Cut planner with diet breaks
Plan a cut from your body fat to a target: the weight you finish at, how many weeks it takes, and where 2-week maintenance breaks fit.
Finish weight
77.4 kg
if lean mass is kept
Weeks dieting
13
Total length
15 weeks
including breaks
- Weeks 1–8: deficit, 85 → 80 kg
- Weeks 9–10: maintenance calories, same training
- Weeks 11–15: deficit, 80 → 77.4 kg
How this was calculated: Finish weight = lean mass ÷ (1 − target body fat). The rate is a percentage of current weight, so weekly loss shrinks as you get lighter. Breaks hold your weight flat on paper; expect 0.5–1kg of water and glycogen back, which drops when the deficit resumes.
Estimates for healthy adults, not medical advice. If you are pregnant, have a medical condition or a history of disordered eating, speak to a qualified professional first.
Worked example
An 85kg lifter at 18% body fat cutting to 10% ends around 77.4kg if lean mass is held. At 0.75% a week that is about 13 weeks of dieting. With a 2-week maintenance break every 8 weeks, the cut runs 15 weeks in total: 8 weeks diet, 2 weeks maintenance, 5 weeks diet.
Common questions
- Do diet breaks work?
- In the MATADOR trial (Byrne et al., 2018), men with obesity who alternated 2 weeks of dieting with 2 weeks at maintenance lost more fat than those who dieted continuously. Later trials, such as ICECAP (Peos et al., 2021) in resistance-trained adults, found similar fat loss either way. The best-supported benefit is psychological: a planned break makes a long cut easier to finish.
- Why does my weight go up during a break?
- More carbohydrate means more stored glycogen and water — often 0.5–1kg. It is not fat, and it comes off once the deficit resumes.
- How lean is too lean?
- Below roughly 8% for men or 15% for women, hormones, sleep, mood and training usually suffer. Bodybuilders spend days there, not months.
- How do I know I am keeping muscle?
- Track the top set on your main lifts. If strength holds while weight falls, you are almost certainly losing mostly fat.
Run the cut with weekly checks on rate of loss and top-set strength.
ShreddedAI starts from these numbers, then learns from what you actually log — and tells you why every time it changes something.
See your free plan