The day has finally come! You finished your cut and you reached your goals! That’s great! But how do you land this plane smoothly and exit your cut phase without going overboard in the kitchen and bingeing?
Anyone who has lost a good amount of weight and reached their goal has probably had to fight off the urge to eat a horse directly after their weight loss phase was over. This urge tends to lead to binges and derail the progress that you’ve worked so hard for.
Transitioning out of a cut is an art that requires just as much discipline and planning as the cut itself.
This article will teach you how to exit a cut while maintaining your progress and building a healthier relationship with food.
Understanding Why Post-Cut Bingeing Happens
The Body’s Natural Response to a Deficit
Understanding why it’s challenging to exit a cut without bingeing involves recognizing the body’s natural responses to prolonged calorie restriction.
When you’ve been in a cut (calorie deficit), your body experiences physiological changes. Your hunger and fullness hormones change. Leptin (fullness) decreases and ghrelin (hunger) increases, making you feel hungrier.
Due to the lower amount of calories being consumed, your metabolism adapts and slows down to conserve energy, making you crave high-calorie foods.
On top of feeling hungrier and craving foods, constant calorie restriction can lead to an “all-or-nothing” mindset with food. The mental fatigue that comes from waiting for your post-cut indulgent foods can make these foods feel irresistible.
This combination of feeling hungrier, craving foods, and waiting on foods that feel irresistible sets the stage for overeating or a binge once the cut ends.
The Psychological Impact of Restriction
The psychological effects of restriction can make it difficult to exit a cut without bingeing, as the scarcity mindset leads to overindulgence.
The scarcity mindset makes you fixate on “forbidden” foods and will likely lead to overeating when those foods are reintroduced.
Social pressures from celebrations or missed meals with friends often exacerbate this situation as well.
Lack of a Post-Cut Plan
Everyone knows that failing to plan is planning to fail. It’s no different with post-diet planning.
Many people focus solely on hitting their goal weight without planning for what comes next. This is only natural but without a structured post-cut plan, many individuals struggle to exit a cut without bingeing, making it easy to fall into old eating patterns.
This is how plenty of people gain the weight they’ve just lost or more!
How to Exit a Cut Without Bingeing
Step 1: Create a Post-Cut Plan Before You End Your Deficit
To successfully exit a cut without bingeing, it’s crucial to treat the transition period out of a cut like it’s a part of the diet phase. Your cut isn’t over until you’ve successfully transitioned out of the dieting phase.
Plan your maintenance calories, meals, and workout schedule ahead of time.
How to Calculate Maintenance Calories
Use your current weight and activity level to estimate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) with a TDEE calculator online.
Start by increasing calories gradually by about 100–200 calories each day per week
For example: If your TDEE is 2,500 calories and you’ve been eating 2,000 a day, transition to 2,200 a day in Week 1, then 2,400 a day in Week 2, until you reach maintenance. Then remain at maintenance for a week or two to let your hormones return to normal levels.
For a free TDEE calculator, I like to use this one by Mind Pump.
And the foods you use to increase your calories back to maintenance should be the same foods you ate during your cut, just eat more of them. If you ate healthy meals to lose weight, increase the sizes of those healthy meals to transition back into your maintenance calories.
I like to eat a couple of cups of rice topped with olive oil and salt with my meals as I exit a cut. It may sound bland but believe me, it tastes amazing when you’ve been in a calorie deficit for weeks on end.
You do NOT want to increase your calories with junk foods!
Step 2: Gradually Reintroduce Foods You’ve Avoided
After you’ve increased your calories for a while by eating more of the healthy foods you’ve already been eating during your diet, you may start to introduce the more indulgent foods that you cut out during your diet phase.
Just don’t dive into the deep end with these foods, you’ll want to slowly add these back into your diet the same way you just increased your calories.
Even though you increased your calories with whole natural foods from your diet and you ate at maintenance levels for a week or two, which should kill your hunger and cravings, it’s still best to approach the less healthy foods with some caution.
If you’ve been avoiding pizza or desserts, start with a small portion of the food alongside your regularly balanced meals. Eat your balanced meal first, then eat the indulgent food last. This should help prevent overeating.
Remind yourself that you can enjoy these foods at any time in moderation. This mindset helped me curb my scarcity mindset.
Once you understand that food is in abundance and that you can have whatever food you want whenever you want, you start to realize that you don’t have to dine out to all your favorite spots each day of the week. Tell yourself that the restaurant or delicious item you want isn’t going anywhere and will be there when you want to get it at a later date.
This is how you practice moderation, and for a more in-depth guide on how to eat with moderation you can read my article: The Secret to Long-Term Success: How to Master Moderation with Food Without Feeling Deprived.
Step 3: Prioritize Protein and Whole Foods
As you increase your calories, protein will help you with satiety and build muscle. Whole foods such as vegetables, fruits, lean meats, and legumes will keep you full and prevent you from overeating high-calorie junk foods.
Try to keep your meals balanced by aiming for a protein source, complex carb, and a healthy fat in each meal.
For more on balancing meals, you can read this article here: How to Eat Healthy Without Tracking Calories.
Step 4: Practice Mindful Eating
Mindful eating helps you tune into your hunger cues and prevent overeating. It’s highly underrated, and most people don’t practice it because we live in a world addicted to our TVs and phones.
How to Eat Mindfully
- Eat slowly.
- Eat without distractions (like phones, TVs, books, podcasts, etc. People are okay though.).
- Rate your hunger before and after meals to see if you’re eating out of habit or a true need.
Avoiding Triggers and Staying on Track
Identify Your Binge Triggers
Common triggers may include stress, social events, boredom, or certain foods. Reflect on all the situations that make you overeat.
Once you identify what triggers you to overeat, look into setting yourself up and your environment to avoid those triggers.
Set Realistic Expectations
It’s normal to feel hungrier or gain a small amount of water weight as you increase calories. In most cases, the weight you gain after your cut is from having more food content in your intestines.
Focus on long-term trends like your strength in the gym or energy improvements rather than the short-term fluctuations.
Stay Accountable
Track your meals or your progress for the first few weeks after cycling out of a cut. What gets measured, gets managed.
You can also share your goals with a friend or coach to stay motivated or add accountability towards your progress.
Reframe Slip-Ups
This may be the biggest key to your success with not only dieting but life. Learn to reframe your mistakes. Use them as learning opportunities. What triggered it and how can you prevent it next time?
Remember, one overeating episode doesn’t undo all your progress and it definitely doesn’t define who you are.
Building Long-Term Habits for Sustainable Results
Focus on Maintenance, Not Perfection
Maintenance isn’t about strict rules, it’s about consistency and balance. The goal is to maintain a healthy weight and lifestyle.
Celebrate the small wins like sticking to your routine or hitting your protein targets.
Celebrate the fact that you made it through your dieting phase and are now entering back into a maintenance phase. Even if you have more dieting phases to do, you’re still one step closer to your ultimate goal!
There are always positives to every situation, it’s up to you to find them and embrace them.
Reassess and Adjust Regularly
It’s good to recalculate your maintenance calories and revisit your habits every 4-6 weeks.
As you build muscle, lose fat, or increase activity, your calorie needs may change as well.
Embrace the Journey
Fitness is a lifelong process. Transitioning out of a cut is just one phase of many in this process.
Embrace the road to a better, healthier you. If you look hard enough, even through failure you will find the answers to your problems and sticking points. View your maintenance phase as a time to explore new goals, like improving your strength or flexibility. Use it as a reflection period to reassess your cut phase.
Key Takeaway: Plan, Adjust, Sustain
Exiting a cut without bingeing successfully is more than just hitting your goal weight. It’s about transitioning mindfully, maintaining your progress, and building habits that support a healthier lifestyle. By creating a plan, reintroducing foods gradually, and prioritizing whole foods, you can navigate this phase with confidence.
Remember, it’s normal to face challenges like increased hunger or social pressures, but with awareness and accountability, you can stay on track.
Sustainable fitness isn’t about perfection; it’s about consistency, self-reflection, and celebrating small wins. Each phase of your journey brings opportunities to grow, learn, and build a better you.
What’s been your biggest struggle after finishing a cut? Share your thoughts below—we’d love to help!
Ready to transform your fitness? Grab your FREE copy of The Keys to Fitness: Beginner Blueprint—a $15 value packed with everything you need to start strong! Download it today!
Share this article!
Follow us on Social Media!
