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Making the cut: the truth about calorie cutting

In my first post, I mentioned that I did a one-off shoot for the purposes of this site and as a memento as I enter the next phase of my life. This was part of a bigger challenge – to experience a cut, something I’d never considered before, and to see how that impacted on my body and my overall fitness levels. The self-imposed regime consisted of a 2-month fat-loss plan, and it put me in a significant calorie deficit. As you will discover, it was not easy, and resulted in some interesting side-effects – but more on those later.

The before

It’s important that I let you know where my starting point was. I am lucky in that I come from a relatively slim family, and have never been overweight. I’m pretty genetically privileged in that regard – we all have healthy appetites and high metabolisms. I exercise because I love fitness, but I don’t do it for fat loss. However, if I didn’t I probably would become ‘skinny fat’ and I like to be lean and toned. Before the diet, I was probably at my strongest, but I have always been self-competitive and motivated. Basically I was intrigued by the whole idea, and wanted to see what a cut would do to my appearance.

It’s all about the kitchen

I knew that in order to achieve a dramatic cut, I would need to focus on my diet – or, to put it another way, remove all the joy of eating for 8 weeks. These results are primarily made in the kitchen, and I knew I would have to make huge sacrifices food-wise in order to put myself in the right calorific deficit. The beginning of January seemed like the best time – still suffering from a slight gluttony hangover from the holiday period, I was also between jobs and had time to indulge myself (which seems pretty ironic seeing as that was the last thing I was doing).

Fat loss is primarily achieved via diet. You can work out as much as you like but losing the wobble is predicated on an 80/20 ratio of diet to exercise. It’s one of the simplest equations out there: calories in need to be less than calories out, hence the calorie deficit. When cutting, your physical expenditure still needs to be high, so the FITT principles (frequency, intensity, time and type) need to carry on as usual (if not at a slightly greater rate).

The programme

I was aiming for a 4-5% loss in body fat over 2 months. In order to lose 0.5-1% of my body fat per week, I had to:

  1. Cut my daily maintenance kcal intake by 450-500 calories per day

  2. Track macros in line with overall daily calorie amount: In my case I was over-indexing in protein, keeping carbs moderate to low and fats very low

  3. Train 6 times per week, ensuring that each session was resistance training based

  4. Get 2-3 cardio sessions in per week: cardio was contained in the programme but was limited to avoid any muscle depletion during the calorie cull.

I have never had to calculate macros before. In fact, I’ve never even dieted before! A couple of days into the programme I’d had enough of all the analysis, planning and constant number-crunching I was being forced to do. I don’t have an iPhone or an Android phone, so couldn’t even fall back on the tried and trusted apps such as Myfitnesspal – but even typing endless ingredients into my phone would have been too complicated.

I also found that I couldn’t make the food interesting. I’m a pretty good cook, but I couldn’t follow recipes as there was too much guesswork involved in trying to calculate macros. And on this kind of cut, you can’t risk getting the numbers wrong.

Faced with the prospect of boiled chicken and broccoli for the next 2 months, I decided to get myself a meal plan with recipes to make my life easier. I’m so glad I did - my weekly plan at least gave me a basic framework to work from, and enabled me to swap things up more easily and flexibly. My meal plan reduced the guesswork and a lot of the aggravation associated with the whole challenge. I got mine from Harry Ranson (https://harryranson.com) and I could not recommend it more - it kept me in line, allowed me to eat relatively well, and minimised the likelihood of eating all my boyfriend’s food every time I opened the fridge.

The after

Thanks to the meal plan, the support of my loved ones, and the ever-present encouragement of my gym buddies, I got through it. There were laughs (well, a few), there were tears, and there were no slip ups, of which I am proud. There was also very little fun, and no cocktails – I even survived a wedding, taking along my little Tupperware of food and eating furtively behind a bush. Was it worth it? Well, yes and no.

The upsides:

  1. You get the results: I dropped 4.5% body fat in the 8 weeks – pretty impressive for a small person like me

  2. The pictures speak for themselves: If I look at myself before and after, I have definitely leaned out and got more cut and defined over the associated timeframe. Whilst my muscles were there to begin with, it was only with this calorific deficit that they actually showed through

  3. I’ve fallen in love with food again: Given I was slightly in starvation mode the whole time, I appreciated every morsel of food, and if at the end of the day I had extra calories to use, I used them. In the past, I have left extra food on my plate, but I literally gobbled up everything I could

  4. I’ve learned a lot about food and its nutritional components

  5. I stopped sweating: This was a strange one. I tend to sweat profusely whilst exercising but as my fat levels decreased so too did my propensity to sweat. It was quite nice for a change to walk out of HITT class fresh and dewy faced

The downsides:

  1. Each meal needs to be planned and prepped, so the kitchen took a beating. I used the stove, dishwasher, oven and pretty much all of the utensils on every meal planning day

  2. It takes so much time! Even with the food plan, I still had to plan each day with military precision. There was no space for spontaneity - if I was out and about I had to carry packed lunches and snacks

  3. Missing fat/carbs: I was put on a low-fat diet and felt completely deprived. If I ate 2 eggs a day this was almost half of my daily healthy fat allowance. I was also on the lowest level of carbs – a crucial energy source, carbs are what ultimately feed the brain so if they had been further tampered with I would have suffered from headaches and brain fog

  4. Highly antisocial: I couldn’t go out to restaurants or meet with friends during the 2 months. I managed a few social engagements, but was forced to just make do with green tea or coffee with Surkrin. It was not fun.

  5. My sleep suffered: Most nights woke up halfway through the night and couldn’t get back to sleep. My sleep hours were cut to 4-5 per night over the course of the diet

  6. Compared to some people, my mood swings weren’t too bad. I was definitely a bit more grumpy than usual, but that was generally because I was hangry (as the millennials like to say)

  7. Lower energy levels and general lethargy

  8. Pangs of nausea experienced in the night

  9. Hormonal imbalances: My menstrual cycle was impacted on the 2nd month of the cull so I skipped a period that month. This is obviously a bad thing, and something I will have to keep an eye on over the next few months

  10. Fat loss isn’t always a good thing: While I lost fat all over, I lost more than I would have liked from my face and chest, which were already small to begin with. I also feel losing fat from my face made me look a bit older. Not something we want to mess with as we enter our 40s!

  11. Lack of sweat: I cited this as a pro above but it also meant I couldn’t gauge how hard I was working

Overall it was a mixed experience. My appreciation for food has increased and I am far more knowledgeable about what I put into my body. But while there is no doubt I achieved the desired results, there were quite a lot of negatives and I think they outweigh the positives.

Don’t forget

Doing a cut like this for a short period of time is okay, but any longer and you will have health implications. This kind of eating completely messes with your homeostasis by putting you into a semi-starvation state. It is not sustainable long term. The people who look like I do in my photoshoot don’t look like that all the time – they are normally models, and they have starved themselves to look good enough for those pictures. Don’t be fooled!

Cue the credits

I would like to thank those involved with me on this journey and those responsible for making me look my best for the shoot.

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