How to Start a Cut: A Beginner's Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Find your maintenance calories

Every number on a cut is set from your maintenance. There are two ways to find it:

• Estimate it. The free calorie and macro calculator uses your age, sex, height, weight and activity level.
• Measure it. Eat a steady, tracked amount for two to three weeks, weigh yourself every morning and see what your average weight does. Flat means you have found it.

The estimate gets you close; your own data gets you the real number. How to calculate your maintenance calories walks through both.

Step 2: Choose your rate of loss

In their 2014 evidence-based recommendations for natural bodybuilders, Helms and colleagues advise losing about 0.5 to 1% of your body weight a week to hold on to as much muscle as possible. The NHS suggests 0.5 to 1 kg (1 to 2 lb) a week for weight loss in general.

Your weight	0.5% a week	1% a week
60 kg (132 lb)	0.3 kg (0.7 lb)	0.6 kg (1.3 lb)
70 kg (154 lb)	0.35 kg (0.8 lb)	0.7 kg (1.5 lb)
80 kg (176 lb)	0.4 kg (0.9 lb)	0.8 kg (1.8 lb)
90 kg (198 lb)	0.45 kg (1 lb)	0.9 kg (2 lb)
100 kg (220 lb)	0.5 kg (1.1 lb)	1 kg (2.2 lb)

Why not faster? In a 2011 study by Garthe and colleagues, elite athletes were set to lose either 0.7% or 1.4% of body weight a week (the faster group actually averaged about 1%). The slower group gained lean mass (about 2.1%); the faster group did not. The slower group also dieted and trained for longer to reach their target, which may explain part of the difference, but the message fits the wider research.

Leaner people should sit at the slower end. Helms and colleagues note that the leaner you get, the greater the risk of losing muscle. If you have more fat to lose, you can usually start nearer 1%.

Step 3: Set your calories

Helms and colleagues note that, in theory, a deficit of about 500 calories a day loses about 0.45 kg (1 lb) of fat a week. Real life is messier, because your body adapts as you diet, but it is a fair place to start.

Example: an 80 kg (176 lb) lifter whose maintenance is about 2,750 calories picks 0.5% a week, which is 0.4 kg (0.9 lb). That needs a deficit of roughly 450 calories a day, so they start at about 2,300 calories.

Resist the urge to go lower "to get it over with". NICE (2025) says very-low-calorie diets, under 800 calories a day, are only for people with a clinically assessed need to lose weight quickly, for no more than 12 weeks and with ongoing clinical support. Even well above that, big deficits bring more hunger, poorer training and more muscle loss.

Step 4: Set protein, then fat and carbs

Set protein first, because it protects muscle and helps with hunger.

• Protein: a 2018 meta-analysis by Morton and colleagues found the benefit levels off at around 1.6 g per kg of body weight a day, with 2.2 g/kg covering most people. On a cut, aim toward the top. Helms and colleagues suggest 2.3 to 3.1 g per kg of lean body mass for lean lifters dieting hard.
• Fat: Helms and colleagues suggest 15 to 30% of your calories.
• Carbohydrate: whatever calories are left. Carbohydrate fuels hard training, so it is worth keeping as high as your calories allow.

For the example lifter on 2,300 calories, that could be about 175 g of protein, 65 g of fat and 255 g of carbohydrate. Macros for cutting shows the full working, or the protein calculator does the first part for you.

Step 5: Keep training heavy, and set a step target

Your training is the signal that tells your body to keep its muscle. A cut is not the time to switch to light weights and high reps "for definition": definition comes from losing the fat on top.

A 2016 study by Longland and colleagues (American Journal of Clinical Nutrition) shows what hard training and high protein can do. Forty young men ate 40% below their energy needs for four weeks while doing resistance training and high-intensity intervals six days a week. Those on 2.4 g of protein per kg gained about 1.2 kg (2.6 lb) of lean mass and lost 4.8 kg (10.6 lb) of fat. Those on 1.2 g/kg held their lean mass and lost 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) of fat. That was a short, tightly controlled and very hard study, not a deficit to copy, but it shows muscle can be kept on a diet.

In practice:

• Keep the weights on the bar and aim to hold your strength on the main lifts.
• Keep effort high on your working sets.
• Cut sets before you cut weight if recovery suffers later in the cut.
• Set a daily step target you can hit every day, so your everyday movement does not quietly drop as you diet.

Step 6: Weigh daily, judge the weekly average

Weigh yourself every morning, after the toilet and before eating or drinking, and work out your weekly average.

Expect a quick drop in the first week. Muscle stores at least 3 g of water with every gram of glycogen, its stored carbohydrate (Fernández-Elías and colleagues, 2015), so eating fewer carbohydrates releases some water. That early drop is real weight but not all fat, so judge your rate from the second week on. How to read the scale explains the daily swings.

Body weight is not the only measure. Take progress photos and a waist measurement every few weeks, in the same conditions each time.

Step 7: Adjust every few weeks

As you lose weight, your maintenance falls, so, as Helms and colleagues point out, your calories need adjusting as you go. A plan that works in the first few weeks will usually need a tweak later on.

There is no tested rule for exactly when, so this is common coaching practice:

• On target? Change nothing.
• Weekly average flat for two to three weeks, with honest tracking and steady steps? Make one small change: trim calories a little, usually from carbohydrate or fat, or add some daily steps. Keep protein where it is.
• Losing faster than about 1% a week, feeling drained or training badly? Eat a little more.

Give each change two weeks before judging it.

Your first cut at a glance

Step	What to do
Maintenance	Estimate it, then confirm it with 2 to 3 weeks of data
Rate	0.5 to 1% of body weight a week; slower if you are lean
Calories	About 500 a day below maintenance for each 0.45 kg (1 lb) a week
Protein	1.6 to 2.2 g per kg of body weight, toward the top
Fat	15 to 30% of calories
Carbohydrate	The rest
Training	Keep it heavy; cut sets before weight
Tracking	Daily weigh-ins, judged as weekly averages

How coaching helps

The steps are simple. Sticking to them when the scale stalls and hunger rises is the hard part. With one-to-one coaching from CoachAk, your training program and your calorie, macro and step targets are set for you in a private app. You log your weight daily and see a smoothed trend, and each week you send a short check-in covering your weight, training and nutrition adherence, steps, sleep, energy, hunger and stress. Your coach replies with written feedback on what went well, what changes next week and why, and adjusts your plan as your body responds.

If you want your first cut done properly, apply for coaching.