Although the cutting diet sounds like you’re going to be losing weight by hacking away at your fat stores, it actually is much less gruesome than that.

Put simply, this particular diet involves tracking your protein, carbohydrate and fat amounts as well as the times you eat in an effort to help you lose fat without losing the muscle that you’ve worked so hard to create. So, if this is your goal, then the cutting diet may be the meal plan for you.

Cutting Diet Basics

The cutting diet is a scientific approach to weight loss based on eating the three macronutrients—protein, carbs, and fat—in just the right amounts at just the right times to give you the best effects. In fact, if you follow it as recommended, you can lose 1 to 1.5 pounds of fat per week. Not water loss which is typical when starting a new diet, but true fat loss.

For starters, carbs are recommended before and after your workout on this diet, and you should aim to eat 1 gram of carbohydrates for every pound that you weigh during this roughly 4-hour time period. Before your exercise session, you would want the carbs to be complex and slow digesting. Right after your workout, your carbs should be simple and faster digesting, and one to two hours post workout you should go back to slow digesting carbs.

Regarding protein, you should consume 1 to 1.25 grams per pound of body weight. This needs to be spread out during the course of the day with no more than 50 grams being consumed in one sitting.

As far as fat is concerned, your goal is to eat about .25 grams of fat per pound of body weight. However, the type of fat you eat matters. Ideally, you want to get your recommended amount by way of healthy fats such as nuts, seeds, olive or coconut oil, eggs, and salmon.

Interested?

If this sounds like a diet that interests you, Jacked Factory offers the Ultimate Guide: Bodybuilding Cutting Diet. It is full of many different pointers to keep in mind when following the cutting diet so that you achieve higher levels of weight loss success without sacrificing your muscle mass.

Have you ever tried the cutting diet? If so, what did you think of it? How well did it work for you? Feel free to comment below to help others considering this type of program!