Nutrition cycles

[Szymon]

many years ago a dieting concept called nutrition cycling was popular among my lifting community. the idea was to do a short cycles of caloric deficit and surplus. for example if your maintenance is around 3500 kcal then you go 2-4 months at around 4000 kcal and than drop your intake to about 2700 kcal for about 2 or 3 weeks. The idea is to burn fat and not losing the momentum of anabolic effect of eating 10-20% calories over maintenance. It was also combined to your training cycles. While on deficit you drop your volume and intensity, give your body time to recover and then hit the wheigths hard again. So my question is - is this approach any good ? Should the calories manipulation happen over night or is it better to strech it over a week ? Or maybe it is a dumb idea and it is better to get big and strong over 3-4 years and than go for a longer "cut" to drop fat% to whatever is satisfing ? Thank you for your reply.

[Robert Santana]

This approach works quite well when applied correctly. Volume needs to stay high on deficits though to preserve muscle mass and limit singles and doubles should be avoided because the resources aren't there to support them.

[Szymon]

Robert, thank you for your reply. I would like to disscus this idea in details over a phone/video call in near future. Once I finish my current training, maybe we could arrange some consultation ? I like your down to earth approach about food You presented in SS Radio. Also so far everything You or Mark Rippetoe said turned out to be working well for me. I would like to thank both of You for that.

Maybe You could help to set my diet and programing on the right track somewhere in march/april ?

[Robert Santana]

You are very welcome. I'm happy to do a consult and/or program your nutrition when the time comes. If you sign up for coaching it includes phone consults so you may just want to hang out and wait until you get started with coaching to do it all together. Entirely up to you!