Then there are the perma cutters, who are afraid of food especially carbs and guard their six pack closer than Fort Knox. The problem with this group is that is has not has not gained a gram of muscle in the last 5 years either. In summary, both groups did not achieve a change in their bodies despite multiple workouts per week and thousands of dollars spend on supplements.
What is the problem? It is your body or nutrient partitioning to be precise.
Your body very good at adapting to new challenges, meaning any fat loss diet will stall and any bulking cycle will turn into a fat building cycle after a while.
Let’s deal with the perma bulkers first. For that, we imagine there are two people living in your body: Muscle Maik (your muscle mass) and Blubber Bob ( your fat tissue).
Those two are competing for nutrients at all times. As long as Muscle Maik gets to the food first, we are in good shape and keep on building muscle while keeping fat at bay. But sadly, all good things come to an end.
When bulking we build (hopefully ) mostly muscle but inevitably gain some fat along the way. At some point the body gets less efficient at handling foods since your insulin efficiency goes down due to constant over feeding, hence adipose tissue aka fat mass starts attracting more nutrients.
In turn, fewer nutrients get to the muscle and this setting the stage for the point of diminishing return where you simply start building more fat than muscle.
This is due to several unfortunate factors caused by under feeding: testosterone and growth hormone drop, levels of thyroid hormone, cortisol and ghrelin ( a hunger hormone) go up, setting you up for muscle loss ( Muscle Maik dies), fat gain ( Blubber Bob flourishes) and extreme grumpiness.
What is to be done: you need planned diet breaks, preferably along with training breaks. hits can be done on a weekly basis where during a bulking phase you have two lower carb days where you keep a caloric deficit, while in a a cutting phase you would have one cheat meal ( not day!!) per week.
As a very general rule, one should keep a dieting or cutting cycle to 12 weeks at the most before taking at least a temporary break or switching the cycle altogether (Timmi, you are ready to diet!)
Maik