There’s no question that one of the most important skills that you should be learning how to do if you hope to be successful at Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu or MMA is cutting weight quickly.  When you have to get lean for a fight coming up, you need to know how you can strip this weight off your body without causing a severe decline in energy levels and putting training performance way down.

Fortunately, with a few smart strategies you can cut the weight fast without seeing negative effects on your workout sessions so let’s go over what you need to know to be successful.

Bump Up Your Protein

The very first thing that you should be doing if you want to cut weight quickly is to make sure that you increase your protein intake.  When it comes to maintaining your muscle mass and your physical performance on a reduced calorie diet, nothing is going to be more important than protein.

By taking your protein intake up much higher than you would have it on a muscle building diet,  you will safeguard your tissues so if some of that incoming protein is used up for fuel purposes, you still have plenty left over to support muscle maintenance.

Aim to take in around 1.5 grams of protein per pound of body weight. This may seem like a lot but when you’re trying to cut weight quickly, it will really help you out.

Place All Carbs Around The Workout

Second, the next thing that you must be doing if you want to maintain your performance and cut weight quickly is place all of the carbohydrates aside from vegetables right around the workout session.

This is when the body is going to need that energy the most for performance factors and by cutting out the carbohydrates from the later meals you will ensure that you’re bringing your calorie intake low enough that you see fat loss moving along quickly.

Lower carb diets do tend to be very effective for cutting weight quickly so this is one approach you will very likely want to utilize.

Stagger Your Calories

Moving along, another quick and simple technique to cut weight faster when you’re preparing for a fight is to stagger your calories.

When you go off cutting calories too low in order to drop weight, the body is going to react to this by slowing down its metabolism. As it does this, further fat loss gets that much more difficult.

But, by staggering your calories so you have some very low calorie days and some that are higher, you’ll trick your body so that it stays on high at all times.  This allows you to burn fat much faster on those low calorie days while supplying more calories on heavy training days to support the physical activity.

Drink More Water

Finally, you should also be sure that you’re drinking plenty of water as you go about the weight cutting process.  You may be tempted to forgo water thinking that this will help you lose weight and while it may in the day leading up to the fight, before that you actually want to be drinking more.

By staying well hydrated you’ll make sure your metabolism is running optimally, help to reduce the level of fatigue you experience, and help to prevent hunger and cravings from developing.

Aim for at least twelve glasses of water a day while going through the cutting period.

So there you have all the top quick tips that you must know to cut weight effectively while still training for a fight. If you keep all of these in mind you should have no trouble reaching your goal weight while maintaining your performance.

This article was found on eZine articles and I thought it was a well observed.  For that reason, I am using it on this site.

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Brazilian Jiu Jitsu – The Path To Blue Belt