Step 1: Establish Your Baseline
Before cutting calories, track your food intake for one week without intentionally changing anything. Log everything honestly. This baseline reveals your actual caloric intake, not your estimated one — and for most people, the number is higher than expected. This is valuable data: it shows you where the hidden calories are.
Step 2: Set Your Deficit Correctly
Input your height, weight, age, and activity level into your app's calorie calculator. Take the suggested maintenance calories and subtract 300–500 to create your deficit target. Don't go lower than 500 calories below maintenance unless supervised — aggressive deficits accelerate muscle loss and metabolic adaptation.
Set your protein target: 1.8–2.2g per kg of bodyweight. This is your most important number during a cut.
Step 3: Log Everything, Including the Inconvenient Calories
The tablespoon of olive oil. The coffee with milk. The handful of nuts. These "invisible" calories are where most diet efforts fail — not in the main meals but in the accumulated unlogged extras. Log for one full month without exceptions to understand your true intake patterns.
Step 4: Review Weekly, Not Daily
Body weight fluctuates daily by 1–3kg due to water, food volume, and hormones. Looking at daily weight changes produces anxiety and misleading conclusions. Review your 7-day average weight trend every Sunday. Is it moving down by 0.5–1kg per week? You're on track. Is it flat or rising? Your actual intake is likely higher than your logged intake.
Step 5: Add Resistance Training to Your Programme
Calorie restriction alone causes both fat and muscle loss. Adding resistance training preserves muscle, which preserves metabolic rate, which makes the deficit sustainable long-term. Log your strength training sessions in the same app as your nutrition — this integrated view shows you whether you're fuelling your training adequately.
Step 6: Adjust Every 4 Weeks
As you lose weight, your maintenance calories decrease (you're lighter and require less energy). Every 4 weeks, recalculate your TDEE in the app based on your current weight and adjust your calorie target accordingly. Apps like Fitblues prompt these recalculations automatically so you never unknowingly drift into maintenance when you think you're in a deficit.
