Bulking and Cutting in Life
Such articles come up when you spend a lot of time in the gym
So I have been really reading and consuming content about fitness because I need to have full control in that area of my life. If my health is on point, I can do anything.
Soon enough, I started to draw an analogy between fitness and life
So for those of you who don’t know, Bulking and Cutting are two concepts that you hear a lot, either in your gym or on the internet, when you start to get serious about building muscle.
Seems like everyone is in the bulking or cutting phase everytime and no one is on the maintaining phase. And it should be like this; you should always look for ways to improve your fitness, lift more, look more ripped and be happy.
Bulking, in simple terms means gaining muscle while minimising fat gains. While bulking you eat a lot more carbs than what you do while cutting and typically aim to be in a caloric surplus i.e consuming more calories than you burn.
Cutting on the other hand, means losing the excess fat while minimising the loss of muscle for which you have smashed your butt in the gym. While cutting, you eat less carbs and aim to be in a caloric deficit i.e. consuming less calories than you burn.
As I learn more and more about fitness, I’ve learned more about life too
My version of bulking and cutting in life comes down to saying yes or no.
Stick with me here….
BULKING IN LIFE
So let’s jump back to 1st April 2017. I had my last exam in 17 days and the syllabus was hardly took 4–5 days to finish at the slowest pace.
With all that free time in my hand, I thought, obviously to write as soon as the exams end(considering that my blog was abandoned since July 2016). But still I had a lot of free time to fill.
So, I started learning Python, which has now taught me to solve problems by writing simple codes. Printing “Hello World” on to the screen seemed like magic to me and the journey has been awesome since then.
I was doing these two things only throughout the day. Writing and working on my blog for 4–5 hours and then coding for 5–6 hours. That makes it a good 10 hour of work to do. But I still had 6–7 hours to fill.
I took on the Enactus LSR project that came my way. It included selling and marketing an organic dishwashing liquid made by underprivileged women in Mangar Village, Haryana,India.
And before I know, I am selling bottles going door to door in my society, convincing people as to why our product is better than the brands that have been present since decades, getting kicked out from other societies and being considered as cheap salesmen, riding on the scooty along with my friend Manik, calling everyone I know to sell the bottles and going crazy to win the sales and the marketing competition
And not to forget, we made this awesome advertisement for the product
At last we did win both the competitions and the event was over.
I thought I’ll be back to normal but then I had to find sponsors for an event that I had to conduct with my team.
Work started to pile up more and more; I said YES to each and everything. All the work for the event had to be managed by me and my friend. We were struggling to finish the work while I tried to balance all the other things in my life as well.
Things started to slip off. My friend was not able to write content for a month and we had started this blog with a commitment to post everyday. I had to take on the responsibility to post everyday, I could not leave it like that.
It felt like I was sitting in front of a fire hydrant; things kept coming at me and I had to do them.
Regular readers might be wondering what do I mean when I write “Work” in my blogs. I hope now you slightly know what that means. I wish I could tell you everything I’m working on.
And then it struck my mind, I had been “bulking” a lot for quite some time. I had been taking on more. I gained much “muscle” i.e. the things that are important and beneficial to do but I also gained some “fat” along the way i.e. activities that are not as important and do not help me progress much.
So now I had to cut that extra fat and make some more space
CUTTING IN LIFE
Cutting in life simply means working on what you have and not taking more work. In other words, cutting is about saying NO more often
It really helps you focus. I am at least out of the ‘bulking’ phase for now and not made much progress in the ‘cut’
I take 3 activities during the day and I focus on them. Everything else can be done the next day or even after that. But I need to take some time to be cutting-edge.
I want to be cutting-edge in writing content, I want to be cutting-edge in writing code, I want to be cutting-edge in chasing my fitness goals and I want to be cutting-edge in taking control of my time.
This can only happen if I focus on what I am already doing.
Conclusion
Focus is, and always will be, about saying no.
You can do a lot of things. And you should. You should say Yes to opportunities to find out what you like to do. But once you find a thing or two that you like to do then focus on that and complete it.
Don’t be okay-ish in 9 things but be awesome at 1-2 things.
It’s upon you now. Decide when you have to bulk and when you have to cut.
But don’t be that guy who keeps bulking all the time and gathers shit all around!
