Cutting is a familiar concept to many gym-goers. This is a diet applied to reduce fat while still maintaining muscle mass. Most fitness enthusiasts and professional bodybuilders apply the cutting method to get a slim, toned body. More specifically, what is cutting? This article of ours helps you understand the cutting method in detail.
What is Cutting?
Cutting means cutting and cutting is the act of cutting something. However, cutting gym has a completely different meaning, this is a cutting diet combined with exercise. When implementing this regimen, it means that you will reduce the amount of calories you take in to reduce fat but still maintain muscle mass, helping the muscle grooves become clearer. In addition, the cutting diet is also known as the small cutting diet to help reduce body fat and maintain muscle.
When to do cutting
After knowing what cutting is, many people still wonder when is the right time to do cutting. In fact, cutting can be done at any time you want to slim down before gaining a large amount of muscle mass. Especially for those who are overweight or obese, cutting is a reasonable choice, which should be done immediately to improve your figure and enhance your health. Even if you have a normal figure but want to have sharp muscles, you can still do cutting.
In addition, when to cut also depends on Body fat, which is the amount of fat in the body. Specifically, you need to do cutting when the body fat ratio is greater than 15% for men and the body fat ratio is greater than 25% for women.
Benefits of cutting
What are the benefits you get when cutting? If cutting is done correctly, this method brings you many benefits, including mental, physical, and health.
Cutting helps improve mood
Being overweight is something that no one wants. At this time, cutting will help reduce excess fat, lose weight, improve body shape, and firm muscle bundles. When you achieve the desired cutting results, your body shape becomes balanced, which is when you feel more satisfied, happy, and joyful.
An effective method to increase muscle and reduce fat
The principle when implementing the cutting method is to reduce the amount of calories in the diet and maintain the necessary amount of protein combined with scientific exercise. When the amount of calories consumed is greater than the amount of calories taken in, the amount of excess fat in the body will tend to decrease. Meanwhile, the amount of protein added will help increase muscle and maintain muscle better.
How to implement a cutting diet
The effective way to cut is that you need to build a suitable diet. To do this, you need to determine your nutritional needs through the following methods:
Calculate calories
Weight loss is only truly effective when you take in fewer calories than you burn for daily activities. The amount of calories you should eat each day also depends on your weight, height, gender, physical condition, etc. For example, if you are a woman, to maintain your body’s activities, you need to add 2000 calories per day. However, to lose 0.45kg of fat per week, you need to cut it down to 1500 calories. For men, the average amount of calories you need to take in each day is 2500 calories, if you want to lose weight, you should cut it down to 2000 calories per day.
Determine your protein intake
What is a cutting diet? That is, you need to maintain adequate protein intake in each meal. The results of many studies have shown that supplementing the body with high amounts of protein will help increase metabolism, reduce cravings, maintain lean muscle mass, and support fat loss. Therefore, when following a cutting diet, you need to pay attention to eating more protein rather than just focusing on losing weight, maintaining weight, or gaining muscle. The reason is that when you eat fewer calories combined with regular exercise, it increases the body’s protein needs. Many studies have also shown that 1.6 – 2g of protein per kg of body weight will help maintain muscle mass. For example, a person weighing about 70kg should eat 110 – 140g of protein per day.
Determine the amount of fat needed for the body
Fat is very important for a cutting diet, specifically good fat (unsaturated fat), found in foods such as olive oil, grape seed oil, avocado, salmon, mackerel, walnuts, flax seeds, nuts, etc. This ingredient directly affects the production of hormones in the body. Although when wanting to lose weight, people often tend to cut fat in their diet, if the body is not provided with enough fat, it will hinder the production of hormones such as testosterone and IGF1, which are hormones necessary for the development and increase of muscle strength. According to many scientific studies, reducing fat from 20-40% of total calories will reduce a large amount of testosterone hormone.
According to many nutritionists, 15-30% of calories in a cutting diet should come from fat. Each gram of fat is equivalent to 9 calories, so if you eat about 2000 calories per day, you should consume about 33 – 67g of fat.
Determine the amount of carbs suitable for your body
Carb intake also plays an important role in maintaining muscle mass during cutting. Normally, your body prefers to use carbs for energy, so adding a sufficient amount of carbs will help limit muscle breakdown.
In addition, carbs also help improve exercise performance. If each gram of fat provides 9 calories, each gram of carbs or protein will provide the body with 4 calories. In a cutting diet, the amount of calories from carbs is the amount of calories remaining in the daily diet after subtracting the calories from fat and protein. For example, a 70kg person applying a cutting diet needs to supplement 2000 calories, then needs to eat 110g of protein and 60g of fat, the remaining 255g (equivalent to 1020 calories) comes from carbs.
Maintain exercise during the cutting process
The most effective way to cut is to combine a low-calorie diet and maintain regular exercise. You can combine cardio exercises to ensure the effective burning of calories and excess fat. Of course, the diet and exercise plan need to be compatible with each other.
Some notes when cutting
Cut down on sugar
One of the effective ways to cut is to choose foods with a low GI index, this index is related to the amount of sugar in food. If you are sedentary and eat foods with a high GI index, they will be stored in the body as excess fat. Therefore, once you know what a cutting diet is, you need to eliminate sugary foods such as white rice, pasta, and white bread from your diet. Instead, you should eat foods with low GI such as brown rice, whole grains, berries, apples, etc.
Limit fat
Although fat is also needed in a cutting diet, you should also limit it, especially bad fats. Compared to energy from carbs, energy from fat is less effective and this is also the cause of fat formation in the body.
Make sure to supplement enough protein
According to ISSN (International Society of Sports Nutrition), a person should consume protein evenly about 3-4 hours a day and within 2 hours after exercise. Providing adequate and proper protein will help burn fat effectively while helping to maintain muscle.
Cardio
A low-calorie diet will help reduce fat effectively. In addition, you should combine cardio exercises such as jogging and cycling on the treadmill, HIIT exercises, etc. to speed up the rate of burning calories. If you maintain a cutting diet and exercise regularly, you will lose fat quickly. Moreover, when you add high-intensity cardio exercises, you can also enjoy more carb-rich meals.
Only drink water, coffee, or green tea
When following a cutting regimen, the right drinks for you are filtered water, green tea or black coffee. These are calorie-free drinks, especially filtered water, which will provide the body with the necessary amount of water. Other drinks that contain gas or sugar will reduce the effectiveness of fat loss as well as muscle maintenance.
