Cutting as a Hybrid Athlete: Best Practices

In the world of fitness, one of the notable hallmarks of hybrid athletes is a focus on performance.

With this being the case, a caloric deficit, colloquially referred to as a cut, becomes a tricky endeavor.

Given that a cut requires you take in less energy than your body burns, increased perceptions of fatigue are commonly noted among people losing weight. This can be a bit paradoxical for the performance-focused person.

So, this article seeks to explain the best practices you can use to achieve a more successful cut while training as a hybrid athlete.

Here’s the menu for this article:

• Improve performance, or maintain it?

• Magnitude of the calorie deficit

• Macronutrient composition

• Training

• Sleep

• Supplements

Improve performance, or maintain it?

If you’ve been training long enough, you know that half of how fit you are at any given moment is dictated by how well fueled you are. Similarly, the process of recovering and adapting from a training requires some degree of energy (calories) as well.

By definition, cutting implies under-fueling so that your body turns to its own energy stores; inducing weight loss.

So, this poses the question: should you seek to improve your strength and endurance further while cutting, or just maintain them through the process?

The answer: it depends.

In some regards, a caloric deficit may impede progress; in others, a caloric deficit may foster progress.

On the aerobic side, weight loss due to caloric restriction may make you more efficient and improve performance. [1]

On the muscular side, further development of muscle may be limited due to being in an under-fueled state. [2]

In addition, your training status will be another factor.

The more trained you are, the harder it is to make further progress; and vice versa. It’s possible that imposing a generally restricting condition, such as a calorie deficit, will exacerbate this.

Lastly, there is the matter of how much body fat you have to lose during this cutting period.

The more you have to lose, the more likely it is that you can see performance improvements all-around; and vice versa.

Hopefully these filters give you some idea of whether or not making further performance improvements is a viable goal during a cut.

Nevertheless, with all that said, my practical advice is this:

Body fat losses should always be the primary goal during a cut. Even if you could improve performance during this period, that should always take the back-burner.

If done right, the time spent in a deficit of calories should be much lesser than the time spent at maintenance or in a surplus of calories.

If you let yourself get too distracted from the main goal, you may inadvertently and needlessly prolong the duration of the cut.

Magnitude of the calorie deficit

As you may know, a caloric deficit refers to eating less calories each day than your body burns.

A consideration of note is the magnitude of this. In other words, how big the difference is between calories consumed and calories burned.

A mistake made by many is going too aggressive with their deficit under the impression that this will expedite results.

The problems found here are threefold:

• excessive muscle loss

• excessive fatigue throughout the day

• greater likelihood the body fat is gained right back

As an aside to the previous section, getting too aggressive with your cut will throw any chance of performance improvement out the window.

Best practice when it comes to caloric deficit magnitude is an average of 300-500 calories below maintenance each day. This should put you around 0.5-1.0% of weight loss per week. [2,3]

The best way to know if you are at this intake is to weigh your self first thing in the morning, every morning. Don’t track day-to-day changes; track week-to-week average changes. Whether or not you are losing weight at this rate will tell you how you need to modify your food intake; if at all.

How to estimate how many calories this means for you:

To get a ballpark of what a ~300-500 calorie deficit looks like for you, first head to TDEEcalculator.net and input your information.

Subtract 300 or 500 from this number to get your target range.

Getting somewhere around this intake as an average daily intake is your goal.

It’s worth noting: calculators like the one listed above are not perfectly accurate, but they’re a good starting point. By tracking your weight as described above, you will know how you need to adjust it, if at all.

Macronutrient composition

For many people, thinking about the macronutrient composition during a cut isn’t the best use of time.

In general, as long as protein intake and overall calorie intake are in order; whether the rest of your calories come from mostly carbs or mostly fats seems to make little difference to the outcome you achieve. [3]

For people training as hybrid athletes, though, it’s a worthwhile thought.

To illustrate this part, I will discuss each macronutrient individually.

Related: Macronutrient Basics: Understanding Carbs, Protein, and Fats

Protein

During a cutting phase, maintaining muscle mass is a key consideration. Sufficient protein intake is crucial to achieve this.

In general, protein needs increase in a calorie deficit. This is because some of the protein you intake may be used for energy instead of muscle conservation.

In line with this, eating somewhere between 0.72 and 1.0 grams of protein per pound bodyweight is what the evidence suggests you should aim for; with the top end of that range potentially being better. [3,4,5]

Fat

It’s typically recommended to consume no less than ~15% of your calorie intake from fats; as consuming less than this may lead to insufficient hormone production. [6]

Of note, this recommendation is in reference to your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE), or your maintenance calories. NOT the number of calories you’re consuming during a cut.

To get a ballpark of your TDEE, head to tdeecalculator.net and input your information.

For safest measure, I recommend consuming 20-30% of this amount of energy from fats.

To find out how many grams of fat this is, multiply your predicted TDEE by 0.2 for the lower end of the range or 0.3 for the higher end of the range.

Then, divide this number by 9 (1 gram of fat = 9 calories).

The number you get here is the number of grams of fats I would recommend consuming.

Carbohydrate

At this point, you should have an idea of what your minimum protein intake looks like and what your minimum fat intake looks like. This knowledge, combined with an idea of what your daily calorie intake is going to look like, will direct what your carbohydrate intake should look like.

After identifying the previous two points, you should fill the rest of your calorie intake in with carbohydrates.

To do this, simply divide the number of remaining calories by 4. This will provide you with the number of grams of carbs per day you should aim for.

Carbs are crucial for performance [7] and under-eating may decrease performance more than is necessary.

It is for this reason that, in my opinion, once you hit your needs for protein and fat, you should fill the rest with carbohydrate.

Don’t be a perfectionist

There’s no need to hit these numbers perfectly to a tee every day; or any day really.

If you want to, feel free. My main desire with providing those macronutrient distributions, however, is for you to leave this article with a general idea of what an “optimal” distribution looks like.

Even if you decide not to track your food intake, hopefully having encountered this recommended macronutrient distribution gives you some aid in your day-to-day dietary choices.

Training

There’s not much to say about your training, but you should keep one thing in mind: you may not be able to sustain as much volume of exercise as if you were eating a higher number of calories.

It’s impossible to give real recommendations without knowing who you are or what your goals are.

All I’ll say is this: keep your training the same as you enter a calorie deficit initially. If at a point you start to feel excessive fatigue during the day or that your recovery is suffering, then consider decreasing exercise volume while maintaining intensity.

Sleep

Yeah, it’s boring and obvious. However, it makes such a difference that it’s still worth bringing up.

We all know what it feels like after a good night of sleep and after a bad night of sleep; and how each affects your training and progress.

People tend to report that the poor feeling after a bad night’s sleep is exacerbated under the condition of a calorie deficit.

Plus, insufficient sleep is well-known to increase hunger; a very counter-productive effect during a cut. [8]

So:

• Try to get 7-9 hours per night

• Try to sleep on a regular schedule (similar wake and bed time each day)

Supplements

The supplements I would recommend for a hybrid athlete on a cut are largely the same as what I would recommend during any other period.

I do have a full-length article dedicated specifically to hybrid athlete supplementation.

To access it, click here.