Hi everyone,
I male, 30 years old and lift weights as a hobby, like most people who do this I go through phases of "bulking" (that's eating around 300 calories a day over maintenance) and then "cutting" (that's what most people would call a low calorie diet... to loose some any fat gained during the bulking phase).
So normally these bulking phases run for an extended period of time, say 20 or 30 weeks, with a cut length of maybe 5 or ten weeks, as a little experient I've tried running these phases quicker than normal, 25 day bulk (i.e.25 days eating too much) and 10 days eating only 1400 calories.
What I've noticed each time is that at some point my oily skin briefly turns dry for a few days (I'm now documenting it all to try and get more specific times on this), but yesterday, my 6th day of low calories I'd noticed how dry my skin was, the difference is as profound as Accutane.
At first I thought it was obvious, its just calorie restriction that means less sebum is produced, but if that was the case when I was doing my last 20 week cut I'd have had dry skin all the way though, which I didn't, in fact I made a note that it had a dry few days about a week after eating more!
I hope that you can make sense of this, I know if you're not familiar with bulks/cuts it might be a little hard to get your head around but just think of it as eating a bit too much and a bit too little. I keep everything else the same, workouts don't change, I don't go and pig out on terrible junk foods or live off broccoli on my cut weeks or anything like that.
I'm baffled but I wonder if there's an answer in there somewhere?
Hopefully some one can add something or try it themselves because if I could replicate the skin I have for 4 or 5 days a month I'd be thrilled.
Cheers, Mark.
That state u mention is where we want to stay to not have oily-skin, by using meds. Fish oils / B5/ dht inhibitors.
check this out..
http://www.acne.org/messageboard/topic/354191-oily-skin-must-go/?do=findComment&comment=3502665
There might be many factors in this, here is some . When people bulk they will usually eat excess carbohydrates, BCAA, leucine-rich whey- or casein-based protein concentrates to gain muscle mass. All the above is known to cause acne. Gaining excess muscle mass is driven by the mTORc1 protein complex, same as acne.
The questions is are there any other way to gain excess muscle mass without getting acne? Maybe https://www.reddit.com/r/ketogains/wiki/index. But I am not sure.
In the beginning of the cutting fase you will probably loose more fat than in the end. So at some point your fat loss will slow down, or even stop. So that might explain why you get clear skin in the beginning of cutting. Loosing fat will activate the FOXO1 transciption sequence which is (much simplified) the reverse engine of mTORc1 activation.
Pic: How mTORc1 promotes oily skin
SREBP-1 expression stimuates lipogenesis in sebocytes
That state u mention is where we want to stay to not have oily-skin, by using meds. Fish oils / B5/ dht inhibitors.
check this out..
http://www.acne.org/messageboard/topic/354191-oily-skin-must-go/?do=findComment&comment=3502665
Dihydrotestosterone inhibitors and vitamin B5 can cause some serious side effects, from hair loss to brain fogs over erectile dysfunction and bitch tits, I DO NOT recommend any of these supplements to anyone.
High quality fish oil is fine if you do not eat fish on a regular basis, but will probably do nothing for oily skin. It's said to halt inflammations thou.