I’m just about to begin a 6-week cut before I head on holidays at the end of summer. It’s not something I do too often, I don’t go on heavy bulks or go through cycles of bulking and cutting throughout the year but its definitely good to do to reset your body especially when feeling a small bit of a plateau. Currently I’m sitting at about 108kg and will be hoping to cut down by about 8 kilos to 100 so just over 1kg a week.
I created a very simple calorie calculator which I use to see what my maintenance calories are based on height, bodyweight, age and activity level.
Using this, my maintenance calories sit at about 3700 cals. I’ll cut this down by 300 to 3400 for the first few weeks and see how well my weight is dropping and reevaluate if I need to.
I intermittent fast throughout the year which I find helps me massively to put on muscle and keep my body fat low. Usually I do 11am/12pm-10pm which works perfectly fine for me. I’ll change this slightly during the 6 weeks and try to reduce the 10pm finish to 8pm. Because I workout early every morning, I think I’ll notice that two hour difference in my energy levels in the morning but its all part and parcel of reducing caloric intake anyway.
Because I’m used to the morning fast I’ll find that okay but the reduced eating in the evening will be a change. However, eating two hours out from my bedtime will improve my sleep as my food will be fully digested by the time I’m sleeping and my heart rate will be lower.
I’ll continue to give updates on the cut as time goes on but I’m looking forward to seeing how my progress changes.