10 day cut - how extreme can I go?

[Sim882]

Hi, I wasn't sure whether I was going to do this, but I am seeking advice on a 10 day cut (I am on 3 week holidays from work, and going away towards end of 2nd week to a beach resort).

My stats are 5'6, 71kg, 9-10% bf.

I'm currently in a bulking phase, and have been eating 4000 calories per daily without gaining any fat.

I want to get down to 7-8%, where from experience my abs will show well (In April, I went for a 6 week holiday overseas, and all the beer, junk food, no exercise, coupled with my preexisting ANPB addiction meant I gained 1.5 kilos of fat).

Currently I have some ab definition, but it is much poorer than before my trip overseas.

Anyway,

(1) I'm wanting advice as to what type of calorie deficit is acceptable for such a short cut? Could I cut calories as low as 2500. This may not seem low, but is given I exercise on average 2-3 hours per day.

(2) I'm not the least carb sensitive - indeed, I frequently wake up in the middle of night eating bowls of oats (with whey + milk + flax). Should I bother with low carb dieting, or is something like 40% OK (my intended macros were going to be 40/40/20). I exercise a lot, and find that on low carbs, I can get close to fainting playing competitive tennis or squash.

(3) Given my bodyweight, and given I'm on holidays, how dangerous would it be to regularly exercise 3-4 hours per day. Tennis season is coming up, and I have been trying to practice regularly as possible (yesterday I cycled 40 kms, played 5 hours of tennis, and according to my polar heart monitor, burnt 4400 calories during this). How dangerously catabolic with Whey and glutamine supplements is it to exercise like this (this is beyond what I'm normally do I should point out, and I'm stiff as hell today, but I will be intending to do 3-4 hours per day).

Thanks

 

[vipergq]

most will offer different advise, but for such a small cycle, you can go quite extreme without dropping Leptin levels too bad and messing up your body balances.

As long as you get back to at least maintainace level after the 10 days, you can go as low as 1200-1500 calories I'd say.

 

[Sim882]

most will offer different advise, but for such a small cycle, you can go quite extreme without dropping Leptin levels too bad and messing up your body balances.

As long as you get back to at least maintainace level after the 10 days, you can go as low as 1200-1500 calories I'd say.

Is that 1200-1500 calories with 3 hours of exercise? I'm guessing my maintenance is closer to 4000 on this amount of exercise.

 

[Sim882]

All going well, and then I don't know what happened. Felt weak and lost discipline big time - last night ate after dinner 2 bowls oats with apricot jam and milk; 400 grams nuts. 4000-5000 calories!!! 4 days of damage!

I made the mistake of using a shake PWO, which seems to not satisfy hunger too well for me and causes the mistep occuring later in the day.

 

[vipergq]

Is that 1200-1500 calories with 3 hours of exercise? I'm guessing my maintenance is closer to 4000 on this amount of exercise.

I did 2100 calories on a Maintainance of 4000 for 30 days without too much of an issue.

In 10 days you can damn near starve yourself and not drastically destroy muscle as long as you are getting adequate protein.