Thread: CICO, cardio and cutting

After a long period of bulking and increasing strength over time, I'm getting ready to go on a cut.

One thing everyone in the gym is saying, "You gotta do cardio too." And I'm like, "Can't I just eat less?" and they're like, "No, it doesn't work like that." A few people use coaches and their coaches say the same thing.

When I started out I cut from an untrained state, initially I did intense cardio but when I learnt about IIFYM and CICO I ditched the cardio and lost 1 pound per week like clockwork by lifting and religiously tracking calories.

My understanding:

Say your maintenance calories are 3,000.

1) Eat 300 calories less, and burn 300 calories via cardio, and your deficit is 600 calories

or

2) Eat 600 calories less, don't do any cardio, and your deficit is still 600 calories.

Surely the end result is the same? The only difference being, measuring 300 calories of food is a hell of a lot easier and more reliable than attempting to measure 300 calories of cardio.

So do I have this right? Is the "gotta do cardio when cutting" just part of the "gotta eat nothing but chicken and brown rice" bro science mentality? Or is there something else I'm missing?

It is the same... they are just parroting the same biased information.

Some people may find it easier to include cardio because it gives you something to do on offdays, makes you feel better (warmer - I often feel cold when dieting) and can actually suppress appetite.

BUT if you are sticking to a carefully measured intake then it ultimately doesn't matter how you create the deficit. And cardio can also interfere with your ability to recover from weight training which would be a negative. If you tend to train 5-6 days a week like me then throwing in extra cardio is probably a bad idea.

So if it really doesn't suit you, you don't have to do it.