There’s never a way to get around the calories in vs. calories out equation. For a really effective fat loss program, you need to think about what you’re doing on both sides of that equation, not just one side.
“Cardio” is about the calories out side. If you do the standard steady state so-called “fat burning” type of cardio, it works because of the different energy pathways your body has for producing energy and it’s the steady state level that favors the fat metabolism pathway. Unfortunately, that is only true while you’re actually doing the cardio and it also fails to take into account that your body doesn’t just use one pathway at a time. A much better choice is high intensity interval training because not only does it burn calories while you’re doing it, it also helps keep your basal metabolic rate from falling and that means you burn more calories every minute of every day. So if you’re serious about fat loss, high intensity interval training is going to make easier. Also on this side of the equation is your training style. Not so much because of calorie burning (but adjusting for that is a good idea) but that if you do really intense muscle bombing workouts, your restricted calorie state will make it difficult for you to recover quickly and if your rate of muscle breakdown exceeds your rate of muscle synthesis, then your workouts are going to cause you to lose muscle, not make muscle and that is not a good thing. Proper peri-workout nutrition can help a lot here. So for fat loss, you’re better off training in the high rep ranges and maybe substituting a cardio day for a weight lifting day now and then.
On the calories in side of the equation, if you have a typical high protein, low carb, diet that many of us do and you stay with that in calorie restriction, your body will become “protein adapted” and it will favor protein as an energy source. Obviously this is not a good thing because your body needs to make up for the missing calories by consuming itself and if it is protein adapted, it is going to favor consuming protein (your muscles) over consuming its fat. So as strange as it may seem, lowering your protein percentage of calories and raising your fat percentage of calories will help you to become “fat adapted” so your body favors fat as an energy source. I’m not saying to cut out protein, I’m just saying that you need to shift the percentages around so that you’re getting more calories from fat than from protein. Remember that you’re not trying to lose weight, you’re trying to lose fat and doing the things that allow you to keep the muscle you have while in calorie restriction are not the same things you do when you’re trying to add new muscle and are in calorie balance. Don’t forget that you’re still counting calories and keeping in calorie deficit. As long as you stay in calorie deficit, you’re going to lose weight, even if the only things you ate were snickers bars. Obviously, the snickers diet isn’t a healthy diet, so you need to stay with a good, solid, nutrition program, you just will want to shift the percentages around a bit. And when I talk about the fat in your diet, I mean a healthy mix of saturated, mono-unsaturated and poly-unsaturated fats.
On the cutting calories side, if you cut too many calories, you’ll go into starvation response and that is a very bad thing because when you’re in starvation response, your body will gladly sacrifice muscle to keep as much fat as it can. Eating every two to three hours will also help inhibit the starvation response.
The whole bulking cycle and cutting cycle thing has pretty much been dropped these days. Most guys try to stay in the 10% to 12% range all the time and get down into single digits when necessary. There is no point in letting yourself get much above 12%… ever.