Many athletes and bodybuilders have needed to lose fat and cut their muscles in different periods. Some people tend to cut their muscles by changing their diet and exercising program after getting their desired weight. Some other individuals by calculating their BMI, find out they need to lose body fat and cut muscles.
In sports and especially bodybuilding, this stage where you lose fat and develop muscle separation is called the “cutting phase”.
The cutting phase starts after finishing bulking phase. Simply speaking, athletes usually start bulking at the beginning so that by mixing their workouts and following a proper diet, they gain their desired muscle size.
In the next step, after getting bulky enough, the cutting phase starts and it aims to get rid of your excess fat that has been accumulated during the previous stage and to focus on growing and improving your muscles. Some athletes and bodybuilders prefer repetitively changing from cutting to bulking phases and vice versa.
The significant point in the bodybuilding cutting phase is that you must design your diet and workout program so that you sustain your muscles and not lose them. You should retain gaining muscles while you are losing fat to balance both stages of cutting and bulking.
Therefore, it could be claimed that the best time for starting the cutting phase and burning fat is immediately after reaching your desired bulkiness. As it has been mentioned before, cutting and bulking stages can be repeated over and over, one after another, until you get your desired physical shape.
The proper eating habits for cutting phase and muscle separation
For improving muscle cut and fat burning, many athletes mainly focus on exercising and spend most of their time on hard workouts at home and the gym. But the fact is that the cutting phase will be more effective if accompanied by an appropriate diet. The cutting phase is based on the calories you gain daily which should be lower than your exhausted calories.
Athletes and bodybuilders are often advised to keep their gained calories 300 to 500 units lower than burned calories. Here the balance between bodybuilding diet and exercise makes sense, because a person may spend more time exercising and exhaust more calories as well. On the other hand, another person does fewer workouts each day. The calories that the first person receives can be much more than the second one.
During the cutting phase, for losing fat faster and improve muscle separation, the consumption of carbohydrates should be cut down. Also, you can substitute carbohydrates with protein. Eating vegetables with a low level of carbohydrates can prevent weakening due to following your diet and the lack of carbohydrate consumption.
