How to Shift into Cutting Season After Winter

How to Shift Into Cutting Season After Winter

By MJ | The Alpha Country | April 2026

I'm doing the same thing right now that a lot of you are doing. Winter is over, the structure tightens back up, and it's time to start actually dialing things in.

For me that means getting my nutrition tighter and getting my cardio back into a structured routine. I've done this enough times to know how to make the transition without torching everything I built. I've also done it enough times to know exactly what mistakes most people make coming out of winter.

I've competed in bodybuilding. I've done full contest preps, full offseasons, multiple bulks and cuts. I know what a real cut looks like and what it asks of you. This is what I'm actually doing right now, and what I'd tell any of my clients to do.

First, figure out which winter you actually had

Not everyone had the same winter and that matters for how you come out of it.

Some of you were in a surplus. Eating to support size, training heavy, not worrying about the scale. That season did its job. Now you're carrying more than you want and you need to start pulling it back without losing what you built.

Some of you were at maintenance. Training was consistent, food was reasonable, nothing aggressive in either direction. You're close to where you want to be but there's a layer you're ready to address. The challenge with this one is that maintenance feels fine. A cut is going to ask more of you than the last few months did.

Some of you trained hard but kept cardio low. Strength is there. Conditioning probably isn't. The instinct is to pile cardio on top of your current training load immediately. That's the wrong move and I'll get to why.

Know which one you are before you change anything.

The training piece

Keep your training heavy. This is where most people make their first mistake when they start a cut. They drop the weight, go higher rep, and think they're doing something productive. They're not. Heavy compound lifting is what signals your body to hold onto muscle when calories drop. That stimulus doesn't change just because you're in a deficit.

What does change is cardio. Right now I'm starting with 20 minutes of steady state, 5 days a week, and hitting 10,000 steps daily. That's my starting point. Consistent and sustainable, which matters a lot more than going hard for two weeks and burning out.

If you're coming out of a winter with very little cardio, don't start there. Start with 3 days a week, 20 to 30 minutes, and build from there over 3 to 4 weeks. Adding too much too fast on top of a training program you're already running is how you stall recovery and wonder why you feel terrible.

If cardio was already part of your routine, add one session or increase your daily step goal by 2,000 to 3,000 steps before you add more structured work. Small additions compound.

Recovery has to be protected during a cut. You're asking your body to do more work on less fuel. Sleep is not optional. If you're cutting calories and cutting sleep at the same time, you will feel it fast and no amount of cardio will fix it.

The nutrition piece

This is where I live, and honestly the hardest part for me personally. 

Coming out of a surplus, don't jump straight into an aggressive cut. Your body has been running on a lot of food and the adjustment needs to be gradual. A small deficit to start, 100 to 200 calories below where you've been eating, gives your body time to adjust without the muscle loss that comes from cutting too hard too fast. You can tighten from there once you see how your body responds. Plus ultimately our goal is to keep calories as high as possible right? Everyone wants to be able to eat as much as possible while still progressing. So if we cut calories too quickly, we risk that.

Coming out of maintenance the shift doesn't need to be dramatic at all. A modest deficit combined with the added cardio output will move things. You don't need to slash your food right away to make progress.

Coming out of a high training volume winter, before you touch calories, tighten up food quality. Cut the processed stuff, the extras, the sauces, the things that crept in over winter. Clean that up first and see what happens. That alone will cut more calories out of your diet than you realize and you may not need as big a deficit as you think.

Protein is not negotiable in a cut (or anytime let's be real). I'm at a minimum of 1 gram per pound of bodyweight every single day. Chicken, eggs, ground beef, whey protein powder, cottage cheese, Greek yogurt. Every meal is built around a protein source first. This is the single most important thing you can do to protect muscle during a cut.

Carbs stay consistent throughout the week. I'm not pulling them on rest days. Carbohydrates support recovery and keep your training performance where it needs to be. If you're eating the right amount of them for your goals, there's no reason to cycle them out on days you're not in the gym.

If you're not sure where your nutrition is at right now, track what you're eating for at least a few days. Make it as realistic to what you've been eating normally as possible to give you an accurate starting point. You need this data before you can make real adjustments. Guessing doesn't work.

Give yourself a transition window

I'm not flipping a switch from winter to full cut mode overnight. I'm giving myself 2 to 3 weeks to get cardio consistent, tighten nutrition, and let my body adjust before I lock into a full protocol. That window matters. It's the difference between a cut that works and one that burns you out by week three.

If you have any questions about you nutrition or want guidance, reach out to me at mj@thealphacountry.com and I'd love to help!

Stay Ready.