It's about to be Autumn locally and Spring is a few weeks away in the Northern Hemisphere. On a personal note I feel like I've taken my Spring & Summer strategy about as far as it is going to take me, and in all honesty as of yesterday I came within .5 of a kilogram of my predicted weight so I feel like that was pretty successful.
5kg down, after being 9kg up, meaning 4kg of mass gain over the year from the previous summer & still relatively lean. At my age on 1/2 a thyroid & not on gear that's pretty close to as good as it gets.
Having said that, I intend to do a little better this year. I'm thinking back to a couple of years ago when I was highly motivated to prove a point about producing a leaner condition by pushing higher fueling targets... and that's what I intend to do again over the Autumn & Winter this year.
So the Autumn strategy will be to push optimal fueling levels as a minimal target, and I intend to actually do this in a manner to provide more nutritional value rather than just calories. It's easy enough to push higher calorie intakes by adding a couple of chocolate biscuits or something, but I feel like that's really a "last resort" situation for achieving maximal fueling in the Winter. In the Autumn I'm thinking more like, more potato and sweet potato for example.
So, working towards consistently optimal over the Autumn, closer to maximal in the Winter, and that leaves you a good margin to reboot and work to a deficit in the Spring, to be in best condition by Summer. I fucked up the timing of this last year to be completely honest. This year it'll be by the actual season.
Now, if you're in the Northern Hemisphere going into Spring... hopefully you've had a season or two pushing higher levels of fueling to facilitate improvements in performance and condition, and you can now think about a strategic level of deficit from those amounts for your Spring Cut. If not, you want to build to appropriate levels now and then reboot in the Summer.
If you're serious about training you really do need to have a periodised approach to sports nutrition, somewhere along these lines. Going on and off crash diets won't cut it. Attempting your Spring Cut after already restricting to sub optimal or insufficient amounts all year won't get it done either. Old school bulking and cutting is probably not in your best interests either unless you're really trying to be a heavyweight.
Work to an ongoing strategy for best performance and lean condition.
You can learn more about this in the VIP section of my Flexible Fueling website and also get all the details of how to join the new season of my online coaching program.
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