Gaining Strength While Cutting

So the last few months have been a fairly interesting test as to whether it’s possible to gain strength while cutting. In the middle of May I weighed 191 pounds after getting back from a trip to Santa Monica. I decided it was time to start cutting for the summer, turns out I started this way too late since it’s now the end of August and I still have a little bit of fat to lose! In a little over 3 months I’ve gone from 191-177. I was very afraid that I would lose a lot of the strength gains I’ve made, but i’ve manged to actually gain some strength on my lifts:

Squat: 225×5 —– 240×5 = +15 pounds
Bench: 175×5 —– 175×5 = +0 pounds
Overhead Press: 122.5×5 —– 120×5 = -2.5 pounds
Deadlift: 275×5 —– 335×5 = +60 pounds
Powerclean: 145×3 —– 155×3 = +10 pounds

The only lift that’s gone down is the overhead press, and only by 2.5 pounds. Bench press has completely stalled out but that’s totally fine with me since I’ve gone from being able to bench my body weight only once to being able to bench it almost 5 times. The deadlift progress has been very steady, I just put 5 pounds more on the bar every workout and it goes up. I’m pretty sure my body is built perfectly for deadlifting though, I have really long arms and the leg/torso ratio is perfect too. This may be one of the reasons why my progress has continued despite the weight loss.

One thing I will say is that I haven’t been super aggressive about cutting. I eat whenever I’m hungry but I’m eating super clean and making every calorie count. For someone with poor food chioces or who wants to drop weight really fast I think losing strength is inevitable when cutting. Basically my diet consists of fruits, vegetables, meat, beans, nuts and whole grains.

I’m not really cutting or bulking at the moment. I think it doesn’t even matter which one I do at this point. I want to put on a lot more muscle and probably need to lose 10 pounds more to get really shredded. I’ve decided to just eat as healthy as possible and not pay attention to the total calories. Whether I lose fat or gain muscle it’s part of my long term goals anyways. If I reach a point where I have no more fat to lose I’ll make sure I put my body in a surplus situation, but at this point that’s not the case.