I looked in the words and saw your problem and it may be you didn't even realize you had a problem yet. Its early for you and the truth is most guys are just practicing their pinning for the first few years until the realize, damn I'm not really getting very far and dig deep to find the discipline needed to grow and most importantly "keep the gains to next run". So great learning experience you said you had gains but they were "wet and sloppy. So you grew some there and realized what you need to do in part which is where I saw the problem maybe. You said its the diet and "I will keep that on point throughout this cycle". Again you're growing in thought but you would have completed the sentence much better in saying "I will keep that on point from now on". Thats the little secret that we all look for early and don't seem to want to adapt before years of yoyo cycles and training. Eventually and unfortunately in my case it took years to accept. I didn't want to believe it in part because I love food, I eat big and I never met a plate of food I didn't like, literally will eat anything. My mom said from one year old they could set a plate in front of me and while my little brother would pick his way around the things that didn't loook good to him I would start at one side without any descrimination and eat my way to the other and then point at the empty plate with a tear! Lol...so food is my weakness, well and tight ass but we'll get back to that (no homo btw). So I had a very very bhard time saying "I'm going to limit myself to these foods". I hate not eating what I want and everything I see. Good example here, I ran out of food yestrday and ate spam and peanut butter and liked it! That would make a goat puke brother! Lol. this is it though, I want you to learn quicker than I and thats the whole deal, this diet roll has to be 365 or you're just fuckin around, you really are brother. Now can you have a cheat day now and then ,yes, can you fall off a bit on vacation if a comps not in the near future, sure. You just have to adapt a lifestyle and quit thinking of it as a 12 weeker. You will never gain nice muscle on one diet and keep it on your old diet, ever. Its not rocket science I just chose to make it hard early on. Think of it this way. You are day trading and have a system in your charts you use to make 100 dollars a day. You then find a new system by where you are making 500 a day and you do that for 12 weeks. At the end of the 12 weeks you decide to start using your old graph system. Will you continue to make 500 a day or go back to making 100 a day? It is not only no more complicated than that, its not as complicated as that...its simple, find something that works and do it forever! See what I mean? Ok so I did my best to make that point so throw your stats/age and goal up for us and let us take a look.