Weight cutting is a weird and janky thing. Weight classes in strength sports were introduced just after the Olympics in 1920, as a means of making sure that competitors were competing with others their size—which is perfectly logical—but in more recent years, the pre-competition weigh in has morphed into something much more than just a tool to level the playing field. Body weight manipulation is not only part of the culture of the sports of weightlifting and powerlifting. It’s as much a part of the contest prep as training; and it requires wiliness, cunning, and mental fortitude. Showing up at the right body weight can make or break your chances at qualifying for bigger events and winning medals.
 
But let’s say for arguments’ sake that you, like most of us, are not planning to slug it out for a spot on the Olympic team. Do you need to worry about weight cutting before a competition? The answer to that question, as always, is “it depends.”
 
First let’s talk about cutting weight versus losing weight. What’s the difference? Losing weight implies that you are decreasing the amount of adipose tissue (fat) in your body. Maybe to be healthier, maybe to lean out and drop a weight class to be more competitive  in strength sports, or maybe you just want to look and feel good naked—all valid reasons! But fat loss requires long term effort and some permanent lifestyle changes—it’s about creating a caloric deficit in order to decrease the amount of tissue you carry around in your meat sack. It’s a marathon, not a sprint.
 
Weight cutting, on the other hand, IS a sprint. It’s about using specific short-term techniques over the week or so before the event, to produce a specific number on the scale on competition day. After the weigh-in is done, that part of the game is over. Now you have two hours to set about undoing whatever you did to yourself to get into your weight class, so that you can get on the competition platform and perform well.
 
Whether or not you should cut weight depends on a bunch of factors. Is this your first competition? (If the answer to that question is yes, then no, you do not need to cut weight. Show up and do some good lifting and worry about that stuff next time.) What do you weigh now and what weight class do you want to lift in? If you are more than about 5% over your desired weight class, then it would be ill-advised to try and cut to that lower weight class (bearing in mind that we’re talking about the week before competition here). The goal with a weight cut is to lower your body weight while maintaining a high level of athletic performance—f you get your weight down but feel like crap and don’t lift well, then you did all that work for nothing. Generally you can safely and humanely cut between two and 5% of your body weight (again, this is subjective; larger athletes have more leeway than tiny ones), and if you do it right, you can show up on meet day feeling pretty good.
 
Let’s talk about what exactly we are manipulating when we’re cutting weight. We can cut weight from three different places: adipose tissue, or fat (which, in the last week before an event, isn’t going to make much of a difference, but hey, every gram counts at this point), fluid balance, and gut contents.
 
Adipose Tissue: as mentioned before, fat loss requires you to create an energy deficit, either by expending more energy or consuming fewer calories. Peaking up for a competition means that you’ll be hitting your heaviest training days six to 12 days before your event—not an ideal time to be trying to eat in a caloric deficit to lose body fat. You’re going to need to be eating at least at maintenance levels in order to fuel your body for those last key training sessions.
 
Fluid/Electrolyte Balance: water weight is the easiest variable to manipulate over the short term and gives you the most bang for your buck. Before we go any further with this subject though, don’t forget: dehydration is BAD NEWS! Do not restrict your fluid intake unless you want to negatively affect your training and your health. There are right ways and wrong ways to cut water weight.
 
Our bodies retain approximately 9g of water for every 1g of stored sodium (which is partly why that pizza binge last weekend made you gain five pounds the next day), so adopting a low-sodium diet a couple of days before the weigh in is a very effective way to drop 0.5-2% body weight (again, depending on the size of the athlete) without feeling any ill effects. Restricting sodium for more than 36-48h before the event, though, can have a negative impact on athletic performance and should be avoided.
 
Do a water load: increase your water intake to double what you normally drink for five to eight days before the meet and then return to normal hydration the day before the weigh in. Stop drinking water about 12 hours before you get on the scale - this can result in 1-2% loss of body weight.
 
Raising your body temperature to increase sweating is another effective way to shed fluid weight in the last hours before a weigh in, either by sitting in a sauna or a hot tub. As water is a better heat conductor than air, a hot tub is your best bet. it’s also more enjoyable, which is important if you’re stressed out about making weight! Both options are miles better than wrapping yourself in garbage bags and going for a run or sitting on a bike, though. Since the end goal is strength performance, saving energy is paramount.
 
Gut Weight: Time for poop talk! Our bodies carry around one or two kilogram of bulk in our guts at any given time. This is weight that we can manipulate pretty easily without causing our athletic performances to suffer.
 
If you’ve been working on losing fat for a while or are a health-conscious person, you probably consume a relatively healthy diet full of high-volume and fibrous foods. While this is normally a good thing, dragging a couple of extra kilos of poop onto the scale with you isn’t going to help you make weight. Food (especially the aforementioned high-volume and fibrous varieties) takes about 24 hours on average to go from one end of your digestive tract to the other.  In order to eliminate as much gut bulk as possible, four days before the event, we want to stop eating fibrous foods such as veggies and fruit, instead looking to high-calorie, low volume foods like nuts and fatty meats. More dietary fat and lots of water will help with the elimination process and stave off constipation—no time to get backed up right now! Shedding gut bulk is also good because if you’re nervous on competition day, you won’t have to worry about filling your pants on the platform (because we have all seen that happen).
 
Weight cutting is a chess game. Lots of athletes feel their best walking around and training 2-3kg above their weight class. They choose to keep their weight as high as they can for as long as they can, dropping into their weight class at the last possible minute. There are definite advantages to this strategy: training at a higher body weight is advantageous to building strength and getting more weight on the barbell, and a weight cut in the last few days can give you something constructive to focus on instead of stressing about the upcoming meet.  On the other hand, weight cutting is an exhausting process and a poorly executed weight cut can destroy your performance on competition day. So plan it out, be as prepared and deliberate as you can, know your body and your tendencies, and you will arrive at that competition platform feeling energetic and ready to smash some PR’s.