A cutting diet reduces a person’s calorie intake to lose body fat while maintaining muscle mass. This diet’s meals include lean meats, yogurts, and whole grains.
Bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts often use a cutting diet after a bulking phase to achieve a leaner physique.
What is a cutting diet?
A cutting diet, also sometimes referred to as shredding, aims to help someone lose fat and maintain muscle.
Bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts typically use the cutting diet as a short-term program before an event, competition, or as part of their training plan.
People use a cutting diet in combination with lifting weights. Weightlifting helps them maintain their muscle mass while they cut calories.
How to do a cutting diet
Competitive bodybuilders typically follow a cutting diet for 2–4 months, trusted source.
A person can decide the duration of a cutting diet according to their individual needs, but it is not a long-term diet.
Bodybuilders usually go through a bulking phase before a cutting diet.
Bulking allows a high-calorie, protein-rich diet with intense weightlifting to “bulk up” a person and increase muscle mass.
During this phase, it is crucial to consume more calories than the body needs to maintain its weight, to use these excess calories to build new muscle.
Nutrition and fitness professionals call this creating a “caloric surplus.”
Bulking up usually results in a person gaining some weight from fat as well as muscle.
The cutting phase aims to eliminate the fat gained during the bulking phase while retaining as much muscle mass as possible.
Weight loss and macronutrients
To achieve weight loss, a person needs to use more energy than they consume. Nutrition and fitness experts call this creating a “caloric deficit.”
A person should first work out how many calories they need according to their , age, and size, then determine their calories per day to lose weight.
During the cutting period, a person’s body mass decreases, and their metabolism adapts. They need to adjust the number of calories they consume to account for this.
Below is a summary of dietary recommendations that people can use in a cutting diet. The suggestions are primarily from a 2014 review trusted source analyzing preparations for bodybuilding contests.
It is important to note that dietary needs may vary from person to person.
Weekly weight loss: 0.5 to 1%Trusted source of body weight.
Protein: 2.3–3.1Trusted source grams per kilogram (kg) of body weight, or 25–30%Trusted source.
Fat: 15Trusted source–30% of total calories.
Carbohydrates: 55–60%Trusted source of total calories, or the remaining amount of calories after someone has calculated their protein and fat.
Meal timing and frequency
According to the International Society of Sports Nutrition (ISSN)Trusted source, a person should space protein intake evenly at 3–4 hour intervals throughout the day and within 2 hours following exercise.
The ISSN also recommend eating protein with carbohydrates before exercise, after exercise, or both.
The amount of protein that someone requires after a workout can depend on the size and timing of any meals they eat beforehand.
Specifically for bodybuilding, evidence source suggests that meal frequency should be moderate with 3–6 meals a day, each with at least 20 grams of protein.
Cheat meals and reefed days
Some people choose to have cheat days or reefed days on a cutting diet.
Cheat days allow a person to have occasional indulgences, which could be helpful, for instance, when eating out.
Reefed days involve eating more carbohydrates to increase energy and performance.
A 2017 survey source suggests that people can achieve better fat loss and muscle retention with reefed days.
People should plan any cheat or reefed days into their diet carefully to continue eating a healthful diet and working towards their goals.
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