Biggest mistakes athletes make during the cutting phase

Many athletes rely on cutting to shed fat while keeping lean muscle. However, they often make mistakes such as being too aggressive or skipping refeed days.

Why do athletes swear by adding a cutting phase to their routines? Beyond revealing your abs, cutting improves your health markers. Cutting is also a great counterpart to bulking, resetting your body to a healthy fat percentage.

What Are Some Common Cutting Mistakes?

As useful as cutting can be, it requires an effective strategy. Here are five simple mistakes that could jeopardize your gains or cause other problems.

1. Cutting Too Aggressively

If you set your sights too high, you’ll get in the way of your body’s ability to mobilize fat for energy. With a 1,000-calorie daily deficit, for example, you’ll lose weight rapidly, but about 30-40% of it will end up being muscle loss.

For best results, stick to a 500-calorie deficit for most of the cutting phase. You should only go up to 750 for mini-cuts (four to six weeks at most).

2. Skipping Refeed Days

A lot of people think of refeed days as cheat days, which is far from the truth. A refeed day allows you to temporarily restore your leptin, the satiety hormone. That way, you won’t have to deal with increased hunger and reduced metabolism.

If your cut lasts more than eight weeks, add a refeed day every one or two weeks. Increase your carbs by 150-200g, but keep protein the same.

3. Tracking Calories Manually

Manual calorie tracking has a high error rate. Many people overestimate portion sizes of lean foods and underestimate calorie-dense foods. They’ll often cut for weeks with no results, then decide to drop calories even further.

These days, the best way to track calories is to use AI-powered nutrition apps. By snapping a picture of your meal, you’ll get all the calorie info you need.

4. Relying on Scale Weight

You should never judge your cut solely by daily weigh-ins. Your scale weight can fluctuate 5-6 pounds each day due to sodium, water retention, and other factors. Instead, use a 7-day rolling average weight while also tracking:

• Training performance
• Circumference measurements
• Weekly progress photos

5. Not Having an End Date

Cutting indefinitely can lead to your metabolism adapting around the calorie deficit. This can cause diet fatigue and hormonal suppression. Many athletes push through these adaptations by cutting more, which accelerates the cycle.

The solution: make sure your cutting phase has a hard end date. Most people should cut for 12 weeks, then follow it up with a diet break.

What Is a Sustainable Cutting Strategy?

You may notice that all the mistakes listed above are caused by a single key factor: imprecision. To maximize your fat loss, you should:

• Use precise tracking tools
• Have clear deficit sizing targets
• Keep a meticulous training routine

If you’re struggling to hit your goals, supplements can help. Focus on a supplement that accelerates metabolism and can double as bodybuilding nutrition.

Maximize Your Cutting Phase With These Tips

Athletes often use a cutting phase as part of their contest prep. However, they often try to do too much, leading to one or more of the above mistakes. The good news: with a bit of effort, every mistake on this list is preventable!

Keep checking out our fitness guides for more cutting tips from our experts!