How to Cut for Bodybuilding: Top 15 Tips for Success

Knowing how to cut is essential for bodybuilding success.

As a bodybuilder, you spend your time lifting heavy weights, building muscle, and eating a lot of food, and then you step up on stage to show off your physique.

Right? That’s what a lot of people outside of bodybuilding believe.

However, that’s only half of the process: the bulking phase.

The other half is the cutting phase, which involves dieting, hard work, and often hunger and fatigue in the pursuit of a lean and muscular body.

A successful bodybuilding cut takes time, effort, and know-how.

Here’s the good news: you provide the effort, and with the tips in this article, you’ll make your cutting diet as smooth as possible.

#1: Don’t Bulk Up Too Much

Bulking is when you purposely consume more calories than you burn in order to gain weight and muscle mass.

Without a doubt, bulking works. Overfeeding calories does not just lead to fat gain but also muscle mass. A naturally lean bodybuilder might gain up to 70% lean tissue during a short bulk.¹

At the end of the day, though, a see-food diet (see food = eat food) isn’t viable for any great length of time.

A too-long bulking cycle with too many high-calorie foods in a short time will result in too much body fat gain for a comfortable cut. If you have to spend six months dieting to get lean, you’re wasting time you could have spent building muscle and risk losing some of your hard-earned gains.

Instead, go for a lean bulk: restrain your weight gain and calorie surplus during the bulking phase, and don’t let yourself put on too much fat. You’ll thank yourself when it’s time for your bodybuilding cut.

#2: Plan Your Calorie Intake

You can plan your cutting diet in many different ways, and one successful cut might look wildly different from an equally successful cut.

However, there is one thing you can’t get away from if you’re looking to get ripped.

To lose fat, you need to create a calorie deficit. Your total daily energy expenditure needs to exceed your total daily energy intake. That’s the most important thing for anyone looking to lose body fat.

The optimal size of your calorie deficit depends on two significant factors:

What’s your body fat percentage? The higher your body fat, the more aggressive your calorie deficit can be. If you’re not carrying too much fat, drastically lowering your daily calories might cut into your lean body mass, and that’s not the definition of a cutting diet.
When’s your diet goal? If you can set your own time points for your cut, you can take as long as you want. But if you’re cutting for a bodybuilding competition, you’ll have to adapt your diet plan to reach your peak conditioning in time for the show.

A weekly weight loss of 0.5 to 1 % of your body weight is a good rule of thumb.² That rate of weight loss ensures you’re losing fat, not muscle. Also, you don’t have to starve yourself to reach it.

A moderate calorie deficit of 500 kcals per day is an excellent middle ground for most bodybuilders.

You can start more aggressively without risking muscle loss if you have plenty of body fat.
As you get leaner, you probably want to go for a smaller deficit to maintain lean muscle mass or lose as little muscle as possible.

Use our nifty calculator to estimate your calorie needs:

>> Calorie Calculator: Resting Metabolic Rate and Daily Need

Plan your diet to reach your target body fat a week or two before contest day. That way, you can cruise your way to the finish line without having to crash-diet and lose muscle tissue the last few weeks.

Read more:

>> How Long to Cut for Bodybuilding

#3: Increase Your Protein Intake

During a bodybuilding cut, your diet centers around eating fewer calories, lowering your fat intake, and cutting down on carbs.

The exception to eating less is your protein intake. During energy restriction, like when you’re cutting, a high-protein diet becomes increasingly important to prevent muscle loss.³ ⁴

In addition, the leaner you are, the more protein you need. That means that you should increase your protein intake further the leaner you get.

When you’re looking to achieve muscle gain and strength during a bulking phase, a protein intake of 1.7 grams per kilogram of body weight (0.8 grams per pound of body weight) per day is plenty.⁵

When you’re cutting, things change.

Bodybuilders typically perform both strength training and cardio during a cutting diet or pre-contest phase. They do so while being very lean with little body fat and with the goal of maintaining as much as much muscle mass as possible.

These conditions increase your protein needs, meaning general recommendations for athletes go out the window.

Aim for a high protein diet of 2.3–3.1 grams per kilogram of lean body mass (LBM) per day.¹ How much body fat you carry determines if you should be closer to 2.3 or 3.1 g/kg of LBM.

Let’s say you weigh 100 kilograms when you start cutting, with 20 percent body fat. That puts your LBM at 80 kilograms.

Eating 184 grams (80 x 2.3) of protein per day would give you enough muscle-building amino acids to prevent muscle loss at this stage.

As your cut progresses and you get leaner and leaner, your protein needs go up.

Let us assume that you lose 5 kilograms of fat during the next few months, and you manage to do it without losing any LBM at all. Now you need more protein to protect your muscle mass, meaning you have to up your intake to, say, 2.7 g/kg of LBM or 216 grams per day.

Once you’re near contest shape, you’ll need those 3.1 g/kg of LBM to prevent muscle loss.

Use our protein calculator to take the hassle out of planning your protein intake:

>> Protein Calculator for Weight Loss and Muscle Gain

While solid foods should make up most of your total calories, adding a couple of shakes per day is a great way to get enough protein when your diet plan is restrictive.

>> Macros for Cutting: Count Your Way to Fat Loss

#4: Low-Carb or Low-Fat?

Once you’ve determined the number of calories and the amount of protein for your cutting diet, you need to plan your carbohydrate intake and how many grams of fat to include.

Ideally, you want enough healthy fats and a high enough carb intake for optimal health, hormone levels, and performance, but that can be tricky on a strict diet.

Something has to go to reach a calorie deficit. But what to reduce? Carbs, fats, or a little of both?

A low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet is effective for weight loss in general. As a bodybuilder, you might want to keep at least some carbs in your meal plan. Going too low in carbs might negatively impact your performance in the gym and increase the risk of muscle loss.¹

One study on competitive bodybuilders found that they probably could have prevented some of the adverse hormonal effects and the metabolic adaptation that happened during the contest prep by eating more carbs.⁶

Some recommendations suggest bodybuilders stay between 20 and 30 % of their calories from fat.⁷ That is probably ideal during the off-season when the focus is on muscle growth. However, during a bodybuilding cut, such a high fat intake might be unrealistic if you aim for close to 3 grams of protein per kilogram of lean body mass per day and enough carbs to perform your best. You’d have a hard time creating the calorie deficit you need to lose fat.

If needed, you might have to lower your fat intake to between 15-20% of calories.¹ Never try to eliminate fats, though. Going too low reduces your testosterone levels excessively.⁸

Bodybuilders have successfully used both low-fat and low-carb cutting diets over the decades. If you know you respond better to a low-carb or a low-fat approach, go with what works.

But suppose you don’t have the experience to evaluate the two alternatives properly.

In that case, you might want to go with a middle-ground plan: a moderate decrease in both your fat and carb intake that allows you to keep your protein intake high and still reach your target number of calories:

Cut down some on carbs, but not to the point where your performance suffers.
Cut down some on fat, but not to the point where your testosterone suffers.

#5: Plan Your Cheat Meals

Are cheat meals of no interest to you even on a cut phase after a long amount of time on a low-calorie diet?

More power to you!

But for many, an occasional cheat meal is a welcome break from the rice and chicken after weeks or months on a strict diet and helps keep your sanity. Also, the extra calories help you perform better in the gym.

Obviously, you can’t cheat on your diet too much or too often, or you’ll be cheating yourself on your results as well.

The key to making cheat meals work for you instead of against you is to keep them under control and plan them. A cheat meal should satisfy your taste buds and cravings, not be a 10,000-calorie junk food feast.

There is no evidence that your body can’t absorb virtually everything you feed it, so such a massive cheat meal or cheat day could eliminate several days’ worth of fat loss. If it happens once, no big deal, but regular, massive overfeedings will have negative effects.

Instead, indulge in whatever you’re craving, but keep it under control.

A good rule of thumb is to eat according to your diet plan 90 % of the time, allowing you to eat more freely during the remaining 10 %. By doing so, you can have your cake and eat it too.

One or two planned and controlled cheat meals per week won’t prevent you from reaching your fitness goals.

If you do happen to indulge in an over-the-top cheat meal, don’t despair. It won’t ruin your cut and it’s not the end of the world.

Forgive yourself and get back to your regular cutting diet right away. Suppose you tell yourself that you’ll get back on track tomorrow or next week. Then one cheat meal can quickly become two or three.

Acknowledge that it happened, don’t feel guilty, and continue your cutting as planned.

#6: Refeeds Can Benefit Your Cutting Diet

Refeeds are different from cheat meals or cheat days. A refeed is a brief period where you increase your caloric intake to slightly above maintenance, primarily by eating more carbs.⁹

The goal of incorporating refeeds into your cutting diet is to keep your metabolic rate from declining and boost your levels of the satiety hormone leptin.

Single-day refeeds probably offer little benefit in the way of fat loss, and multiple refeed days per week is a luxury few bodybuilders on a cut can afford. However, regular refeeds might provide a protective effect on your muscle mass.¹⁰

By adding carbs to your standard cutting diet plan, you also fill your muscles with glycogen, which allows you to perform better in the gym for a workout or two.

In addition, the psychological effects of breaking up your diet with a refeed now and then can’t be understated. Constant dieting is mentally challenging, and a refeed day allows not only your body a break, but your brain, too.

The leaner you get, the more often you can benefit from a refeed.

At the start of your diet, your resting metabolic rate and leptin and testosterone levels are still high from your offseason caloric surplus. At that point, you probably don’t need any refeeds at all.
You benefit from more frequent refeed days, maybe one per week, as you get leaner.
You might benefit from two refeeds every ten days once you’re shredded, or at least below 10 % body fat.

Ideally, you want to spend as little time in diet breaks like refeeds as possible so as not to extend your overall cut more than necessary but still get maximum benefits both physically and mentally.

#7: Choose the Right Supplements for Your Bodybuilding Cut

Nutrition is a vital part of bodybuilding. If your diet isn’t on point, your efforts in the gym will likely go to waste, especially when it comes to cutting.

Getting all the nutrients to support your training during a low-calorie cutting diet is a challenge. That’s where supplements can help.

While dietary supplements aren’t strictly necessary for bodybuilding success, and there are many overhyped or useless ones on the market, some help you reach your goals.

Creatine

Creatine isn’t a fat-burning supplement, but it helps you with the other crucial component of a cut: retaining or even increasing muscle mass.

Backed by hundreds of studies and without any documented significant side effects, creatine is a positive addition to your bodybuilding strategy plan, regardless of whether you’re bulking or cutting.¹¹

Protein Supplements

Protein supplements come in many forms: whey protein, casein protein, soy protein, etc. They all serve the same purpose in your supplement stack: boosting your daily intake with extra protein.

During a cut, your protein needs increase, and getting that much protein from foods alone without unwanted calories can be challenging.

A protein powder provides you with, more or less, pure protein and nothing else in a convenient package: a good reason to keep it in your bodybuilding supplement stack.

>> Casein: Fast Gains from Slow Protein?

>> Whey or Soy Protein for Building Muscle?

Caffeine

Caffeine improves your performance in the gym and makes you feel more energetic, making it a great pre-workout supplement during a cut when your energy levels are lower than usual.¹² ¹³

In addition, caffeine boosts your energy expenditure, increases fat oxidation, and promotes body fat loss.¹⁴ ¹⁵ ¹⁶

It doesn’t get better than that while staying legal!

Want to learn more about dietary supplements? Which ones are worth your money, and which are questionable or useless? Check our StrengthLog’s Supplement Guide, our free guide where I review 26 of the most popular supplements.

#8: Introduce Cardio Gradually

Don’t underestimate the value of cardio during a cut. Controlling your calories with your diet is way more impactful, but adding cardio to your bodybuilding cut supports your fat loss.

When starting a cutting program, a common mistake is to do too much cardio too soon. You want to do as little cardio as possible and gradually increase the amount over time.

Weight loss is not linear. Sooner or later, your progress will grind to a halt and you’ll have to adjust your calorie intake or increase your cardio.

Your metabolic rate goes down and what was once a calorie deficit no longer makes you lose as much weight.

If you go from your off-season bulking phase to your cutting diet by immediately adding an hour or more of cardio many times per week, you limit your options when your initial progress stalls.

If you’re already doing an hour of cardio per day, what are you going to do once your fat loss slows down? Add even more cardio?

Before long, hours of cardio will eat into your ability to recover from your lifting and maybe even into your lean muscle mass.

You don’t want that to happen.

Instead, a better idea is to start slowly by gradually introducing cardio into your cutting phase.

A good starting point is to control your caloric deficit mainly through your food intake and add two 20-minute cardio sessions per week. That way, you don’t have to cut down too much on your caloric intake from the get-go, and you can increase your cardio when your progress slows down without getting overwhelmed.

Once you find your fat loss slowing down after a couple of weeks, add another cardio session.

Now you’re doing three 20-minute sessions per week.

Add 10 minutes to each aerobic workout when you hit the next hurdle.

Now you’re doing three 30-minute cardio sessions per week, and you can keep alternating between adding a little here and a little there for your entire cut.

You keep your energy levels as high as possible by not going all-out with cardio from the start, and by slowly increasing the amount, you can maintain a higher calorie intake and still get leaner.

#9: Train To Gain, Not Just To Maintain

During a bodybuilding cut, when you’re not eating enough calories to maintain your weight and energy levels, your training must be tailored to retain as much lean muscle mass as possible.

Many bodybuilders and fitness enthusiasts change their training the first thing they do when they switch from bulking to cutting. They start doing high reps and isolation exercises with light weights.

That’s a mistake.

Your gym sessions are not for burning fat. Abs are made in the kitchen.

When you’re in the gym, you should train to build muscle, whether your main goal is gaining mass or getting shredded.

Your muscle protein synthesis decreases on a cut. At the same time, your muscle breakdown goes up.

Numerous studies show that strength training helps maintain muscle mass during caloric restriction.¹⁷ Resistance training is the best option to boost muscle protein synthesis.

Focus on compound exercises. They allow you to work multiple muscle groups, saving time and increasing your workouts’ efficiency. In addition, compound lifts stimulate the release of testosterone and growth hormone, which are important for muscle growth and repair.
Use heavy weights to keep your strength up. Strength isn’t the end-all-be-all for a bodybuilder, but a stronger muscle is, in general, a bigger muscle. You’re on the right track if you’re not losing strength during your bodybuilding cut.
Increased calorie burn. Compound movements help you burn more calories during and after your workout, as they require more energy and engage more muscle groups. That’s not the primary goal of a strength-training session, but it all adds up.

For the best results: train to gain, and you’ll ensure you lose only fat, not muscle, during your bodybuilding cut.

#10: Fasted or Fed Cardio?

Fasted cardio, meaning performing aerobic exercise on an empty stomach, is very popular among bodybuilders, physique competitors, and fitness athletes.

how to cut for bodybuilding fasted cardio

There is little doubt that performing fasted cardio increases fat oxidation during the training session. Due to hormonal factors, you mobilize more fatty acids and use more fat as fuel, simply put.

However, scientific evidence does not support fasted cardio as a superior way to lose body fat.¹⁸ ¹⁹

The body is very competent when it comes to compensating for your efforts to increase the amount of body fat you burn.

If you burn more fat during a specific time, like when you do cardio on an empty stomach, it burns less fat the rest of the day, leading to a zero-sum game.

It important to keep in mind that there are no studies on bodybuilders performing fasted cardio on a cutting diet.

Compared to other athletes and the general population, bodybuilders carry more muscle and less fat, combine strength training and cardio during a cutting phase, and eat more protein.

Therefore, even though fasted cardio does not seem to make any difference compared to fed cardio for the average person, that conclusion might not carry over to a bodybuilder on a contest diet.²⁰

In addition, minimal changes in body composition that might be irrelevant or even undetectable for most people might make the difference between winning and losing on a bodybuilding stage.

At the beginning of your cut, when you carry significant amounts of body fat, fasted cardio likely will offer no benefits compared to fed cardio.

But if you are struggling to get rid of that last stubborn fat during your cut, adding fasted cardio or switching from fed to fasted sessions might be worth trying. There are no downsides, and anecdotal evidence suggests doing so can help you get shredded.

#11: Don’t Drink Your Calories

Liquid calories don’t fill you up the same way whole foods do. They are stealth calories.

Your body and brain don’t register that you’ve just poured hundreds of calories down your throat in the form of sugary drinks, making it easy to consume even more without thinking about it.

If you regularly drink soda, juice, soft drinks, milk, and other relatively calorie-dense beverages, simply cutting them out might be even enough to kick-start your cut and fat loss.

Assessing your liquid calories is a good idea.

They are easy to overlook, and substituting them for solid, nutritious whole foods will stave off much of the hunger you might experience during a fat-loss diet.

When you’re on a cutting diet, getting as many calories as possible from filling solid foods makes the whole endeavor much more manageable.

The one exception is protein shakes.

Protein is filling, and a protein shake or two might help you reach your protein goals without added calories from fats and carbohydrates, which can be helpful on a strict cutting diet.

Protein shakes aren’t essential, but they aren’t the kind of liquid calories you need to eliminate either.

#12: Don’t Sleep on Your Sleep

If you don’t sleep enough for a long time, you’re in for a heap of trouble.

Not only does the human body function below its peak physical capacity while sleep deprived, but you also set yourself up for failure in your bodybuilding diet.

Lack of sleep makes it easier to stray from your caloric target and overeat, according to a recent study.²¹

Even during a caloric deficit, not sleeping enough reduces fat loss and increases muscle breakdown. Several studies show that sleep restriction reduces the amount of fat you lose.²² ²³

In addition, lack of sleep rapidly lowers both your testosterone and your muscle protein synthesis significantly.²⁴

These things undermine your diet and make it more challenging to get shredded. All good reasons to ensure you get enough sleep on a daily basis. Or nightly basis.

When planning your sleep, you should take your individual needs into consideration. The general recommendation of 7–9 hours is the sweet spot for most people, but during a bodybuilding cut with a strict diet and high-intensity training, a one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t always cut it.

#13: Match Your Training to Your Recovery

Tip number 13 isn’t an unlucky one at all. Adequate recovery is essential during a bodybuilding cut.

As you cut your calories and lose more and more weight, your ability to recover from high-volume training likely goes down as well. Some training days, you’ll find you don’t have enough energy to match your off-season volume and intensity.

While you certainly need to prepare for fatigue during an extended bodybuilding cutting diet, especially towards the finish, depleting your body and your resources more than necessary impairs your progress more than it helps.

As you lower your caloric intake during a cut, it makes sense to lower your weight training volume, too. Make sure you’re not doing too much to the point where you can’t recover.

You’re not in the gym to burn calories, but to build muscle or at the least maintain it. You control your calorie intake and expenditure with your diet and your cardio, respectively.

While dropping training volume massively is not necessary, adjusting it to match your decreased ability to recover is a good idea. Focus on training intensity and keeping your strength up.

In addition, training to failure increases the time needed for recovery.²⁵ Keep that in mind and limit the number of sets you take to muscular failure.

Quality over quantity is an important thing to keep in mind during a strict cut with the goal of keeping your lean muscle while losing fat.

#14: Meal Prep

Instead of cooking every time it’s time for a meal (and that’s often for many bodybuilders who prefer a high meal frequency), consider preparing most, if not all, your meals for the week in advance.

Meal prep during a bodybuilding cut offers several benefits.

Portion control. When you prepare your meals in advance, you can control the portion sizes and ensure you’re not overeating. This is especially important during a bodybuilding cut, where every calorie counts and can make a difference in your conditioning.
Consistency. Meal prep helps you maintain consistency in your diet by ensuring you have healthy meals ready when you need them. You avoid making unhealthy food choices when you’re short on time or hungry.
Time-saving. Preparing meals in advance saves time during the week, as you won’t have to spend time cooking and preparing meals every day. Just add fresh fruit and other perishables, and you’ll streamline the entire process of bodybuilding meal planning.
Nutrient-dense meals. Meal prep allows you to plan and prepare nutrient-dense meals that support your bodybuilding goals. Getting your macros right is much more challenging if you’re throwing a meal together on the fly.

If you have your meals ready when it’s time to feed your muscles, half the battle is already won.

#15: Track Your Strength Levels

Maintaining as much of your hard-earned muscle mass as possible is one of your primary goals during a bodybuilding cut.

It can be hard to keep track of your body composition if you don’t have access to the proper tools or lack the know-how to use them.

Common ways to measure body composition include bioelectrical impedance analysis (BIA) and skinfold calipers. BIA devices for home use are notoriously unreliable, and skinfold measurements require practice and basic knowledge of human anatomy. More reliable ways to keep track of your body fat and muscle mass, like DXA scans and hydrostatic weighing, are not available for the average person.

Tracking your strength during a cut is a reliable and easy way to ensure you’re not losing muscle mass. As long as your strength levels aren’t going down, you can be confident that your muscle mass is intact as well.

A workout log is the best way to track your strength levels and helps you lift as much or more than last time. Again: train to gain, and it’ll be much easier to maintain.

Our workout tracker app is free to download, and your best friend for tracking your progress. It’s like a personal trainer in your pocket, keeping you motivated and holding you accountable during your workout routine.

Use the button for your device to download it for free:

Download StrengthLog Workout Log on App Store

Download StrengthLog Workout Log on Google Play Store

Further reading:

How to Cut: Lose Fat and Keep Your Muscle Mass