Guide › Track it your way

A cutting week

Losing fat while keeping protein high.

A cut is a fixed deficit on your ordinary eating, with protein held high. This page shows one invented week, so you can see where the numbers land before you start one.

When to use it

• You are about to start cutting and want to see what a week of targets looks like.
• You wonder why your rest and training days are closer together than you expected.
• You want to check what a day of a cut gives you in protein, carbs and fat.

How a cutting day is built

A cutting day is built like any other day, with two differences: the goal offset and the protein figure.

1. Resting burn: worked out from weight, height, age and sex (the Mifflin-St Jeor formula). When Forma already has a body-composition reading, it works the same figure from your lean mass instead.
2. Everyday movement is added: 10 percent of the resting burn.
3. A training day adds its exercise: about 250 kcal for a strength day until Forma has at least three of your own sessions to learn from.
4. The cut is applied: about 17.5 percent fewer calories than the average day of your week uses. That is a fixed deficit, and it lands on every day.
5. A check against the floor: the target never goes below the higher of your resting burn and the common least-to-eat guideline for your sex. When the floor holds the target up, Forma says so.
6. Protein is set per kilogram of bodyweight (2.1 g/kg on a cut), fat is 27.5 percent of the calories, and carbs fill what is left.

A worked example

Sam is a man, 88 kg, 180 cm, 38 years old. His goal is cut, and he trains 4 strength days a week. His resting burn is 1,820 kcal, and his average training week would use about 2,145 kcal a day. The cut takes 375 kcal off that average day.

His week, as Forma sets it:

How to read it: his protein never moves; only carbs and fat do. His rest days sit at exactly his resting burn of 1,820 kcal, because the floor holds the target up. The unrestricted number would be lower, and Forma says when it does this. A strength day is only a little above it, so rest and training days sit close together on a cut this deep.

Protein is where the 2.1 g/kg on a cut shows: for Sam's 88 kg that is 185 g a day, and the fat at 27.5 percent of the calories is about 56 to 57 g. What remains of each day's calories is carbs.

Good to know

• Protein on a cut is a floor, not a budget: going over is good. Calories, carbs and fat are budgets, and calories are the one to watch.
• The target follows your 7-day average weight, not a single weigh-in. Weigh in a few times a week; the average is what counts.
• The scale confirms the pace over weeks, not days. What you lose is what the scale shows, not what the plan predicted.
• You never type a calorie number. Forma works the target out; the goal is what you change.
• This page is information and estimates, not medical or diet advice. Talk to a doctor or dietitian before eating at a deficit, especially if you have a medical condition.

Related

• Your day target, and why it moves
• A beginner's week
• A gaining week
• Weight and the 7-day average

Something unclear or missing? Write to support@raveniq.ai and say which page.