When looking at losing weight it is important to differentiate between losing weight and losing fat. Weight is what the scales say, irrespective of body composition whereas losing fat doesn’t necessarily have to correlate with a drop in weight. You can lose fat without losing weight on the scale. Ideally when you lose fat you would like to hold on to as much lean body mass (LBM covers muscle, water, bone, hair, skin, organs etc) as possible as muscle mass is associated with an increase in metabolic rate. If you lose muscle mass your metabolism will drop as your thyroid output will slow down, this makes it much more likely that you will stall your weight loss and find it very easy for your weight to yo-yo back up to where it was before. This phenomenon is common among popular weight loss groups where their policies involve cutting calories to extreme proportions rather than qualifying food intake.
As a starting point for cutting you would take your bodyweight in lbs and multiply it by 16 (to find your maintenance number) and then take away the amount of calories you want to create the deficit for. 500 calories per day below maintenance is a sensible number to start off with. Depending on your activity level, amount of lean body mass and macronutrient (protein, carbohydrate and fat) intake this number will vary. If you find that 500 calories below your maintenance level results in too much weight loss then you can increase it in the same way you can decrease your caloric intake if your fat loss is not continuing.
200lb person x 16 = 3,200 calories. 3,200 – 500 = 2,700 calories for fat loss starting point.
This is a simple law of physics and is based solely on energy expenditure.
To take this further you can tailor your nutritional approach based on your own macronutrient needs. Recommending these over the internet is mostly guesswork and nothing is set in stone. What works for one person will not work for another. Therefore it is important to be able to find what works for you. Here are some simple approaches and recommendations to allow you to tailor your own plan.
The glycemic index (GI) factor. Glycemic index is a score based on food’s effect on blood sugar. You can find a score of most common foods. Blood sugar is an important thing to note as one of the hormones involved in blood sugar regulation (insulin) is a fat storage hormone. This is why there is a large amount of GI recipe cookbooks and dietary books on the market at the moment. To take your fat loss further you can eat foods that are lower on the GI scale.
Here are some basic recommendations;
- Brown grains usually have a lower GI than white grains (bread, rice, pasta etc)
- Vegetables on the whole tend to have a lower GI than grains
- Additional fibre at a meal can lower the blood sugar response (and therefore improve your rate of fat metabolism)
- Additional healthy fats at meal times also lower the blood sugar response
- Smaller and more frequent meals have a lower impact on blood sugar levels
Therefore to improve your chances of fat loss while holding onto muscle tissue here are some easy guidelines to follow;
- Protein (primarily in meat, fish and eggs) is crucial to losing lean body mass. Eating low amounts of protein is a guaranteed way to lose muscle tissue
while dieting, especially if you are training hard.
- Eat smaller meals more frequently
- Add healthy fats like olive oil, coconut oil or fish oil to meals
- Fibre can mitigate large blood sugar responses from meals
This is why low carbohydrate diets tend to have so much success. It makes eating the wrong things much harder to do as well as removing some of the subcutaneous (beneath the skin) water that is associated with higher carb intakes.
The first thing people should do when they improve their food intake for cutting is make everything healthier rather than working on a ratio of carb:protein:fat. This is because it doesn’t necessarily qualify food choices. You could only eat 100g of carbohydrates per day but that wouldn’t be conducive for fat loss if it was 100g from sweets when compared with 100g of carbohydrates from fruits and vegetables. Here is a list of foods which can be in abundance;
- Meat
- Fish
- Eggs
- Vegetables
- Fruits
- Nuts
- Seeds
Whole grains are healthier than white grains and gluten free options are often considered even better. This should be monitored as some people find they hinder weight loss.
Some people are ok with dairy sources and others tend to bloat and get gastrointestinal side effects from them.
Usually people who clean up their diets and start eating more naturally will lose a significant amount of fat straight away, even when caloric intake isn’t monitored strictly. Once you are eating healthily you can start fine tuning using different ratios of macronutrients, carb cycling etc. When you are trying to lose a large amount of fat you tend to find that half of the battle is already won when you start eating healthily, the other half tends to come with consistency. Steady fat loss is more productive in the long run than rapid weight loss as the latter often results in a weight rebound. Keep as much muscle tissue as you can to keep your metabolism high and lose weight at a controlled pace. 1-2lbs fat loss per week is considered healthy by most and helps to minimise the risk of muscle atrophy.
