How to Make Weight (Without a Caloric Deficit)

Updated: 28th December, 2025

If you’re a fan of boxing or MMA, you may have wondered how professional fighters can walk around in the ring some 15–20 lbs heavier than they weighed in the day before.

The answer, for the most part, involves an extreme level of water manipulation. Professional fighters with a 24-hour weigh-in have no choice but to dehydrate and then rush to rehydrate in the 24 hours before the fight if they wish to be competitive. — The more weight they can successfully cut, the lighter the weight category they can compete in and the greater the size advantage. However, if pushed too far, they will fail to recover and lose the fight.

Fortunately, weightlifters, powerlifters, and amateur fighters are spared this brutal practice, as weigh-ins typically occur 2 hours before competition. Still, there is a solid opportunity to manipulate your weight in the last week.

The methods in this guide will show you how to reliably drop 3–5% of your body weight over a week without being in a caloric deficit. We’ve ranked them from lowest to highest performance risk, and I imagine you’ll be pleased to know we’ll suggest considering switching to candy and chocolate as part of this.

We hope you enjoy this excerpt from the 3rd edition of our book, The Muscle and Strength Pyramid: Nutrition.

An Important Caveat Before We Begin

What isn’t in this article, but which is in the full book, is how we wholeheartedly recommend against novices, juniors, especially teens, and even intermediate level lifters, from repeatedly doing fat loss phases to make weight.

Advanced lifters looking to qualify, break records, win international or national competitions, sure. Other lifters who are sitting 1-2% over without dieting who can do something mild in the preceding day prior to comp, also fine. But spending time dieting when you haven’t even built most of your strength capacity (that is, unless you are dieting for health or personal reasons unrelated to sport), is you getting in the way of your long-term potential to serve a short-term goal.

Now let’s begin…

This book has already outlined how to manage nutrition for strength sport, whether that’s fueling performance or losing body fat to move into a target weight class. However, if you’re close to the class limit, you don’t necessarily need to diet all the way down via fat loss. If you’re 1–3% over your weight class (and in some cases, up to 4–5%, depending on your personal experience and tolerance) one week out from competition, you can likely make weight using short-term methods that reduce body water and gastrointestinal (GI) content.

Note: This section is written with 2-hour weigh-ins in mind, which are standard in most IPF and IWF competitions. These are much stricter than 24-hour weigh-ins, where extreme cuts are easier to recover from.

While you can lose more than 5% of your body weight using these acute methods, doing so is not only dangerous (even outside of a 2-hour weigh-in), but very difficult to recover from and perform (within a 2-hour weigh-in). 

In the final week, when these acute manipulations occur, fat loss is not the goal; the concern is your actual weight. Thus, the variables of interest are the actual weight of food relative to their energy content, body water, the weight of the contents of the gut, and rehydrating (and to a lesser degree refuelling) as much as possible after making weight to minimize the impact on performance. 

Reducing Gut Content 

The safest way to lose weight without negatively impacting performance is by reducing the weight of food and fiber in your GI tract, commonly referred to as a “gut cut.”

While fiber is essential for long-term digestive health and a key reason why fruits, vegetables, and whole grains are part of a balanced diet, it also:

• Slows digestion.
• Increases food volume.
• Leads to more fecal matter retention in the colon.

To reduce gut content, consume less than 10 g of fiber per day for 2–4 days leading up to the weigh-in. At the same time, switch to low-residue, energy-dense foods that provide sufficient calories and macronutrients with minimal total weight. Think: protein powder, chocolate, candy, and refined carbs, rather than fibrous vegetables, fruit, whole grains, and lean meats.

This combination of low fiber, low total food volume, and high energy density can reduce body weight by ~1–2%, depending on how heavy and fiber-rich your normal diet is, without dehydration [1].

Critically, as this method does not rely on dehydration, it’s very safe and preserves performance capacity.

Reducing Body Water 

While a gut cut is ideally sufficient for making weight, an additional ~1–3% of body weight can be safely lost through mild dehydration, if done properly.

Research shows that while aerobic and skill-based performance declines with just a 2% loss in body water, strength and power are more resilient to dehydration of this magnitude [2]. With proper rehydration, most lifters can recover adequately within a 2-hour weigh-in window.

But how you reduce body water is key. Active sweating through exercise and passive sweating from heat exposure both place unnecessary stress on the body. Cardio in a hoodie may sound hardcore, but for strength athletes, it’s far from ideal. Heat stress isn’t much better, and combining the two is even worse. Fortunately, there are lower-stress alternatives for reducing body water that are more compatible with peak performance.

One method involves modest restriction of fluids or sodium in the final 12–24 hours before weigh-in to encourage a natural reduction in fluid retention. Another quirky but effective tactic is using chewing gum or sour candy to stimulate saliva production, then repeatedly spitting into a cup. While not the most pleasant strategy, it can help shed a small but meaningful amount of water.

Another option is fluid loading — increasing fluid intake to high levels for several days before restricting fluids. Water loading results in slightly greater losses of body water as you maintain a higher urinary output during fluid restriction [3]. 

Finally, you can engage in short-term fasting for ~12–16 hours prior to competition, mimicking the least harmful fasting durations observed in the time-restricted feeding literature (see Level 4) to further reduce body mass. For example, if your weigh-in is at 10:00 a.m., you’d stop food and fluid intake by 8:00 p.m. the night before. Sleeping through most of the fast makes it relatively easy; many lifters find it no more disruptive than simply delaying breakfast. 

However, this strategy is best suited for morning weigh-ins. If your weigh-in is in the afternoon or evening, fasting becomes significantly more challenging. Being awake, active, and dry-mouthed for long stretches without food or water can increase stress and fatigue, making it a less appealing option.

Ultimately, these methods, used alone or in combination, can help shave off that final 1–3% of body weight with minimal risk to performance. But, like all aspects of competition prep, they’re best tested in advance to avoid surprises on meet day.

Carbohydrate Restriction

Carbohydrate restriction reduces food weight and produces body water losses. If you recall from Level 2, carbohydrates are 4 kcal/g while fats are 9 kcal/g. Thus, the weight of food decreases after shifting to a low- to moderate-carbohydrate, higher-fat diet from a moderate- to high-carbohydrate, low-fat diet. 

Additionally, carbohydrate restriction triggers a mild diuretic effect. This occurs partly due to the loss of glycogen-bound water, as well as the reduction in insulin, which alters renal sodium handling and further promotes fluid excretion [1, 4]. These effects can meaningfully reduce scale weight in just a few days. 

However, caution is warranted. Excessive muscle glycogen depletion should be avoided, which is more likely if you restrict carbohydrates and energy, as muscle glycogen depletion may impede muscle contraction [5]. Indeed, a very low-carbohydrate or ketogenic diet sometimes results in initial fatigue before acclimation [6] and can have a small negative impact on strength [7]. 

To mitigate these downsides, carbohydrate restriction should be implemented gradually, using isocaloric exchanges to preserve energy availability. A practical approach is to reduce carbohydrate intake by 45 grams (180 kcal) while increasing fat intake by 20 grams (also 180 kcal) per day. Begin this taper on the Sunday prior to a Saturday competition, allowing several days for acclimation. Importantly, avoid dropping carbohydrates too low; keep intake above 1 g/kg of body weight if you habitually consume 3–4 g/kg, and above 2 g/kg if your typical intake exceeds 4 g/kg. This helps maintain adequate glycogen levels to support training, recovery, and performance. 

Combining Methods

When lifters need to drop between 3–5% of their body mass to make weight, a combination of methods can be used to achieve this goal safely and effectively. However, combining strategies increases complexity and the potential for error, so a trial run well before competition is strongly recommended. This gives athletes the chance to assess whether they can make weight, recover adequately within a 2-hour weigh-in window, and still perform at a high level. 

A low-fiber, high-energy-density, carb-restricted diet with water loading, followed by water and sodium restriction, and a 12–16 hour fast prior to weigh-ins, reliably results in a loss of 3–5% body weight (sometimes more or less depending on the individual). 

Only use the necessary and lowest risk methods below to minimize performance decrements (which are possible) or health risk (which are possible, but unlikely at this magnitude of weight loss).

Acute Weight Loss Methods from Lowest to Highest Performance Risk 

1. Low-fiber, high-energy density (low food weight) diet. 
2. 12–16-hour fast with an early morning weigh-in. 
3. Water loading, then fluid and sodium restriction (with or without spitting). 
4. Carb restriction with isocaloric increase in dietary fat. 
5. 12–16-hour fast if you have an afternoon or evening weigh-in. 
6. Heat and/or exercise-induced dehydration (not recommended). 

Rehydrating After Weigh-Ins 

Rehydration is arguably the most important step in recovering performance after making weight if dehydration was involved. If your cut only involved reducing food weight via a low-fiber, energy-dense diet, or if you included mild carbohydrate restriction, rehydration may not be necessary. But if you fasted, water-loaded, restricted fluids or sodium, or used spitting, then effective and timely rehydration is essential. 

Immediate Priorities

As soon as you step off the scale, the priority should be fluids and electrolytes, not solid food. While hunger is common after a low-volume, high-energy-density diet, particularly if preceded by a gradual fat-loss phase, food can slow gastric emptying and delay hydration. Therefore, begin with a sports drink that includes both electrolytes and carbohydrates. This helps with both fluid absorption and energy replenishment. 

While you should aim to fully replace lost fluid weight (1 kg = 1000 ml/1 L), rehydration speed is influenced by gastric emptying rate [8]. The threshold for fluid absorption in a single sitting is ~600–1000 ml, which, if exceeded, could lead to bloating [9]. Gastric emptying rate also limits the speed of glycogen replenishment, which is a secondary concern, but still important if fasting and/or carb-restriction was performed [10, 11]. Consuming large amounts of carbohydrate in a single setting can cause GI discomfort (if that leads to vomiting or diarrhea, dehydration will get worse), reducing absorption efficiency and potentially affecting performance [12]. The GI tract’s maximal rate of carbohydrate absorption is ~60 g/hr using a single-source carbohydrate [13], while dual-source carbohydrate, including fructose, increases this to ~90 g/hr [14]. But it’s typically unnecessary to max out this rate, as doing so risks GI distress, and glycogen depletion only recovers so quickly, and unless severe, impacts strength less than dehydration. 

How Much and What to Drink

The recommended intake is 15 ml per kilogram of body weight using a carbohydrate-electrolyte sports drink. Don’t exceed 1000 ml in the first 30 minutes. Sip the remainder gradually until your first lift attempt. If you run out of your initial drink, switch to plain water, sipping based on thirst and tolerance.

Most commercial sports drinks provide 30–40 g of carbohydrate per 500 ml and use dual-source carbs (e.g., glucose + fructose) to improve absorption, up to ~90 g/hour. However, unless your cut was severe, there’s usually no need to push to that limit. If your required fluid volume or the carbohydrate content of your drink is high, consider diluting it 50:50 with a zero-calorie electrolyte drink to reduce GI stress and maintain hydration efficiency.

What About Food?

You can begin eating once fluid and electrolyte intake is underway, especially if you have a longer gap before lifting, but start with light, low-fat, low-fiber foods that are easy on the gut. If you have limited time before your first attempt, stick to fluids to avoid slowing gastric emptying. Reintroduce food in small, digestible portions between same-lift attempts or discipline sessions (e.g., between squat and bench press), especially if you’re tolerating fluids well.

Monitoring Recovery

If you lost more than ~1.5% of your body weight through dehydration, even 15 ml/kg of fluids may not be enough to fully restore hydration before your opener. Pay attention to how your warm-up sets feel. If they feel heavy or sluggish, consider lowering your opener slightly to stay within reach of your planned second and third attempts. If your performance noticeably lags, it likely means you cut too much, and adjustments will be needed next time.

If your cut wasn’t too aggressive, even if your opening attempt was slightly impacted, you should mostly or fully recover by subsequent attempts, or certainly by subsequent lifts. To ensure strength recovery, keep rehydrating between attempts, consuming fluids, and beginning to eat light foods between lifts if there are sufficiently long breaks and you aren’t experiencing GI distress. 

A Note on Overnight Weight Loss

You’ll typically wake up around 1% lighter than your bedtime weight due to moisture loss through breathing and nighttime urination. So if you’re about 1% over your weight class the night before a morning weigh-in, you likely don’t need to take any further steps. Similarly, for a midday or evening weigh-in, being ~1% over eight hours out while fasting suggests you’ll make weight without added stress.

The template below outlines the entire process of acute weight manipulation from one week out, through to rehydration and refuelling; however, it includes all the recommended methods. Only do what’s necessary, in the order of least potential risk of harm to performance, as listed above.

*Eat 1.6 g/kg of protein, 1.0 g/kg of carbohydrate, and 0.5 g/kg of fat on the day before competition to reduce the weight of food in your gut prior to your 12–16-hour fast. This intake strikes a balance between meeting macronutrient needs and minimizing gut content. If you find hunger becomes distracting or affects your sleep quality, increase your intake slightly using low-weight, high-energy foods. Chocolate is an excellent option. Remember, energy content is irrelevant; this goal is to lower food weight.

If you have found this helpful, you might be pleased to know it is just a small section adapted from our Muscle and Strength Pyramid books.

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