Cut, bulk, or maintain: choosing your next phase
Most people don’t choose a phase. They drift — eating a little less when they feel soft, a little more when they feel small, never fully committing to either. The result is months of effort that net out to roughly nothing. The fix is to pick a phase on purpose and run it.
Start with body fat
The single most useful input is your current body fat, because it caps your options:
- Higher body fat (men roughly 18%+, women 28%+): cut first. Bulking from here mostly adds fat, and you’ll carry it for months. Get leaner, then build.
- Lean (men roughly 10–12%, women 18–22%): you have room to bulk. Adding muscle is the point, and a bit of fat gain is an acceptable cost.
- In between: either works — decide based on which you care about more right now, and commit for long enough to matter.
Then match the phase to the goal
Cut when the goal is to lose fat. Eat in a moderate deficit, keep protein high, and expect to lose muscle-sparing amounts of weight — roughly 0.5–1% of body weight per week. Faster isn’t better; it just costs you muscle.
Bulk when the goal is to build muscle. Eat in a small surplus — “lean bulk,” not “dirty bulk.” A slow, controlled gain adds muscle with minimal fat, which means you spend less time cutting later.
Maintain when the goal is to consolidate, recover, or simply live for a while — around a big event, a stressful stretch, or after a long cut. A maintenance or diet-break block is not wasted time; it’s what makes the next hard phase sustainable.
The part people skip: end it deliberately
Choosing a phase is half of it. The other half is knowing when it’s done:
- A cut ends when you hit your target leanness — or when progress and performance say you need a break. Long cuts should include planned diet breaks.
- A bulk ends when you’ve added the muscle you were after, or when fat gain starts outpacing muscle. Chasing the scale up indefinitely just buys a longer cut.
- A maintenance block ends when you’re recovered and ready to commit to the next real phase.
Make it a plan, not a vibe
Cut, bulk, diet break, repeat — that’s the actual shape of long-term progress. The mistake is running it by feel. Fit Phase puts the whole sequence on one timeline: each phase with a start, an end, and a target, and a weekly check-in that tells you when a phase has done its job.
Not sure where to start your numbers? Run the macro calculator for a baseline, then join the waitlist to turn it into a plan.