Daniel dzgakk

Neuschwanstein Castle is situated near Schwangau and Füssen in the Allgäu. The path to the castle starts in the village of Hohenschwangau, and this is also your last opportunity to park.

Take the A7 motorway (direction Ulm-Kempten-Füssen) until the end. From Füssen first follow the road B17 to Schwangau, then the signs to Hohenschwangau or take the A7 motorway until the exit Kempten and then the road B12 to Marktoberdorf. Follow the road B16 to Roßhaupten – OAL I to Buching – and then take the road B17 to Schwangau and Hohenschwangau.

The village of Hohenschwangau has only private parking facilities.

Google maps:

Take the train (www.bahn.com) to Füssen, then the bus to Neuschwanstein (stop "Hohenschwangau Neuschwanstein Castles, Schwangau"). Information on bus routes and timetables can be found at: www.rvo-bus.de

Find long-distance bus connections to Neuschwanstein.

Please note: Entrance tickets for Neuschwanstein Castle can only be bought at the Ticket Center Hohenschwangau!

Map of the the village of Hohenschwangau with special information for visitors (section); you will find the complete map with a legend on www.hohenschwangau.de

Please be aware that cars and bicycles are not allowed on the road to Neuschwanstein Castle (Neuschwansteinstraße) and the road may only be used with the permission of the Neuschwanstein Castle administrative office. If you are a cyclist, please use the cycle path that branches off Neuschwansteinstraße after about 100 m.

It takes about 30-40 minutes to walk from the ticket centre to the castle (around 1.5 km on a steep uphill road).

Departure point: Hotel Müller, Alpseestraße, Hohenschwangau

Because of space limitations, the carriages cannot go right up to the castle. From the carriage turning area beneath the castle it is an uphill walk of about 450 metres or 10-15 minutes to the castle entrance.

Please note that the carriage service is not operated by the Bavarian Palace Administration, but by independent companies.

A normal attack is done by pressing the attack button on the ground.

Rapid jab/gentleman: the jab (normal attack) usually takes two forms depending on the character: either it is a succession of several blows that ends with the last one (like Mario's punch-punch-kick), or a multihit that does not end until the player releases the button (like Kirby's punches, this is known as a rapid jab). There are characters that can do both types of jab, but only if they press the attack button multiple times and hold it for a single second.

The tilt attack is done by pressing the attack button with the joystick pointing in a certain direction. The direction is usually put in English: F-tilt (forward tilt, forward), D-tilt (down tilt, downward), U-tilt (up tilt, upward)

Smash is an attack that is done by pressing the attack button and moving the joystick in one direction at a time.

There is a lot of talk of Smash.

The special attack is referred to as B. The names are Neutral-B, Side-B, Up-B, and Down-B.

Air attack. The aerials in the 5 directions are known as Nair, Fair, Bair, Upair and Dair.

The Zair is a type of air attack that only certain characters can use, and is done by pressing the grab button on the GameCube controller.

Grab. It is a ground option that allows the opponent to be thrown or hit in a state of submission. The two main types of grab are standing and dash grab, the first variant has less end lag but also less range.

Throw. You can say F-throw, U-throw, D-throw and B-throw.

The blow that can be made while holding an opponent, before throwing it or releasing it is called aummel.

Some characters with disjoint grips and longer reach have the ability to use weapons such as whips or hooks to grab things. tether recovery and Zair can be used with some of these grips.

The Grappling Beam can be used to hit with the Zair and as a tether grab.

A character's special move kit includes a command grab. It has the same properties as a grab but is not used with the grab button. Command grab can be seen in the works of Wario and Bowser.

Command grabs allow you to grab while in the air, so they are an aerial alternative against an opponent who is using the shield.

The attacks of a character are set.

One way to dodge attacks is to press the shield button and move the joystick in a certain direction. The character will roll a bit to the left or right for a few moments.

Spotdodge is a way to dodge attacks by pressing the shield button and moving the joystick down to achieve intangibility for a few frames. The inclusion of spotdodge cancel in Ultimate allows you to eliminate the last frames of spotdodge's ending lag if a normal or special attack is used, which is a more used resource than in previous installments.

Air dodge is similar to roll and spot dodge, but in the air.

It is possible to do it without moving the joystick, but it is also possible to do it in the first way, but with more ending lag.

The initial dash is the sprint.

In Smash, the character with which it is clearest is Banjo, since the initial dash is done by him and in the rest of the animation the one that runs is Kazooie. The options that a character can use while in the initial dash are different from the ones he has while running, and in some characters the initial dash allows them to advance faster than the run itself, so it can be more profitable for them to move with the dash.

There are two types of jumps in Smash, with more or less height depending on how long the button is held.

Short hop is the normal hop. A short jump can be done by pressing two jump buttons at the same time, or by pressing both jump buttons and an attack button at the same time.

Air attacks used in a short jump do slightly less damage than air attacks used in a long jump. In both cases, the characters perform a small animation known as a "jump squat" before jumping, which in previous installments varied depending on the character, but in Ultimate always lasts 3 frames.

The object is item. They are projectiles that can be picked up and thrown, without the character being able to use his normal attacks until he throws them. There are some items that are generated by special moves of some characters that are allowed in competitive play, but are not allowed on the stage.

Some of these objects are only good for throwing (like Peach's turnips or Megaman's gear), but others have special properties if they stay on the ground (like Diddy Kong's banana); There are also objects that appear in the character's hands when using the movement, while others are thrown automatically and must be grabbed later. Some items are important to a character's playing style and others are unimportant, but all of them are important.

The Hitbox is the area of influence of an attack. Hitboxes deal damage to an opponent if they hit him. Hitboxes will appear in the animation of the sword when you swing it with Link, which causes damage.

Hitboxes in Smash Ultimate are shaped like a circle.

A hitbox that does not cause damage, hitstun or hitlag, but does knockback, is called a windbox. The water from Mario's Down-B is the most obvious example of a windbox, although there are other attacks that have windboxes that aren't the main part of the attack.

The Hurtbox is the area of vulnerability of a character. All characters have hurtboxes on their bodies.

The character will take damage if a foreign hitbox touches their hurtbox.

Disjoint is a hitbox that is separate from a character's hurtboxes. If I hit my opponent with a sword, I can do damage to them, but if they hit my sword, it won't hurt me. Disjointed attacks are useful for hitting safely.

They are not projectiles because they cannot be seen.

A frame of animation of Marth. You can see her hurtboxes, hitboxes, and the area of the attack that is disjoint. The source is ultimateframedata.com

The landing hitbox is the hitbox that some air attacks have only when landing with them. In some cases it is a normal hitbox, while in other cases it is a windbox.

There are examples of Toon Link's Dair.

An attack does not do the same damage every time.

The sweetspot is the part that does the most damage and the sourspot is the part that does the least damage. If the attack hits with the tip of the sword, it will do more damage than if it hits with the rest of the sword. There are some attacks in which it matters little, but in others the difference in damage is abysmal (as in the Fair of Captain Falcon and Zelda or the attacks of the aforementioned Marth); in some cases the properties of the hit are different (not only less damage but also a different angle on the knockback).

Some people call the sweetspot a "tipper" when it is on the tip of a weapon because of how famous it is for attacks. March.

Some attacks don't work with a single hit, but they are multihit. They are programmed so that most punches don't land directly at you, but instead catch you and take a bunch of punches and finally land the last one at you.

Multihit attacks are useful because it is usually easier to connect with them (they last longer, more difficult to calculate to punish them...) but sometimes the opponent may "get out" of the succession of blows before receiving the final blow (or that the attack is interrupted by something), leaving the player who used the attack vulnerable or wasting a KO or combo chance. Shulk's Up-Smash is one of the examples of multi hit attacks.

The minimum unit of time for a video game is the frame. Video game animation works like this: when you make a series of drawings on many pages of a notebook, you quickly turn the pages to make it appear that the drawing is moving, each of these pages would be a frame. Frames are used in Smash to measure the speed of attacks. There are 60 frames in every second in the video game that works at 60 frames per second.

The time it takes for a character to recover from an action is called ending lag. The rule that you cannot act before can be broken by doing another action at the right time, or a special move, which is known as "cancel" the ending lag.

This expression is used to talk about how many frames it takes to execute an action. The start up of a Little Mac punch is when he starts to move his fist until he hits the target.

Intangibility is the state in which a character takes no damage or knockback from enemy attacks. It can be in the whole body of the character, or in some specific parts. It's as if the character doesn't exist for a few frames, so nothing that happens in combat will affect them.

Invincibility is a state in which a character takes no damage or knockback from enemy attacks, unlike intangibility, which has an active hurtbox.

It can be in the whole body of the character.

Recovery is the ability of a character to return to the stage so as not to fall into the void, using all the actions that allow him to move in the air.

A player is said to be recovering when he uses those actions to return to the stage, either because he was sent out with a move or because he went out on purpose. A character's recovery ability is a key factor in their competitive viability, as it's not only important to go from distance but also to be able to do it in many different ways.

A tether recovery is the recovery of a character with a whip or rope. If the move is used in the air, the rope will catch on the edge if it is within its range, and the character will be left hanging on the edge. In some cases it is the main recovery movement of the character, as it is in its Up-B tether, but it may be in another attack such as Zair, Fair or Side-B.

Stage limits in the blastzone. If you go through a blastzone, you will die.

Stock is life. When going through a blastzone, what is lost is what is lost.

In competitive rules, time-out is when the time of a fight is up. If this happens, the one with the most lives will win the fight and the one with the lowest percentage will lose.

Punish is punishment.

Taking advantage of the opponent's mistakes and hitting him while he is vulnerable is what it is about.

Knockback is how far an attack will send the opponent. The knockback depends on several parameters, but I'm only going to explain the one that depends on movement because it has two variables.

On one side is the base knockback, the knockback that always causes an attack, while on the other side is the knockback scaling, which shows how much the knockback caused increases depending on the opponent's percentage. In other words: two moves with the same base knockback will send the opponent the same distance at 0%, but at 30% the move with more knockback scaling will send it farther; this makes attacks with a high base knockback useful at low percentages, while high scaling moves are better at high percentages. As a small anecdote that serves to explain the importance of these two parameters: on the internet you can find some videos of "at what percentage does each attack KO?"; In the case of the B-Throw (it's the clearest example), there are two videos, one in which the throw is made from the edge of Final Destination and another in which it is done from the center, and people were very surprised seeing that the "winning" character was different depending on the video (Incineroar and Ness, respectively).

The player who has been hit can't do anything for a short time. Shieldtun is the period in which the player cannot act when the blow does not connect against him.

Hitlag is when an attack hits a hurtbox and both characters are frozen in the hit animation.

Little Mac hit Pichu. Both characters suffered a lot of hitlag frames when he took the hit.

Chain multiple attacks. Taking advantage of the fact that the opponent has been at a disadvantage due to an attack to hit him with another attack before he can react is what a combo is. There is talk of "true" combos when the opponent cannot escape from them with any tool: it is usually because he is still in hitstun from the previous attack (or he has just finished and does not have time to do anything), and not even using the DI or SDI can get far enough away to prevent the next attack. The basic premise of the use of combos is to hit with a movement that is easy to connect (fast, sure) to be able to hit later with a more difficult one: the combos allow you to do a lot of damage even if the opponent makes few mistakes, or even achieve the KO (at these combos are called “kill confirm”).

Timing is a word used to talk about the right moment to do something.

The timing is tight indicates that there is a short window of time to act.

The GameCube controllers have a "c" written on them, so the C-stick is the right one.

In Smash it can be used to use attacks, but in most games it's used to move the camera. It can be changed to do tilts or special attacks depending on where it's moving.

Missinput occurs when a player fails to make a move.

He chose an option, but he did something else that was not his choice. It could be that his finger slipped.

Missed a hit. The player missed because he miscalculated and didn't hit where he should, not because the opponent read or dodged him.

Labear practices in the laboratory. When practicing a character or a technique in training mode, expression is used. It's said that a person is labbing a combo when they enter training mode and doing it over and over again until they get it consistently, but labaging can also be about researching things in search of new techniques or strategies.

Self-destruction is what it's called.

It happens when one of the players loses a stock by mistake, without the other having merit.

3 stock is when a player defeats his opponent without dying. The winner of a match in Ultimate takes three lives from his opponent and never loses a life.

0 to death is when a player takes a life from another without getting a hit. The percentage of the player who gets 0 to death doesn't matter if he didn't take a single hit from his opponent.

The 0 to death occurs whenever a player takes his rival "from 0 to death", regardless of whether he has been in a single move or just dodging his opponent's blows. There are some characters that can achieve a 0 to death with a single combo, although most are not true or require very specific circumstances (like Min Min); there are three that stand out: Luigi (with a D-throw), Ice Climbers (thanks to desync) and Diddy Kong (with an infinite combo that he can do).

The angle of the knockback can be influenced by tipping the stick in a direction.

It might be enough to escape a combo or miss the blastzone, but it doesn't change the angle completely.

The position of the character being hit will be slightly moved by tipping the joystick. The position of the character during the hitlag is unaffected by it.

A lot of this mechanic can be used to escape attacks.

Hitbox extension is a phenomenon that occurs due to hitlag, the hitbox that caused it will still be active during freeze frames, causing it to last longer than it would if it hadn't connected. It is usually seen in team fights or when there is a different hurtbox than the characters. The hitbox extension can catch some players off guard by altering the timing of dodge attacks.

Every time a shield is hit it will get smaller. If hit hard enough, they may break. If the shield breaks, the character will be stunned for a period of time, allowing slower options like charging a smash attack to be used against him. There are some moves that deal more shield damage, like Marth's Neutral-B or Donkey Kong's Side-B. All shields have the same amount of health and will break on the same hits, some are bigger overall but because of the character itself is bigger.

Jigglypuff is not vulnerable when his shield is broken, but instead shoots out and dies, because he is not left vulnerable.

King K. Rool is at the mercy of an attack.

Shield poke is the fact that the shield gets smaller with each hit, the shield actually gets smaller and covers less parts of the character. Hurtboxes that are not covered by the shield are vulnerable to attack. The mechanic is negative on the one hand, but positive on the other. Sometimes it's better to take the hit than suffer a broken shield.

The shield can be moved so that it covers the character's body. Some characters are vulnerable to this because their shield size isn't matched well to their body size, like Olimar, and at the other end is Yoshi who never gets shield poke because his shield is special.

crush is the name of the game. Pressing the controller buttons multiple times helps to escape faster.

They are vulnerable to attacks because they can't do anything except get out faster.

This state can be caused by attacks like Inkling's Side-B or normal attacks like R.O.B.'s D- throw.

Tripping can be tripping over or slipping away. The player does not fly or hitstun, but falls to the ground in a special animation.

There are some attacks that have a chance to do this at low percentages, like Kirby's D-tilt.

The word armor means armor. A character can take damage from opponent's attacks, but doesn't get knocked back or hitstun.

Normally it is thanks to special attacks like Donkey Kong's Side-B, but it can also be due to other actions such as normal attacks or even doing nothing. There are several types of armor in the game: there are some in which the attack never causes knockback (superarmor), others in which the armor drops based on the damage (%) caused by the attack (the limit is not the same in all armor, each one has its own) and armor in which the knockback of the attack is used to decide if the armor works (so that an armor can work or not against the same attack depending on what percentage it is at, as it happens in the Yoshi jump).

The hitboxes have priority. When two ground attacks collide, one of them may win. The internal value of the move and the power of the two moves determine this.

When two moves with the same priority collide and cancel each other out, it's called a collision. Both characters will be unable to move for a while, which will last longer the higher the power of the attacks.

Spike is also called meteoric and is the only one that has two different mechanics. The attacks send the opponent down, which is useful when he's offstage, because he can send him into the lower blastzone.

If your player masters edgeguarding, you can be stomped to death by the strongest spikes in the game.

Rage is a mechanic in Smash 4 that will cause more knockback if a character's attacks are higher than their own percentage is. The attacks will have up to 10% more knockback when the character is at 150% and the power of the attacks increases. Smoke can be seen coming out of the character as he rages.

Stale is a mechanic that causes a move to lose power if it hits an opponent or a shield. Other moves need to be used multiple times to regain normal power. It's useful to have a move that's stale, but be careful when using a KO move. The Hero's Side-B charges are stacked together even though they appear to be different attacks when a move is paused.

The dodge options in Smash Ultimate have a new mechanic that affects the ending lag of dodges, if it has been a while. To avoid using these options many times in a short period of time, it's important to use them only once.

You can't make an option in Smash if you're in the middle of the previous option. If you try to do something during the last few frames of the ending lag, the character will make the option at the exact moment the ending lag of the previous one ends. The number of frames of ending lag is the same as the number of frames of action, and the action will happen in the first frame if the button is pressed earlier.

The buffer mechanic allows the player to do it a little earlier than at the exact frame. The buffer allows the player to do things they don't want, but actions that the player doesn't want may also occur. It is not uncommon for things to bebuffered that cost the player a life.

inertia is the key to the movement. The horizontal movement is what a character has for having carried out an action before.

It could be from using a movement that pushes you forward, or it could be from running.

Air speed is the speed at which air moves. The maximum speed at which a character can move horizontally is known as the speed of motion. A high airspeed is useful for closing in on an opponent. King Dedede is the character with the least airspeed, while Yoshi is the character with the most.

How long does it take for a character to reach their maximum speed or change direction in the air. It is not dependent on airspeed, a character can have high acceleration and low speed, which indicates that he reaches his top speed very fast but it is not high.

It helps to get out of juggling and combo situations, as it makes it easier to dodge mid-air attacks, but it's also useful for spacing, because it allows you to use an air attack and move back quickly.

I will comment on air friction to avoid being confused with acceleration, which is a physics that is usually talked about.

Friction is the time it takes a character to slow down once the joystick is no longer moving. It's not like acceleration, where you move the joystick in the opposite direction to change direction, but rather the joystick is held still to slow down the character. Ryu and Ken have a unique mechanic where their drag value is zero if they are in the air from a jump.

The rate of fall and not the horizontal movement is whatgravity is about.

A character with a higher gravity value will reach his maximum falling speed sooner, which does not mean that his falling speed is high. If fast fall is used, it will be achieved instantly and at the maximum speed possible, which is greater than normal maximum fall speed. Gravity also has a slight effect on vertical knockback, a character with a lot of gravity will be thrown less distance upwards than a character with a lower gravity value, even if they weigh the same; this has led some players to believe that certain attacks or mechanics (such as Wii Fit's Trainer's Deep Breath or Cloud's Limit) increase their weight, when in fact they affect gravity.

Floaty/Fast faller is a term that used to describe characters based on how fast they fall.

Floaty characters fall slowly, unlike fast fallers. It's not an exact division: it's clear that Jigglypuff is a floaty character and Fox is a fast faller, but it's harder to say for those in between; it will be said according to the situation and the comparisons if a character is more or less floaty. There are some combinations that work better against floaty characters, and some that work better against fast fallers.

It is used to talk about vulnerability to attacks and to talk about when the game doesn't run smoothly because of online connection. There may be lag spikes in this case, as well as input lag.

The best way to avoid online lag is to have a good connection and connect a LAN cable to the console.

Delay is the time that occurs between the input of a command and the execution of the game. The input lag in Smash Ultimate is at least 6 frames, which can increase depending on the online connection, television and controller used.

Tech is used with three different meanings.

The first usage is "technique."

We talk about the tech of a player to talk about how easy it is for him to make plays. You can hear the expression "Sheik is a character that requires a high tech".

The second use can be translated as "technical", but in this case it refers to specific moves. There are techniques that allow you to move in a different way, or make attacks that have less ending lag, as well as techniques specific to certain characters. They are not essential mechanics but they help in combat.

I will explain the most important ones in this section.

The name of a mechanic is what the third and last use is about, it has nothing to do with the word "technique" This mechanic consists in that, if you press the shield button at the exact moment in which you are going to touch a surface (wall, floor or ceiling) while in hitstun, you will not hit the surface but "roof"; if you manage to get it right, you will stop being in hitstun and remove all the knockback you were cast with. It prevents you from bouncing off the wall and flying in the opposite direction, and it prevents your opponent from punishing you if you get stuck on the floor.

If the character is flying at a high speed, it will be impossible for him to tech even if the shield button is pressed at the right moment.

Sheik makes a move to the roof and doesn't lie on the ground.

The jump is called a wall jump.

This technique allows characters to take an extra jump by launching themselves against the wall. The player needs to move closer to the wall and the joystick in the opposite direction to do so.

Some of the characters can use wallcling. They will be able to hang onto the lever for a few moments if they hold it towards the wall.

The technique used to decrease the ending lag of an air attack is called autocancel.

The animation when you land with them is different from the animation when you land without using any attacks, but the animation when you land at certain times will be the normal landing animation. Each movement has its own window of frames. The technique allows you to make some combo true that were not true before.

Desync is a generic name given to different techniques of the Ice Climbers. There is a particularity to these three characters, they have a second entity that also hits. Normally the character and this second entity move at the same time and in the same place, but sometimes it can be forced not to; for example, each Ice Climber will make a different attack, or a Pikmin will make an attack from a place where Olimar is not.

Do you want to learn how to cut successfully? Do you want to lose fat and keep your muscle?

Sure you do.

That is one of the main goals of most people sweating next to you in the gym. If you want to show off the physique you have built in the gym, you need to shed the layer of fat that probably covers it.

This article will walk you through a complete guide to losing fat while keeping your muscle. You will not find specialized or obscure diets here. While those can work very well, this is a guide for almost everyone.

You don’t need any prior knowledge about the topic, and we will thoroughly review the basics and more advanced stuff.

If the answer to the opening question is yes, then read on for everything you need to know in an easy-to-read step-by-step guide.

Cutting is a term for losing body fat and improving your body composition to make your muscles more visible by “cutting down” on body fat. You cut by reducing your calorie intake and adjusting your diet to maximize fat loss while training for muscle gain.

It is possible to gain muscle while losing body fat, but the realistic goal is often to maintain it. The best way to maintain, however, is to train to gain.

Read more:

>> Building Muscle and Losing Fat at the Same Time – Is it Possible?

Let’s get into it, starting with diet. Everyone likes to eat, and while you won’t be doing as much of it during a cutting diet, you need to know the hows and whys of it.

Okay, so that was an exaggeration. Weight and fat loss is not all about calories, but they are the foundation of every diet.

Calories are units of energy. In nutrition and exercise, calories refer to the energy you get from the food you eat and the energy you expend. That includes the energy you spend exercising, doing any physical activity, and simply existing. Your muscles, organs, and all the processes they perform cost energy.

When we refer to calories in daily speech, what we really mean is kilocalories, or kcal. Kilo = thousand, so 1 kcal = 1,000 calories. “Calories” is casual speak. We use calories for kilocalories in this article, in order to keep it simple and easy for everyone to understand.

Most people have no problems eating too many calories, leading to fat gain over time. A caloric surplus is a viable strategy for your bulking phase, but it won’t cut it when it’s time to lose fat and get in shape.

To lose weight and fat, you need to expend, or “burn,” more daily calories than you eat. That’s the one fact of weight and fat loss you can’t get around. There are no compromises. Every single diet that allows you to lose weight does so by creating a so-called caloric deficit.

There are many ways to create a calorie deficit. Some diets do so by having you count calories, some by restricting high-calorie foods, and some by relying on foods and nutrients that make you feel full and want to eat less.

Some diets might claim to work without relying on the equation calories in minus calories out, but they do. You might not have to count calories or think about them, but at the end of the day, if your diet does not create a negative calorie balance, you won’t lose weight.

Yes, you need to eat fewer calories than you expend to lose weight and body fat. Things aren’t as simple as calories in minus calories out alone, though.

That equation does not tell you anything about what those calories do. All it means is that you will lose weight (and fat) if you burn more calories than you eat, and gain weight if you eat more than you expend. However, it does not tell you one very important thing: what that weight loss or weight gain is composed of.

Different foods with different nutrients allow you to lose or gain more muscle or more fat.

This means that yes, calories in versus calories out is the foundation on which your diet rests. It determines if you will lose weight at all. However, by basing your diet on the right foods, and by strength training, you can dramatically change the composition of your weight loss.

Now it’s time to calculate how much you should eat to lose weight and body fat. How much do you eat right now on average? How many calories do you need to eat to lose weight? Once you figure out these basic things, you can start planning your actual cutting diet. Don’t worry. It’s not very hard or time-consuming.

So, how to figure out your calorie intake?

First, you need some way to track your food intake. We used to do this with pen and paper, writing down everything we put in our mouths and counting the calories using a pocket calculator.

Now there are many food tracker apps you can download and use for this purpose. They are not 100% accurate, but any of the most popular ones should be accurate enough for your purposes.

Once you have your choice of food tracker, you need to record everything you put into your mouth that provides calories. That means pretty much everything except plain water, black coffee, tea, and zero-calorie diet soda.

You should track everything you eat and drink for several days, ideally at least a week. Most of us don’t eat the same amount of calories every day, even if it often evens out over a couple of weeks.

What you want here is the average amount of calories you eat daily. Track your food intake for a week, add the calories up, then divide the total sum by 7 to get your average daily caloric intake.

Measure and track everything you eat. Not just everything you eat, but everything you drink as well. It’s easy to forget to track your drinking, but it’s also easy to drink a lot of calories without really thinking about it.

Don’t skip anything in your tracking efforts, thinking it doesn’t count or make a difference. It does count. Even if it’s just a few calories, they all add up, and in the long run, even something like an apple you didn’t count will make a difference.

If you lie to yourself about what you put into your mouth, or if you forget to track it, your results will be the only thing suffering. Be completely honest to yourself about your food intake and track every single thing you eat and drink that contains calories.

Start by calculating how many calories you need for energy balance. That’s the caloric intake where you neither gain nor lose weight. Use our calorie calculator below to estimate your resting metabolic rate and total daily energy expenditure.

Enter your information and you should come up with a number showing how many calories you need to eat every day to maintain your body weight. Note that this is an estimated value and that you might have to adjust it once you start dieting.

If you already are weight-stable, meaning you haven’t lost or gained any weight in some time, you can simply use the average daily caloric intake you calculated in the previous step as a starting point.

To lose a kilogram of body fat, you need to burn about 7,700 more calories than you eat. That’s the amount of energy released when metabolizing a kilogram of pure body fat. Keep in mind that this is a purely mathematical model. In reality, it’s not completely accurate, for two main reasons:

That being said, it is close enough an estimate for your purposes.

Now you know how many calories you need to keep your body weight stable. Let’s look at how many you need to eat to lose weight at a good rate. What’s a good rate, by the way?

A better question would probably be “How fast should you lose weight?”

While it might be tempting to drop weight as fast as possible to get the diet over and done with, that’s not always a good idea. A number on the scale means nothing in and of itself. What matters is what that number is made up of. The faster you lose weight, the greater the risk of losing muscle mass in the process.

There is no such thing as a “starvation mode” where you eat too little to lose weight and your body starts to store fat despite being in a caloric deficit. That is a myth and just doesn’t happen. The less you eat, the faster you lose weight and body fat. However, you also increase the risk of losing muscle mass the larger the caloric deficit you create.

I recommend losing between 0.5 to 1 kilogram (or 1 to 2 pounds) of body weight per week. That rate ensures you can keep all your muscle and lose more or less only fat weight, as long as you engage in strength training and eat enough protein. Drop too much weight too fast means putting your hard-earned lean muscle at risk.

If you are very overweight or obese, then you can definitely drop weight faster than a pound of fat a week.

To lose half a kilogram of body fat in one week, you need to create an energy deficit of 500 calories per day, on average. If you want to lose a kilogram of body fat in a week, you need to create a deficit twice as large as 1,000 calories per day.

You can go faster by eating less or exercising more, thus creating a larger caloric deficit. Do so at your own risk, though, the risk of losing muscle mass.

In summary: calculate how many calories you need for your weight to be stable, then subtract 500 to 1,000 calories from that number. That number of calories is the starting point for your cutting diet.

Now, let’s take a look at the nutrients that provide you with those calories: the protein, fat, and carbohydrates in the food you eat.

A macronutrient is a term for the nutrients you need in large amounts. They are also the nutrients that provide you with energy: protein, carbohydrate, and fat. And alcohol, but alcohol calories shouldn’t make up a significant portion of your cutting diet. Micronutrients are nutrients like vitamins and minerals, that are very important for your body but don’t provide any calories.

Protein is the most important macronutrient during a cutting diet. Your body uses protein for muscle growth and to build and repair tissue.

Protein also provides you with energy, although that is not the main reason for eating it. You get four calories from each gram of protein.

The combination of weight training and protein is powerful enough to build muscle even when cutting.

A sufficient protein intake allows you to maintain your muscle mass while you lose weight and body fat. A high protein intake, combined with strength training, makes it possible to gain muscle and lose fat at the same time.

At least during the early stages of your diet.

If and when you reach really low levels of body fat, gaining muscle mass will become increasingly difficult to the point of being impossible. At that point, keeping your protein intake high becomes more and more important to just maintaining what you have already got.

Not only does protein help you maintain your hard-earned muscle mass, but it also keeps you from feeling like you are starving while on a diet. Protein keeps you full for longer than either carbohydrates or fat. This means that you will have an easier time avoiding hunger pangs and staying away from the fridge if you make protein a priority in your diet.

Read more:

>> How Much Protein Do You Need per Day to Gain Muscle?

When you eat for maintenance or for gaining weight, you don’t need all that much protein, not even as a bodybuilder. More than the commonly recommended amounts for the average person, sure, but your protein requirements decrease when you eat enough calories.

If you’re not dieting, 1.6 to 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight (0.7–0.8 grams per pound of body weight) per day is enough for most people. Eating extra protein won’t do any harm, but neither will it make you build more muscle.1

On a cutting diet, things change.

When you don’t get enough calories to maintain your body weight, your protein requirements increase. At least if you want to maintain your muscle mass. If you want to look your best as a result of your dieting efforts, maintaining muscle mass should always be a priority.

To maximize your fat loss and to avoid losing muscle mass, make sure that you get at least 2 grams per kg (0.91 grams per pound) of lean body mass.

If you are on a really strict low-calorie diet or if you are already relatively lean and looking to get shredded, you can increase your protein intake to 2.3–3.1 grams per kilogram (1.04–1.4 grams per pound) of lean body mass daily.2

You can shoot for that amount of protein even if your caloric intake isn’t super-low, just to be on the safe side. There is no harm in doing so.

The easiest option is to use our spiffy protein calculator to calculate your daily protein needs. Sit back and let it crunch the numbers for you.

One drawback of a high-protein diet is that it makes it harder to compose tasty meals. More calories from protein mean fewer from fat and carbohydrates, and fat- and carbohydrate-rich foods often taste the best. But hey, no one said getting ripped would include five-star meals. Keeping or gaining muscle mass while losing fat makes the sacrifices your taste buds endure worth it.

Read more: Protein for Strength Athletes and Bodybuilders – How Much, How Often, and What Kind

Carbohydrates and fats are your main dietary energy sources. Of course, you won’t have enough energy to completely cover your needs during a cutting diet. Because of that, your body is forced to use its stores of fat to make sure you have enough energy for your daily activities.

Compared to your protein intake, how you distribute your carbs and your fats is less important. As long as your stay within your planned caloric intake, you can pretty much compose your diet the way it suits you. There is no convincing evidence that either low-fat or low-carbohydrate diets are superior.

That being said, fat is more important than carbohydrates for one very good reason: the human body needs fat to survive. Carbs are a great source of energy to fuel your hard workouts, but you don’t need them. They are not essential for health or survival.

Let’s get into it.

Fat is an essential nutrient. You can’t cut it out completely. You need some fat in your diet to stay healthy.

Dietary fat gives you energy, allows you to absorb other nutrients like vitamins, and keeps your cells and your brain healthy. It also helps your body to produce important hormones and keeps you feeling full on a diet. Speaking of energy, you get more than double the number of calories from fat than from protein or carbohydrates, a whopping nine calories per gram.

When it comes to a cutting diet, protein and carbohydrate often get most of the attention. Rightly so, in a way, since protein is what builds muscle and carbs are the best source of fuel for your intense gym sessions. However, the don’t ignore the importance of getting enough fat.

When your main goal is losing fat, you must cut calories somewhere. Protein is essential to maintain muscle mass, and protein requirements increase during an energy deficit. That means you need to restrict your fat intake, your carb intake, or both.

Evidence suggests that diets very low in fat can reduce your testosterone levels. Since testosterone has profound effects on muscle mass, it might seem like a good idea to do anything to avoid lower testosterone levels. However, lower testosterone levels do not necessarily mean a loss of muscle mass during a diet, at least not if you engage in strength training.

In fact, several studies suggest that high-carbohydrate diets are more effective when it comes to maintaining muscle mass than diets higher in fat, as long as your protein intake remains high.3 4 5 6

Carbohydrate is the preferred fuel during a training session. Perhaps maintaining an adequate carbohydrate intake allows you to perform better in the gym, which in turn means a lower risk of losing muscle. Nothing is more anabolic than strength training, and being able to perform in the gym might trump any manipulation of your carbohydrate and fat intake. This suggests a benefit from keeping your carbohydrate intake up and reducing your fat intake if you have to choose.

At the same time, you don’t want your hormone levels to crash. It has been suggested that you don’t reduce your fat intake to below 15–20% of your caloric intake.7 Another overview recommends keeping your fat intake between 20–30% of your caloric intake.8

In the end, it mostly comes down to personal preference. Almost any kind of carbohydrate to fat ratio, from low-fat to low-carbohydrate, including any middle ground in between, is equally effective. As long as it suits you. If you don’t feel good on a low-fat diet plan, for example, change it up. If you keep your protein intake high and make sure you are in a caloric deficit, it matters little how you distribute your fat and carbs.

Read more:

>> How to Build Muscle on Keto

Let’s take a look at an example.

This is Toby. He wants to lose weight and get in shape, and is all geared up for it.

The first thing Toby did was calculate his energy requirements. He found that he needs 3,000 calories per day to be weight stable. He has also decided to go with a moderate caloric deficit, ending up at 2,500 calories per day during his diet.

Toby weighs 80 kilograms and wants to ensure he eats enough protein to maintain his muscle mass while losing fat. He even hopes to be able to gain some.

Toby determines that he needs at least 160 grams of protein per day. In the end, he decides on 200 grams for good measure. Since each gram of protein provides roughly four calories per gram, Toby has 800 calories from protein alone. That leaves 1,700 calories left to play with, in other words.

Being a moderate person, Toby settles on a moderate fat intake, 25% of his caloric intake. Twenty-five percent of 2,500 is 625, meaning Toby will eat 625 calories per day in the form of fat. Each gram of fat provides roughly nine calories, meaning those 625 kcals will be coming from 69.4 grams of fat daily. Let’s round it off to 70 grams.

Now Toby is at 1,425 calories, after planning his protein and fat intake. That leaves 1,075 calories for, you guessed it, carbohydrates.

“Cutting carbs” has become almost synonymous with losing weight for many. It is a very common notion that if you eat fewer carbs, you lose weight, and if you eat a lot of them, you gain weight. While there is some truth to that notion, it’s not because carbohydrates automatically make you gain weight. They don’t.

The real reason it’s easy for many to gain weight on a carbohydrate-rich diet is that they taste good and are easy to eat. Or at least carbohydrate-rich foods do and are. It’s easy to eat a lot of calories from pasta, pancakes, ice cream, bread, and so on. Not to mention drinking the carbs in the form of soda or juice.

That’s why it might be easy to gain weight from foods rich in carbohydrates, and that’s also the reason why many find it easier to lose weight if they cut down on carbs. Or even cut them out completely.

If you eat mostly fat and protein, you feel full quickly. Also, let’s face it, it is not as appetizing and easy to eat a lot of protein and fat as it is to eat a bowl of pasta with a nice sauce or a stack of pancakes with syrup.

Carbohydrates are the preferred fuel for intense physical work and exercise. You get 4 calories per gram of carbohydrate, and it’s a very efficient fuel for hard work. If you exercise at a high intensity, fat isn’t good enough to fuel your muscles. You can’t keep that intensity for very long if your carbohydrate stores are empty.

You can adapt to a low-carbohydrate, high-fat diet if you stay on it long enough, forcing your body to learn how to use fats from the food you eat and from your stores of body fat more efficiently. But if you eat an average diet with both carbs and fat, eating too few carbs or running out of carbs stored in your muscles might limit your performance.

As we discussed earlier in the guide, protein is the most important nutrient for maintaining or gaining muscle. You need to keep your protein intake high. Your fat intake is more malleable, but fat is an essential nutrient. You can’t cut fat out completely, or you will suffer consequences in the form of health issues, hormonal disturbances, and diminished nutrient uptake.

In other words, first, you need to find out how much protein and fat you’re going to eat. If you have followed the guide up this point, you already know this. If you have set your target caloric intake, you also know how many calories you have left to spend.

Any kind of diet that creates an energy deficit makes you lose weight and body fat.9 10That includes anything from low-fat diets to low-carb diets. Once you have determined your calories and your protein intake, it matters little how you distribute your fat and carbohydrates. As long as you burn more calories than you eat, you’re good.

Practical observations confirm this reasoning. If you look at different eras of bodybuilding, for example, you find various diets popular amongst top competitors. From extreme low-carbohydrate ketogenic diets to high-carb, low-fat diets, they all result in ripped competitors on stage come contest day.

The type of cutting diet you like the best, or maybe dislike the least, is also the best, at least for you. The diet you can stay on is the diet that works.

As long as your protein intake is high, let personal preferences guide you when deciding whether to cut fat or carbohydrates. Both methods work equally fine, as does cutting some of both, meeting somewhere in the middle. As long as you don’t go below 15–20% of your caloric intake from fat, you can mix and match your fat and carbohydrate calories pretty much any way you see fit and makes you feel and perform your best.

A review of nutritional guidelines for bodybuilders and strength athletes recommends 4–7 grams of carbohydrate per kilogram of body weight and day.11 However, that recommendation might be more suitable for bodybuilders during periods of energy balance or above rather than during a strict cutting phase.

For example, 7 grams per kilogram of body weight for someone weighing 90 kilos means 630 grams of carbohydrate. That is more than 2,500 calories from carbohydrates alone. It is unlikely that an energy intake that high leaves enough room for protein and fat as well when trying to create an energy deficit. The lower end of the 4–7 grams per kilogram of body weight and day recommendation might be applicable, but probably not the higher.

Do you remember our friend Toby? He has 1,075 calories left to spend on carbs. Each gram of carbs gives him 4 calories, which equals 268 grams a day or 3.35 grams per kilogram of bodyweight.

Since strength training is an anaerobic type of exercise, fat is less useful as fuel. Keeping your carbohydrate intake reasonably high at the expense of your fat intake might be a useful strategy. That way, you will more likely be able to perform your best in the gym.

Either way, determine your caloric intake, your protein intake, and your fat intake first. The calories you have left should come from carbohydrates, preferably quality carbohydrates.

On a cutting diet, carbohydrate quality, not just quantity, becomes an important consideration. When you’re on an energy-restrictive diet, you can’t afford to waste your carbohydrates on “empty calories” like sugary drinks and ultra-refined foods. Try to get most of your carbs from quality sources like legumes, whole grains, and natural fruit and vegetables. Those are foods that provide you with quality nutrients and fill you up with less calories.

Rather than constantly undereating, day after day, week after week, you can utilize a strategy called refeeding. A refeed is a short break from your diet, where you increase your caloric intake, preferably in the form of more carbohydrates, up to or slightly above energy balance. This strategy is psychologically beneficial and has some potential positive effects on your metabolism as well.12

When you diet for a long time, a number of negative things happen to your body.

Once you increase your caloric intake and your diet is over, most, if not all of these negative effects disappear and things go back to normal. However, you can’t do that if you’re still dieting if you plan on reaching your goals.

Refeeds lasting several days might help prevent some of the expected decreases in your resting metabolic rate. This could help mitigate or stop muscle loss during a prolonged diet. You probably shouldn’t expect single refeed days to have the same effect. One day is too short a time for any dramatic hormonal effects.

Also, don’t underestimate the psychological effects of increased food intake. It’s mentally challenging to diet constantly. Having a day now and then when you fill your plate can be a real morale boost.

In addition, even a short-term increase in your carbohydrate intake fills your muscles up with glycogen, stored energy you can then use for a few productive sessions in the gym.

The leaner you get, the more often you benefit from refeeds. At the start of a diet, if you have a significant amount of body fat, a refeed day every other week is enough. If you are overweight or obese, you don’t need them at all, at least not physiologically. As you get leaner and leaner, increase the frequency of your refeed days: once every ten days, then once a week. Once you drop below 10% body fat, you probably benefit from two refeed days every ten days.

Don’t use refeed days to binge on junk. Treat yourself to something, but don’t use your refeeds to gorge on sugar and fast food.

Increase your calories about 20% or to maintenance levels on your refeed days. If you are naturally lean, you can increase your caloric intake to a bit above maintenance levels.

The extra calories you eat on your refeed days should come mainly from carbohydrates. Depending on your everyday carbohydrate intake, this could be somewhere between 50% to 100% more than usual. If you are at a point in your cutting diet where you still have plenty of body fat, stick to the lower end of that interval.

Research shows that a diet with refeeds is as successful as a diet without refeeds. There does not seem to be any negative effects from including refeed days. If you plan on taking several refeed days in a row, be prepared for a longer diet. You might decrease the risk of losing muscle by doing so, though.

You don’t have to include refeeds in your cutting diet. It’s possible to just power on through until you’re done. The result won’t be dramatically different, everything else being equal. But if you find being able to eat more regularly without any negative effects appealing, then go for it. You might even get something positive, like maintaining your metabolic rate and your muscle mass, out of it.

An incredibly common belief is that eating many smaller meals during the day increases your metabolic rate compared to eating fewer but larger meals. This is a myth. You won’t see a difference in your resting metabolic rate or your energy expenditure based on how many meals you eat.13

For fat loss, you can pick the meal frequency you like the best as long as your total caloric intake is the same.

It still comes down to energy balance at the end of the day, but many find that they don’t compensate for a prolonged fast when they only have a few hours a day to eat everything they will eat.

There is a caveat to the “eat how often you like” mantra. You can only use so much protein from each meal to build muscle. If you cram all your food into a short window of time, you might miss out on some of the anabolic effects of your protein-rich meals.

According to current recommendations, spreading your protein intake out over your waking day might be a good idea.

Evenly distributed protein-rich meals every 3–4 hours, each providing 30–40 grams of protein, is probably ideal. This strategy lets you get all the muscle-building effects from each meal and optimizes your total protein intake to maintain or build muscle.14

Read more:

>> How Much Protein from a Single Meal Can Your Body Use to Build Muscle Mass?

To sum things up: meal frequency doesn’t matter when it comes to keeping your metabolic rate up, but you might improve your chances of keeping or building muscle by spreading your meals out over the day. At least your protein intake. Is it the 100% determining factor for a successful cutting diet? Not at all. Even intermittent fasting works fine during a diet.15 It is probably not optimal for muscular gains, but it could improve fat loss.

It is a good idea to get the majority of your calories from solid foods. Liquid calories don’t keep you full, and it is much easier to gulp down more calories than you need when you drink them.

Also, when you eat solid foods, you normally reduce your caloric intake from your other meals without even thinking about it. If you drink your calories, this compensation doesn’t happen, and you end up having eaten more calories than planned.

If you track your calories meticulously and prefer to get a large part of your energy intake and your nutrients from nutritious drinks, feel free to do so. Your results won’t suffer from it, as long as it doesn’t lead to overeating. Expect to feel less satisfied and hungrier if you do, though.

You can drink as much water as your want to, but one type of drink you should stay away from entirely is sugar-sweetened soft drinks and soda. They provide you with nothing except pure energy in the form of sugar. You don’t get any nutrients from them. When you are on a diet, you want your calories to give you the most bang for your buck. If you want soda in your diet, make it the sugar-free diet kind.

Fruit juice isn’t devoid of nutrients like soda, but it is not as good as eating fresh fruit. You get less whole fiber, which makes you feel less full. Like soda, it’s easier to drink a lot of calories in the form of juice than peel, chew, and swallow whole fruit. Fruit juice isn’t worthless but worth less than fresh, whole fruit, which should be your primary choice.

Protein shakes and dairy products like milk and yogurt can certainly be a part of your cutting diet. They provide you with high-quality protein and plenty of nutrients. Getting the majority of your calories and protein from nutritious, solid food is usually the better option, at least for keeping hunger and cravings in check.

Here are some great foods for your meal prep to get the protein, fats, and carbs you need. Also, these choices give you plenty of healthy micronutrients as well.

Fatty fish contain quite a bit more calories than lean. It’s a very healthy fat, so no problems there. Just be aware of the higher caloric content, and adjust your other fat intake accordingly, if needed.

There are, of course, many, many other examples that fit into these three lists. They are just examples to kick-start your imagination. Also, you don’t need to be 100% strict all the time. An occasional bowl of ice cream or a junk food meal will not hurt your diet.

As long as you have a foundation of healthy, nutritious foods, feel free to have an occasional cheat meal. The exception could be during the last few weeks of contest prep.

While you should base your nutritional strategy on nutritious, whole foods, there are a few supplements that can help train harder, keep muscle, and lose fat. You don’t need any supplements to get lean and ripped, but there is evidence that some can be of benefit.

Probably the number one supplement for anyone who wants to build muscle and perform better. Numerous studies support the use of creatine to enhance performance, increase strength, and gain muscle mass. These effects could be of particular value during a period of energy restriction, a natural catabolic condition.

You might regard creatine with a certain amount of skepticism since it does increase your body weight a bit. However, that body weight is not fat, and you are not trying to lose body weight for the sake of losing body weight here. You want to lose fat, not quality fat-free mass. The number on the scale is largely irrelevant unless you are trying to make a weight class for some competition.

The weight you gain from creatine comes from water retention. You don’t need to worry about looking bloated since almost all the water weight you gain from using creatine is stored inside your muscles, not under your skin. Hydrated muscles are high-performing, better-looking muscles.

A common way to take creatine is 5 grams 4 times daily for a week. This is called the loading phase and quickly fills your muscles with creatine. After that, you switch to a maintenance phase, taking 5 grams of creatine a day. You likely don’t need the loading phase, but it will take longer before your muscles are saturated with creatine if you skip it.

You will find many different types of creatine when you browse a supplement store, but creatine monohydrate is the original and best variant. It is the most researched, the cheapest, and no other form has outclassed it in any studies.

Read more:

>> Creatine: Effects, Benefits and Safety

Sometimes you need an energy boost to get you through a grueling workout. The most potent over-the-counter performance booster and pick-me-upper is caffeine. It works so well that it used to be a banned substance in the Olympics.

In addition, caffeine can increase your fat burning by 10–29%.16 That’s not as much as it might sound (if you usually burn 5 grams of fat per hour, a 10% increase means you’ll burn 5.5 grams caffeinated), but it all adds up.

When you need that little extra to perform your best, take 3 to 6 milligrams of caffeine per kilogram of body weight an hour before your training session. Pure caffeine in pill form, coffee, or caffeinated energy drinks doesn’t matter. They all work. It might be unpleasant to work out with the amount of coffee needed to provide enough caffeine for a noticeable effect, though.

Much like with creatine, we have a comprehensive article covering everything you need to know about caffeine, with references.

Getting enough vitamins, and minerals while on a strict diet can be a challenge. Older studies show that dieting bodybuilders often are deficient in several micronutrients. However, these studies are old and outdated, and they might not be reliable sources anymore.17 A recent study found that competitive bodybuilders seem to get enough of most micronutrients even during the cutting phase, although there were exceptions.18

If you want to make sure you get enough, a daily multivitamin- and mineral supplement can be a good insurance policy. Don’t pick a supplement with megadoses of any vitamin or mineral. Those can do more harm than good.

There is no evidence that supplements touted as “fat burners” actually offer any significant benefits for someone looking to cut body fat. Also, it’s one of the high-risk categories of supplements where you might end up with a banned substance or another in your system.19

I do not recommend fat burners or supplements marketed as such as part of your fat loss strategy.

I don’t consider protein supplements suitable for mention here. That’s not because they are bad for you, but simply because I don’t think of protein powders as supplements. You can use protein powders to reach your target protein intake just like you would any other protein source. They are both cheap and easy to use with good absorption and utilization.

We have articles about both whey and casein protein right here on the site.

There is little convincing evidence for the need for or even benefit from most other supplements. Omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D would be the exceptions, but that’s more for general health reasons. Health is important beyond everything else, of course, but the focus of this article is more on things that will benefit a cutting diet specifically. You can read more about omega-3 fatty acids and vitamin D, and how you can benefit from supplementing with those in our articles.

BCAA and other amino acids, like glutamine, likely offer no benefits. Even if and when they have any theoretical effects as a supplement, your protein intake during a cutting diet should be high enough that you get plenty of them all from your regular protein intake. More than enough, even. For everything BCAA, your next stop should be our comprehensive overview.

Want to learn more about dietary supplements? Which ones are worth your money, and which are questionable or useless? Check our StrengthLog’s Supplement Guide, our free guide where I review 26 of the most popular supplements.

What, and especially how much, you eat is the most important thing when it comes to losing weight. However, you’re not just interested in numbers on the scale. You want to lose fat and keep your muscle. That’s where your training plays an important part.

If you ask the average person on the street, he or she will probably tell you that the most effective way to lose weight is exercising. This not true.20

There are several reasons why doing a ton of cardio is not a good idea if you want to get muscular and ripped. There are also reasons why you shouldn’t ignore cardio completely.

No. You can control your body fat levels through diet alone. A caloric deficit of, for example, 500 calories per day, results in just about the same amount of fat loss regardless of whether cardio is a part of that day or not.

Considering these drawbacks, maybe it’s a better idea to just skip cardio altogether? Then you could focus on getting in shape through diet and strength training alone. You could do that, but hold on. There are benefits to be had from including some cardio in your cutting program as long as you keep the amount and intensity of the cardio in check.

Low-intensity cardio doesn’t take much effort. You can keep going for a long time and not get winded. It also doesn’t cut into your ability to recover from your strength training sessions too much. This category of cardio is where you find power-walks or light biking.

If you have the time, low-intensity cardio is the type of cardio you should focus on when you aim for fat loss and retaining as much muscle mass as possible.

High-intensity cardio is the opposite of low-intensity cardio. You can’t keep it up for long. If you can, then you’re not doing high-intensity cardio, unless you are an endurance athlete who has trained specifically to be able to maintain a high intensity for a long time.

High-intensity efforts burn a lot of calories quickly. That might make it seem like the ideal choice: high effort, but you don’t have to do it for very long. Unfortunately, high-intensity cardio does have its fair share of drawbacks. It makes it harder for you to recover, and the risk of injury is fairly high, especially if you use running as your cardio of choice.

Moderate-intensity cardio is probably the least useful type of cardio for cutting. Short moderate-intensity workouts won’t burn any appreciable amounts of energy. Long, moderate workouts burn calories, but they are more suitable for endurance athletes. It is the type of training that can hamper your strength training results. They also eat into your recovery ability and can result in injuries.

Read more:

>> Is Cardio Bad for Your Strength Training?

If you choose to incorporate cardio as part of your cutting plan, you have four options when to do it.

Does it matter? Maybe. Probably not as much as many claim, though.

Despite plenty of research, there is currently no evidence for or against any specific order of strength and aerobic training. Some studies have shown a so-called interference effect by performing either strength training or cardio first. Others have shown the opposite, with cardio before strength training being the best option for muscle mass gains.21

If you want to do your cardio and strength training in the same workout, that’s fine. Not everyone has the time (or desire) to split things up.

You can perform either your cardio or your strength training first in the workout. There isn’t much support for the claims that doing cardio first will hamper your strength or muscle mass gains. Taking your cardio to the point of exhaustion will of course mean that you don’t have much energy left for lifting. That’s a bad idea. Low to moderate intensity cardio should be fine, though.

Doing your cardio after your strength training is also okay. An argument could be made for the notion that you should rest and eat following a strength training session to give your muscles what they need to recuperate and grow. However, eating or drinking protein an hour or two after your workout has the same effect as immediately after. Just don’t run a marathon after your leg workout or something like that.

Want to get things over with and do both cardio and strength training during the same workout? Go for the order that you like the best. Cardio before a leg session might not be the best idea, though. While upper body strength performance is not usually affected by prior cardio, lower body strength can be, unless we’re talking about power walk levels of cardio or below.

If you have the time and opportunity, place your cardio away from your gym sessions. You can do them on separate days or during the same day but with a few hours in between workouts. There isn’t anything negative about doing so compared to combining the two types of training in the same workout. If that’s your thing, go for it.

Few myths about cardio for fat loss are more pervasive than the notion that fasted cardio leads to greater fat loss. No, you didn’t misread. I did say myth. Science does not support that fasted cardio makes you lose more fat or lose it faster.

Without a doubt, fasted exercise increases fat oxidation more than exercising after a meal.22 That’s where the misconception comes from. This temporary increase in fat oxidation does not seem to make any difference when it comes to how much body fat you actually lose.23 24

We suggest you do your cardio when you feel like it, when you have the time, and when you perform the best. Fasted cardio does not make you lose more fat. If you prefer fasted cardio, go for it, but don’t expect any different results from doing it later in the day after eating.

What you do in the gym is the most important thing to keep your muscle mass on a cutting diet. You lose fat mainly through your dietary efforts, but nothing tells your body to hang onto, or even build, muscle, even if your caloric deficit is quite large.

Just like when you plan your diet, you have a lot of freedom when designing your resistance training protein for cutting. There is little evidence that any specific training split or training frequency is superior, even if we’re talking about losing fat and building muscle at the same time.25

Any program tailored for increasing strength and muscle mass will work fine if it fits your individual needs, schedule and recovery ability.

A good workout routine for cutting contains both compound lifts and isolation exercises. Compound exercises are time-efficient and great for keeping your strength up, and isolation movements allow you to target specific muscle groups.

Read more:

>> 80+ Strength Training Programs & Workouts

>> 15 Best Bodybuilding Programs: Beginner to Advanced

The main thing to remember is that you train with weights to build muscle, or at least to keep it.

Don’t treat your sessions in the gym as a fat-burning exercise. A lot of people drop the heavy weights and switch to doing a high reps workout routine using light weights when they start a cut.

That’s the last thing you should do. All that would accomplish is making it harder to keep your hard-earned muscle. Refrain from treating your strength training as fat-burning exercise. You have cardio for that.

Read more:

>> How Many Calories Do You Burn Lifting Weights?

Your diet and your cardio, if you choose to do cardio, make you lose body fat. Your strength training is what builds muscle, and you should perform it with that goal in mind.

Let’s say you are still a beginner, perhaps in the first year of your training career. In that case, it’s probably not a good idea to copy the training program of a pro bodybuilder preparing for Mr. Olympia. You are likely better off doing full-body workouts three times per week or following an upper/lower split four days per week. I suggest you go with something along those lines.

I recommend strength training at least three times per week in a progressive manner. Don’t go to the gym aimlessly. Follow a structured program and keep track of your progress.

Since you will be in an energy deficit, you won’t have your usual drive or energy in the gym, at least not after some time on your cutting diet. Try not to let that stop your lifting efforts. Resist decreasing the weights you use as long as possible. Intense training tells your body to hang on to your muscle mass. Once you start to get ripped, if you want to take your diet that far, you will find it hard or impossible not to decrease the weights you use. But resist it for as long as possible.

You also need to track your recovery. Balance your progression with your ability to recover from your workouts. If you find yourself not recovering enough, adjust your training. Cut back a bit on your training volume before you cut back on your training intensity.

In summary, feel free to use your favorite hypertrophy- or strength-focused training program while cutting. Preferably one tailored to your level of experience, of course.

A workout log is the best way to keep track of your progress.

Progressive overload is the key to consistent gains over time. To continue making progress, you must gradually increase the demands on your muscles, whether you’re on a lean bulk or a cut.

A training log helps you stay consistent, set and achieve specific goals, track your progress over time, identify patterns in your training, and hold yourself accountable to your fitness goals.

StrengthLog is 100% free to download and use as a workout tracker and general strength training app. All the basic functionality is free – forever. It’s like a personal trainer in your pocket. You’ll also find many training programs to help you get the best results.

Download StrengthLog for free and keep track of your weights and reps. Train to gain, and you increase your chances to maintain.

There you have it! Our complete guide to cutting. If you follow these recommendations, getting in shape and reaching your fitness goals should be a breeze.

Of course, this is not the only way to get the desired results. The method in this guide might not be for some, and that’s fine. You can lose fat using any number of diets and exercise plans. I wrote this one as a good starting point: the entire process is easy to follow and designed to suit as many people as possible.

Now cut those calories, hit the weights, pound the protein, and get ready to shred some fat the easy way!

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Further reading:

Main usage of Avistal 10mg Tablet is for Indigestion.

Avistal 10mg Tablet

Indigestion means discomfort of mainly the upper part of your stomach which may also have other symptoms such as stomach pain, bloating, feeling full, etc. Avistal 10mg Tablet improves the movement of food in your stomach and gut (intestine). This relieves these symptoms and helps in the proper digestion of food.

Take Avistal 10mg Tablet as prescribed by the doctor. Think about what foods trigger indigestion and try to avoid them; eat smaller, more frequent meals; try to lose weight if you are overweight, and try to find ways to relax. Do not eat within 3-4 hours of going to bed.