How to Cut: The Core Principles

What is a cut?

Cutting means losing fat while holding on to as much muscle as possible. That's what separates it from a standard diet. A diet aims to move the number on the scale; a cut aims to change body composition. Your weight drops slowly, your waist drops faster.

The mechanism is purely mechanical. Your body pulls from its fat stores when your calorie intake falls below your energy expenditure. Without that deficit, no fat loss happens, whatever program you follow.

Plenty of lifters confuse cutting with training. A cut isn't a type of workout, it's a nutrition phase built around training. It naturally follows a bulk, when the muscle you built over the winter is still buried under a layer of fat.

A badly run low-calorie diet costs you as much muscle as fat. Too sharp a deficit, no heavy loads, not enough protein, and you shrink without ever getting defined. You lose weight, but you lose muscle with it. A cut is designed to do the exact opposite.

How to cut: the five variables to set

It looks like a big topic, but it comes down to five settings. Work through them in order: the first one accounts for most of the result.

• The calorie deficit: 10 to 20% below your daily energy expenditure.
• Protein: 1.6 to 2.2 g per kilo of body weight per day.
• Training loads: kept where they are, never lightened because you're cutting.
• Time: 8 to 16 weeks, not three.
• Tracking: a weekly weigh-in and a waist measurement.

Working out your calorie deficit

Start by estimating your daily energy expenditure. A common ballpark sits around 30 to 35 kcal per kilo of body weight for an active lifter training three or four times a week. Then subtract 300 to 500 kcal.

The temptation is to speed things up by cutting more. That's the most common mistake. An aggressive deficit tanks your gym performance by week two, and your body compensates by burning less through everyday movement.

The useful range jumps off the table: losing 0.5 to 0.7% of your body weight per week. Go faster and you give up more muscle without the mirror catching up. Weekly tracking, like the kind built into the progress tracking tools, keeps you from flying blind.

Eating during a cut

Your diet during a cut doesn't change in nature, it changes in proportions. You eat the same families of food, in different amounts.

Protein comes first

Protein is the one macronutrient that isn't up for negotiation. It limits muscle loss during the deficit and it keeps you fuller than carbs or fat do. Aim for 1.6 to 2.2 g per kilo, spread over three to five meals.

In practice, an 80 kg lifter is looking at roughly 150 g of protein a day. That's 200 g of chicken, 200 g of fromage blanc, six eggs and a serving of fish spread across the day.

Carbs around training

Carbs are your main adjustment dial. They're the first thing you pull back, but never down to zero: they fuel the intensity of your sessions. Put the biggest share in the meal before your workout and the one after.

Dropping below 2 g of carbs per kilo for weeks on end kills the training volume you can handle. You lift lighter, so you give your body fewer reasons to hang on to muscle.

Fat: don't cut it out

Fat still has a hormonal job to do. Don't go below 0.8 g per kilo of body weight. Olive oil, nuts, oily fish, egg yolks: these are useful fats, even on a cut.

In practice, cuts rarely fail on food choices. They fail on the deficit held for three weeks, dropped, then picked up again two months later.

What foods should you avoid on a cut?

Physiologically, no food is off limits. Some are just poor value for their calories: plenty of energy, little satiety, few nutrients. Those are the ones to cut back first.

• Sugary drinks and fruit juice, which push your intake up without filling you up.
• Alcohol, calorie-dense and disruptive to recovery.
• Store-bought sauces and cooking oils, easy to underestimate.
• Ultra-processed snack foods: biscuits, pastries, crisps.
• Ready meals, where the real numbers are hard to pin down.

One practical point that often gets missed: liquid calories and cooking fats routinely add up to 300 to 500 kcal a day. That's exactly the deficit you're trying to create. Spotting them is sometimes enough to start losing weight without changing anything else.

Your training program during a cut

The rule is counter-intuitive: you change almost nothing about your training. Heavy loads are the signal that tells your body to keep its muscle. Switch to sets of 20 with light dumbbells and you remove that signal.

Keep the load, adjust the volume

Hold on to your compound lifts and your sets of 5 to 10 reps on the main movements. You can drop total volume by 10 to 20% if recovery starts to suffer, but not the intensity.

Three or four sessions a week is enough. Following a structured program beats improvising: in a deficit, fatigue piles up and badly built sessions turn counter-productive. Our goal-based training programs cover exactly this case.

Cardio, as a supplement only

Cardio is there to raise your energy expenditure, not to replace the deficit in your diet. Two or three sessions of 20 to 30 minutes a week is a good starting point. Brisk walking, bike, rower: it doesn't matter, as long as it doesn't eat into your recovery.

Piling on endless cardio doesn't work. Past a certain volume, fatigue degrades your lifting sessions, and it's muscle that pays the price.

A program matched to your profile, your equipment and the time you actually have makes a real difference to a cut. That's what MUSCU builds from your data, with 1,800 filmed exercises and guided sessions on your phone. The subscription plans fit in three lines.

Try it for 14 days

Cutting for men, cutting for women: what actually differs

The principles are identical. A female body and a male body respond to the same calorie deficit and the same protein needs. The differences are in the starting numbers and in how fat is distributed.

How to cut as a woman who lifts

Protein needs are still 1.6 to 2.2 g per kilo. The deficit is worked out the same way. The difference is the baseline body fat percentage: a healthy woman naturally sits higher than a man, and chasing male numbers leads straight to cycle disruption.

Second point: lifting doesn't thicken a woman's shape during a cut, it defines it. Dropping your loads for fear of "bulking up" means sabotaging the one mechanism protecting your muscle.

After 40 or 50

Past fifty, muscle mass declines naturally and recovery slows down. Two adjustments cover it: push protein toward the top of the range and stretch the cut out so you can run a gentler deficit. Talking to a doctor before starting a restrictive diet at that age is worth it.

How long should a cut last?

Plan for 8 to 16 weeks. Under eight weeks, the loss stays marginal or you pay for it in muscle. Past four months of continuous deficit, fatigue and flagging motivation become the real obstacles.

Cutting without lifting is possible if all you want is to lose weight, but expect some lean mass to go with it. At the same body weight, the visual result will be noticeably softer.

Plan your exit from day one. Bringing calories back up gradually, over three or four weeks, keeps you from piling the fat straight back on. It's the phase most lifters skip, and it's often the one that decides whether the result lasts.

To get a cut right, remember the essentials: a moderate deficit, high protein, loads kept heavy, and patience. The rest is detail.