[FretDancer]

Update

It's been a while since my last update in this thread.

I stopped dieting not much after posting those updates. I stopped counting calories and probably only did so like 2 or 3 times a week (usually on training days). Reason is because I got tired of cooking, and I got tired of eating the same food all the time that allowed me to track my calories and macros.

Since I live in campus and there are a few nice good restaurants here, I would frequent those instead.

I would still always try to cycle my fat and carbs between training and rest days and "try" to eat at a deficit or at least maintenance, but otherwise I wasn't really counting calories.

After about 3 weeks I decided to take some pictures again to see what happened. Here are a few:

See more pictures here.

As you can see there is barely any difference between last update's photos.

What I want to point out here is that even after a relatively long period of taking a break (aprox. 3 weeks, maybe more) I still managed to stay relatively lean.

Sure, it is possible some small fat gain occurred, but overall is not really noticeable from last time.

Since I have been dieting for too long I have decided to stop and I am now preparing to slow bulk.

However I am gonna keep a few things in mind:
- Stay in a caloric deficit on rest days.
- Caloric surplus on training days. A surplus of about 20% calories, maximum.

This is basically the protocol that Martin suggests in LeanGains. I am still confident that I can build muscle even when on a caloric deficit on rest days only.

I expect to put on around 0.5lbs of lean muscle per week, best case scenario, but im not counting on this.

Still, I am not gonna focus on how much muscle I am putting on a weekly basis. Just eat, and stay on your caloric range with the right macros, and lift.