Physique Maintenance

Ok, so we’ve talked about bulking up, and we’ve talked about cutting up. What about maintaining what you’ve worked so hard to build (or burn)? Seriously, people, if you’ve reached your goal and you’re happy with it, the worst is over. I’m going to use a stupid analogy to explain what I mean.

Let’s say you decided not to cut your hair and facial hair for 3 years (if women are reading, just imagine not shaving your legs for 3 years… yes, people will take pictures, point and say “big foot!!”. Just bare with me). Now, after growing that a** load of hair, you decided to shave it all off with a razor blade. You only have ONE razor blade to shave the whole thing off. How long do you think it’ll take you to do it? An hour? Two hours? Three? Six? Let me tell you (from personal experience, too. Not 3 years, but a couple of months) it’ll take a long a** time. Let’s just say you finished this task in a little less than 3 hours. A week later, you decided to shave it again with a new razor. How long do you think it’ll take this time? 5 minutes? 10 minutes, max?
The first time you shaved your head and face (after three years of not shaving or cutting it) you will, and I repeat, you will cut yourself a lot, especially if you’re only using one razor for the whole ordeal. A week later, not so many cuts. A week after that, you hardly cut yourself.

What the hell does this have to do with maintenance? Well, let’s say you just went through a year of cutting up. It’s as hard as hell at first. The cuts on your face and head translate to all the torture and agony you went through in the whole process. The razor blade resembles your will power. You always start off strong and then you start to lose it later on. Finally, when you reach your goal, you want to take a break and stop working so hard, but you still want to keep what you have. A week later (or a month, depending on the person), you start growing back the fat. How much fat? Very little. I’m talking grams here. All it takes is one or two cardio sessions to burn it off. Just like the hairs that grow back. You have to shave it off, but it won’t even take a fraction of the time it took you to shave it in the beginning.

The Plan

By now, you should be able to estimate how many calories from all the macro-nutrients you’re taking in every day. Also, you should know what is considered to be “good” food and what “bad” food is. Here’s what you could do:

1- Estimate number of calories burned per day:
For endo-morphs: Lean body mass x 12
For ecto-morphs: Lean body mass x 15

2- Estimate your caloric intake every day

3- You do not have to eat clean all the time. What would work best is eating clean for the first two or three meals and crap it up a little in the fourth or fifth meal (you don’t have to eat 5-6 meals, but it sure as hell helps)

4- Remember, eating 5-8 small meals (even if they’re full of crap) is a lot better (and burns a lot more calories) than eating 2 or 3 huge meals.

5- When ever you feel like you’ve gone overboard in a meal, you can wait for 3-4 hours then go do cardio for 30-50 minutes to burn off most of those calories you got in before they turn into fat.

6- Cardio should be done atleast once per week. Weight training should be done atleast twice per week (4 days max, of course)
7- NEVER EVER EAT ICE CREAM MORE THAN ONCE A WEEK!!!! That s*** is horrible!!! It’s the worst thing you can ever put in your body! Frozen low fat yoghurt is fine.

8- Try to keep protein at 1 gram/lb. of lean body mass (this is very important)

9- Don’t eat snacks often (chips, candy bars… etc). If you feel hungry, eat a meal.

10- Monitor your weight and measurements weekly to make sure you’re on track

11- There’s no point in torturing yourself after you’ve reached your goal. Eat some of your favorite foods (burgers, fries, chocolates, whatever) once or twice a day if you feel like. Please eat them in small portions and be reasonable (no ultra super duper jumbo size fries, or a deep fried mars bar or any of that s***).

12- Always keep emergency foods with you at home. Yes, I mean tuna, chicken breasts, protein shakes, and skim milk just to name a few. Nothing is worse than feeling extremely hungry, and finding nothing but a stick of butter in the fridge. Knowing some people, they’d just coat it with sugar and eat it.

13- Learn how to cook. It’ll help you a lot.


Don’t Over Do it!

If you go down to 4% fat, don’t be an idiot and expect you can maintain it. Anything under 7% fat is extremely hard to maintain and it’s very unhealthy. A good range to be in is between 7-10% fat. Even professional body builders don’t go below 7% in the off-season or when trying to maintain what they have. Let’s say you’re planning on going on a vacation in the summer and you want to be ripped and shredded for those beaches you want to go to. If you’re at 7% fat, all it takes is 4-8 weeks to get extremely ripped. So, it’s no big deal.


That’s all I can think of right now. If you have any questions or anything you’d like to discuss, just post a comment or send me an email. I’ll be more than glad to help.


Good Luck