You often see people in fitness mention going through a cut/bulk cycle, or mention one, with plans to follow up with the other. Why is it that cutting and bulking so often happen in cycles, rather than said person just doing both at once, until they hit their desired weight?
In basic terms, ignoring certain situations like being significantly overweight or being completely untrained, you build muscle (and add some fat) during a caloric surplus, and you lose fat (and a bit of muscle) while being in a caloric deficit.
Naturally, it’s logically impossible to simultaneously be in a caloric surplus and deficit. It’s not possible to build a large amount of muscle while also being in a caloric deficit, and you won’t ever lose a meaningful amount of fat without being in a deficit.
Building muscle requires an excess of calories, but unless your diet is supernaturally fine-tuned, you’re gonna put on some fat at the same time.
Burning fat requires a deficit of calories, but you’ll also lose a little bit of muscle mass along the way.
If you eat at maintenence, you won’t have the excess nutrients needed to build new muscle, and you won’t need to burn fat to survive either.
I’m not a fitness guy. However, I’d assume it’s for the same reason you don’t press on the gas and the brake at the same time. I could be wrong, however.
My general understanding of why you bulk and cut is because muscles take a lot of calories (carbs and protein) to grow and sustain growth. So in your bulk cycle you focus your workouts on pure muscle and strength growth and eat a lot which causes you to both have sustainable muscle growth as well as gain fat from the excess of calories you eat. Then in your cutting cycle you try to lose the weight you gained but when you are on a calorie deficit you also lose muscle mass. So, you focus your diet to hold as much muscle as you can while also focusing your exercises on high cardio. Again this is just my general understanding of why you do it I may have gotten some things wrong
You can, it’s called a lean bulk.
