Mini Cut Part 2 : How To Plan a Mini Cut

A comprehensive mini cut plan should consist of the calorie deficit and the overall goal. With these ideas in mind, you can further set back those deficits into daily deficit, be it either through diet or exercise according to every individual. The maintenance after the cut often being overlooked however that is the most important thing that makes a person either succeed in their mini cut, or ended up in a yoyo-dieting cycle.

Believe it or not, the main reason most people failed their cutting phase isn’t that the cutting process itself is hard, but because they don’t have a clear and realistic plan. And some of them who are actually successfully achieving their cutting goal, they ended up having a hard time maintaining their physique.

That’s the reason why I decided to prepare another post after I explained the basics of mini cut. This post will be about the execution process of setting a calorie deficit and how you can avoid ending up in a bad cycle after a mini cut–the maintenance.

If you haven’t read my last post [Mini Cut Part 1: The Basics], don’t forget to read it before proceeding to this post.

What Your Plan Should Have

To start off a cut is actually easier than you imagined, you know that you just need to stay in deficit and you’ll eventually lose fat. However, in reality, sometimes we ended up planning a plan that is hard to stick with.

Here are a few important aspects that you should have while planning the mini cut:

Have A Specific Goal

Having a final goal in mind help you determine how long the mini cut lasts. Therefore your goal needs to be specific enough (until the point you can tell the number).

After setting up the final goal, then you can further set up the weekly deficit. With all those benchmarks, you can expect how much you actually wish to lose on a weekly basis. The more weight you wish to lose, the longer your mini cut can be. For individuals that have too much to lose, it is better to start off with a longer and gradual cut instead of a mini cut.

The importance of tracking your progress along the road is you are in control of what happening. You are able to make adjustments along the way, be it either adjusting your diet or exercise. In some cases, you might need to extend or shorten your mini cut phrase based on the result.

Sustainable And Realistic For You

For those that had done their planning, here is the second thing to check with. Is the plan realistic enough to accomplish? Sometimes we tend to plan the goal that is too much for our own ability and it isn’t sustainable over the course of the mini cut.

The most important thing in fitness isn’t accounted of how brilliant your plan or how hard you are doing, instead, it’s about how you sustain a habit that makes you stick with it. This works even in a mini cut plan. Be it whether you decided to set the calories deficit through dieting or exercise, if your plan isn’t work based on your ability, you’ll fail at the middle way,

Have A Clear Idea Of How You Can Create The Deficit

You know that you need to be in a deficit. But do you know exactly how you can create it? Go for a night jog? Swap the donut to wrap? Or just fly by the seats of your pants?

It’s true that not having a plan allows you to be more aggressive when you are in a really good condition. Sometimes you can go for over 700 deficit when you are in a good mood. However, what about the other days? This approach often makes an individual go all in or nothing. Having a clear game plan for your deficit can help you actually follow the plan.

I had created a comprehensive mini cut goal template that summarizes what I had explained above. Here’s a sample of the template. We also have the pdf version and it’s ready for download!

Track The Progress

Constantly tracking your progress could help you determine whether you are on the right way. There are a few ways to track your progress, the most straightforward is by weighing yourself. However, I personally will go for measuring the waist measurement. The reason is that any fat loss will directly reflect on the waist. Although it will results slower than looking at the weight, it gave a clear indication that you had losing fat.

Not Losing an Inch At the First Week?

I wish to include this point because this is something that might happen to someone that is tracking the progress. And for beginners it is terrifying.

If this is what you experience, here are a few things you need to know. It is impossible for you to not lose any fat at all if you are surely in a deficit. Check whether you actually consume less or expend more energy from your normal routine. If you are certain that you did everything right, then you have nothing to worry about. The weight might just because of water retention.

In the first few weeks of mini cut, you might eat less and exercise more frequently than normal. That will often put your body in some form of stress. When this occurs, the body tends to hold on water in advance of fat loss. This means, you had actually lost fat but the water had replaced the void that the fat held before. This will not last long, stay patient and continue doing what you doing and it will fade eventually.

The Maintenance

So after you actually reached the goal, so what’s next?

Most people will go immediately into their normal diet. This is a tricky move because most of them found they regain weight quickly. That makes people fear the regain and are often willing to stay at the deficit for a long time. This is why a maintenance phase is so important for everyone that just ended their mini cut.

Your Maintenance Calories After Cut

While it seems like you are bouncing back the weight, however, the fact is just your maintenance is no longer the same as you first started. I had another articles explain about metabolic damage.

To deal with this, take time adjusting your calories to somewhere between your current calorie intake and calories before you start the cut. Progress tracking is even important during this time because you need to constantly adjust to any changes happening.

If you are afraid of going too far on the calories consumed. A reverse diet is also a good solution. For individuals that having their deficit on a larger scale, you can go up to 200++ per week to avoid staying in a severe deficit for an extended time.

Usually, maintenance will last not more than half of the mini cut phrase. The more aggressive your mini cut is, the longer you need to spend time in the maintenance phase. Once you complete the maintenance, you are ready to start off another bulk if building muscle is your goal.