Successful and effective bodybuilding consists of two major phases; bulking and cutting. Both of these phases are often misunderstood, but done correctly can lead to incredible results and exceptional physiques.
Bulking is where you put on as much muscle as you can, typically off-season, whilst cutting is where you lose weight whilst maintaining your muscle mass, in time for competition season.
Typically because of this, a cutting diet lasts between two and four months.
When organising your cutting diet meal prep, your weight, lifestyle and regime will be huge factors in how you will need to structure your diet and exercise plan.
Here are some tips for safe and successful cutting.
Use A Food Tracker
A cutting diet is all about losing weight and body fat percentage, so you need to be burning off more energy than you take in, with the remainder being taken from your fat stores.
Because of this, you need to track your food intake and weight every day and work out an average for the week.
Typically you need to create a deficit of at least 500 Kcal every day to lose 1lb of fat, so you need to have 500 Kcal less energy or increase your exercise to remove the remainder to lose weight.
Go Big Then Slow Down
When you are at your most bulky is the best time to go big on your weight loss. This is when you have the most fat to lose, so make sure you are training hard, strategically using cardio and aiming to cut the most weight.
As you get leaner, your weight cut should reduce, because once you reach a lower body fat percentage, you will start to burn muscle instead of fat, which is not what we want.