How I Cut 15lbs in 12 Weeks Without Losing Strength | IPF Worlds Recap
Last week, I competed at my first IPF Classic Worlds Championship. I dropped 15lbs in 12 weeks without losing strength. In fact, I actually got stronger. Let me tell you how.
Leading up to the Arnold in March, I was looking to fill out the 74kg class. Being a natural hardgainer, I completely disregarded macros and just ate as much as I could to make this happen. I was consuming anywhere from 3500-4000 calories a day and still barely gaining weight. At the Arnold, I weighed in at 160lbs. During this time, I received the invite to compete at Worlds in the 66kg weight class, and if I wanted to win, I knew I needed a solid game plan to cut weight. I decided to “coach” myself for my nutrition during this prep.
Since I was maintaining my bodyweight at roughly 3000 calories per day, I started my cut at 2700 calories. Since I typically stay pretty lean, I didn’t want to take too big of a caloric deficit and risk losing muscle in the process. I kept the protein really high at 196g, carbs at 337g, and fats at 63f. Eventually I dropped my calories to around 2300 (in the form of carbs) as my weight plateaued and my metabolism adjusted. This was a fairly easy cut, but not during the first month. This was my first time being strict with counting macros because I had a hard deadline to meet, so it came with its fair share of struggles. Some of these struggles had to do with abiding by the macros: scheduling meals, fighting hunger pangs, missing my macros goals because of poor planning, and just the general stress of not seeing progress sometimes. Other struggles had more to do with stressors in my personal life.
April was a rough month for me in and out of the gym. Long story short, I made the necessary changes to let go of anything that was weighing on me in my personal life. After a couple of weeks, my sleep quality improved which drastically improved my recovery, and my motivation to train and adhere to my macros skyrocketed. I felt that sense of purpose again. Sometimes I was even training twice a day because I felt that good. I implemented bodybuilding workouts on my rest days because I wanted to train all the time. I had never felt this good before. My numbers were increasing in the gym, I was looking better, losing weight, and my waist measurements decreased while my other measurements either stayed the same or increased.
Physiologically, the most important things to preserve muscle while cutting are:
Keeping protein intake higher than usual, while maintaining a caloric deficit
Continuing a consistent resistance training regiment
Minimizing stress and maximizing recovery
As I’ve mentioned before however, adhering to the macros was hard especially because it was my first time. It can be a scary process. A lot of people know how cutting works, but when things don’t go as expected they still panic because they have a deadline approaching or they think THEY are the one exception where the basic nutrition principles don’t apply. I wanted to share what I’ve learned during this cutting phase and outline mistakes I’ve made in previous attempts at cutting weight.
Discipline: I’ve learned to stay completely task-driven this prep, because if I don’t stick to my macros, I won’t make weight. Simple as that. Ironically, once I accepted that, this became the easiest cut I’ve ever done because I made it my mission to find ways to overcome obstacles.
- Trust the process: Far too many times in the past while cutting, I would make foolish and impulsive adjustments like drastically cutting my calories when I didn’t see the scale move in over a week. Either that, or I would add in a ton of cardio. I would drop my calories way too low, which would not only take a toll on all of my training sessions, but cause me to hold onto water weight because my body was under a lot of stress. I’ve learned to trust the process and be patient when making adjustments. Now, I don’t drop my calories or adjust my macros unless I don’t see progress for 4 weeks. There was a time this prep where I didn’t see the scale at all for 2-3 weeks, but I stayed consistent with tracking and one day I had the “big flush” and lost about 3lbs.
How to measure progress: As I’ve just mentioned, I don’t make adjustments unless I don’t see the scale move for 4 weeks. However, not seeing the scale move doesn’t necessarily mean progress wasn’t made. It’s important to take pictures and measurements prior to dieting, and continue to take them periodically (I’d say anywhere from 2-4 weeks apart). This allows you to have multiple parameters to visualize before making the conscious decision to adjust your caloric intake. I have a checklist before I make an adjustment. I ask myself the following: Has the scale moved? Do I look leaner? Is my waist measurement decreasing? If the answer to all of these questions is no, then I will proceed with the adjustment. If I answer yes to any of these questions, then I don’t make the adjustment.
Sacrifice: While cutting in the past, if my friends wanted to drink or go out to eat one day, I would give in and say “ehh, it’s not a big deal. What’s one day gonna do?” This lack of sacrifice and discipline showed in my performance. Either that, or I would convince myself that I was strong enough to go to these events and not drink or go over on my calories. During this prep, I’ve turned down numerous social events so that I didn’t even put myself in the position to mess up. This took tremendous discipline because it’s the beginning of the summer, which means I had to miss cookouts, graduation parties, trips to the beach, and other events. It didn’t affect me because I knew this was the biggest meet of my life. If you want to set yourself apart from your competition in anything, then sacrifice is necessary.
Volume: In previous preps, I would always be hungry while cutting, which caused me to binge eat some days and go over on my calories. This only made my cut a harder mountain to climb. This was due to my poor food selection. I still wanted to eat how I had been eating while was bulking. I still wanted fast food. I’ve always eaten what I wanted, so I didn’t want any restrictions. When sticking to my caloric goal, I would choose foods with high caloric density and low food volume (foods with high fat content). Now I’ve learned to be smarter when budgeting my calories. I would choose light ingredients whenever I could like fat-free cheese, eat more vegetables, use cooking spray instead of oil, and just eat more lower calorie foods in general so I could stay full. This made my cut super easy.
Recipes: In the past, I would stick to a cut for a week or two then get bored of eating the same thing every day. I was too lazy to figure out new ways to hit the same macro goals once I figured out how to achieve them once, so I would just eat the same boring meals every day. I would eat ground turkey, tortillas, and egg whites most of the day. Eventually, I would grow tired of this and fall off track whenever the opportunity presented itself. I finally stopped being lazy and did a ton of research on different meals I could eat that would fit my macros. This allowed me to have more flexibility with my dieting and keep my foods interesting to ensure adherence to my macros. Additionally, if I had time before bed, I would go in the MyFitnessPal app and plan all of my meals out for the next day. Sometimes getting the right food measurements to get within range of your macros can be like playing Tetris, so planning your meals out the day before is a great way to take the guesswork out of the process. Often times, if I didn’t plan my meals in advance, I would go over on fats because I didn’t know how to make my last meal fit my macros.
Okay, that was the good. Here’s what I did wrong with my nutrition:
In the days leading up to the meet, everything was going well. I had gotten my bodyweight to around 152lbs and I had 7 more pounds to cut. My water load was working and I was able to eat normally without depleting glycogen stores. I was even able to eat a normal-sized breakfast the day of the meet, which I’ve never been able to do before. I was still urinating frequently the morning of my weigh-in and I wasn’t dehydrated, which was also a first. After heading to the sauna to cut the final 2kgs, I was finally dehydrated, but only for about 2 hours. After weighing in, I immediately consumed 7.5 grams of sodium so that I could retain water weight. The only problem is, I forgot the most important component: THE WATER!
I showed up to the meet with a half gallon of water, foolishly thinking this would be enough. It was all downhill from there. After finishing the half gallon of water, I had about an hour until I had to start warming up for squats. I felt fine, at least I thought… After walking around for 2 minutes, I was cramping so bad to the point where I couldn’t even stand up. Every single step was excruciating. It was frustrating. I couldn’t make sense of it. I consumed the sodium and drank the water, how could I possibly be cramping!? I later learned from my coach that it was sodium-induced cramping. At this point all I could do was drink more water to balance out the sodium I consumed. I was drinking water to the point where I was uncomfortably bloated and it was giving me anxiety. I kept thinking, “what if I’m too bloated to squat?” or “what if I’m still cramping on the platform?”
When it was time to warm up for squats, you’d better believe I was bloated out of my mind and still cramping. I cramped on every single warm-up attempt. We actually had to lower my opener by 12.5kg just to be safe. On my last warm-up, I almost dropped the bar and fell backwards on my coach. I had no clue how I would pull it together for my opener. Thankfully, my coach got me to calm down and gave me some PRI drills to do. This worked well enough to get me through the meet with minimal cramping. I was cramping during all of my attempts as well, but it wasn’t unbearable to the point where it kept me from completing any lifts. This pattern would continue for bench and deadlift as well.
Overall, I came away with a second place finish, and was a little disappointed by this. Although I had a great meet, I expected to do better, and I should’ve. The fact that I could’ve prevented my own demise in this meet if I had just drank more water during the refeed was bittersweet; on one hand I was still disappointed I didn’t win, on the other, I still had my best meet yet and could pinpoint exactly why I didn’t do better so that I can fix it for next time. If you can take anything away from this, it should be to learn from my mistakes. You can execute everything perfectly up until game day and still sabotage your performance if you don’t finish the job. Trust the process, stick to the plan, and execute.
For now, the plan is to bulk up to around 170lbs and do a similar cutting progress with a smaller water cut to make weight for the 74kg weight class. The next meet I will be doing is Raw Nationals in October, so I’ll be sure to keep you guys posted on my prep!