Should You Cut or Bulk First? (2025 Update)

Bodybuilding is about building your body. Whether you do it to maintain your fitness levels, climb Everest, run the marathon, or be a competitive bodybuilder is up to you.
––Ronnie Coleman

Useful Links: 2022 article

The million-dollar fitness question.

The most effective choice for you depends on three factors:

1. Your current body fat level
2. How skilled you are at cutting and bulking
3. Which phase will benefit your physique the most in the long run

 
To learn about each one in detail, read on.

​When should you not cut or bulk?

If you’re overweight or have obesity because of excessive body fat, you don’t need to cut or bulk just yet.

Instead, focus on alternating fat loss phases with consolidation phases until you achieve a healthier body fat level for your size.

During fat loss phases, you’ll be in a deficit and actively working towards reducing fat.

Technically, this is the same as a cut, but the point is that you’re not planning a bulk afterwards just yet.

During consolidation phases, you’ll practise maintaining your new low weight; enjoy some extra food flexibility by increasing calories to your estimated maintenance; and recharge your motivation when it starts to dwindle.

You can use a combination of two tools to assess your current body fat level:

• The BMI
• The waist-to-height ratio

 
While I believe the BMI can provide helpful data for a lot of people, it isn’t designed to capture the difference between muscle mass and body fat.

So, if you carry more muscle than the average individual of your size, you could be classified as “overweight” based solely on the BMI, even if your body fat level doesn’t pose a risk to your health.

The waist-to-height ratio can fill this gap.

Thus, taking the two together, you can paint a more accurate picture of your current body fat level and of how it may be impacting your health status.

In general:

• If your BMI falls within the “overweight” or “obese” category, and
• Your waist-to-height ratio is above 0.5

 
You’re at a greater health risk due to your current body fat.

In this case, work on reducing this first before considering cutting and bulking phases.

What if you don’t need to worry about your body fat level?

While there are multiple factors involved in the final decision on whether to cut or bulk, most people will likely benefit from cutting first.

These are the five main reasons why:

#1. It teaches you skills that will bolster bulking, too.

If you’re asking yourself whether to cut or bulk first, you’re probably a bit of a beginner who’s trying to figure out their training and nutrition, or you haven’t trained and/or managed your nutrition like this for a long time.

In either case, you need to either learn how to cut and bulk effectively or at least dust off the cobwebs.

In order to cut, you’ll enter a calorie deficit––the smallest calorie budget you’ll ever have.

The smaller the calorie budget, the more challenging it is to hit your macros without going over. So, when you master your macros and food choices on a cut, it’ll be far easier to maintain these habits at maintenance calories or in a surplus.

This will vastly improve your future bulks for two reasons.

The first is that hitting your protein target will become second nature, which will in turn promote faster muscle growth.

The second is that sticking to your surplus calories will feel like a walk in the park compared to a deficit. This decreases your chances of overdoing it and gaining fat too fast, which will cut your bulking phase short (pun intended).

In addition to nutrition-related skills, you’ll get better at lifting weights with proper form and within close proximity to failure. Gaining this proficiency will help you build more muscle in a future bulk because, the greater your training quality, the better the results you get from it.
 
If you want to learn more about the three key variables of an effective muscle-building program, read this article.

Finally, this is less obvious, but cutting first will also lead to less fat gain in a bulk.

Think of it this way: In one universe, you spend three months honing your training during a cut, then bulk and gain 5 lbs, split into 4 lbs of muscle and 1 lb of fat.

In a parallel universe, you bulk first and gain the same 5 lbs, but your training is subpar because you didn’t have three months of practice under your belt. As a result, in this scenario you’re adding 3 lbs of muscle and 2 lbs of fat.

I know which universe I’d rather live in.

#2. You can lose fat and build muscle at the same time in a deficit.

If you’re new to cutting and bulking, you’re likely in a prime position to build muscle and lose fat simultaneously in a calorie deficit, which will get harder and harder to do the longer you’re in the physique development game for.

This is called body recomposition, and it’s exactly what I did with my non-binary client Sam a couple of years ago, leading up to their top surgery.

You can listen to their interview here.

#3. It gives you the confidence to commit to a bulk.

Straight talk: There is no way to only add muscle mass during a bulk.

A little bit of fat accumulation is the “price to pay” for a faster rate of growth, even when you’re doing everything right because you follow my obviously awesome advice.

For this reason, many people don’t want to bulk because they’re afraid of gaining fat, of not being able to lose it afterwards, or both.

But, if you go through a successful cutting phase, you’ll prove to yourself that you’re capable of losing any fat you might gain in the process of bulking up.

This can help you truly commit to a bulk instead of pulling a 2019 Nikias and telling yourself that you’re “bulking”…

… When in fact you’re increasing calories by a measly 100 and then dropping them back down a week later because you freaked out when the scale went up half a pound. Embarrassingly, I was stuck in this wheel-spinning cycle for at least six months after my first cut.
 
But that’s why my clients work with me, among other reasons: I made those mistakes and learnt from them, so they don’t have to.

#4. It gives you a kick up the arse.

I don’t know about you, but, at the end of my first cut in 2018 (which I documented in the first blog post I’ve ever published on my website), I looked at my physique in the mirror and thought, “Wow, I’m small.”

At the time, I’d only been lifting and studying the science of physique training and nutrition for four months, so I wasn’t totally bought into the concept of a bulk yet.

I was also still dealing with some disordered eating thoughts and an irrational yet powerful fear of weight gain, courtesy of the eating disorder I’d suffered from in my teenage years. This made me even more hesitant.

However, when I realised how little muscle I actually had at the low bodyweight I achieved by the end of that cut, I was persuaded at last that a bulk was the right move for my goals.

It took me six months to get around to doing it properly, but that’s why you hire a coach: so you don’t have to wait as long as I did to get results.

Would that I’d been so wise at the time, but alas…

#5. It helps you bulk for longer.

Bulking for a long time is crucial because muscle growth is far slower than fat loss.

To give you some perspective on the difference, a lot of people have the potential to lose anywhere from 6 to 12 lbs in a three-month cut, which can take their physique from “average” to “how the hell did you do that and can you teach me please????”

When a client is already lean, three months may be the maximum amount of time I’d keep them in a cutting phase. On the other hand, three months is the bare minimum I usually recommend for a bulking phase.

Thus, the longer you can bulk for without gaining excess body fat, the better.

Moreover, the most common reason why people want to stop bulking is that they’re no longer comfortable with their appearance.

Thus, if you’re already too close to the maximum bodyweight you’re ok with, your bulk won’t be as long or as productive as it could be otherwise.

For these reasons, if you’re in a leaner body to begin with thanks to a prior cut, you have a longer runway to make more gains.

One reason why you don’t need to cut before you bulk is because being leaner supposedly improves your partitioning ratio.

The “partitioning ratio” is a fancy way of saying that, if you bulk when you’re leaner, you’re primed to gain a greater percentage of muscle than fat, with the ratio shifting in the opposite direction as you get less and less lean.

This is a myth that’s been debunked in the evidence-based fitness space in the last couple of years. I covered it in a podcast interview with Dr. Eric Trexler, which you can listen to here.

How long should you cut for?

When I’m planning a client’s first cut, my goal is to take them to the bottom of their “comfort” bodyweight range, then build up to or slightly above the top.

This “comfort” bodyweight range is a spectrum of a few pounds within which:

• You like the look of your physique well enough
• You feel well-nourished
• Training and life performance is good
• Sleep is as good as it gets, and
• You don’t have much food focus or stress around nutrition and fitness beyond what would be considered the norm for you.

 
As an example, my own “comfort” bodyweight range used to be 105 to 115 lbs at 5ftNothing.

The more weight I lost under the 105-lb mark, the greater my hunger, food focus, and irritability; and the worse my energy levels, sleep, and digestion.

In addition, I’d become more and more critical of my appearance, and my relationship with food and body image would worsen. These are standard symptoms of getting below your “comfort” bodyweight range.

Therefore, I’d only get leaner than 105 lbs to achieve a very cool but temporary physique for a photoshoot.

On the other hand, the more weight I gained above the 115-lb mark, the less confidence I had in my physique and the more uncomfortable I’d get with continuing a bulking phase.

Therefore, I tended to start bulking at around 105 lbs, then diet down again once I got to 118 lbs at most.

Interestingly, I weighed around 100-101 lbs by the end of my first cut in 2018. However, while I was below the above-mentioned 105-lb mark, I wasn’t struggling at such a low bodyweight as I would from 2021 onwards.

This is because in 2018 I was in a smaller body, but I wasn’t lean; I had less muscle and more fat at the same weight than I did in 2021.

So, while I’ve been referring to this range as “comfort” bodyweight range, the reason why you may incur negative side effects below it is that you carry too little body fat, not that your weight is too low.

I only prefer the term “bodyweight range” because there’s no particularly accurate way of measuring body fat, whereas we’re all familiar with stepping on a scale and letting that number dictate our mood for the rest of the day.

Cue awkward laughter.

Anyway, back to my story: after that initial cut, my first bulk lasted a year and a half, and I built up to 118 lbs before dieting down to 102-103 lbs from October 2020 to April 202 for my first photoshoot.

I’m bulking again now and currently averaging 116-117 lbs, but I’ve built so much more muscle over the last seven years that my muscle-to-fat ratio at this bodyweight has completely changed:

I weighed 114.6 lbs on the left (2018) and 116.2 lbs on the right (this April), but I carried more body fat than muscle on the left at a similar bodyweight.

For this reason, don’t be surprised if your own “comfort” bodyweight range shifts upwards as the years go by. You’re gaining more muscle, which means you’ll look leaner at a higher bodyweight than you used to.

That’s why I said my “comfort” range used to be 105 to 115 lbs. As I continue to bulk and cut, I’m curious to find out how this range may keep changing.

“Most people” is not everyone.

While the majority of my clients benefit from cutting first, I’ve had a handful for whom bulking was a far more appropriate option.

These clients usually share at least one of these two characteristics:

• They’re in a body they consider “skinny”;
• They have a restrictive eating disorder or disordered eating in their background.

 
If you’re using a negative term like “skinny” to define your body, clearly you don’t feel good about it, so cutting first would make you feel even worse.

Furthermore, at such a low body fat level, you already have plenty of runway to gain muscle, and trying to get more would just be redundant and delay your growth for no reason.

Finally, if you’ve had a restrictive relationship with food in the past and you’re still in a very small body as a result, you might be below the lower end of your “comfort” bodyweight range.

In this case, bulking won’t only help you build muscle; it’ll help you feel healthier, happier, and more energetic.

For instance, my client Elijah had recovered from anorexia nervosa before we started working together.
 
However, at the time of his first consultation in December 2023, his body fat level was still so low that he struggled to sleep, suffered from brain fog, and had a lot of food fears and body image struggles still lying around.

Through an extended bulk––during which we gradually gained weight over a year and a half––in his own words, he’s now returned to his pre-anorexia peppy self.

 
What now?

If you want some extra help to make your final decision, take my free “Should You Cut or Bulk?” quiz here. In addition to a personalised result based on nine multiple-choice questions, you’ll also get a link to a free guide to make the most of the chosen phase.
 
Once you’ve made your decision, I have some resources to help you set up a successful cutting or bulking phase:

• For cutting, sign up for my free five-day email course on fat loss here.
• For bulking, tune into my two-part guide in episodes 139 and 140.

 
Last but not least, if you want to get far better results than you could on your own––no offence, but I’m what you’d call a bit of an expert here––then you’ll love my one-on-one coaching service. Read more about it here.

Thanks for reading. May you make the best gains.

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