How to “Cut” Calories Properly to Maximize Results
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Today I want to chat with you all about CUTTING. And what I mean when I say “cutting” is cutting the amount of calories you eat daily. This is actually an extremely important topic for us to discuss, as most women, when they want to lose weight, go about it in the wrong way.
To get real with you, the way most women like to go about their “cut” actually slows down their metabolism, making it SO much harder for them to lose weight. So if you’re looking to cut back, there is science to it that you need to know in order to do it safely and effectively, which I’ll be sharing with you in this episode of Embrace Your Real!
If you loved this episode, then you will also love…
Episode 18: What Happens When You Don’t Eat Enough and Episode 46: Why You Should Consider a Reverse Diet (The Only Diet I Support!).
TRANSCRIPT:
Hey there, beautiful human. You're listening to Embrace Your Real with me, Julie Ledbetter, a podcast where I empower you to just be you. With each episode, I dish you a dose of real talk and actionable advice for building your confidence, honoring your body and unconditionally loving your authentic self. Stay tuned if you're ready to Embrace Your Real. Let's get it, let's go.
Hello, and welcome back to another episode of the Embrace Your Real Podcast. Really excited about today's episode. We are talking all about how to cut calories properly to maximize your results. You guys know I'm a firm believer that you can simultaneously love yourself, embrace your real while having goals. And that's why I am a huge believer that you need to educate people if they do want to do a body fat loss phase, number one, they have to do it out of a place of love, not of hatred for their body. But if you are wanting to lose body fat, I want you to learn how to do it effectively because there's so much information on the internet that it can feel so confusing and conflicting.
And it's an extremely important topic for us to discuss, because I have worked with so many women over the years and when they want to lose weight or lose body fat, a lot of them go about it, doing it the wrong way, because they just don't know what they're doing. And to be real with you, when people do that and they do a body fat loss phase that is not maximizing their results, that's not effective, that's not scientific, they're likely slowing down their metabolism, which can ultimately make it harder for them to lose weight in the future.
So if you're looking to cut back, there is a science to it that you need to know in order for you to do it safely and effectively, and also sustainably. You guys know I'm a huge believer of sustainability in your health and fitness goals. And that also comes with your nutrition as well. Now I know many of you guys might be listening and you're like, "Why can't you just cut as many calories as you want in order to lose weight?" This is a whole other topic, which is really, really important. And I actually talk about that specific topic in depth on episode 18, what happens when you don't eat enough so that you can fully understand the actual damage that you're doing to your body, your metabolism and your progress when you do this.
So if you haven't tuned into that, I would encourage you to tune into that so that you can learn more about it. But in today's episode, we're going to go a deep dive into how to do a proper body fat loss phase cut. But before I do, I have to share the super sweet review. It says, "I feel normal now. This podcast has helped me be kinder to myself. Julie has made me feel like a human being. I don't feel like I have to punish myself and I can accept myself for who I am and where I'm at right now. I just signed up for her course and look forward to learning her wisdom and get more cozy in my body. Thank you for being a source of warm comfort for me when I feel out in the cold. Pamela."
Oh my gosh. I love that so much. Thank you so much for the review. I really appreciate you. And that is the whole goal of this podcast. I want you to number one, feel empowered. And two, I always back that up with education. I feel like personally, I have felt my most empowered when I feel my most educated, especially when it comes to health and fitness and just reaching your goals. I remember what it was like to have these goals, but not feel empowered because I wasn't educated with the proper tools and techniques in order for me to reach my goals in the most effective and sustainable way.
So let's first talk about doing a cut, but before I do, I have to make something super clear. The formula that I'm about to share with you in this episode is generally speaking. There are so many variables that come into consideration, which is why I will always say hiring a coach or investing in a program that teaches you the fundamentals can be so helpful. And one other thing to note here is that it's important that you don't live in your cut phase. And I'll talk a lot more in depth about that as we go through this podcast episode. But just how cutting too many calories can slow your metabolism down for lack of a better term, staying in a cut phase for too long can actually slow your metabolism down as well. This is something that you should be cycling in and out of not living in permanently.
So now that we've cleared that up, let's start with how do you start a cut phase? So in order for you to know what your body fat loss... And when I say body fat loss phase or cut, it's the same thing. Body fat loss phase, I like to refer to it as a body fat loss phase because that's exactly what it is. And just to kind of go back a step, there's three actual phases that you will hear me talk about. Number one is maintenance mode. So calories in versus calories out is exactly the same, so AKA you're maintaining your weight. There's a caloric surplus. So the amount of calories that you're eating is higher versus the amount of calories that you're outputting every day. And then there's a caloric deficit. So the amount of calories that you're intaking, AKA eating is less than the amount of calories that you're out taking. So there's three phases. Think of maintenance being in the middle, think of caloric surplus being to the right of that, and to the left of maintenance is caloric deficit. So we have caloric deficit, maintenance, caloric surplus.
Okay, now that we've cleared that up, your first step is to find out your caloric intake at your maintenance mode. If you don't know what your maintenance calories is, I encourage you to download my free ebook. You can go to juliealedbetter.com/free-ebook. I will also put it in the show notes. But like I said, in order for to know what a cut would look like for you, you have to know what your maintenance calories and macros are first. And if you've never counted macros before, I would always suggest starting with getting a good idea of what you're eating before you ever start a cut. So once you figure out your maintenance calories, I always tell this to people when they first start counting, I feel like people have all these goals and these things that they want to accomplish. And that's great, but you can't start five things at one time. It's just not possible. And if you really want to get good at one thing, start with one thing at a time, master it and then stack it on top of each other.
So if you've never counted macros before, I would encourage you to figure out what your maintenance calories and macros are. You can do that by downloading my free book. Inside that 39-plus page ebook, I give you an entire calculation that will help you figure out what that is. And I just want you to try to log your food, try to just without judgment, know what you're intaking. If you have no idea, if you just kind of eat intuitively, but you really want to dial in your nutrition, it is important to know how much you're eating. And I think that this is a part of, like I just said earlier, just that education piece and how it closely relates to just feeling more empowered.
I know for me, I feel so much more empowered in the kitchen and just knowing how to reach my goals simply because I've taken the time to educate myself around food. It doesn't have to be this obsession, but I think that we all as human beings have to eat every day. So why not feel more empowered through education about our nutrition? That's kind of my outlook when I come to it. But log your food with zero judgment so you can get a good idea of where you're currently at first in terms of your protein, carbs and fats. And then you'll be able to say like, okay, this is what my suggested maintenance is based on that free ebook. And this is the protein, carbs and fats that are my suggested maintenance calories versus what I'm eating. Like I said, that will just kind of help you to ease into it before you go into something like a body fat loss phase or reverse site, which we're not talking about reverse site today. We're just talking about body fat loss.
Here is a couple of scenarios that I just wanted to point out before we get into the nitty-gritty of how to actually calculate the body fat loss. If you find that you have been eating about maintenance, so you figure out your maintenance calories, and then you track your food without judgment for a day or two, just to kind of see where you're at, I would encourage you to try hitting your maintenance macros for about two weeks consistently before you decide to calculate for a body fat loss phase, simply because I want you to dial in your maintenance first, before, like I said, diving into five things and trying all these different things at one time.
Number two, if you've found to be eating lower than your maintenance calories, and when you recalculate your macros for body fat loss, using what I share later in this episode, you've been eating close to your overall calories, but not your macro goals, I would encourage you to get closer to your macro goals, to see if it will kind of kickstart and nudge your body to get going. And I want you to do that for three to four weeks consistently. And if you're not seeing results associated with your weight or your body measurements, I would look into doing a reverse diet phase, which I talk about in episode 46. So be sure to tune in there. I'll also link it in the show notes. Or if you calculate your body fat loss, cutting macros that I share later in this episode, and they're just too low and you can't see yourself sticking to those consistently, but you don't want to jump straight into your maintenance macros, I would encourage you to consider doing a reverse diet too, which can help you make your way back up to maintenance slowly and methodically to minimize your fat in.
I know that that was a lot, but I just wanted to kind of clarify this. And whenever I say generally speaking, it's so hard to actually generally speak about someone's journey because we're all so different. And that's why, honestly, I love macro counting because it is so customized to each person, but it can kind of be difficult sometimes to be sharing something so customized to a general audience. So that's why I'm trying to break it down as much as possible, but also simplify the process as much as possible. But I felt like it's important to mention that there's so many variables that need to be taken into consideration, which is why, again, hiring a coach or investing in a self-guided program, like my Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy can help you figure out all of this and prevent frustration or confusion.
Remember all of us at one point started out. Even me. I remember when I first got into this, I hired a coach. I invested a lot of my hard earned money into a coach because I didn't know what I was doing. And I wanted to feel confident. I wanted to feel like I could do this myself in the future. And that's exactly what it gave me. When I invested in a coach, he was able to teach me what I needed to know so that now, eight years later I can do it myself and also I can help other women feel empowered as well.
So let me kind of share with you an example of what cutting macros would look like for me. And I'm just going off of my stats and how I would calculate it. So if you have a pen and paper by you to go through this, that's awesome. Again, I would definitely recommend downloading that free ebook if you haven't already, www.juliealedbetter.com/free-ebook. You'll be able to just type in your name, email and make sure you confirm your email because I will not send you the free ebook until you've confirmed the email. So just make sure you go into your inbox, confirm it, and then you'll be sent the ebook.
Okay. So currently I'm around 150 pounds. So as you see in the maintenance equation in that free ebook, I give you some numbers that you'll multiply your weight by, based on your activity level. For most people you'll see in that ebook, they fit into 13. But for the sake of this equation, I'm using 14 because it fits better with my current lifestyle. So I would do 150 pounds, times 14. So 150 times 14 equals 2100. And that means that my maintenance calories are 2100 calories. Once you have your maintenance calories, I would keep it simple by subtracting 300 to 500 calories to find your starting caloric intake at your body fat loss phase. And then once you do that, you're going to need to break it down into your preferred macro. So just a little refresher on macros. One gram of protein equals 14 calories. One gram of carbs equals four calories. And one gram of fat equals nine calories.
So for me, a cut would be starting at 1800 calories and I did a 300 calorie cut because I personally like to take things slow. I always go that route. I always recommend women to take things slow because I want to maximize my body's ability to process fuel as efficiently as possible. I don't want to go straight into a 500 calorie caloric deficit because then I'm not giving my body any wiggle room at all. And I know for me, my body is very adaptive. So it allows me that extra time and calories to be able to go lower if my body hits a plateau.
So my macros would look something like this. Just a refresher, my starting body fat loss calories would be 1800. This is for me, my weight, my body, my activity level. Again, it's very customized to you, which is why it's important that number one, you download that free ebook. And two, you take that maintenance calories and then subtract, I would say, start with 300 calories for that cut. So once you have the calorie intake, then you're going to break it down into macros. So protein is anywhere from 0.8 to one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So for me, personally, just to make this very simple, I'm going to calculate my protein as one gram of protein per pound of body weight. So since I weigh around 150 pounds, that would be 150 grams of protein. Then remember I'm starting out at 1800 calories. Remember that with protein, four calories equals one gram of protein. So, if you multiply 150 by four, you actually see that 600 calories is coming from my protein intake.
Then for fats, I would aim for 25 to 30% of my total calories for my fat intake. I prefer to be a right around 30%. I feel like that is perfect for the amount of fat that I'm eating every day, as well as just keeping my hormones happy and healthy. So if I did 30% of my total calories, my total calories being 1800, it would be 540 calories coming from fat. And then remember that one gram of fat is nine calories. So then to figure that out, that means that it would be 60 grams of fat, right? So you did 540 divided by nine and you get 60. So 60 grams of fat, and then the remaining calories after I subtract 600 calories coming from protein and 500 calories coming from fat, I would be left with 660 calories. And then I would divide that by four, because there's four calories in one gram of carb to get 165 grams of carbs.
Whew. I know that that was a lot. Doing math in an audio format can be very confusing, but I hope that you followed me there. Again, you can always rewind that and listen to it again. But just having the fundamentals like I talked about earlier, if you can write down on your paper, remembering this, that one gram of protein equals four calories, one gram of carbs equals four calories, and one gram of fat equals nine calories, it will make a lot more sense to you. So my starting cut macros would be 150 grams of protein, 165 grams of carbs, and 60 grams of fat, AKA 1800 calories.
So the key to a successful fat loss phase is to stay consistent. And when I mean consistent, I mean, starting to try to reach those macros, whatever your starting cut macros are, it's going to be different. Don't go off of my macros. It's going to be different for your body, where you're at and what your goals are, but it's so important that you stay consistent. And to start with that, I encourage people to try and hit each macro. So 150 grams of protein, 165 grams of carbs, and 60 grams of fat within five to 10 grams of each macro each day. I encourage you to do that, especially when starting out, just because people can get so hot on the numbers. And I think that, especially with something like macro counting, people can become obsessed with trying to hit zero, zero, zero, like trying to hit exactly right on the dot 165 grams of carbs, 150 grams of protein and 60 grams of fat.
But when you first start, it's going to take time, which is why I encourage people to get plus or minus five to 10 grams of each macro each day. It will take like two to three weeks, if you really stay consistent. I think it will take you anywhere from one to three weeks, depending on how much you plan ahead. And that's a key component of this too, is making sure that you're planning ahead, making sure that you have built a food database of all the foods that you consume daily so that it's super easy and seamless for you to track them daily. But give yourself some grace, give yourself some time, two to three weeks to try and get within plus or minus five to 10 grams of macros each day.
And then once you have found consistency with that, then try narrowing down and try hitting your macros plus or minus one to five grams of macros each day and just get as close as you can to that. Remember, it's very unlikely that you're going to get a plus or minus zero, zero, zero on all of your macros. So don't even stress about that. I don't even want that to be a goal because oftentimes that is just so nitty-gritty. But if you can stay consistent within plus or minus one to five grams of macros within your protein goal, your carb goal and your fat goal, that's what I want to see. Remember consistency is absolute key when it comes to macro counting, because if you're not consistent, you're never really going to have a starting point or a baseline to go from.
The biggest struggle that I see women going through is that they become impatient because they're consistently changing everything. They're changing their macros, they're changing their workouts and they get frustrated because their body is not responding. But you have to remember that you have to take it one variable at a time, which is why I always say, when you first calculate your maintenance macros, be realistic with yourself on your activity level. Yes, you might want to work out six days a week, or you might want to work out four or five days a week, but what are you actually going to stay consistent with? And that is where honesty comes into play with this. And so just remember that you have to stay consistent. That is the only way for you to be able to know what you need, why your body needs it, and when it needs it.
Remember that in order for you to know if you've hit a plateau, you're going to need to have your body measurements, your progress photos and your weight. If you feel triggered by your weight, I personally don't weigh myself. I just guesstimate. And I go off of body measurements and progress photos. That's totally, totally fine. But if you have hit a plateau and you've hit a plateau because maybe your body measurements are not changing, your progress photos aren't really showing a difference, but you can say to yourself, honestly, I have been consistent. I've been hitting my macros within one to five grams and I've been staying consistent for at least two to four weeks, then at that point, you can say that you've hit a plateau and then you're going to want to move on to your next set of macros, which I would just encourage you to cut your carbs by eight to 10 grams and then two to three grams of fat, keeping your protein the same and doing the same thing.
Once you've found consistency with those new cut macros within one to five grams of each protein, carb and fat for about four to six weeks, then you can go onto your next set of macros, et cetera. Well, some things that I need you to know about body fat loss is like I mentioned, this does not work if you're not consistent. So if this is something that you truly want to try, you have to commit to it and try your best to stay consistent and committed or else there's no real point of it. And that's one thing that I always tell women is if they're not seeing results and they are not staying consistent, they can't expect to move to a different set of macros and think that that's going to change anything. At the end of the day, it's consistency. Consistency is the best thing that we can go by in this journey.
The second thing that I need you to know is during a cut, it's important that you adhere to your macros, again, within one to five grams of each macro. And that includes weekends. So when you're in this, just remember that consistency trumps perfection. I know that there's going to be days that you go over your macros a lot, stay consistent. That doesn't mean that the next week, because you're frustrated, you just cut your macros again. I always tell women, if you went over your macros, give yourself grace. The next week, try your best to hit your macros all seven days within one to five grams if you'd gotten to that point of really dialed in and stay consistent and try that for two more weeks. And if you've truly hit a plateau, that's when you can go into your next phase. But don't change your macros just because you, number one, haven't seen results and two, you haven't stayed consistent.
And the third thing that I need you to know is if you find yourself towards the end of a cut or even on the cut, not staying consistent at all, or don't find it realistic in this season of your life to be in this caloric deficit, I encourage you to start a reverse diet and get back to maintenance slowly and methodically. The beautiful thing about a reverse diet is that it allows you to slowly increase your caloric intake while minimizing fat in. Again, I talk about reverse diet. It's an entirely different phase, like I mentioned earlier in this episode, and I go really deep into reverse dieting in episode 46. So be sure a tune in there.
But you have to be realistic with yourself. Is this a season of your life where you can be in a body fat loss phase? And if you consistently just keep finding yourself not being able to hit it, give yourself some grace. I would much rather you reverse your way back to maintenance and just be at a happy place where you're consistently hitting your maintenance calories for a good couple of months or even half a year or a year before you try and start a body fat loss again because I've seen women do that. I see that they put so much pressure on themselves to be in a body fat loss phase. They're just not consistent. And then they feel even worse. And so it's just this vicious cycle. So I would much rather you be consistent at like your maintenance calories because it's giving you a lot more calories to play with than you constantly trying to go into a body fat loss failing, getting upset, and then just binge eating and going crazy.
So those are just some things that I need you to know. The other thing that I wanted to mention about body fat loss is how long should you stay in a cut phase? This is going to vary person to person. Again, so important that you recognize that this is a customized journey. But with that being said, I need you to remember that you cannot stay in a cut phase forever. It totally depends on where you started your cut. I initially mentioned 300 to 500 calories. And like I mentioned earlier, I always like to start on the lower end of the spectrum to give my body time and space, to have more calories to cut if necessary. For example, if your body's responding to a lower caloric deficit, then that just allows you to stay in a cut a little bit longer until you reach the maximum overtime.
So I always suggest going no higher than 25% caloric deficit for most people. Some people have the exception of being at a max 30% caloric deficit. Again, this is why this is such a customized journey, but for the majority of people, I would say, I do not encourage you to go past that 25% caloric deficit. Typically, a slow and methodical cut can be anywhere from 15 to 22 weeks, depending on the person's journey, how consistent they've been, how long they've stayed at a specific set of macros, et cetera.
So then the next question naturally is what is next after a cut? So you've gone through the body fat loss, you have taken it slow methodically. You've really dialed in within plus or minus one to five grams of protein, carbs and fats. And you've hit your max caloric deficit. What is next after a cut? Generally speaking, when you hit your max caloric deficit, or you have reached the body composition that you want, you will then find your new maintenance calories given your new body composition. So you'll go back to that free ebook and then you'll figure out your new maintenance calories.
However, once you find your new maintenance calories, you can't just jump from the caloric deficit that you're in. So let's say you max out at a 25% caloric deficit. Think about this being like a spectrum, right? So we have negative 25, which would be deficit and then think about maintenance being in the middle at zero, and then think about a caloric surplus. So anything that's positive numbers. So 15, 20, think about that on a spectrum. You can't just jump from negative 25 to zero and expect your body not to gain weight. Your body has been used to being in this caloric deficit for so long, which is why I always, and any client that we ever work with that is maxed out at their caloric deficit, they want to know what's next, we always recommend that they go into a reverse diet phase because basically what they're doing in a reverse diet phase is they're slowly going back down the ladder, making their way to zero, which is maintenance at 0%.
As you're going from a 25% caloric deficit, maybe your first set of reverse diet macros are at a 22% caloric deficit. So you get to eat a little bit more, stay consistent for four to six weeks, then they jump to a 20% caloric deficit. Then they jump to a 15% caloric deficit. Then they jump to a 10% caloric deficit and so on and so forth. You see how we're working our way back to zero, but slowly and methodically. And I've talked about this in episode 46, why you should consider a reverse diet because our bodies and our metabolisms are adaptive, which is a beautiful thing. So when you are slowly and methodically telling your body, it's okay, I'm giving you more food over time, staying consistent, your metabolism is going to adapt to that. Thus, you will be able to maintain your new body composition that you achieved from your body fat loss phase, but eating a higher number of calories, which is a beautiful, beautiful thing.
So whenever you guys see me do my comparisons, like I just threw up a comparison last week, that was 1000 calories versus 2100 calories, you have to remember, you guys, that there has been number one, so many years between those, but number two, I've done four reverse diets. I've done about four or five cuts over the last eight years and I've done four full reverse diets. So right now my body is at a place where I can maintain my weight at a higher number of calories than previously, because I have trained my metabolic capacity that way.
Another beautiful thing, which I dive a lot deeper into this in episode 46, but if you go through a reverse diet or you go through multiple reverse diets, the beautiful thing is that if you ever want to do a body fat loss phase, you most likely don't have to go into such a severe caloric deficit in order to lose weight in the future because your body has been trained to maintain its weight on a higher number of calories to begin with. Thus, you don't need to cut your calories as much, but you can still see results if you want to do a mini cut, which is what I typically do during our Honor Your Body Challenges, which are, I do anywhere from two to three challenges per year. I do little mini cuts and then I reverse my way back up to maintenance. And then I live at maintenance. So pretty much the majority of the year, I live at maintenance mode with the exception of doing a few mini cuts. But you have to remember I'm eight-plus years into this journey. So it's just taken time to do that.
So I know that this is a lot, I know that nutrition, especially numbers and math can be overwhelming. They can be complicated. They can be confusing to people. And this is exactly why I created the Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy. This is intended to help you simplify the approach to building the body that you want in a healthy and sustainable way.
So if you're ready to give a body fat loss or a cutting phase a try, but you want to make sure that you're doing it correctly, or if you listen to this and you're like, I really think that I need to be starting a reverse diet, we are always here to help inside the Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy. We teach you all three of those phases that I mentioned in here. We talk about body fat loss. We talk about maintenance. We talk about caloric surplus, reverse dieting, all of those things. And we can actually guide you through that process. We have you fill out an extensive questionnaire form and then we're able to tell you and suggest to you, this is the phase that I would encourage you to start with and this is why.
So if you are feeling overwhelmed or you're just wanting some guidance in this, we are always, always, always happy to help. You can learn more about the Macro Counting Made Simple Online Academy by following the link in the show notes, or if you just want to type in the URL, it's macrocountingmadesimple.com. Again, that's macrocountingmadesimple.com. The two episodes that I referred to a lot in this episode was episode 46, why you should consider a reverse diet. So be sure to tune in there. I will link it in the show notes. And then at the beginning of this episode, I mentioned episode 18, what happens when you don't eat enough? So be sure to tune in to those episodes, if you haven't already or refresh your memory with one. Now that you kind of have the body fat loss phase fresh in your mind, maybe you want to refresh yourself on reverse dieting and all of that, or learning more about what happens if you don't eat enough. If you're constantly living in this severe caloric deficit, how it can damage your body and health.
So again, I hope that you found this episode helpful. I know it was a lot, but this has been a highly requested episode, especially just with people wanting to feel more educated and empowered. So I hope that did that for you. Again, you can always rewind this when you have the free ebook in front of you, number one, to get your maintenance, calories and macros, and two, a pen and paper to figure out what your cut calories are, if you feel like you're in a place that you can and should start a body fat loss cut.
I hope that you enjoyed this episode. If you have questions, as always, feel free to DM Embrace Your Real Account, that account, we will be on the lookout for any questions that you have. We can direct you in any place that we feel necessary in terms of learning more about the program or directing you to the free ebook. So feel free to DM us there. We're always happy to help.
If you have somebody in your life that you feel like would benefit from this very nitty-gritty, how to cut properly, I encourage you to send it over their way. You can copy the link, send it to them in a text message. I would love to hear your aha moments. So you can screenshot this, post it up on your story, tag me, Julia Ledbetter. Again, I appreciate you so so much. And I will talk to you guys in the next episode.
All right, sister, that's all I got for you today, but I have two things that I need you to do. First thing, if you're not already following me on the Gram, be sure to do so, juliealedbetter, yes, it's with an a in the middle for that daily post-workout real talk, healthy tips and tricks and honest accountability to keep your mind and heart in check. The second thing, be sure to subscribe to Apple Podcasts to never miss an episode. Thank you so much for joining me. It means the absolute world. And I'm going to leave you with one last thought. The most beautiful women that I have met in my life are the ones who are completely confident and secure in being authentically themselves. Remember that beauty goes so much deeper than the surface. So go out there and embrace your real because you're worth it.