How can I figure out if I need kcal surplus or deficit ?

Just eat normal balanced meals and take walks/bike, maybe lift a bit twice a week. If you have an eating disorder, CBT works great. Fitness autism is cringe.

Light cut

You train two times a week? Do full body, not UL.

You don't need 2g per kg

Log your workout. Progressive overload.

I workout upper lower 4x per week and 2x cardio, so 6x

It really depends what your goals are. Do you want to be slimmer? Or do you want to be thicker/ wider/ more muscular?

You may have built some muscle, but it takes a long time to build enough for it to be obviously visible.

So if your goal is to look more muscular, keep going. And make sure you are doing progressive overload, perhaps revamp your split or your programme, if you feel progress has stalled. If building muscle is your goal, I would also consider dropping one or both of your cardio days, to do more resistance sessions- you could then switch to PPL maybe

Use a capacitive scale that monitors muscle and bone density. Map that over time

Monitor your insulin resistance (skinny fat): tg/HDL or fasting insulin/homa-ir

Keep your workout program going.

Remove carbohydrates from your diet, or if you can't do that, limit them to once a day. Don't worry about + - calorie targets, just eat until you are not hungry without carbohydrates

The most dangerous thing about being skinny fat is poor metabolic health.

Every time you eat carbs you raise your insulin for 4 hours, overriding your bodies efforts to recompose and repair. Removing this will help your body eliminate excess fat, skin tone, and increase your general health.

I second a program revamp. Starting simple is great for getting a good habit going of rotating muscle groups for days, then move on to more targeted/complex programming. Push, Pull, Legs is super simple and gives a good rotation of muscle groups to start. Definitely log or note where your maximum weight for reps is and then base your sets around that number until you can move up. You want to push your body into building muscle without overdoing it and risking injury. Diet is a huge point of developing muscle and a better build, but it won't happen if you don't also train properly. Eat well, update your programming, and don't forget rest days to allow your body to rebuild and heal up. It will take time, but it will get there.

I heard full body 5x5 on Strogg Lifts is better than PPL or Upper Lower etc...

So basically Id do Squats Bench Rows Curls and in the other workout Deadlifts, Pull Ups and Overhead Presses.


But dunno... I read too much lol

There is not one workout split that is categorically "better". You have to start with your goals, then look at things like how long you can realistically spend at the gym when you go, and how many times a week you can go. The combination of those factors define the best suited split and programme for you.

What you need, no matter the split, is consistency, and progressive overload.

You're pushing some respectable numbers on your main lifts. Are they progressing well? If so, I wouldn't worry so much about everything else. Anything from a slight deficit to a slight surplus will still move you towards getting overall leaner and more muscular. I would say to choose whichever option is easier for adherence.

Thanks!

Yeah I dunno, 27.5 kg is weird (Dumbbell Bench Press) I heard it's "beginner" level, and for a male its low.

I workout since half a year, I am so bad lol.

I started at 20 kgs, but I somehow can't do 30 kg Dumbbells.
It's like I can't even pick them out of the rack... 27.5 kg 5x5 no problem, I can even do another 7-8 reps on my last set of 5x5 and the program says go up in weight if you can do 5x5. It's not happening lol...

From what you've wrote, I know you are a beginner and you have been lifting for a year. Your numbers have gone up well on your lifts but you can't see that reflected on your physique.
First of all, congrats on training consistently for a year! That takes discipline and puts you on track to achieve the look you want.

It's difficult to answer your question because I don't know your goals so, since I've been where you are not so long ago, I will answer using my goals as the anchor.

My main goals are to not hurt myself and to build muscle, specially on the upper body (wanted to have big arms since I was a kid lol)

If I were you I would look at my training and try to answer the following questions:

Is my exercise selection in line with my goals to build muscle?

_I focus on always having arm isolations on upper days. I choose lifts with good stabilty_

Am I too focused on the numbers?

_I used to get frustrated if the numbers went down on a particular session or if they took longer to go up. I later learned that day-to-day progression will vary due to things like sleep or stress. It's best to focus on showing up and accumulating quality work sets_

Am I using lifting techniques aligned with my goals?

_When I started lifting I followed the most common advice for benching: the arched back. This is powerlifting technique to lift more weight. I only saw real chest growth when I switched to bodybuilding technique_

Do i know what training to failure is?

_Training close to failure is necessary to build muscle long term, if you are natural. Getting close to failure requires knowing where it is. I only really tested my limits a year and a half into my lifting journey and it was when I started to visually see better results_

Do I push harder only on certain lifts?

_if I want to have big arms, I need to train them serioulsy, not just the compound lifts_


As for diet, you look to be somewhere around 20-30% bodyfat (hard to estimate but its always safer to assume its higher than we think). With that bodyfat percentage you could still bulk but I would make the surplus very very low or just be at maintenance. The reason being that you're still a beginner so there's plenty of room to grow.
Quickly looking at a Total Daily Energy Expenditure calculator it estimates you need 2400 kcal a day. This means you're in a small to moderate surplus, you could lower it slightly and still make gains.
As for protein intake, I would take Lyle Mcdonalds advice and base it of lean body mass and not total weight.

If you want to cut, I would highly recommend researching Lyle Macdonalds Rapid Fat Loss diet, its extremely effective. In a nutshell: cut fats and carbs, focus on lean protein. Eat veggies, supplement omega 3s & electrolytes. Continue to go to the gym, prioritize low reps (heavy weights and high intensity) and cut volume in half.

Last spring I did a dirty bulk and got to the high 20s bodyfat percentage. Using Lyles method I dropped 8kg in 2 months while maintaining gym performance.

Maybe its enough now, it's already a wall of text.

You're looking at these strength standards as if "beginner" means "bad". It doesn't. It's just an arbitrary label someone decided to slap on arbitrary numbers. What you should be focusing on is whether or not you're progressing. That's where you can make judgements on whether you're doing well or not.

As for your issue with DB bench, my solution would be to drop the weight and do something differently to make it harder when using lighter weights. That can mean any combination of the following: increasing the number of reps, increasing the range of motion, or increasing the duration of the pause at the bottom. For comparison, my work sets for DB bench are typically 30-40% of the numbers I use on barbell bench. You're currently doing 85%.

For reference: going up 2.5kg per dumbbell, i.e., going up 5kg in total is a pretty big step for the upper body. In your case this means going up 9.1% which is a pretty big jump. This might just bring you too close to "really heavy" and your muscles might just need a bit more stimulus and time. To me, it doesn't sound odd.

You need a deficit because you've got a few kg of fat. But you are lifting weights so you dont want to do a hard cut and lose motivation or impact your workouts. I'd suggest a 250cal deficit until you reach about 77kg. Then eat whatever you need to maintain and keep working out hard. You'll could look good in 6 months.