Getting Shredded in Summer 2023
It’s July now, so if you haven’t started cutting already, you’re running out of time if you plan to be lean at some point in the summer. There is still plenty of time, especially if you live in a country like I do, where summer realistically extends through September. Additionally, cutting during the summer, rather than before the summer, is much more conducive to our biology. So let’s dive into how to approach a mid-summer cut.
Enter Action with Boldness
If you hesitate before doing something, your doubts will undermine your efforts. When you act, be bold — and if you make mistakes, correct them with even greater boldness. Everyone admires the bold.
Law 28 of the 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
If you stand any chance of getting lean this summer, enter a heavy calorie deficit to initiate weight loss as quickly as possible. With the summer having already started, you don’t have time to be as thorough in ensuring that you are not dieting too hard. Typically I advise knocking 10% off maintenance calories, but you might want to make this 15%. If your deficit results in a weight loss that is too extreme in the first week (significantly more than 1% of your total body mass), you can adjust your caloric intake the following week. And I strongly advise you do.
Make it Short and Sweet
If you are going to cut aggressively, you must be careful not to fall into the trap of prolonging your deficit past your intended goal. A 4-6 week mini-cut will be perfect to lean out as much as realistically possible without risking a drop off in muscle mass, and performance. In fact, you can still progressively overload in your training, within this short timeframe.
Maintain if You Need To
I am not a fan of maintenance periods because I think maintenance is a fool’s errand. We either progress or regress. However, they can be helpful under certain circumstances. Let’s say you have a short window to get lean before a vacation. Let’s say it’s six weeks out. Ideally, you steadily lose 1% of body fat per week for six weeks. But this is rarely the reality. To ensure meeting your goal with complete certainty, it would be better to drop calories by enough to reach your goal in four weeks and spend two weeks in a maintenance period.
Re-feeds and Diet Breaks
I love implementing diet breaks / re-feeds in a cut, as they are fantastic for maintaining performance in the gym and offsetting the risk of binge eating. However, a 4-6 week mini-cut is not the time for these techniques. There is no need, given how short of a duration you’ll be cutting for.
Mindset
If ever there was a time to focus on discipline and eating strictly nutrient-dense foods, with minimal ‘dirty’ food, this would be it. Under normal circumstances, I think unnecessary food restriction is a complete waste of one’s finite discipline, however, in a short period, it can do wonders for resetting the reward centres in the brain, balancing out any slight nutrient deficiencies, and fostering a greater appreciation for the convenience of modern-day processed food.
Get It Done
If you are going to do a mini-cut, commit to it fully. The time will fly, and executing it aggressively will motivate you to quickly reenter a gaining phase and spend more months of the year building muscle mass. Don’t bitch out and treat this as an extended cut halfway through. This version of cutting is a sprint, not a marathon. Get in, get it done, and move on to the next goal.