When you're cutting...

[Chris]

How many calories do you take in?

Chris

[hlcn8]

i start by only going 500 calories below my BMR, and every two weeks increase the deficit by 250 so my body doesn't start immediatly canabilizing muscle tissue. keep it mind i don't start that hypocaloric cycle by cutting all food either, i do it by upping cardio. when i'm taking off the 250 calories at a time, that's when i begin restricting food only.

[candle25]

hlcn8's plan sounds about right. The idea behind cutting is to trim away unwanted fat while retaining as much lean mass as possible. It is obvious that in order to burn fat one must exhaust more calories than one takes in but there is a specific way to do this. The body is always striving to maintain homeostasis. This means that it wants to keep a balance between all internal functions. Metabolism is a function of this. If your caloric intake changes extremely, so will your metabolism in order to maintain homeostasis. The trick is to change your intake slowly so that your body doesn’t notice.

The first step to any diet is to determine what your starting conditions are. Have your body fat percentage checked, keep up with weight, and keep up with your diet. I’ll use my last cut as an example:

My daily calorie intake was at 4000cals/day. My BF% was at 16% and my weight was at 190lbs. So to slowly lower my intake I reduced my caloric intake by 500 cals/week. This is what it looked like:

Week 1 3500cals/day
Week 2 3000cals/day
Week 3 2500cals/day
Week 4 2000cals/day

By the Fitday calculations I was burning 3700 cals/day, so you can see how that would equal fat loss. At the end of my cut my BF% was 10% and my body weight was 185. That means that I lost 11.9lbs of fat and gained 6.5lbs of lean mass! It is rather hard to gain lean mass while cutting as the main objective is to get rid of fat, but it can be done with the right supplementation.

The duration of any diet can only be decided by the individual that is doing it. I am naturally ectomorphic (trim) so it is easy for me to lose fat. That is why I planned a 4-week cut. You know your body better than any one so it is up to you to plan to your advantage.

[Chris]

Cool, thanks guys. I will keep that in mind.

Chris

[goliath]

go here and use the lower end of the range. works like a charm...

http://www.hussman.org/fitness/bmrcalc.htm

[Chris]

Wow, thanks goliath!

Chris

[Danny_v]

Well I never count calories I tend to work out my micronutrients. It all depends on your goal what you want to achieve. Diet is a 65% of the inital goal.