gratification. That's right. And you might see that, okay, my weight's not going down. Maybe even went up a couple of pounds. Okay. I am strong on the gym. That part's kind of cool. Like I'm lifting more weight, but God, I want to get the 60 pounds off you guys.

17:07Adam Schafer:Like what's going on here? And then you're, you're eating a little more and you're like, okay, am I ready to lose? And you know, you've got one of us as your coach. We're like, no, we're going to go up in calories again. Let's feed more muscle. And you're like, what? I don't want to do that. But you follow it and you follow along. And after three or four months, you're now consuming, you know, 3000 calories a day 3200 calories a day you've built great strength your body's got different shape to it and then you come to us and you're like all right can i do it now and we're like let's do it let's cut now and then we cut and here's what happens fat falls off your body suddenly you burn body fat the plateaus aren't as hard you're doing less work and then when you do plateau you've got more runway to cut again flexibility and you end up in this uh much more uh sustainable place um now Now, what's interesting about the recomp, because people are like, well, what if I just want to recomp, right?

17:57Adam Schafer:I want to do this kind of slower. Recomp is actually hard, but also easy. What I mean by hard, it's hard to be in that perfect, you know, lose fat, build muscle, lose fat, build muscle. But it's actually, the process actually looks like this. Eat your target body weight and protein. Only eat whole foods. Eat when you're hungry and lift weights. and then what happens is your appetite dictates the calories and then it kind of looks like this i bulk a little i cut a little i bulk a little without you even thinking about it yeah yeah bulk cut bulk cut bulk cut and then the body slowly recomping takes longer yeah slowly changes