Your Fat Loss Cheat Sheet
People have the best intentions when it comes to fat loss,but they tend to put their time and effort into the wrong places. This makes the likelihood of achieving effective, long lasting results extremely low, leaving people exceedingly frustrated and in many cases desperate. There is no real secret to how we lose fat, but there are more and less effective ways to achieve it. We want to avoid situations where our actions lead to crash dieting, poor dieting behaviors and fat regain due to desperation.
For those with sufficient fat loss dieting knowledge and experience, you are not exempt from the degree of effort, dedication and consistency needed to achieve results. In a lot of cases, people have achieved fat loss outcomes that could of done things a better way. Does this sound like you? I’m certainly not saying that fat loss is a walk in the park, and that sacrifices wont need to be made to an extent, but have you suffered more than you needed to?
This article will cover effective strategies to help manage and mitigate the common obstacles to fat loss, giving you a better grasp on where to put your attention, so you don’t need to unnecessarily punish yourself.
Nutrition/Calorie Management
Creating a calorie deficit is simply unavoidable when trying to lose fat. This means we must be using more energy than you are intaking. Determining calorie needs is important and there are many formulas out there to give you a starting point. The best practice is to pick a formula and stick with it, eat the suggested maintenance calories for a 10–14 day period, and adjust calories based off the average changes in body weight. Once you have found this figure we need to consider the starting deficit. Anywhere from 10–30% can be used but it depends on many considerations like the time frame. the individual and the goal. I like to start with around 10–15% for most clients, but I have used more aggressive starting deficits, especially for competitors.
The next nutrition consideration is diet composition. The amount of calories is important but the composition of those calories does have influence on how we retain lean tissue, strength and performance. The most important macronutrient during a fat loss phase is protein. A low energy environment is a catabolic environment, this means “to break down”. Unfortunately your body wont just breakdown fat and convert it to energy, it will look for other sources too. This is why we need to support extra protein in the diet during this phase. How much depends on a lot of things like your goals, current level of activity and lean mass. However if we look at the data we can see favorable outcomes in a fat loss phase for protein intakes anywhere from 2–3.3g+ per kg of body weight. I personally like to start at around 2g then increase protein as the individual gets leaner, due to less energy availability in fat stores, and higher chance of protein oxidation for fuel.
What about dietary fat and carbohydrates? The reality of it is once you have established your calories and protein requirements, the rest of the distribution of energy is personal preference. This means one person could eat more carbs than fat, the next person may eat more fat than carbs. Personally, I like to distribute the left over calories more toward carbohydrates than fat. This is primarily due to energy availability during training and food volume purposes.
Hunger Regulation
Managing hunger during a phase of fat loss is always going to be challenging. These days people seem surprised to be hungry during a fat loss phase because they are sold a dream that simply is not true. If you look at this whole situation mechanistically, we are eating less than we need to maintain the organism and therefore our body will increase hunger signalling to encourage us to eat more. Endeavoring to avoid this all together is a losing battle, but we can manage and mitigate some of these effects, with specific diet strategies and behaviors.
Food choices are extremely important during a fat loss phase. Think of your calories like a daily allowance, how you spend your calories can be a make or break for the success of someones diet. The best bang for buck foods in this case are high volume, highly satiating foods. The ‘Satiety Index’ is a great resource for discovering these food types. The index has a rating of foods that have been tested for their satiating effect in a 240 calorie portion. Foods that score high on the index are:
Potatoes
White fish
Beef steak
Oatmeal
Oranges
Apples
Eggs
Its also important to look at the lowest satiating foods on the index, and try to consume these foods in very small and less frequent amounts. A lot of the foods that score low on this index are also hyper palatable. This means they trigger certain reward centers in the brain, which makes ceasing consumption of these foods real hard after commencing.
Some of these foods are:
Croissants
Cake
Donuts
Chocolate bars
Peanuts
The next strategy to mitigate hunger is meal distribution. A very effective strategy I have used is extending out the fasting period upon waking (delaying or skipping breakfast altogether). The benefit of this method is sparing drastic changes in meal composition for the rest of the day, which sits well with some individuals. The downside is its not very effective for those who are most hungry in the morning, or who do their workouts in the early AM.
For those hungry early risers, some form of time restricted feeding window might be more beneficial. This is where the individual sets a window of feeding throughout the day to fit their calories in. I tend to find the longer the dieting phase, the more natural of a transition people make to this method, however there is nothing wrong with a normal meal distribution throughout the day if that also suits you best.
The final consideration for hunger management is environment.
Where possible its important to take control of your surroundings to set yourself up for dietary success. We can do this by decreasing friction to positive behaviors/actions that facilitate our goal, whilst increasing friction to behaviors/actions that take us away from our goal.
An example of removing friction to a behavior is meal prep. If we prep our food, the likelihood of diet success is significantly higher. Another example is keeping some spare protein powder on you at all times for those emergency situations.
An example of creating friction is putting foods you typically overeat or want to minimize consumption in hard to reach places, or don’t buy them at all. This choice creates resistance to that behavior, making the likelihood of it happening much lower. This significantly increases the chances of adherence and diet success.
Stress Management and Sleep
Under eating is a stressor, intense training is a stressor, as are many other things. It is important to understand the total “stress load” of a client, before engaging in any goal. Stress load is a combination of work, personal life, health, training and nutrition. Before commencing a phase of fat loss, if overall stress load is too high, it may be a better idea to put things on hold until an individual is not only willing, but able to commence the phase.
One major part of managing overall stress load is sleep. Having adequate, high quality sleep not only promotes recovery, but it will also have a significant role in managing overall energy levels and diet compliance. Being tired, stressed and exhausted makes diet compliance really hard. We become less aware of our food choices, we also become less aware of hunger and typically gravitate toward more highly palatable foods. Being tired and over stressed also effects training performance, and lowers day to day activity levels (like NEAT). This is not a great environment for fat loss. Most adults should aim for 7–9 hours of sleep per night.
Strategies to mitigate stress will vary from person to person, but there needs to be some awareness of the situation and intent to do so. Some strategies I have effectively used with clients are:
Deloads
Refeeds
Meditation/breathing practice
Journalling and reflection
Reduced time on electronics
Proper sleep/wake schedule
Overhauling environment for sleep and mindfulness purposes
Training and Activity
People spend way too much time debating over whats better for fat loss, cardio or weights? Weight loss researchers recommend both, how much of each depends on the goals of the individual. If you want to look good naked, do more weights, if you just want to lose some fat and have no specific body composition goals do a combination that is most enjoyable to yourself.
Most of the people I work with are interested in achieving a specific look for their physique. This is why there is always a larger distribution of resistance training to cardio. Resistance training stimulates muscle tissue. which will preserve that tissue during a low energy state (in conjunction with adequate protein). We also burn calories when we weight train, so we can manipulate energy balance to achieve some fat loss, in conjunction with the right diet set up.
In some cases we might need to increase energy expenditure, and adding more resistance training isn’t viable, due to its demands on recovery. Adding another activity like aerobics may be more favorable. This will allow the individual to achieve a greater level of energy expenditure needed to continue driving fat loss.
The final consideration for training is taking a progressive and performance based mindset. You must set a standard of strength and activity every week, and ensure you meet or exceed it. This puts you in the best situation for continued progress. If everything stays the same, it’s highly likely at some point you will also, that’s how adaptation works.
Results Tracking and Data Interpretation
Assessing the right metrics is extremely important during any goal specific phase. To know if a client is on track with their fat loss, there are specific metrics and KPI’s we can use to interpret results.
Its important to understand that results are never linear, we are not going to see a gradual loss in weight during a fat loss phase for example. This is why its important to have multiple metrics for assessment and interpretation.
Some of the key metrics and assessment tools I like to use are:
Average body weight over the week
Total girth measurements of specific sites of the body
Skin-fold totals across 7 or 9 sites in the form of total mm’s
Progress pictures
Subjective markers like energy, hunger, stress load etc.
Action points and your non-negotiables’ for the week
Using all or most of these markers gives us a better indication of what is happening than interpreting one on its own. As stated earlier results are not linear, in a lot of cases when the metrics don’t add up, the behaviors need to be looked at, If the behaviors match the goal then we just need more time. Its important to look at results interpretation globally and make decisions and changes after looking at everything.
This is where I personally think having a coach shows the most value. Having someone removed from emotion to interpret results, and behavior is extremely valuable. When we do this ourselves, we can be clouded by self talk and emotion.
Adherence
The best plan is the one you can follow. This has been peoples biggest downfall in the past when it comes to fat loss success. They either get too caught up in the things that don’t matter, or get caught up in some extreme intervention that cannot be sustained.
We want to pick a method or transition through multiple methods, that still fulfills the underlying principles to fat loss, but in preference to the individual. Always ask yourself. “can I stick to this for a long period of time?”. If the answer is no, then this method is not for you.
In some cases the method will dictate the time frame, as the time frame may dictate the method. Whats important to understand is best practice will change from situation to situation, and person to person. There is no single better way to do this, rather than a plethora of methods that uphold the principles.
Wrapping things up
By now you should have a greater understanding of where to put your focus and how we can make a phase of fat loss catered to the individual. At all times we need to ensure we are manipulating energy balance negatively, and we are providing adequate protein in the diet.
Activity is important and a combination of resistance and cardio is best practice. If you want to look good naked, resistance training should be the foundation of your training program, with cardio added in for health and energy expenditure purposes.
Hunger is not totally avoidable, it makes sense mechanistically that we experience hunger, but there are strategies to mitigate hunger; like meal distribution throughout the day and food choices.
Its important to acknowledge someones total stress load and understand how stress, and poor sleep can get in the way of adherence to the plan. In some cases you may need to delay your fat loss phase till your total stress load is more manageable.
Its important to interpret data to ensure we are moving in the right direction, but it should come from multiple reference points. Progress is not linear, this is why its important to establish behaviors and monitor them for results interpretation also. In a lot of cases if we are doing all the right things, we just need a little more time. This is also why having a coach can be beneficial as they remove emotion from decision making.
Finally the best plan is the one you follow. Its important to think “can I follow this structure for a long period of time consistently?”. In some cases the method might dictate the time frame, and the time frame might dictate the method. If you are committed to getting extraordinary outcomes its important to be flexible here to a degree. Best practice doesn't always mean the most flexible and preferable to the individual, but we should always try to meet in a happy medium where possible.
This is your fat loss cheat sheet.
