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Cutting for strength athletes
Cutting, or in simple words losing fat, is an inherent part of a strength athlete life. Whatever the reason is - the desire to get into a certain weight class (especially for powerlifters and Olympic weightlifters), get more shredded (for bodybuilders) or just to improve the looks, from time to time we make the decision to go through cutting. For us, strength athletes, it is essential to preserve muscle mass while losing fat. We spend so much time building those beautiful, strong muscles so who is willing to lose even an ounce of it? Strength athletes typically are more concerned about losing either muscle mass or strength than others, since it imminently and directly translates into lower numbers in the meet or even in the gym.
Cutting philosophy explained
Cutting is all about creating a caloric deficit. No matter what your diet is - low fat, low carb, vegan, even intermittent fasting - you will lose weight only if you create a caloric deficit. It also works in the opposite direction - if you are in a caloric deficit you will lose weight no matter what you do. Keto for losing is not better than Paleo, WFPB or any other diet of your choice. All the fad around choosing the right diet for losing weight is just nonsense and marketing games. The truth is fairly simple - you can use any diet you like for cutting, bulking or maintenance. If you are in deficit you will lose weight. In surplus, you will put pounds (only muscle if done right) on. Eat just enough and you will maintain your current weight. End of story. Once you have internalized these foundational facts the most important question to ask is: how do I know how many calories are “deficit” for me?
How to establish a proper caloric deficit
First of all, what “deficit” is? It’s fairly simple actually - it’s a negative difference between your intake (what you eat) and what you burn. For successful cutting it’s crucial to understand that for most of us what we eat is the biggest contributor to weight loss and should not be overlooked.
Here is why what you eat is typically a bigger contributor of all: think about putting just two tablespoons of olive oil on your salad and your caloric intake immediately increased by 240 kcal. You probably know how hard you need to burn it exercising, especially heavyweight training that generally burns calories slower than cardio. Repeat it a couple of times a day with other innocent but calorie-dense foods and you will need to burn anywhere from 600 to a thousand calories extra. I’m not saying it’s impossible, but it would be so much easier to control your intake and makes a lot of sense.
The “what you burn” part deserves a more detailed explanation. It consists of two parts, the first is your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) or, simply put, what your body burns at rest in 24 hours, the second is the extra calories your body needs to perform normal daily activities including any kind of exercise. BMR is strictly based on your lean body mass, in other words on the weight of your muscles only (I will have a separate article on that). The more muscles you have, the more calories you burn at rest. Typically BMR is a bigger number than your activity burn. What you burn during exercise can be only roughly estimated based on activity type, intensity, duration, and body weight. You can also try using stuff like smartwatches or other heart rate monitors but while they might be somewhat reliable for cardiovascular activities, the error for strength training is typically too big. Anyway, it’s not absolutely necessary since there are practical ways to figure this stuff out that I highly recommend. One approach that always works:
Know what you eat. Install a calorie tracker that is easy to use and has an inclusive nutritional database of most commercially available products, a full history of the products you typically use, recipe and meal recorder and other options to reuse info. Meticulously record everything you eat, at least for the first couple of weeks.
Track your weight or better, body composition (how to monitor body composition) to see the trend.
Establish a baseline based on the information above and come up with what a potential deficit looks like. Use your estimated BMR (how to estimate BMR) and your estimated energy expenditure based on your activity for that purpose. The combination of the two gives you an estimate of maintenance calories (daily amount of calories to maintain your current weight).
Don’t expect it to precise, because it’s a rough estimate. Only in rare cases, using professional-grade body composition monitors that estimate your BMR pretty accurately (I am lucky to have access to this one), and having a good idea of your caloric expenditure you will get it relatively close right away. Otherwise, use your guesstimate to make the first attempt to create your first caloric deficit. I recommend starting with no more than 200-300 kcal a day if muscle loss is a concern, you can try up to 500 kcal if you feel really adventurous. Just subtract it from your presumed maintenance and you are good to go.
Plan your meals based on your estimated number of calories. Establish proper daily macros (carbs, protein, and fat) that will provide both caloric and nutritional needs. There are different opinions about choosing proper macros, I personally recommend the following approach (read here) which is efficient and also doesn’t fight your physiology, unlike some others. Using a tracking app as a planner also helps. I normally put all I am planning to eat starting with breakfast and see how my macros behave so I can change and rebalance everything as needed, so no surprises when I eat. It’s especially useful when you plan on changes in your normal meals or eating out at night. Knowing what you are going to eat throughout the day really helps to keep things under control.
Monitor your body weight and/or body composition changes over the course of one week. Since your body weight may fluctuate significantly based on hydration levels, sodium intake, the emptiness of your stomach and other factors that are impossible to precisely control so I weigh in every day to watch the trend to be sure.
Based on the results adjust your caloric intake and macros accordingly. Since your goal is to preserve and even build muscles while cutting (yes, this is possible) you should not see more than 1 pound (or about 0.5 kg) weight loss a week. If you use any kind of body composition monitoring methods you should see your fat mass going down while muscle mass is either stable or ideally slightly increased. If you didn’t lose weight go ahead and reduce your intake by another 200-300 kcal a day and monitor for another week. Repeat until you have achieved the desired weight loss speed. If this approach stops working before you achieved your target weight, make the same adjustments again until you reach your goal. From that point, you are in maintenance so your caloric intake should go up slightly (about 200 kcal) which is just enough to maintain your target weight.
How to create a deficit and survive it
There is more than one way of creating a caloric deficit. The simplest is obviously by decreasing your food intake. This way you can pretty easily make a dramatic cut compared to your normal intake. The obvious issue with that, if you are used to eating much more you may feel hungry. I mean, really hungry. This isn’t sustainable for most people. So this method works best either when you don’t need a dramatic caloric decrease or if you are extremely disciplined. Another way is increasing the amount of cardio/conditioning. This again works best for those who aren’t too far from the target caloric intake. You obviously can burn a lot doing cardio, but here is the problem - if you overdo it your lifting (especially lower body) will suffer. So while I recommend cardio for cutting, it ideally should be done right after strength leg work or at least as far away from your next leg day as possible and it should be steady-state (not HIIT) 15-30 minutes 2-3 times a week. For a greater drop in daily calories, it’s best combining a decrease in intake with an increase in cardio. This will be easier from the hunger management standpoint and won’t hurt your strength training at all. Still, for 99.9% of the people creating deficit is not fun at all. Like at all. I have experimented a lot with different approaches to making this process significantly easier and found many useful tricks that made the process absolutely painless for me that I would like to share with you.
Prioritize foods with low caloric density and high volume. Foods that are high on fiber and LOW ON FAT. In that sense, healthy fats sourced from avocado, nuts, and seeds are not any better than refined ones. They are definitely better for your overall health but still deliver 9kcal per gram which is more than twice as much as either protein or carbs which makes a huge difference.
Drink plenty of water. Overhydrate at least for several hours a day. Carry around your large water bottle with known capacity and drink. Finish and refill. Repeat. By the way, when I say water, I mean it. Water, not beverages. I know, many people don’t like drinking just water, especially lots of it. What worked for me is adding a splash of lemon juice into my bottle. It makes taste so much better and the drinking process so much easier while adds zero calories to your diet. Win-win.
Don’t try getting all of your protein from food. While cutting it’s important to keep your protein intake relatively high, but on low calories, it will be extremely hard if not impossible. Really, I am on WFPB (whole foods plant-based) diet myself and prefer getting my protein from whole foods. While it works fine with bulking and maybe not extremely hard on maintenance, cutting is a different story. While cutting I still get at least 50% of my daily protein from real food, but the rest comes from protein powders and shakes. Believe me, there is nothing wrong with using organic, non-GMO, derived from whole foods plant-based protein powder. You still get all you need from a nutritional perspective eating most of your calories from a well-balanced (from both micro and macronutrient perspective) diet that comprises most of your daily calories. Go ahead and make your shake or add protein powder to your morning cereal. It’s totally fine.
Try my modified version of intermittent fasting. Real intermittent fasting is about splitting your day into two parts - one is fasting per se and it lasts most of the day, typically 16-18 hours, while you are allowed to only drink (remember water?). In the remaining 6-8 hours, you consume all of your calories. Do I recommend it for lifters? Definitely not, at least not this way. You need the energy to lift and you need to preserve your muscles. The way to do it is simple. When I wake up I have a few dried dates. It gives you enough sugar to start your brain and keep you moving for a while. A few hours later I have my protein shake which is liquid food and doesn’t really count as breaking your fasting. This helps me survive for the first 16 hours. This way I save lots of calories for just 2 remaining meals, most of it for dinner so I feel like I eat a lot every time. It really helps taming hunger. Most people get hungry in the evening and overeat, with this approach it will never happen. This schema is best if you workout later in the day. If you are a morning lifter just flip eating to be the beginning of your day and fasting the last.
Morning training or night, intermittent fasting or not - eat some carbs before, during and after training. This will support your energy and focus, and prevent catabolism. Don’t count calories coming from sugar intake around your training and you won’t have to count what you burn. Don’t overdo it, and they even out with no effect on your macros.
Don’t underestimate the importance of creatine supplementation. While cutting it is absolutely critical. It will help you preserve muscle mass while losing weight. Average-sized men will need about 5g a day, 3g for women. If you are bigger or smaller, adjust accordingly. It’s best if you start creatine loading a few days before cutting, but if you didn’t it’s never too late. If you are going for 5g or more, you can split it into 2 daily doses. Timing doesn’t play any role. Eat some carbs with it, this increases creatine absorption.
I hope these tricks will make your cutting experience more pleasant.
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