calories to lose it. You’ll never lose weight permanently with low calorie diets – it’s nearly
impossible. Temporary dieting can only produce temporary results. You need to use other
methods.
And that said, here's eight methods you can use to lose fat permanently while staying out
of the starvation mode.
1. Instead of "diet" mindset, introduce yourself to "habits"
The first step towards your new lean body has more to do with your mindset than it does
with nutrition or training. You have to change your entire attitude towards these factors.
Instead of adopting the mindset of “diets” (short-term) you must adopt the mindset of
“habits" (long term).
A habit is a behavior that you perform automatically without thinking or putting any effort on it.
Once a habit is firmly established to your everyday life – doesn't matter if it's good or bad - it takes
a lot strength to break it. To describe it, it would be like trying to swim upstream against the current.
The entire concept of “dieting” for fat loss is distorted. When you say you’re
“going on a diet” the implication is that it’s a temporary phase and at some point
you’re going to have to come off the diet. With this kind of attitude, you’re setting yourself
up for failure right from the beginning. Permanent fat loss won't be achieved by going on and
off diets. It can and will only be achieved by adopting new exercise and nutrition habits that you
can maintain for the rest of your life!.
Depending on your goal, you may need to make your nutrition plan more or less restrictive
at certain times, but you need to maintain a baseline of healthy eating habits to which you stick
for the rest of your life. Usually you’ll eat the same foods all year round. When you want to
lose body fat, all you need to do is cut a little off of those same foods and exercise
a lot more.
The best way to get rid of unwanted habits such as poor nutrition or inactivity is by replacing
them with new ones, and not attempting to overcome them with sheer willpower.
We could think about this scenario: To cover up a bad paint job, you need to lay over a new paint
that is thick enough so the old paint disappears. The new habit then takes over as the old one is
forgotten away in the subconscious mind.
Good nutrition habits may not be easy to form, but once you’ve formed them, they are
just as hard to break as the bad ones you had. One expert put it this way:
"The beginning of a habit is like an invisible thread, but every time we repeat the act we
strengthen the strand, add to it another filament, until it becomes a great cable and binds
us irrevocably."
At the beginning, there will be a period where starting the new habit feels somewhat uncomfortable.But the key is to be patient! Everything is difficult at the start. For a new habit to become
permanently entrenched into your nervous system, it could take months. However, the
base of nutrition and exercise habits can be formed in just 3 weeks - 21 days.
That’s why it’s so important that you give 100% total effort and commitment for at least the first
3 weeks! Once those 21 days have passed, you'll already be leaner and you'll be on your way to
making your new habits as effortless and natural as brushing your teeth or taking a shower!
2. Keep your muscle mass at all costs
One of the most important factors in turning your body into a “fat-burning machine” is to build
and maintain as much muscle mass as possible. Muscle is the bodybuilder’s secret weapon to fat burning! Muscle is your greatest friend on this matter. The more muscle you have, the more calories
you burn, even at rest. With more muscle mass, you burn extra calories even while sleeping.
With a higher lean body mass, the calories burned during exercise are greater. If you put two
people side by side on a stationary bike, one of them with 90 kgs of lean body mass and the other
with 75 kgsof lean body mass, the person with 90 kgs of lean body mass will burn more calories
from the exact same workout.
The most efficient way to burn extra calories and lose more body fat is to gain more muscle.
That’s why weight training is an important factor in the fat loss equation.
3. Use only a small calorie deficit.
To lose body fat, you must be in negative calorie balance. You can create a calorie deficit
by increasing exercise, by decreasing calories or with a combination of both. The most efficient
way for fat loss is to decrease your calories a little and increase your exercise a lot. The
recommended guideline is to reduce your calories by 500 to 1000 less than your maintenance level.
For example for a female whose calorie maintenance level is 2100 calories per day, then a 500 calorie deficit would put you at 1600 calories per day.
And if you’re a male with a calorie maintenance level of 2900 calories per day, then a 500
calorie deficit would put you at 2400 calories per day. In one week , that's 3500 calories minus.
In a kilo of fat there's approximately 7000 calories, so (in theory), a 500 calorie per day deficit
will result in a loss of about 0,5 kgs of body fat per week. It follows that a 750 calorie deficit would
produce a loss of about 75 per week and a 1000 calorie deficit would result in close to 1 kgs lost.
But because of the way the weight regulating mechanism works, fat loss seldom follows these
calculations so airtightly, so don’t tangle up in them. An emphasis on exercise with a small
reduction in calories is the best approach. 500 to 750 calorie deficit under your maintenance
level is usually enough. Add weight training and aerobics into the mix and this
will produce as close to 100% fat loss as possible.
An alternate (and preferred) method is to set your calorie deficit as a percentage of your
maintenance level. 15-20% is the recommended starting calorie reduction for fat loss.
This is considered a small calorie deficit and just that small calorie deficit is the key to
losing fat while maintaining muscle.
For example, with a 2000 calorie maintenance level, 20% would be a 400 calorie deficit,
which would put you at 1600 calories per day. With a 2600 calorie maintenance level,
a 20% deficit would be 520 calories. That would put you at 2080 calories per day.
The reason why this percentage method is superior is because using an absolute number
like 500, 750 or 1000 calories as a deficit instead of a percentage deficit might drop your
calories too low into the danger zone. To illustrate this, if you are a male with a 3500 calorie
maintenance level, a 750 calorie deficit to 2750 calories per day is only a 21% drop (a
small, safe and acceptable deficit.)
However, if you are a female with an 1800 calorie per day maintenance level and you cut
your calories by 750 per day to 1050 calories, that is a severe 41% cut. Using the percentage
method is more individualized and appropriate for everyone.
At times, an aggressive calorie deficit greater than 20% may be allright, but calorie cuts
greater than 20% are much more likely to cause muscle loss and slow down your metabolic
rate. If you do use a calorie deficit greater than 20%, then it’s wise to raise calories
at regular intervals using the “zig-zag method” (Which i covered on my earlier post).
This will trick your body and prevent your metabolism from slowing down when you happen to
have a large calorie deficit. Always remember to start with a small deficit. In other words,
cut calories out slowly. It’s better to start with a small deficit and then slowly increase towards
your maximal deficit than to make a sudden drop in calories right away. The body cannot be forced to
lose fat, you need to coax it.
Based on what you now know about the body’s weight-regulating mechanism, the
optimal amount to decrease your caloric intake for fat loss is as little as possible, as long
as you still keep losing body fat.
4. In fat loss, use exercise rather than diets to burn the fat
To lose body fat, there must be a calorie deficit. Such are the laws oft energy balance.
However, there’s more than one way to create a calorie deficit. One way is to decrease your
caloric intake from food. The other is to increase the amount of calories you burn by exercising.
Of the two ways to create a calorie deficit, burning the calories is much superior approach.
This is because large calorie deficits cause muscle loss and trigger the starvation response
in your body. Ironically, many people do the opposite: They slash their calories to starvation
levels and exercise too little or not at all.
This causes a loss in muscle mass and wakes up the starvation mechanism.
Controversial as it seems, the most effective approach to fat loss is to eat more
(keeping the calorie deficit small) and let the exercise burn the fat away. You must not
starve yourself! You just have to choose the right foods and make exercise
a permanent part of your lifestyle.
So we might ask ourselves, why would anyone resort to starvation diets when they can burn
fat more efficiently through exercise? Perhaps they believe that eating more food and
working out at the same time will “cancel each other out". Maybe they are afraid of the
hard work involved in exercise. There's also a false belief going around that cardio exercise
will make you lose muscle, and thus they're avoiding it.
But contrary to belief, aerobic exercise combined with weight training - is the only
fat loss method that allows you to create a calorie deficit and burn fat without slowing
down the metabolism.
Here are some very good reasons why exercise - not dieting - is the best method of
losing body fat:
-Training – aerobic and weight training - boosts your metabolic rate.
-Training will create a caloric deficit without triggering the starvation mode.
-Training is good for your health and heart. Dieting is usually harmful to your health.
-Training, especially weight training, signals your body to keep your muscle and not
burn it for energy. Dieting without exercise can result in over 50% of the weight loss
to come from muscle mass.
-Training increases fat-burning enzymes and hormones in your body.
-Training increases your cells sensitivity to insulin so that carbohydrates are easier to burn
for energy and stored as glycogen rather then being stored as body fat.
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One way to make sure that you never trigger the starvation response is to find out the minimum
amount of calories you can eat without slowing your metabolism. Then, use that as your bottom
calorie number. Because nutrition can be quite different for everyone, it’s difficult to set an absolute
single figure for everyone in general as a minimal calorie requirement, but the American
College of Sports Medicine has suggested some guidelines.
The ACSM recommends 1200 calories as the minimal daily calorie level for women and 1800
as the minimum for men. They have also recommended a maximum deficit of 1000 calories below maintenance level. The 1000 calorie maximum deficit is good advice, but it’s just a guideline.
Sometimes a 1000 calorie per day deficit can be too much.
People with low bodyweights or low activity levels will have relatively low daily calorie needs,
so 1000 below maintenance could be a little overkill. For example, it’s not uncommon for a female
to require only 1800 calories per day to maintain her weight. If she were to drop 1000 calories off
this already quite low maintenance level, this would bring her to a dangerously low 900 calories per day. 1200 should be her rock bottom number, and a small 20% deficit of only 380 calories would be
very ideal (1520 calories per day).
6. Eat frequently and don't skip meals!
I will explain the importance of small frequent meals more deeply on my future posts, but for now,
let it be known that the body might interpret missed meals as starvation. Here's an example:
You eat lunch at 11:30 and dinner at 18:30. If you would skip breakfast for some reason the next
day, that’s 17 hours without food! This sends a signal to your body that you are starving, even if
your lunch and dinner are good and large meals.
Your goal should be to eat approximately every three hours. Make scheduled meal times and
follow them. Regularity in your eating habits is crucial in weight loss. By eating smaller portions
more frequently, you’ll eat more food than you’ve ever eaten before and you won't be starving
yourself. Many people have said that by starting to eat eat more than they’ve ever eaten, they still
have gotten leaner than they’ve ever been before.
7. Don’t stay in a calorie deficit for long
I bet we all know that one person who always seems to be on a diet. The odds are also good
that although these dieters may achieve some small success in weight losses, they are among the
95% that always gain it back. Then, with the failure of the last diet in mind, they quickly hop
on to the latest “extra-super-diet” and repeat the cycle.
When fat loss stops or begins to slow down after being in a negative calorie balance, most people
panic and cut down their calories even more! Sometimes this may work and it breaks the plateau.
More often though, it digs you into an even deeper metabolic downfall. The best thing to do
is to raise your calories for a couple of days or even for a few weeks.
Your body’s weight controlling mechanism works both ways: It can decrease your rate of
energy consumption when there is a calorie deficit, or it can also increase the rate of energy
consumption when there is a calorie surplus. When you eat more and frequently, your body burns
more calories. A temporary increase in calories when you have hit a dead end in fat loss will give a
“spike” for your metabolic rate. It sends a signal to your body that you are not starving and that it’s ok to keep burning those pesky calories!
This process of raising your caloric intake up and down is known as “cycling” your calories
(also known as the “zig-zag” method). In general, the lower you go down with calories, the
more important it is to take periodic high calorie days.
8. Make your goal to lose weight at a rate of 0,5-1 kgs
per week. And be patient!
The best way of losing fat permanently without losing you muscle is to lose weight slowly with
focusing on exercise rather than cutting calories severely. In my posts on goal setting, I already
made the suggestion to lose no more than 1 kilos per week.
Let’s elaborate a little on the logic behind that recommendation. In the ACSM’s position statement on “Healthy and unhealthy weight loss programs,” The ACSM recommends losing weight at a maximum
rate of 1 kgs per week. This 1 kg figure has become almost universally recommended as the standard
guideline for safe weight loss. Why? Because, of course, you can lose more than two pounds of weight
per week, but losing fat over 1 kilos per week is highly unlikely. Even at that rate, it’s difficult to lose 100% body fat with no loss of lean body mass.
There are cases of fat loss with greater than one kilos per week on numerous occasions, but this is
the exception that makes the rule. Usually this only happens when someone has a large amount of
weight to drop. But the more slowly you lose weight, the easier it is to maintain your important muscle
mass and keep the fat off, permanently. It’s better to lose only 0,5kgs of pure fat per week than it is
to lose one kilo per week with half from muscle and half from fat.
Bodybuilders also usually set their goal to lose weight at a rate 0,5 - 1 kilos per week. Losing
only a single pound a week may seem like an excruciatingly slow and painstaking process,
however, this is one of the secrets of bodybuilders and fitness models and one of the most crucial
keys to permanent fat loss. Why would you want to lose weight faster if you know you’re going to lose muscle and there’s a 95% chance that all you just lost will come back right away?
How should you react if you lose more than 1 kilo per week? It depends; everything is relative to
the individual. If you have very much of fat to lose, then losing 2 kgs a week is safe and
acceptable during the beginning. But make sure it's not water or muscle weight you're only losing.
And as you get closer to your long-term goal, you can expect the weight loss to slow to half - one
kilos per week. For most people, losing more than a kilo per week signals that you should actually
eat more! This may be hard for you to accept, but if you're losing more than the recommended
amount, you’re also losing muscle with the fat.
Don’t let the temporary confidence boost from a large drop in scale weight sabotage your efforts
in the long run. Remember to be patient! Don’t ever confuse weight loss with fat loss.
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