Bulk or Cut first?

[Gymaholic]

Yo guys. I have been bulking for around 3-4 weeks and gained a total of 3 kgs. I now weight 76. Around 5 months ago i was overweight and didnt exercise at all, back then I weighed 83 kgs. Today I found some photos of me when I was 76-77 kgs, these were taken before I started lifting also. Then I took some photoes of myself and  to compare. I definitely look leaner for the same bodyweight so Im guessing my bulking is working. Im guessing my body fat percentage right now is around 17-18%. My goals are to get strong and big while staying as lean as I can. Im wondering if I should be cutting instead of bulking at this stage to get rid of some of my bodyfat then bulk to put on muscle ? Before I started bulking I was 73 kgs and my parents said to me I looked leaner back then but theres not a huge difference in terms of fat. Any advice would be appreciated. 

Cheers

[FellowshipOfTheRon]

really depends. when you are higher bodyfat it can get a lot harder to scope your muscle gains in the mirror and when you're bulking at a rate of like half a kilo or more a week you're probably putting on lot more fat than muscle which just creates more work for you later on when you want to look lean again.

 

lots of stuff out there about on and off season diets & all that i used to follow that when i started. thought i was real cool going on big bulks but ultimately it was really stupid (atleast for me it was) because wasted too much time cutting in the end.. imo you should get lean-ish first then bulk up steadily. you will be able to see your progress over time and it's really motivating. only real advantage of being higher bodyfat as is that the fatceps/fatchest help fill out the shirt and make you look bigger than you actually are lol

 

so if you wanna get lean, how lean are you wanting to get?

 

if you cut down first to say 12~14%  (still looks reasonably lean, no real bloated look but different from person to person) and go bulking again from there it's not too hard to put on lean muscle while remaining at around that body fat the whole time. if you wanna get down to like 8% that's where it gets a lot harder to manage, you have to get real strict with your diet not just to get down to that but to maintain that bf% while bulking. big difference to bulking at 18%+ where you can just sort of eat whatever you want

 

[Gymaholic]

Yeah I want to drop down to arounf 12% bodyfat. guess its time to replan the diet

[Leeroid]

IMO nobody should be bulking if they are over 12% bodyfat to begin with. And I would try to stay under 15% bodyfat throughout the bulk.

[OnlyHuman]

IMO nobody should be bulking if they are over 12% bodyfat to begin with. And I would try to stay under 15% bodyfat throughout the bulk.

I agree. Your insulin sensitivity is much better at lowerbody fat %s, thus the ratio of weight gain will be more likely in favour of muscle as oposed to fat. 

[2fierce]

I been using the anabolic diet for 12 weeks now. BF% was in the 20% now BF% is 15%. Refined your food will make it easy to drop BF%without sacrificing lean mass. I am in my forties and have a primal attitude to lifting weights. I train with only compound lifts. When it comes to cut I will use more specific exercise exercises for increasing bulk. My methods may not suit everyone, but I have made real gains lifts have increased significantly. Weight dropped a long with birthday. .

[2fierce]

birthday suppose to read body fat. Thanks predictive texting.

[Dinahlady]

I think you should do maintenence or "bulk" for a while longer as if you've recently lost some weight (you said you'd only been "bulking" for 3 or 4 weeks) it can help normalise hormone levels and maximise food intake levels compared to bf % and give you more longevity to get to a lower body fat.

Dieting upon dieting is not very sensible in my opinion.

possibly you've increased things too fast so pulling back a little bit could be good - it doesnt have to be an extreme either way imo. Just pull back by a couple hundred calories and maintain for a while and see how your recovery and strenght gains are doing.