 Our first caller is Kyle from Wisconsin. Hey, what's up Kyle? How can we help you? Hey guys, first off, I just want to say thanks for everything you guys do Especially for someone like me that has been looking for quite a while And I know that I do things wrong, but I don't know why and you guys explain kind of the reasons That things don't go correctly for like weightlifting and stuff so like my deep squats I totally started doing that now and now I actually see things in my quads and calves Unlike I've ever done before so Thanks for all that kind of information first off. Awesome But my question is so I've been doing your guys is suggested mini-cut and mini bulk and I do it at three weeks Three week intervals right now I Notice when I do a mini cut I lose about five pounds in the first couple days And I didn't know if I was supposed to readjust my macros kind of after that initial weight loss that I'm guessing is from water Or do I keep just going with my previous? Macro break down that's almost certainly water You especially when you go to a cut right so you're reducing calories probably one of the places that you reduce calories is In carbohydrates, you know for every three grams of carbohydrates your body takes in it pairs with about three ounces of water So you can guarantee that it you're you're probably and then plus your sodium intake probably naturally comes down a tiny bit Which also retains some water so I would I would guess that that most of that is is water weight And so long as you feel like you're seeing good progress in those three weeks Like you feel like you lean out. I wouldn't readjust or calculate your macros I mean, how how has it been so far? I mean, how many cycles of the three on three off? Have you have you gone through now? Well, I'm I just started a bulk then again this week And so I only did the one cycle of cutting and then I started this bulk. I actually bought you guys's your shredded package so I started the bulk with the first phase of the aesthetics package and The cut went great I I lost an extra couple pounds after that initial weight loss of water so I think it went great and Now I'm on this bulk. I didn't get the same Water retention that I thought that I would have when I when I lost it for on my bulk Is that something that I would be getting usually to or is it? Yeah, you know, there's a lot of variables there and now here's the thing with the mini bulk and mini cut kind of protocol So for people listening right now Essentially, you know when you're cutting you're reducing your calories and you're bulking you're bumping your calories and we advocate for doing this for shorter periods of Time so rather than you know doing like three or four months of just cutting to inject periods of you know Slight bulks in between to prevent metabolic adaptations where the metabolism slows down and helps preserve muscle And it you actually results in more fat loss and on the reverse It rather than doing just a bulk for 12 weeks right injecting some some periods of time in there where the calories are lower Keeps the appetite up helps with digestion reduces inflammation and reduces fat gain, but here's a deal at the end of the day What's your ultimate goal right if your ultimate goal? Let's say you follow the shredded summer bundle, which I know has maps aesthetic Maps prime those maps hit I believe some other programs in there right there So let me think aesthetic prime hit and the intuitive nutrition guide right so you've got at least If not more 12 to 16 weeks of exercise programming in there or longer So if your ultimate goal at the end of it is to build muscle Then you want to be in a bulk more than a cut So what you don't want to do is do three weeks three week cut three week bulk three week cut three week bulk I mean you can do that But you're gonna end up kind of bouncing back and forth and kind of maybe slowly progressing over time or staying the same What you want to do is if figure out your ultimate goal Is it to build muscle? Is it to burn body fat if it's to do burn body fat, then I'd say two-thirds of the time Stay in the cut the other one third do these kind of small shallow bulks or vice versa Otherwise like I said, you're gonna kind of end up where you're where you started because you're going calories surplus and calorie deficit It all equals out Okay, so like if I so what these phases it doesn't I shouldn't switch between cold cuts and bolts Per phase it like I shouldn't kind of base it around that I should just kind of do like a Like a three-week cut in a one or two week bulk Yeah, I'm trying to lose body fat Right. Yeah, if your main goal is to lose body fat then yes like and you don't and it's not and by the way That's not wrong. What you're doing. Okay. I just want to make that clear like what you're doing is is okay But to Sal's point if your goal is more to get shredded and get lean more than it is to add 10 15 20 Pounds of muscle if that's more of a focus then you just want to spend more time Focusing on the cut and then you'd have shorter bulk So I would do something like a 3-1 so I'd be I would be cutting for three weeks And then I'd run like one week where I would do a calorie surplus and I go back to cutting for three weeks And I'd run a one-week surplus just to break that up So if that's your goal now and just like he said vice versa if my goal was mainly just to put on size I'm already relatively lean I would bulk for three weeks and then only and then reduce calories for one week and Again, what you're doing is not wrong because over time you're gonna you're gonna lean out and build muscle going the direction You're going Sal's just suggesting that if you if you have more of a focus Then in one area than the other then you'd want to spend more time in that if you want to see more results in that direction If that makes sense Okay, great. Yeah, um and to answer what you asked before how it's going I've done the six months, you know dirty bulk basically before in the past years and then try to cut that off and then after listening to you guys totally change that thing up and Cuz mentally I couldn't cut enough before and now I think this is a like I can easily change my my eating and Stick to us stick to how I'm bulking or cutting. So this was just the best thing I could have learned from your guys's show Very cool. Thanks for calling in. Yeah, thank you guys. No problem. Yeah, I think there's two things here, right? One is people tend to if they have a goal They go so hard in that specific direction that they their bodies really start to adapt they start to render problems Right so cutting for too long at some point the body starts to look at muscle and say do we really need this? Maybe we should pair muscle down You you start to kind of slow your metabolism down, right hormone issues start to become a problem If you bulk for too long, you can start to gain lots of body fat now You're starting to get diminishing returns. So going in and out of these two of these if these goals Really keeps the body progressing. But yeah, if you have a specific goal more of your time needs to be spent there Yeah, you do have to have an overarching sort of goal with that So that way you can you know direct it in that in that fashion I was actually wondering I was gonna ask you guys while he was talking like of you know If if say like my whole goal right now it is to get lean like it's it's summer and that's my main focus I know to kind of go weave, you know Go heavy on on the cut, but then also add you know like a shorter time for the bulk But what about you know just more focusing on maintenance instead of the bulk? What's the advantage of going up a little higher? Yeah, so I you know and when I say you know come out of your cut for a Little while and do a bulk not like this aggressive. I said shallow so it's let's say he's doing by the way Right, he didn't say it but it's written up in his question that it says he's just going like 10% over Yeah, so if your maintenance is 2,000 calories and your cut is 1500 calories Then you might have a four or five days at I don't know 2,100 calories I mean just a little bit a little flex. Exactly just a bit above the fuel Muscle and strength and to prevent that slow down and I do want to make it clear though Like what he's doing isn't necessarily wrong, right? It really depends on the where the person is at like so If if you were already in pretty good shape, I actually think that's a great way to eat, right? Like it let's say he's basically you're doing maintenance, but but not being maintenance all the time Right and doing that he'll lean out a little bit and if he's not Over-consuming a lot on the bulk and he's doing a very moderate bulk He should add muscle a little bit every time he does that then he should lean out every time He goes down the other direction and actually probably shape his feast physique up really nicely now I would eat some that's kind of like how I eat right because I kind of keep my body fat percentage in pretty much check So I don't need to go in an extreme cut or an extreme bulk So I do something similar to what he's talking about right now But if you're if you are you know, you got quite a bit more body fat percentage that you need to lean out And that's more of a focus that I agree with you that you know doing something That's more three one or you know running running a much longer cut and then going back to a bulk for a shorter period I make sense so you see more results in that direction But what he's doing is not a bad strategy either just for overall health and getting a little bit leaner and adding a little bit of muscle You