5 Biggest Mistakes I Made When I Started 'Cutting'

After eating and drinking myself silly over the Christmas period I decided to go on a bit of a cut in the lead up to Easter in order to lose a bit of fat. When I say a 'bit of a cut' I mean I dropped my calories into a deficit of 200 under maintenance. This was the first time that I'd ever purposefully put myself into a calorie deficient for a prolonged period of time and upon reflection it taught me a few things, which I will outline for you below.

1. Meal Timings - Naively when I started out on the cut I thought I'd be able to eat like I had previously when bulking i.e. have a massive breakfast containing around 1200 calories, a decent lunch of around 700 calories, and then a 900 calorie evening meal. However, what I quickly found out when cutting was that eating this way and having the traditional three meals a day caused periods of extreme hunger and massive energy lags. After a number of weeks I realised that instead of having three meals a day at an average of 933 calories each meal, I could have 5 meals a day at an average of 560 calories per meal. Eating this way curbed my hunger for the best part of the day and allowed me to be more productive rather than thinking about food all the time.

2. Too Much Too Soon - When reducing your calories by any significant amount you are highly likely to see an initial rapid change in weight or shape. However, don't expect that rate of change to continue, the changes will be slower and more gradual than the initial progression. Don't get disheartened by this, as long as you are working hard in the gym, being consistent with your diet, the results will come.

3. Lack of Precision - Obviously when trying to cut I was restricting my calories and was using MyFitnessPal to record my foods. However, I was very loose when it came to measuring portion sizes. I wouldn't weigh my ingredients, I'd just guesstimate and it wasn't until I started weighing all my food I realised how much I was underestimating my consumption. In addition to this I was literally just scanning/recording the primary ingredients to each meal and therefore things like sauces, milk in a cup of tea, mushrooms would go unrecorded. This obviously lead to my progress being restricted somewhat.

4. More Cardio = More Food Right? - One day whilst I was recording my food for the day I realised that because I'd been on a 5 mile run MyFitnessPal had given me 687 additional calories on top of my days allowance. My natural reaction was consume those additional calories in a 'bonus meal', which I continued to do for a number of weeks until I saw Nick Cheadle say that your daily calorie requirement is a calculation of your activity level in a snapchat Q&A session. This led me to get researching and much to my disappointment Nick was right. Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) takes into account your regular activity levels and sets your calorie goal with that already factored in. Obviously though if you are a sedentary person and you have calculated your calorie goals based on being sedentary and decide to run 10k randomly one day you can have that 'bonus meal' that I was talking about.


5. Ab Smash - For the majority of people a cutting phase is all about getting those much converted abs back and I was no different. However, I was so desperate to get my abs popping that I thought training them everyday was a good idea. As it turned out all it did was give me a sore back and tighten up my hips. You have to realise your abs are like any other muscle in your body they need time to recover and grow, and the only way you're going to get them poppin' is through consistently being in a calorie deficit and getting your body fat percentages down.

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