How to burn fat without losing muscle- the cutting guide

Getting a lean physique is that every fitness freak aspires for. Cutting fat is tricky & can ruin all your progress if not done right. Cut is not function of cardio alone. Although additional cardio workout would be added to your workout routine, nutrition will pay the most important role in cutting.

Before, we more ahead, let’s discuss basics about cutting & bulking.

1. Bulking: Bulking means increases your calorie intake to gain weight & build muscle
2. Cutting: It means you want to lose fat you gained during bulk, so you do a calorie deficit during a certain period of time.

There is not much difference in cut & losing weight. We generally want to lose weight when we have built huge fat on over body due to consuming junk & calorie dense food. However cutting is used when you have a decent amount of muscle & want to shred fat built during bulking t. It makes sense to get into cutting after 2 to 3 years of training since cutting is not going to help until you have build solid muscle foundation.

If you exercise and eat healthy, you will boost your metabolism, which will lead you to burn more calories in the long run. So if you have a little amount of fat, you will burn it without the need to do a cut.

The length of cut depends upon how much fat you want to shred. Please remember that you do not want to lose muscle, so an organised & thoughtful cutting strategy has to be in place.

Ideally to achieve this goal, you should focus on cutting 1 pound of fat per week.

So what nutrition you should adopt? 

Since you have an objective of losing 1 pound (0.45 kg) of fat per week, you should maintain a calorie deficit. So either you reduce your calorie intake(consume nutrient dense food) or add more cardio workout to your schedule. You can do both. However, understand what is basic daily calorie requirement to maintain your weight. You can check calorie maintenance calculator here.

Once you have got that number, you can adopt a nutrient dense nutrition plan based on your body type( check our blog on body type here) & track progress on a weekly basis.

Maintaining muscle while shredding fat means, reducing your calorie intake progressively every week. Calories which you want to reduce can vary from 200 to 500 calories. For example if Stephen wants to reduce 5 lbs in 5 weeks. His burn ratio is 1lb every week. If his calorie maintenance is 2500 calories, he shall reduce calorie intake by 300 calories so his new calorie intake would be 2200. If after a week he weighs 1.3 pounds less, he will continue with 2200 maintenance calories. A week after, he will probably lose 0.5 pounds so he will reduce calorie intake by 200 to 300 & continue this process. The cutting process is different for every body. Someone may  achieve his/her goal by reducing calorie intake by 200 while someone may require calorie deficit of 400 calories. You need to keep tracking your progress every week. Some important considerations include:

1. If you do not lose weight continue to decrease your calorie intake.
2. If you lose weight more than a pound weekly, maintain status quo for next week & re-check.
3. If you lose too much weight too soon, increase your calorie intake by 100 to 200.

The idea behind this is to not lose muscle in this cutting process.

Cardio is recommended but not required. While cutting process, you may do cardio once or twice a week since too much cardio can lead to muscle loss.

During cutting you know you have to lift weights but you will not have the same amount of energy that you used to have. So re-structure your workout strategy accordingly:

1. You may not have the same amount of energy to lift heavy, so better shift to lifting moderate to light weights
2. Ratio of compound exercises ( work multiple muscle groups at the same time, two muscles in one exercise) & Isolation exercises(targets a specific muscle group) be changed from 80% &20% to 60% & 40% respectively.
3. Reduce the length of workout: If you have been working out normally for more than 1 hour, reduce the duration of your workout to 45 minutes since your muscle glycogen stores is less(you are in calorie deficit) than you had during bulking. Longer duration workout during cutting may also drive you towards anabolic state, leading to muscle loss. Besides, less duration workout means, less rest between workout which will further burn more calories.