Eli5: how does cutting weight work? What needs to be done?
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Your body burns a certain amount of energy every day. More of this than you think just goes into keeping you alive; exercising only adds a relatively small amount. Every day, you take in some amount of energy from the food you eat — this is what a “calorie” means. If you take in more energy than you spend, your body uses the extra energy to make fat which it stores for later. If you take in less energy than you spend, your body breaks down some of its fat stores to make up the difference. Losing weight requires eating less energy than you burn for a prolonged period of time so your body uses up a significant portion of its fat reserves.
The other thing you may be referring to is cutting for a weigh-in or bodybuilding competition. This mostly refers to severely dehydrating yourself so your body loses a bunch of water weight. Think of drying a grape up to make a raisin. However there’s only so far you can take this before you run the risk of affecting major bodily functions, plus you lose the “benefit” as soon as you increase your fluid intake again. So it’s usually only done by athletes who need to get below a certain weight for a single point in time, or by movie stars who want to look shredded for a scene.
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