How to Cut (Without Losing Your Mind)
Fat loss that actually sticks. No meal replacement shakes, no "one weird trick."
Heads up: If you've struggled with disordered eating or have a complicated relationship with food, chat with a professional before diving into calorie counting. Seriously. Your mental health matters more than any physique goal.
The Basics (30 Second Version)
Eat 300-500 calories below your TDEE. Get 1.6-2.2g of protein per kg of bodyweight. Keep lifting. That's genuinely it.
Everything elseāmeal timing, carb cycling, fasted cardioāis just noise. Get the basics right first. You can optimise later when you're already seeing results.
Setting Your Deficit
A 300-500 calorie deficit is the sweet spot for most people. Aggressive enough to see progress, sustainable enough that you won't crack after two weeks and demolish an entire pizza.
Why not go harder? Because you'll lose muscle, feel like death, and your metabolism will fight back. Research shows that people who crash diet almost always regain the weight. The tortoise wins this race.
Real talk: If you've got a holiday in 4 weeks and you're thinking of a 1000 calorie deficitādon't. You'll look flat, feel irritable, and probably binge afterwards. Start your cut earlier next time.
Protein: Your Best Friend
Aim for 1.6-2.2g per kg of bodyweight. This keeps you full, preserves muscle, and actually burns more calories to digest than carbs or fat.
If you're 80kg, that's roughly 130-175g of protein daily. Sounds like a lot until you realise a chicken breast is about 30g and a protein shake is another 25g. Spread it across your meals and it's very doable.
Practical tip: Front-load your protein. If you start the day with eggs or Greek yoghurt, you're already ahead. Trying to cram 100g of protein into dinner is miserable.
Stuff That Actually Helps
Don't drink your calories
A Starbucks Frappuccino is 400 calories. A large OJ is 200. Swap to black coffee, diet drinks, or just water. This alone can create most of your deficit.
Weigh yourself daily, stress weekly
Your weight will bounce around day-to-day (water, sodium, whether you've been to the bathroom). Look at the weekly average. If that's trending down, you're winning.
Volume eating is your friend
A massive salad with chicken is like 400 calories. A small bag of crisps is 250. One fills you up, one leaves you wanting more. Vegetables are basically free caloriesāeat loads of them.
Walk more
Forget hour-long cardio sessions. Just hit 8-10k steps daily. It burns a surprising amount of calories without spiking your appetite or crushing your recovery. Park further away, take calls walking, use stairs.
Sleep. Seriously.
Bad sleep tanks your willpower, spikes hunger hormones, and makes everything harder. 7-9 hours isn't a luxury when you're cuttingāit's damage control.
Keep lifting heavy
Don't switch to "toning" with light weights. That's how you lose muscle. Keep the intensity upāyour body needs a reason to hold onto that muscle while you're in a deficit.
Cut the Ultra-Processed Stuff
Yes, this is trendy. Yes, it sounds preachy. But hear me out.
There's a difference between eating less of the same foods and actually changing what you eat. If you just shrink your portions but keep all the crisps, chocolate, and ice cream in your diet, you'll spend your entire cut white-knuckling it through cravings. You'll save up calories all day just so you can have a small fix at night. It's miserable.
But if you cut out ultra-processed foods properlyānot forever, just while you're cuttingāsomething interesting happens after about 10 days. The cravings just... stop. Fruit starts tasting incredibly sweet. You stop thinking about food all the time. The diet stops feeling like a diet.
Is it boring? A bit, yeah. But it's also way easier than fighting your brain every single day. And the health benefits beyond fat loss are well documented.
The real trick: Get your household on board. Frame it as a lifestyle change, not a diet. If there's no junk in the house, there's no 11pm moment of weakness where you demolish a packet of biscuits. You can't eat what isn't there. Your family doesn't need that stuff either.
Where People Go Wrong
Weekend blowouts: A disciplined Monday-Friday means nothing if you're smashing 3000 extra calories every weekend. You can easily undo your entire weekly deficit in one Saturday night.
Eyeballing portions: Most people underestimate what they eat by 30-50%. A kitchen scale (affiliate link) is Ā£15 and removes all the guesswork. Use it for a few weeks until you can eyeball accurately.
Cutting for too long: 8-12 weeks is a solid cut. Beyond that, your body starts fighting back hardāmetabolic adaptation, increased hunger, worse recovery. Take a diet break at maintenance for 2-4 weeks, then go again if needed.
Expecting linear progress: You'll lose a bunch in week 1 (mostly water), then it slows down. You might even stall for a week or two. This is normal. Trust the process and look at the 4-week trend, not daily fluctuations.
Useful Tools
Sources
Affiliate links: We may earn a small commission if you buy through our links. Doesn't cost you extra and helps keep the site running.