how different is cutting diet from bulking?

[luckyboy]

1) Will my # of g of protein decrease? By how much?
2) Is it fat I am cutting down on?
3) As far as carbs, do I still go with the oatmeal/rice/multigrain bread early in the day and fibrous carbs later?
4) Should my post W/O shake still contain a simple carb?

Sorry, alot of questions. I was just wondering where I would vary the diet from my bulking diet.

Thanks.

[Lubricator]

1)No, stick with the 1g per 1body pound.
2)Of course, thats the point of cutting. Its purpose is to shed the fat off and show the muscle you worked hard on during bulking phase.
3)Sure
4)Yes.

Basicly, you just have to lower your fat calorie intake.

Someone correct me if im wrong.

[ASS COBRA]

Keep the Protein Up its thermogenic and muscle sparing

Keep your fats up, just cut overall calories..carbs are best to cut to keep insulin low to facilitate fat burning

Eat complex carbs tapering off before bed

Yes, if you think you need it. I dont need carbs to recover when im cutting, some do.

[CliffStamp]

If you drastically lower your fat intake you will promote the burning of lean muscle mass because your body will not readily switch to the ketogenic pathways when you are supplying it with mainly glucose as energy. It can readily burn proteins to get glucose, it does not do so with fat.

Of course fat is very calory dense, containing 9 calories per gram and very little water or fibre so it can be easily 5 times as calorie dense as a piece of meal or fiberous carb, so you need to take care in how much you eat. Less so if you go on a fully ketogenic diet (Atkins).

You can still get high GI carbs after a significant workout because here you will preferentially load muscle glygocen and not store it as fat.

-Cliff

[Maxgain]

Do you mean drastically lower glucose intake will burn proteins?

[CliffStamp]

No fat, assuming a calorie restricted diet of course. If you eating enough calories, then you won't burn lean muscle mass on a low fat diet, but then you won't burn fat either.

Once you start to restrict calories your body has to look elsewhere to get its energy. The main arguement is don't give it any fat, or very low amounts so it starts to look for it in the adipose tissue.

If you give it lots of carbs, say 70% then obviously it doesn't need to burn muscle for carbs as you are giving it lots right? Well no because you are still in a calorie deficit, and your body needs to get energy from somewhere and it is set up to do so from carbs as that is all you are giving it.

This is why the most efficient diets for burning fat are essentially 100% fat diets. On such diets your body switches over to burning fats as the primary source of energy and thus it readily burns body fat for energy happily as that is what it is set up to do.

This of course is not a good diet in general as you are not giving yourself enough protein to maintain lean body mass, so your muscle tissues will start to degrade. Not becuase they are being broken down for energy, but because there is nothing to upkeep them.

So a more realistic diet is 70% fats, 30% proteins. This will strip off fat massively fast, especially if the fats are highly ketogenic / thermogenic (omega-3, medium and short chain TG's).

Such a diet is however very difficult for most people to follow as the meals are very unfamiliar, and you can't eat what you are used to normally. A lot of people also eat really unhealthy fats (rancid when bought because of improper storage) and burn them when cooking so they are highly oxidized.

It is also easy to get constipated due to lack of fibre, and vitmain and mineral supplementation may be necessary depending on the quality of the meat. If you eat quality organic organ meats it won't be.

Thus a more optimal diet still would be 65% fats, 30% protein, 5% carbs. With the carbs being very nutrient dense, very fiberous ones. This is essentially any ketogenic diet which is about ~100 years old.

The fat burning advantage is also given an extra boost in that there is an inherent ketogenic low efficiency for most people so that you burn more fat calorie wise that you would if you were using carbs, meaning you lose more weight on isocalorie diets. That is essentially the main Atkins arguements, and you can find studies which support this metabolic advantage.

It is a pretty radical diet though and prone to problems mainly because of incorrect applications, but can work very well especially for people with syndrome-x or similar problems with carbohydrates.

In general though I would probably first suggest that someone wanting to lose weight try :

1) exercising more, both cardio and resistance
2) removing all quick junk foods and refined foods
3) increasing fibre intake
4) splitting up meals
5) drinking more water

And eat a balanced diet, decent servings of hihgly ketogenic/thermogenic fats, slow digesting proteins and low GI carbs. If this fails to work then there are many reasons why it can (thyroid for example), then a high fat ketogenic diet might work so look into that.

-Cliff

[Maxgain]

Yeah of course you are still in a cal defecit I didnt cop that thanks.
Are you saying that this is they way to minimise muscle losses as you are training your body to break down fats instead of protein by eating a high fat diet and that you lose the weight by a cal defecit or are you advocating the Atkins way where by eating fats and protein you supposedly lose weight due to ketosis and the thermal effect of these foods

[CliffStamp]

I would not say I advocate Atkins, I used to, but in the past few months have seen so many people misinterpret the diet, and in general have problems with staying on it in a sensible manner (I had a wonderful Atkins breakfast, 2 lbs of Bacon!), so I would currently suggest it as an option which should be considered. The sad part is that there is a huge number of people who have carbohydrate intolerance because of high GI carbs and thus really need Atkins-like diets to function properly but the massive amount of missinformation makes this almost impossible to apply.

Does the ketogenic effect of high fat diets work? Yes, this is a well known biological process. There are also other effects such as the high satiety of high fat foods, and if you do a little work cooking you can make excellent low carb dishes, which in general taste better to many than low fat versions. Unfortunately now both are overpopulated with synthetic additatives, I don't think loading yourself with aspartame is sensible, which a lot of people do on low-carb diets.

Of course you can add to this effect by restricting calories. Atkins discusses this in his book, and adds that you can increase it further by cardio, and resistance training to try and build significant muscle mass (this isn't likely for a lot of people however).

-Cliff