Looking for advice on programming during a cut
Hello everyone,
Sorry for the long post in advance. I guess this is a way for me to vent right now. For the purposes of this post the A in A/B indicates the weight in kilograms and the B in pounds.
I'm 24 years old, 171cm /5'7" tall. Living in Turkey. Used to be a swimmer and then did track and field for around 10 years as a kid until I started college. Never held a barbell in any way in my life until this year.
When I started the program this January I weighed around 85/187, but a lot of it was fat. I'd been around 70/157-160 my entire life until I started eating badly and not doing any physical activity to gain that extra weight.
I've been doing the program and eating anything between 4000 to 5500 kcal for 5 months now and I gained another 15/33 in the process. Now I weigh around a good 100/220, and although I haven't lost the belly at all I do feel better than how I did before. I rarely ate junk food, 90% of the things I ate during this process was stuff I cooked myself. Ate around 240-250 grams of protein, made sure 170-180 of it came from dairy, poultry, red meat and eggs. No I did not do GOMAD.
My stats have progressed as stated below:
•Squat: 60/132x5x3 to 130/287x5x3, I did 132.5/292x5 too but failed the other two sets in my last workout.
•Press: 30/66x5x3 to 57.5/127x5x3
•Deadlift: 85/187x5 to 330x5
•Bench Press: 45/100x5x3 to 87.5/193x5x3. Did 4 reps with 90/200 but failed the fifth on my first set on my last workout.
•Power Clean: 35/77x3x5 to 72.5/160x2x4.
There's been a couple things that caused me to lose some time. By the end of January it was discovered that I had an inguinal hernia on the left side. Doctor said it's at its beginning phase and wouldn't cause any problems for me for a couple years until I'd need it surgically repaired. That along with the problems I was having with the squats because of some mistakes I made earlier caused me to stop squatting in February. Then I decided to stop being stupid and resumed squatting. No problems since then.
And I injured my elbow during April and it caused me to be unable to bench press for a couple weeks. Strangely did not affect my overhead press though. It healed and I had no problems since then.
Now here's the problem I'm having. Since I already started with a lot of fat, being 100/220 is really starting to have an effect in my daily life. Along with this I'm also worried about my hernia, I'd hope surgery wouldn't be needed anytime soon, but if not, I don't want to be stuck at this weight without being able to work out for a while. And the worse of all is.... Money. I'm not talking about the usual "eating meat daily is so expensive uhh" cliché here. I really can't afford feeding my body at this weight for long sadly. Turkey is seeing inflation numbers close to 200% and the economy is getting worse by the day. I'm aware that it's the stupidest thing in the world but it's a fact I have to face. Getting 250 grams of protein daily is not something I'm gonna be able to keep up with at this point in my life. And honestly this comprises 80% of the reason I'm going to do a cut. Sure my stomach is tired and everything else I wrote, but if it weren't for the money I could gain another 10/22 if needed.
I don't feel like my LP is over. Only tweaks I've done to the program so far is putting a light day only for the squat on Wednesdays and dropping the power clean volume from 5x3 to 4x2. Everything else is 3x5 and increase the weight after every succesful workout except 1x5 for the deadlift. So I feel I have at least another month or two in me for the NLP but sadly I have to start cutting until I get back to around 85-90/187-200. I have no idea what kind of different programming if any would be necessary for a cut where I have around a 500 kcal deficit daily. Hence why I'm asking for your advice.