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How to start your first cut.

By Mike Hendriks · Published 31 Jul 2026 · 4 min read

Start a cut by making four decisions before day one. Pick a pace of 0.5–1% of your bodyweight per week — about ten weeks for most first cuts. Fix a small set of meals so eating requires no daily decisions. Walk 10,000 steps a day instead of adding punishing cardio. Then track whether you executed the plan — not calories. If you did the day, the fat loss follows; if you didn't, no spreadsheet saves it.

01Pick a pace you can hold

Most first cuts fail in the first two weeks because the deficit is too aggressive. Halve your calories and you will lose weight fast — along with muscle, energy and patience. Then appetite wins, the weight comes back, and you learn the wrong lesson: that you lack discipline. You didn't. The pace was wrong.

Aim to lose 0.5–1% of your bodyweight per week. At 90 kg, that's roughly half a kilo to under a kilo a week — slow enough to keep your training productive and your muscle on, fast enough to see real change in the mirror by week four. Plan for about ten weeks. Crash deficits also teach rebound: the harder you restrict, the harder the snap-back when the diet ends. A moderate pace keeps you fed enough to train, think and stay pleasant to live with — which is what adherence actually looks like. A pace you can hold for ten weeks beats a pace you can survive for ten days.

02Fix the plan before day one

The worst time to decide what to eat is when you're hungry. So don't. Make every decision once, before day one, and spend the cut executing instead of negotiating:

• Choose 3–4 repeatable meals you actually like and can eat all week.
• Set portions once, from your plan — not from your appetite at dinner.
• Prep on Sunday so the week is already cooked and in containers.
• Schedule one free meal a week. Planned, on the calendar, guilt-free.
• Set a daily step target — 10,000 is a solid default.
• Pick your weigh-in moment: every morning, after the bathroom, before food.

That's the whole diet. No food is moral or immoral here; some meals fit the plan, and the rest wait for the free meal slot.

03Track execution, not calories

Beginners burn out trying to log every gram. You don't need to. If your meals and portions are fixed, the calories are already decided — the only question left each day is: did you execute?

So track that. Photograph each meal before you eat it. Weigh in every morning and read the seven-day trend, never a single day — daily weight swings on water and salt, but the trend tells the truth. Take one progress photo a week, same spot, same light. Screenshot your step count at night.

Four checks, two minutes. A beginner who executes an imperfect plan for ten weeks gets leaner. A beginner who counts calories perfectly for nine days does not. Consistency beats precision — pick the one you can repeat.