Too skinny?
You're losing fat, but you're unhappy with how you look. You thought losing ten pounds would reveal a Fight-Club body. It didn't. You look more like Crypt Keeper.
You're exposed.
You've lost so much fat you're finally able to see what was hiding underneath your insulation: not much. You don't have as much muscle mass as you thought you did. To make matters worse, the remaining fat on your body is loose. Your fat cells are no longer filled to the brim, crammed into a confined space, like dozens of hot helium balloons packed inside of a plastic garbage bag. You're runny like ragù. You jiggle when you jump.
You never felt more skinny-fat in your life.
You're stuck.
You're not as lean as you'd like to be. You want to get six-pack pixelated and have deep grooves between your ab muscles, but you fear what you'll become if you lose more weight. You wonder if you should stop cutting and start bulking, to build muscle, so when you get laser lean you'll be more shapely than a bowl of soup.
Should you?
Not unless you want to experience “weight whiplash” and regain the fat you lost.
Your body seems to regain fat easily after a cut. Makes sense, from an evolutionary standpoint. Body fat is stored energetic material, a bridge between life and death when food is scarce. After a significant loss, you've chewed through a large portion of your emergency funds. This is alarming. What if food becomes scarce again? You won't survive. You need to rebuild your survival stash to prevent this possibility.
Almost as if you were stockpiling toilet paper for years and everyone was like What are you doing? but then a pandemic happened and everyone but you had an itchy butthole and when the pandemic (fake) ended (like, twelve times) you rebought all of the toilet paper in town in preparation for the next pandemic (MONKEYPOX IS COMING AHHHHH).
Luckily, your body can't randomly get fat. Your body can only get fat when fed excess energetic material. Unfortunately, most by-the-book bulking strategies call for chronic overfeeding. In other words, you'll have plenty of excess energetic material swimming through your system. And so, if you start bulking the day you stop cutting, I have a hunch your body will prioritize fat regain above muscle growth; your soft parts will expand like a dry sponge in water.
To minimize weight whiplash, you should transition from cutting to bulking slowly instead of flicking the switch from one to the other overnight.
Gradually increase your energy intake… and prepare for the worst.
Something worth considering (before you shoot yourself in the foot with a rifle loaded with regret): do you really want to break your stride? Losing fat is difficult. Killing your cut prematurely is like putting a healthy Greyhound to sleep.
Sure, you might look undead, and your family might be worried about your health. They might think you have an eating disorder (hopefully you don't). They might worry about you until you expand to your old size and increase your risk of cardiovascular disease, making you just as likely to die on account of how you look as they are. You know your family loves you when they'd rather see you die from fatness as opposed to skinniness.
Before you let social stigma stop you from getting six-pack pixelated, do me a favor:
Consider the length of time you'll have to bulk to see noticeable results.
When I was a noob, I thought a three-month bulk would build muscles so big aliens would see them from outer space. I was dumb.
Average rate of muscle growth is one pound per month. It's a slow process. There are exceptions, of course. Beginners can usually gain a little quicker, as long as they train correctly. (You better be training correctly. You better be lifting weights or doing calisthenics, trying to get stronger. If you aren't, then you have no business bulking.
There's variability, but I'm betting you'll have to bulk for at least six months to build a visually impactful amount of muscle. During this time, you won't get leaner. You'll probably get fatter. Are you okay with sustaining your current body fat percentage (or higher) for another year? Or are you going to get caught in a rundown?
Are you going to stop cutting and start bulking because you hate how frail you are, and then, two months later, stop bulking and start cutting because you hate how fat you are, and then, two months later, stop cutting and start bulking because you hate how frail you are, and then…
When you're caught in a rundown, you do lots of work but you don't really get anywhere.
The situation is different and you've been cutting for a while and recently hit a wall.
Once you stop eating your weight in deep-fried pig parts and you start eating sane portions of nutrient-rich foods, fat loss usually occurs rather predictable and linearly. The average expectation during the 60-day skinny-fat transformation challenge is one pound every week, initially (scale weight won't always drop one pound). This honeymoon phase doesn't last forever. Eventually, the rate of loss will slow, perhaps even plateau.
Plateaus are frustrating but natural. Smaller creatures don't require as much energy as larger creatures. When you started, you weighed 180 pounds. Now you weigh 160 pounds, which means your body doesn't need as much energy to sustain itself; the gap between your energy feed and your energy need isn't as large as it used to be, leading to less loss.
Contrary to what supplement companies want you to believe, pills won't help you power through a plateau. You need to tip the Energy Balance Equation in your favor (again) by decreasing your energy intake. This is easier said than done.
Back in 2006, when I started my first legit “diet,” I ate six small meals per day. I was never satisfied after I ate. Even though I ate every three hours, I craved my next meal. I couldn't fathom the idea of eating less than I already was.
My approach is much different now. I only eat two meals per day. Hunger is “scheduled” and easier to cope with because I eat a full and satisfying dinner every night (even when I'm keeping my calorie intake under control). Makes it much easier for me to navigate plateaus. (If you want to see how I eat sandwiches and get shredded, check this out.)
Even if you're like me and you can see yourself doing what's necessary to power through a plateau, you might not want to.
If you've been losing weight for 6+ months and you've recently reached a plateau, you might be better off taking a vacation from your diet. Cutting is stressful. Every day, your body is forced to eat itself alive. You don't have infinite stored energetic material. If the energy deficit continues, you'll die.
Given the life-or-death stakes, your body can undergo a handful of metabolic adaptations during a chronic calorie deficit. These adaptations are in service of skewing the Energy Balance Equation in survival's favor within the context of starvation: Your body can reduce energy output and make it more difficult to increase energy input, making it tougher to lose weight.
For instance, during a chronic deficit, leptin levels decrease. Leptin is a hormone responsible for inhibiting hunger and telling your body you’re full. In other words, if you've been cutting for a while now and you've lost a considerable amount of weight, your meals may leave you increasingly less satisfied. You'll experience harsher hunger pangs more often. This is your body's attempt to get you to eat more.
The extent of these adaptations is anything but universal, but if you've been cutting for a while and your progress is subpar or you feel worn down like a bald tire, then you should think twice before diving headfirst into a deeper calorie deficit and fostering further cannibalization.
Instead, you should consider eating more. Not saying you should bulk or take up temporary residence inside an all-you-can-eat buffet. Just eat more of what you've been eating. Increase portions slowly until you've gained a few pounds. Maintain for a month or two from there. This will give your body time to catch its breath. Afterward, you'll be in a better position to decide whether you want to (a) experiment with a proper bulk or (b) launch another attack on your body fat.
If you launch another attack on your body fat, you should consider calorie cycling.
Calorie cycling is alternating between a higher calorie intake and a lower calorie intake. For instance, you eat at a deficit for two weeks, then you eat at maintenance for two weeks. Or you alternate between deficit days and maintenance days and even surplus days, as I do (see Two Meal Muscle). There are many ways to cycle calories. Just remember, for fat loss, you still need to create a calorie deficit over time.
Cycling is useful when you're “soft lean” and trying to get “hard lean.” Higher calorie days may minimize undesirable metabolic adaptations that would otherwise be triggered by a chronic calorie deficit. At least, that's the hope.
Think of food as information. When you're in a calorie deficit, the information is, There's not enough energy and nutrients out there to sustain our current form. The body reacts to this information accordingly, by adapting to become a creature better fit for a world where food is scarce. When you spike calories throughout a deficit, your body has reason to believe it's not on a one-way conveyer belt to death. (Again, that's the hope.)
You can also calorie cycle if you're a greedy SOB, still in the honeymoon fat-loss phase, and you really want to try to build muscle.
The higher calorie (non-deficit) days might help with muscle growth. Might. And although calorie cycling does still risk ruining the good thing you have going, there's much less risk involved with calorie cycling than with a proper bulk.
Ultimately, the choice is yours.
You might be okay with more body fat and dawning a plump “dad bod” for the next six months or whatever, in which case you have less to worry about. I don't know. The good news is, no matter what you do, you won't cause irreversible damage.
Even if you bulk into oblivion and get fatter than you want to, you can return to cutting and lose the weight you gained. One of the highlights of being in this position is you've proven you can lose weight.
The worst outcome isn't getting fat.
The worst outcome is a rundown.