Metabolic Adaptation and How to Make It Work For You, Part 2: Off Season

A while back, I spoke a lot about metabolic adaptation and how it can help (or, usually, hinder) a person coming into a cut and ways that we can minimize this metabolic slowdown. Now, however, I'm going to talk about maintaining this sort of thing on a bulk.

While it might seem counter intuitive that we'd want a higher metabolism in the off season, this is still ideal, as this is all setting the stage for maintaining at a higher intake, which is naturally going allow you to cut at a higher calorie diet. However, there are a few keys here:

Slow, Gradual Increase in Calories

When I came out of my first show, I intelligently started around 2300 calories a day, while cutting back on cardio. Several months later, I'd worked my way up to 3500 calories (and still being less active!) While I had gained a little more than I should have along the way, by the end, I was in a very good place metabolically. I went from being ravenous to being barely able to finish enough food to maintain weight!

Cardio: Should You, or Shouldn't You?

This is one question that has very few hard answers. I'll leave aside the heart health reasons for doing so (though some might argue that there are reasons that weight training alone would be adequate for this). One issue I'd have is that it's better to drop down cardio in the off season to a certain baseline, and not deliberately add it just for the sake of eating more food. At this point, it's not because that doesn't work, only that it makes controlling those variables harder when it comes time to remove the cardio, and then you become dependant on it.

Carbs: Keep Them at a Reasonable Level

I've often seen people try too hard to focus on absurd methods of setting up a diet, such as the typical 40% protein, 40% carbs, and 20% fat. Never mind the flaws of using percentages when figuring out amounts of each macronutrient, it also requires that protein is unnecessarily high (and carbs unnecessarily low). This is a problem, because when your body is used to more carbs, you won't have to cut them as hard, and your performance in the gym (not to mention NEAT, or non-exercise activity thermogenesis) will be much higher. Someone who's off-season carbs are at 500, while still lean, may only have to go down to 300 or 350 when dieting (provided protein and fat aren't too high).

This is, of course, only a look at the ways that we can help to maintain a healthy metabolism to avoid the problems associated with following a "dreamers bulk" with a "fever dream cut", starving themselves, and destroying their metabolism.