How to Sustainably lose fat

Sustainable & Realistic Weight Loss

Calories and Macros:

Macronutrients are protein, carbohydrates, and fat. Calories are the sum total of the macronutrients we eat in a day. Calories represent the energy taken in, while macronutrients are the composition of those calories.

Losing fat is a simple process. It involves putting your body in a caloric deficit so it begins using its stored energy source (fat). This process is known as fat oxidation or lipolysis. It requires oxygen, which is why increasing daily activity with exercise aids in fat loss. Increasing muscle mass raises the basal metabolic rate, which is the number of calories we burn just by existing. This also helps in the process. Building muscle has many other health benefits for the body. While it's a simple process, it doesn't mean it's an easy one. Here's a breakdown of how to approach it.

Getting a Snapshot: First Things First

We need a picture of your current diet. Tracking calories doesn't have to be done forever, but it's crucial for some time as we learn how to eat healthier. For 3-4 days, track everything you eat in a normal day. This is most easily done with an app like MyFitnessPal, Cronometer, etc. For many people, this can be quite eye-opening. It will give you a breakdown of your macronutrients (protein, fat, and carbohydrates) as well as calories, which is the total of the macronutrients added together.

What Does Tracking Our Diet Tell Us?

By tracking our macros, we now know the total calories we're eating in a day and the breakdown of where those calories come from. If this has been your diet for some time and you've been gaining weight, you now know you're in a caloric surplus and where those excess calories are coming from.

How to Build a Healthy Diet

I don't like the phrase "going on a diet." Diet, by definition, is what we normally eat. So the next step is cleaning up the diet. This doesn't mean plain rice and chicken. You can still make delicious, healthy meals. It means prioritizing whole foods like lean meats, whole grains, fruits, vegetables, and healthy fats. We can still have small amounts of junk food, but it must fit into our need to be in a calorie deficit. The premise is that our diet should be mostly whole, healthy foods with some fun stuff in small portions. For example, one day you might have three Oreos with a glass of low-fat milk as a treat after dinner, which was sautéed chicken and green beans with some sweet potatoes. It's about the portions and, therefore, the calories.

How Much of Each Macro Should I Eat?

Protein is the priority. Our muscles are made of it, and our body takes more energy (calories) to convert it into a usable nutrient than fats or carbs. The general rule of thumb is 1 gram of protein for every pound of body weight. If you're obese, you may need to reduce your protein intake from this recommendation. I would recommend aiming for the protein amount that corresponds to your goal weight. For the general population, where our other calories come from is not of huge importance. If you prefer a diet higher in fat or higher in carbs, it's up to you. Extremely active individuals will eat lots of carbs because it affects physical performance in the gym, but for most people, it's a matter of preference.

What's Next?

With metrics like your age, height, and weight, and the snapshot of your new cleaner diet, we will reduce your caloric intake to about 250-500 calories below what your body needs every day to maintain its current weight. This usually results in anywhere between 0.5 to 1 pound of fat loss per week. This may not seem like a lot, but it's important in two ways. First, it's sustainable; you won't crash because of a shock to your body from a massive calorie reduction, which can cause diet rebound and lead to the same place we were before. Second, the body experiences something known as "diet fatigue"; the more extreme the caloric deficit, the more quickly this will set in, and you'll want to quit the diet.

How Does Exercise Play a Role?

It aids in many ways, but the two most crucial are the following. Resistance training, aka training with weights, increases our muscle mass. This has numerous health benefits, but it will aid in burning some calories while doing it, as well as increasing our basal metabolic rate. Remember, this is the calories you burn just by existing. The second is increasing our daily activity. This may be as simple as getting 10k-15k steps a day, or doing a sport you enjoy like swimming, riding a bike, or shooting a basketball. This will help keep the heart healthy and increases our calories burned every day, which means a greater deficit.

Don't Panic!

This isn't exact, and all our bodies are different. Learning about how our body responds to these changes is part of the process. If you don't see the scale move in two weeks, we may need to just adjust something, or maybe you're gaining some muscle while losing fat. Either way, the results WILL come!

IMPORTANT!
As we lose fat our bodies can reach a point where we are using less calories than before. Which means we need to reduce calories a bit more to start using fat an energy again. When we get to a happy weight and are stable there with the calories we are eating, that is known as maintenance calories or the amount of calories it will take to stay at that weight.