You decide you want to shed some fat. There’s a new diet you’ve been hearing about. You see people on social media posting incredible before and after photos. Maybe your friend - or your friend’s friend - dropped 25 lbs. in a month using it.
So, you make up your mind that you’re going to do it. Out go the usual foods you eat. No more treats. It’s brutal, but hey, you want results so you suffer nobly.
Sound familiar? It happens a lot.
What happens next?
Maybe you gritted your teeth through weeks and weeks of misery. The scale reading is lighter. Your clothes fit looser. You spend more time in front of the mirror. You won, right?
Congratulations! Now what?
You return to incorporating the foods you love back into your eating. Little by little, your belt starts to tighten, your face begins rounding out. A couple months later, you’re just about back where you started.
Perhaps you tried your damnedest to stick to the diet plan of chicken breast, broccoli, and rice cakes. You really gave it your all. But you found yourself digging in the freezer for that pint of ice cream. Or sneaking in several slices of pizza. After a few months of this, the scale has hardly budged. You feel like you failed and changing is impossible.
Have you felt either of these experiences? You’re caught in an endless loop of attempting, depriving yourself, and ultimately failing.
It’s unbelievably frustrating and discouraging, isn’t it?
The good news is it’s not you. You didn’t fail. This is exactly how these kind of boom and bust diets turn out. They are not sustainable by design.
Think about it: you totally revamp the way you eat. You cut carbs way, way down - or maybe try to cut them completely. But you love carbs. Or you go vegan when you crave a good steak. You limit yourself to 1200 calories a day because… well, that’s what the diet says.
The progress you make on a plan like that is built to crumble.
It’s not your fault.
The truth is people make enormous amounts of money by pushing fad diets and “revolutionary” plans. They market waist trainers and fit teas and detoxes. They promise results and imply that if you don’t get them, you must have done it wrong.
So what’s the solution?
Have you ever noticed that all of those ads have one thing in common? They claim you can get huge results fast. Transform your body in twelve weeks! Eight weeks! Thirty days to a new you! They’re saying you spent years getting to where you are now, but you’re only a few weeks away from looking like the toothy, ripped 20-something in the ad?
It’s a lie.
Don’t get me wrong, great changes are possible. It’s possible for any one. It’s possible at any age. It’s possible for you.
The thing is, it’s just not possible on that fast-track timeline. I’m going to give you two options below:
Option 1: Drop 30 lbs. in a month and gain it all back by the end of the year.
Option 2: Drop 30 lbs. in 6-8 months and maintain that new weight for several years.
Which one would you choose? Take a second to really think about why you would.
There’s no question that losing fat rapidly is hugely appealing. But the saying “easy come, easy go” exists for good reason.
Dropping fat at a more moderate pace doesn’t sound sexy at first. It takes a ton of patience on the front end. The payoff is using a moderate approach lets you hold on to those results far longer.
How does moderation work?
In essence, rather than restrict yourself drastically (e.g. cutting out carbs), you gradually lower the amount of food you eat. The scale starts sloping down without you ever feeling like you’re starving yourself.
Before we get into that, let’s go over a couple important ideas.
Energy balance.
Energy balance is just the term that describes the amount of energy (food) you eat compared to how much food you burn.
Your body burns energy just by keeping you alive. If you did nothing but lay on the couch all day, you would still burn calories because you’re alive. All the processes your body does on autopilot, like breathing, digesting, pumping your heart? All that stuff that keeps the machine humming? That adds up to equal your metabolism.
But you don’t just lay on the couch all day, every day. You work. You work out. You play with your kids. The energy you use just staying alive plus the energy you burn actually doing things add up to your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE).
Basically that’s the Energy Out part of the energy balance equation.
The Energy In is made up of everything you eat and drink. We measure this energy in calories.
A calorie is just a unit to measure energy. That’s it. It’s not good. It’s not bad. At least not any more than any other units of measurement are. Would you describe a mile as being good or evil?
You burn calories by living and doing stuff. You take in calories by eating. Simple, right?
There are just three states of energy balance.
Energy maintenance is when the amount of calories you burn and the amount of calories you take in are the same. When you do this, your weight remains the same.
Calories Out = Calories In
Weight stays the same.
Energy surplus happens when the amount of calories you burn is less than the amount you eat. When this happens, you gain weight. This is also called being in a Calorie Surplus.
Calories Out < Calories In
Weight goes up.
Energy deficit describes when the amount of calories you burn is greater than the amount you eat. When this happens, you lose weight. This is also known as a Calorie Deficit.
Calories Out > Calories In
Weight goes down.
Your body naturally leans towards maintenance. It’s most comfortable with what’s familiar. What’s familiar is how you are most of the time. This is why your weight, no matter what it is, tends to stay fairly constant. It’s not exactly constant, but you probably notice you’re usually within a range of 5-10lbs.
When you eat a lot less, your body ramps up hormones that tell you “You should eat. Aren’t you hungry? Wouldn’t a burger be good right about now?” It’s trying to maintain, even if you’re intentionally trying to drop your calories. From an evolutionary standpoint this makes sense. When you ate less, your body anticipates famine and drives you to search for food.
Ever eat a ton more than you’re used to and then notice the next day you have a much lower appetite? That’s your body trying to keep maintenance again. This time it’s in the other direction.
Fad diets and extreme diets are about leaning hard into being in a calorie deficit. You cut your calories significantly. In a couple days you see the scale start to move down. You’re excited. It’s working!
But what’s your body’s response going to be? “Oh [expletive]! We’re in a famine!” You know what happens next. Cravings. Food rampages. Bingeing. Maybe you grit through for a few days or a few weeks but when you give in to those hormonal signals, you literally eat back the progress. Does that make sense?
It’s true you need to be in a calorie deficit in order to lose fat but there’s a better way.
Moderate Calorie Deficit
Taking a moderate approach to cutting your calories will lessen the degree to which your body triggers the “We’re starving! We must eat now!” alarm hormones. The initial drop on the scale is not as extreme. The tradeoff is you can be in a moderate calorie deficit for a longer period and more comfortably.
Great, so how do you know how much to eat?
A lot of diets come up with an arbitrary number and suggest it for everyone, without regard for their circumstances. I hear 1200 calories recommended frequently as a daily target. I have no idea where this came from.
Ignore that number. Here’s what you can do instead.
Multiply your goal body weight by 12 to get an approximation of your daily calorie intake for a moderate calorie deficit. Simple right? Simple’s good.
Use a smart phone calorie-tracking app to keep track and help you stick to that target. Be as consistent as you can for 2-3 weeks and assess how it’s working. Monitor your scale weight. Use a tape measure to get the circumference of your waist at the navel. If you’re losing fat, keep doing exactly what you’re doing.
If you’re being consistent but not seeing progress after a few weeks, drop your daily calories by 100. Eat at that level for another 2-3 weeks and reassess.
This approach is about eating as much as you can while the indicators (scale, waist, how your clothes fit, etc.) are moving in the right direction. This way you will feel fuller. You’re less prone to falling off the plan or bingeing.
That covers how much to eat, but what about what to eat?
Macros
Macros is shorthand for macronutrients. Macronutrients is just the name for types of food we need in relatively high quantity to live. The main macros are protein, carbs, and fat.
Anything you eat that has calories. Technically this includes booze, but we’ll hold off on that for now.
Macros provide the energy your body needs.
Protein is what your body breaks down in digestion to use as building materials to create and repair, well, you. You may be aware that protein is the building block for building and keeping muscle. Adequate protein intake ensures other things, such as your hair and nails are able to grow.
Common sources of protein are meat, fowl, fish, and dairy. If you prefer non-animal protein, you can get it from foods like rice and beans, or tofu. Of course, you can supplement with protein powder (both the kind derived from animals and the vegan kind).
Protein is good for you.
Carbs (carbohydrates) are the body’s preferred source of energy. Your body breaks carbs down easily and quickly for use, including by your brain. Carbs have many, many sources.
Fruits, starchy vegetables, pasta, and bread are among the most available.
Carbs get a bad rap because “sugar” has been demonized in popular culture. All carbs are broken down in to simple sugars by the body. There’s nothing inherently bad about them.
Eating carbs won’t make you fat. Eating carbs won’t prevent you from losing fat. That is all about energy balance.
If you’re in an calorie deficit you will lose fat even if you eat carbs. Let me repeat: carbs are not the enemy. There is zero reason to fear them.
Carbs are good for you.
Fats are stigmatized also. Dietary fats provide energy your body uses to create hormones you need (including sex hormones, which I suspect you’re okay with). Fats also aid your body in utilizing vitamins and minerals to keep you functioning well.
Common sources of dietary fat are oils, butter, avocados, eggs.
Fats are good for you.
Be aware that most foods contain more than one macro in them. Eggs, for instance, have both protein and fat. Certain pasta has protein and carbs.
How much of each do you need?
When it comes to fat loss, calories in vs. calories out is most important.
If you ate nothing but “clean” foods, but ate in a calorie surplus, you are not going to lose fat. You will gain fat.
If you ate nothing but candy, but ate in a calorie deficit, you will lose fat. Does this mean this is a good idea? Of course not. Eating only Pop Tarts might help you lose fat in the short term, but you know it’s not good for your overall health in the long term.
After calories in, the next priority is making sure you get enough protein. How much protein is enough?
If you eat 0.8-1.0 grams of protein per pound of body weight per day. So, if you weigh 200 lbs. that means between 160-200 grams of protein per day. If your goal is to drop fat, you want to consume 0.8-1.0 grams of protein per pound of your goal body weight per day. If you’re 200 lbs. and your goal is to weight 170, you’d want to get 136-170 grams of protein daily.
It’s a range, so don’t think if you eat .7g one day you screwed up everything. Similarly, if you have 1.1g you ruined that day.
It’s a target. It ensures you’re giving your body enough protein to retain muscle. Muscle keeps you strong. Having a good amount of muscle on you is what’s going to give you the lean look you’re after once you’ve shed the excess fat.
If you hit your calorie target and your protein target and filled in the remaining calories in a tasty combo of carbs and fats, you won. You’re good. In fact, if you only tracked calories and protein, that’s enough to hit your goals.
Protein has 4 calories per gram. If you eat 50 grams of chicken breast, that will be 200 calories (4cal/g x 50g).
Carbs also have 4 calories per gram.
Fats have 9 calories per gram. This is part of why they get the criticism. But they’re not a bad food, they just have more calories per gram. If you have 10 grams of butter, that’s 90 calories.
When it comes to how much of each macro, prioritize hitting your protein target, then hit your calorie target in whatever ratio of carbs and fats feels best.
Some people feel better on higher carbs with lower fats. Others do better with lower carbs and higher fats.
That may take some experimenting on your part.
Alcohol
Alcohol is the fourth macro. It's different in that it is not something your body needs to function well. Should you abstain if you want to hit your fitness goals? That's a choice only you can make.
Alcohol has 7 calories per gram. If you do drink you want to include those calories in your tracking. The trouble with large alcohol consumption isn't necessarily that it will add fat. Your body treats alcohol like a poison and prioritizes breaking it down. When this is happening, your body isn't breaking down your body fat. Also drinking impairs decision making. We often make suboptimal choices, including overeating as we're out drinking. It's not the booze that packs on the pounds, it's the high-calorie foods you eat while you're drinking that do it.
What if I don’t want to count calories?
Counting calories is like any other new skill. There’s a learning curve where you start out clumsy and unsure. Keep doing it and you rapidly get more efficient at it. After a couple weeks it’ll only take you a couple minutes per day.
If you’ve considered it and it’s something you really don’t want to do at this point, cool. You can do the plates method.
For each of your three meals per day, fill half your plate with non-starchy vegetables (e.g. spinach, broccoli, carrots, etc.). One quarter of it should be protein. Whether it’s animal or not is totally up to you. The remaining quarter is filled with carbs (e.g. rice, potatoes, etc.).
This is just a built-in portion control. You can have two snacks per day, each the size of one of your palms (e.g. a piece of fruit).
Okay, so how long is this going to take?
By now you get that it’s unrealistic to expect a huge transformation in just 30 days. But what’s a realistic timeline?
This depends on two things. How consistent can you be? How far do you have to go?
The more consistent you are, the faster the process. And you can intuit that it will take longer to lose 60 lbs. than to lose 30 lbs. Maybe not twice as long, but surely longer.
You can expect to lose, on average, 0.5-1 lbs. per week using this moderate approach. As much fun as it would be to step on the scale and see it down 1 lb. every week, this is an average, so it won’t be a straight graph down.
Losing 0.5-1 lbs. per weeks doesn’t seem like a lot, but if I told you it adds up to about 25-50 lbs. over the course of one year, would you sign up for that?
It’s important to start thinking about fat loss as a long game for a few reasons. You want to keep the progress, not just yo-yo back to where you started, right? Seeing it as a marathon instead of a sprint helps you relax. It means you can enjoy yourself on a vacation without having to worry about how it’s impacting your progress. It takes off the pressure.
Which foods are off limits?
None. Zero. No food is forbidden.
This is because food isn’t good or bad. There’s a sliding scale of nutritional quality from food to food. 100 calories of salmon isn’t the same nutritionally as 100 calories of ice cream. It doesn’t make salmon “good” and ice cream “bad”.
Once you understand how calories work and how foods fit in your calorie “budget” you can see how you can “afford” them.
The basis of your nutrition should come from minimally-processed whole foods. What does that mean? There’s no perfect definition. Can you recognize the food and its ingredients? Would your great-grandmother recognize it and its ingredients? You’d both understand something like a potato or a pancake probably.
If 80% of your food falls in this category, you’re good. You don’t have to be perfect. Get to 80% and you’ll make progress. That leaves up to 20% (if you choose) for less nutritious stuff that you enjoy.
Now if over the course of a day you have one apple and an entire pizza, you may have only eaten two foods but don’t lie to yourself and think you ate 50% nutritious.
We all have certain foods that give us trouble when we try to control our portions. For me, a serving of Thin Mints is 4 cookies. Four cookies? Four. That barely gets the party started. You may have a different food that’s hard not to eat whole in one sitting. It’s fine.
A couple tips for that: Don’t eat it directly from the container. Take out how much you’re going to have, put it in a dish. Put the rest back. Take your dish and go to another room. Then take your time and savor each bite, lick, or spoonful. I’m serious. Eat slowly. Really taste it. Don’t just wolf it down.
Patience
The final key to sustained fat loss is to be patient. It’s going to be a slow process. Slower than you want. Slower than you expect or hope.
Don’t quit.
If five years from now you look back and realize it took you a year and a half to get the results you wanted in three months, would you be disappointed? Of course not, you got the results. You won the long game.
This isn’t about getting to a certain weight as fast as possible. If it is, cut off a leg, you’ll lose weight. No? Not appealing? Good. So you acknowledge it’s not a sprint.
Be patient.
Don’t quit.
Moderation
The quick-fix approach just doesn’t get you long-term results. It’s not designed to, even though its advertising often implies it.
There’s a very good chance you’ve experienced this yourself. You know it doesn’t work.
The way to win the long game is a moderate approach. Form a plan to eat at a moderate, sustainable calorie deficit. Eat your protein to sustain muscle and cell-repair. Include carbs for energy and fats for healthy hormones and vitamin absorption.
For best results include some strength training a few times per week. This signals your body to get stronger and to keep lean muscle tissue. You’ll be more capable. You’ll look leaner once you peel off the fat. As a bonus, having more muscle on you will allow you to eat a few more calories at your new, lower maintenance level.
Moderation doesn’t sound or look sexy, but you know what does?
Results.
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