Cutting calories all at once or slowly?

[shudash]

First off, I'm using my cousins account so ignore his stats. I'm 24, 6'2", and about 195. BF% is about 18%. I'm really trying to get it down to about 10% and I already know my maintenance calorie intake and how much I'm gonna cut to drop into my calorie deficit. What I'm wondering is can I just jump right into a cut from a bulk of about 700 calories above maintenance? Or do I slowly lower my calories? If so, how slow should I lower them? I heard that if you drastically drop your caloric intake too fast your body will freak out and out on as much fat as possible. I'm training 6 days a week. My sups are whey, BCAAs, creatine monohydrate, preworkout, and soon I will be adding an ECA stack. All advise welcome!

[Jbw55]

First off, I'm using my cousins account so ignore his stats. I'm 24, 6'2", and about 195. BF% is about 18%. I'm really trying to get it down to about 10% and I already know my maintenance calorie intake and how much I'm gonna cut to drop into my calorie deficit. What I'm wondering is can I just jump right into a cut from a bulk of about 700 calories above maintenance? Or do I slowly lower my calories? If so, how slow should I lower them? I heard that if you drastically drop your caloric intake too fast your body will freak out and out on as much fat as possible. I'm training 6 days a week. My sups are whey, BCAAs, creatine monohydrate, preworkout, and soon I will be adding an ECA stack. All advise welcome!

You'll get a million different opinions on this... so here's mine. I would not move from a "diet" of being 700 calories above maintenance directly to a drastically calorie deficient diet. If you know your maintenance caloric level, then I would move down to that level (for you it sounds like that's -700 cals from current) for a couple of weeks to ensure that your metabolism has not changed given the added weight you put on during your bulk. Once you nail your maintenance calories then you can plan for your "cutting" diet by going calorie deficient. Rule of thumb is 3,500 cals to lose a pound, so if you wanted (or needed) to lose 2 pounds in 2 weeks, then you would go on a 500cal/day deficient diet (7,000 / 14 days). As your body, and metabolism, will change with your diet and supplements and workout schedule, you'll need to monitor this to ensure your maintence caloric levels haven't changed too much, but if they do then you'll need to adjust intake (or expenditures) accordingly. In general, it's best, in my experience, to cut calories slowly than all at once. You'll save your hard earned muscle tissue that way.

Good luck.

[JulianBee]

Your metabolic output eventually equals your caloric intake. Therefore, if you consume 3000 calories for long enough eventually 3000 calories will become your new maintenance. Usually when this happens, weight loss or weight gain stops. That's why on a bulk or a cut people continually add or drop calories to keep progressing towards their goals. My advice to you would be to slowly drop your calories(I like to do a 5%-10% cut depending on how much or how little I'm eating) from what you're currently consuming, not what you think your maintenance is. Cutting calories too much too fast can be a recipe for disaster because it may leave you in a position where you're already consuming very little, but still need to lose a significant amount of body fat.