A little old school Steve Reeves for you. They really don't build 'em like that anymore and it's a crying shame. Classic lines always look better and healthier than the big muscle freaks.
A cut diet or a cutting diet is about one thing for the most part - loosing body fat and getting that 'ripped' look. To do this it has to get rid of fat but the muscle has to stay. That means you have to feed the muscle and starve the fat. This is the second cut diet I have done. The first one did not really get me ripped per say but I learned a lot about me and how my body reacts to nutrition. In that cut I dropped from 285lbs. to 262lbs. More importantly, my body fat dropped from 10% to 6% and the great thing is that mass building this winter never caused that to get above 7% and my weight did go up. That means muscle growth and the fat I lost last year has left for good.
The idea of a cut diet ultimately is about carbohydrate(carbs) manipulation and reduction. Because you are trying to save your muscle you keep your protein level high and because fats really help in keeping the nervous system and testosterone levels high (important for men) that means it really is all about carbs. During mass building carbs are high to make sure all the protein goes to the muscle, but during a cut they drop, so the body start draining the fat cells for energy.
Water and salt are also important as muscle need both to maintain itself, but at the very end of a cut you start lowering both to get the fat cells to give up the last of their water to get them to shrink even more.
A cut diet cannot be maintained forever because after a certain amount of time the body will start to cannibalize the muscle tissue. For competing bodybuilder timing is everything so their muscles stay large and they get ripped because their fat is gone. Cut too early and you will shrink too much, too late and you will not have the ripped appearance.
For me, I am trying an experiment because this cut is only eight weeks instead of twelve like last year. The experiment is basically carb rotation. I have a three day cycle: high carb, then medium carb, and then low. It is an experiment for me and being I have only been doing this a short time it is OK because I am trying to find what works for me. I have a few year to do just that, find what works so I am doing what I can.
I started early ( I originally had my cut planned for twelve weeks out of August 15th) because of my trip to Romania (June 14th to June 27th) with my daughter. That's going to be hard because I have no idea what we will be eating every day although what is provided is three meals a day and bottled water. I am used to six smaller meals a day so this may not be good. I am putting a body weight only workout together in case their is no equipment of any kind (very possible). So for now, I am in a cut diet that will end on June 4th and give me a week to get my energy level back up and then off to Romania and back.
I am thinking, if I don't completely like the results of this cut, when I get back I will do another four week one (after doing what I need to do to recover from Romania) that takes me to August 15, 2001 my second anniversary of being a bodybuilder.
After the first two weeks, I lost only eight pounds, but the bodyfat dropped a whole point and a half. So far so good.
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