Your nutrition should be periodized – just like your training
While I'm not proud of it, when I first started losing weight, I was 100% into cut mode every day 24/7. I didn't have the slightest clue as to what a real maintenance period was, because I thought that was something you only did once you reached your ‘goal weight’. I also didn’t realize I was doing more harm than good by trying to be in a straight deficit for a majority of the year. Maintenance is where so much of the magic happens; habits are built, there’s more flexibility with food choices and social gatherings, cortisol levels are lower, and energy is higher.
Cuts can be beneficial, but they should not be where you spend a majority of your year. They should be planned and limited, around 8-12ish weeks, to limit the amount of stress a cut puts on your body, hormones, mental state, etc. If you’re a competitive athlete, a cut should also ideally happen in a time frame where your performance isn’t a priority, and far out enough from a meet. Besides, no one actually wants to be in a cut for the majority of the year and being in one continuously is not sustainable. And it is straight up not a good time.
The same goes for bulks. While anyone can do a yolo bulk and start packing in more calories, a strategic approach can help build and maintain muscle, improve performance, increase your metabolism and support healthy hormone production. More muscle mass will likely lead to higher maintenance calories, which means more calories to work with in a cut and make it suck a little less.
Obviously there’s exceptions and there’s no one correct way to do things. Athletes cut for meets all the time for example, but a nutrition coach can help to navigate those avenues in a way that best fits your lifestyle, aka not surviving on 1200 calories. My biggest inspiration to being a nutrition coach is being the coach I wish I had when I got into nutrition and fitness, and passing along the info that I spent years sifting through in the hopes to help people avoid the mistakes I made.
Written by: Ashley, Black Iron Nutrition Coach