Typical approach to dieting is to take it slow to lose fat at a sustainable pace.
Mini-cuts are quite the opposite of this, and there's two things in particular that make it different. The first thing is speed, which refers to the short period of time you'll be dieting for, typically no more than about four to six weeks. The second thing is aggression.
You might be a little bit more grumpy than usual through it, but aggression in this case relates to how big of a calorie deficit you'll be on and how much weight you'll aim to lose every week. Typically, you'd want to aim for a rate of fat loss of about 0.5 to a maximum of 1% of your body weight per week. With mini-cuts, you aim to lose around 1 to even 1.25% of your body weight per week.
So for most people, this is somewhere between 1.5 to 3 pounds per week. The idea with this fast yet aggressive diet is that you're able to quickly lose fat without the muscle loss and fatigue that would occur if you had extended it any longer. They're most effectively used during a bulk to quickly reduce your body fat percentage before returning back to a bulk or as a way to quickly lean down before an event like a wedding or vacation.
But how effectively does it work? Well, a recent study run by one of our researchers here at Built With Science, Alex, provides some insight. They took a group of resistance-trained males and females and attempted to see the maximum amount of fat they could lose in just two weeks. To do so, the test group reduced their calorie intake by almost 40% while continuing to train and eating a high-protein diet.
After the two weeks, they lost a total of almost 4 pounds. Some of this weight loss was water weight but the rest of it was pure fat with virtually no muscle loss. So at this point, you're probably thinking this sounds great and you're eager to give this a shot.
But the problem with mini-cuts is that they're very hard to stick to. And even if you do manage to stick through it, because of the changes your body experiences during the mini-cut, it makes it very easy to regain all the fat that you lost as soon as you're done. I'm going to show you the exact diet and workout tweaks that I made to make the mini-cut easier to stick to and what I did afterwards to ensure the fat that I lost stayed off so that you can do the same.
Let's start with workouts. I've broken this down into my weight training workouts and cardio since there were important tweaks that I made with both. So for weights, prior to the mini-cut, I was lifting five times a week using the five-day workout split.
However, an aggressive calorie deficit now means that I have much less fuel to energize my workouts and support my recovery. This can quickly lead to excessive fatigue and strength loss. To avoid this, I made a few tweaks based on the findings of a 2011 study.
The researchers took 70 trained males and had them lift weights three times per week for four months while tracking their gains. After the four months, the researchers then tested to see the minimum amount of workout volume needed for them to maintain their new gains. What they found is that just one workout per week, so a third of the volume they were doing previously, was all that was needed.
Now don't get me wrong, I love lifting weights, but implementing these findings into my routine was game-changing for managing fatigue throughout my mini-cut. To do so, I switched to a four-day workout split and removed one set from every single exercise in the routine. This essentially cut the total workout volume I was doing in half, which was more than enough for me to maintain my gains.
Now as for cardio, prior to the mini-cut, I was on average taking 10,000 steps a day and doing two 20-minute HIIT sessions per week. My approach during the mini-cut was to further increase my overall activity so that I could burn more calories every day rather than have to rely solely on eating less calories to achieve my goal deficit. Those of you who are more sedentary will benefit a lot from doing this.
However, I had to make sure to add in the right type of cardio. Cardio that was easy to recover from and something I could actually stick to throughout the six weeks despite my lower energy levels. I decided to do two things.
First, by taking more walks throughout the day and making frequent use treadmill at my office, I quite easily increased my daily step count to 15,000 steps a day on average. Second, I replaced my two 20-minute HIIT sessions with something much easier to recover from, light cycling for 30 minutes three to four times a week. And I did this either indoor farmers walk and outdoor as a brisk walking depending on how the weather was.
Now my body responded really well to this routine. I recovered quickly, my energy levels during my workouts remained high, and it was something I could fairly easily stick to every day. However, these workout changes would not have been nearly as effective without the specific changes I made with my diet.
The tweaks I made there are what enabled me to maintain my muscle strength, keep my energy levels high during my workouts, and keep my hunger and cravings at bay. All right, so now let's shift focus and talk about those dietary tweaks. So at the time, my body needed about 2,600 calories to maintain its weight.
During the mini cut, I dropped this by 25%. This drastic drop in calories created two problems that I had to solve. First, I had to find a way to save most of my energy for my weight workouts so that I didn't end up losing a ton of strength and muscle.
Second, I had to find a way to manage my hunger levels and cravings. To solve problem one, I was strategic in what specific foods I'd be eating less of. The minimal amount of fat that you should eat per day for your health is around 0.2 grams per pound of your body weight.
So to cut calories from my diet while ensuring I still had enough carbs for energy and enough protein to maintain my muscle, I reduced my fat intake close to that minimum amount rather than considerably dropping my carb and protein intake. In addition to this, I strategically timed the ingestion of my carbs to best fuel my performance and recovery. This was done by saving most of my daily carb intake for my pre-workout meal to give me energy for my workout and my post-workout meal to help with recovery.
The rest of my meals were relatively lower in carbs. Now to solve problem two, hunger and cravings, I made simple food swaps that kept me full and enabled me to pretty much eat the same meals I was before the mini-cut but now with far less calories. For example, before the mini-cut, here's what a typical breakfast would look like.
In comparison, here's what a typical breakfast would look like during my mini-cut. By swapping out some of the whole eggs for egg whites, swapping the bagel with avocado for lower calorie bread instead, and adding more greens, I was able to save several hundreds of calories without decreasing the actual volume of food. Same with lunch, I kept the ingredients pretty much the same but instead of using a 300 calorie tortilla, I used a low calorie wrap.
And again with dinner, I was able to drop the calorie count of this meal by over 300 calories just by swapping some of the white rice for cauliflower rice and reducing the fat content by not including eggs in the rice. Now in addition to these food swaps to help me resist temptations during the day and curb my cravings at night, I always always made sure that I had some kind of tasty yet low calorie dessert.
Banana and cream, apple fritters, frozen yogurt, just something sweet at night that I could look forward to during the day to help me keep on track. We know frequently cravings can totally derail progress. However, although these dietary changes were key to helping me quickly and sustainably lose fat throughout the six weeks, it's what I did afterwards that helped me keep that fat off and is where most people mess up.
So after a mini cut or any dieting there's two factors that cause rapid fat regain. The first has to do with your metabolism. As a result of weighing less and the effects of dieting, my metabolism is slightly lower now than it was previously.
In addition to this, drastically reducing my activity or cutting it out altogether after the mini cut would not only mean that I'm burning even less calories every day, but there's also data to suggest, and I can definitely attest to this, that lower levels of activity make regulating hunger more difficult. This is what causes people to unknowingly overeat after their diet is over.
Now guys, just keep in mind that mini cuts are exactly what their name applies. Mini. They are not a long-term sustainable solution.
It's short and aggressive for a reason, as they quickly become unsustainable if continued for too long. But when used properly, they are effective.
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