Loading...
Get your target calories, protein, fat, and carbs for a fat loss phase. Pick a conservative, standard, or aggressive deficit based on your timeline.
20% deficit. Balanced pace. Works for most lifters.
Enter your details above to see your cutting macros.
Cutting is a structured phase of eating below maintenance calories to reduce body fat. It is not a diet or a cleanse. It is a temporary period, usually 8 to 16 weeks, with a clear start and end. The goal is to lose fat while holding onto the muscle you built during a bulk or maintenance phase.
Three things make a cut work: a calorie deficit, high protein intake, and resistance training. Skip any of the three and you lose muscle instead of just fat. Get all three right and you come out lighter, leaner, and stronger relative to your body weight.
Conservative (10% deficit)
Slow, steady, easy to sustain. Best if you are already lean (under 15% for men, 22% for women), have plenty of time, or are new to dieting. Expect 0.5 to 1 lb per week.
Standard (20% deficit)
The default for most lifters. Noticeable weekly progress without wrecking training or hunger. Expect 1 to 1.5 lbs per week for someone at 180 to 220 lbs.
Aggressive (25% deficit)
Faster loss but training suffers and hunger is real. Only use if you have meaningful body fat to lose and a short timeline. Expect 1.5 to 2 lbs per week.
Fat loss is the goal. Muscle loss is the failure mode. Most people lose 25 to 30% of their weight as muscle on a cut. Do these four things and you can push that below 10%.
End the cut when one of these is true: you hit your goal body fat, you are pushing 16 weeks, your training has tanked for more than 2 weeks, or life stress is breaking adherence.
Do not jump straight to high calories the day the cut ends. Spend 1 to 2 weeks at maintenance to let hormones recover, then decide whether to start a lean bulk, stay at maintenance, or plan the next cut cycle. The post-cut transition matters as much as the cut itself.
A cutting phase is a period of eating in a calorie deficit to lose body fat while keeping as much muscle as possible. It runs on three levers: calories below maintenance, high protein to preserve muscle, and resistance training to signal the body to hold onto lean mass. Most cuts last 8 to 16 weeks.
Start with a 20% deficit below your TDEE. For a 2,500 TDEE that means 2,000 calories. Go conservative (10%) if you have a lot of time, are already lean, or struggle with hunger. Go aggressive (25%) only if you have more body fat to lose and can handle the intensity. Never drop below 1,500 calories for men or 1,200 for women.
Aim for 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. A 180 lb lifter targets 180g. Protein is the single most important macro on a cut because it preserves muscle, controls hunger, and has the highest thermic effect. Cutting calories is fine. Cutting protein is not.
Diet drives fat loss. Cardio is a tool to widen the deficit when food alone is not enough, but you cannot out-train a bad diet. Hit your calorie and protein target first. Add cardio when weight loss stalls or when you want to eat more food at the same deficit. Resistance training matters more than cardio for keeping muscle.
Most cuts run 8 to 16 weeks. Any longer and adherence drops, sleep suffers, and training performance tanks. If you still have fat to lose after 16 weeks, take a 2 to 4 week diet break at maintenance calories, then resume. Short aggressive cuts and long conservative cuts both work. The failure mode is running a moderate cut indefinitely.
Eating 800 to 1,000 calories a day causes rapid muscle loss, metabolic adaptation, hormonal disruption, and rebound weight gain. You lose weight fast, but most of it is water, glycogen, and lean mass. When you return to normal eating your body stores more fat than before. Crash diets are the reason most people regain everything within a year.
First, track for 2 weeks. Most plateaus are inaccurate logging or weekend drift. If intake is truly on target: drop calories by another 100 to 150 per day, add 1 to 2 cardio sessions per week, or take a 1 week diet break at maintenance to reset hunger hormones. Do not drop calories more than 150 at a time. Drastic cuts backfire.
FitCommit calculates your cutting macros from AI body composition analysis, then tracks them with camera-based food scanning. Free 1-month trial.
Try FitCommit Free