Lose BodyFat - The Diets

Unlike gaining overall size and strength losing fat can be considered both incredibly simple and unusually complex. Your body is a survival machine, honed over hundreds of thousands of generations into a hunter gatherer that may experience long periods of drought or famine and consequently we are equipped with a system that priorities all excess energy be stored as body fat, to be used in emergency long term starvation. There are a few problems here:

One – these days we have access to far more food than we could ever use.

Two – A lot of that food is refined and altered beyond what our bodies naturally anticipate and create all kinds of hormonal havoc.

Three – Most of us want to build an athletic healthy body that maintains quality muscle tissue without having to starve ourselves close to death to reach low body fat.

With these caveats in mind there are a few basic rules to eating for fat loss. First off we need to be in a calorie deficit. This means consuming less calories than you are burning up so our body is forced to eat away at stored fat in order to fuel itself – however we need to balance this with the need to eat enough of the right things to keep our hard earned muscle tissue intact and to stop our metabolisms crashing to a halt. Unlike the ‘more is generally better’ approach to mass gain you need a ‘careful balance of everything’ approach. You will be eating a decent mixture of the three macronutrients and these rations will depend upon your metabolism and goals.

Carbs/Proteins/Fats

Carbohydrates for fat loss –Carbohydrates are the easiest way for our bodies to have access to quick clean energy. They provide us with the quick day to day fuel that drives our bodies to work and our brains to tick over. There is however a dangerous edge to carbohydrates. Firstly although for many years people assumed fat foods made you fat the simple truth is that any carbohydrates not used for immediate energy cannot be held as sugars and the body rapidly converts any excess into stored body fat. Secondly high carb consumption can lead to promoted insulin levels and when high insulin is present in the blood fat burning more or less comes to a crashing halt. So we have a dilemma – we need carbohydrates to ensure we have energy to train and live day to day as well as supplying us with vital nutrients – but we need to treat them as a double edged sword and know when to cut them down. (Calories per gram 4)

Whole food sources: Sweet potatoes, wholemeal rice, oatmeal, limited pasta or bread (preferably wholemeal) Beans and legumes, some fruits, lots of vegetables (as much colour variety as possible for health reasons)

Supplemental sources: Weight gain drinks, Carbohydrate drinks, Post workout drinks.

Protein for fat loss – Protein as every bodybuilder and strength athlete knows is the primary source of raw building material for muscle tissue. Under eat protein and you deprive your body of the essential stuff to repair that damaged muscle and create new lean mass from the training stimulus. When eating for fat loss we are also at pains to ensure that our body doesn’t start breaking down all that hard earned muscle in place of its emergency fat stores. Eating protein on a calorie controlled fat loss diet is even more important than on a mass gain diet and since you have less calories to work with you need to think of the quality and portions much more readily. When choosing whole food proteins those with less excess calories are usually best although those with some fat may be beneficial in making us feel full on less food. For protein shakes and supplements weight gain formulas are out and lean low carb proteins are in. You may prefer a thicker blended protein too which can fill you up for longer. (Calories per gram 4)

Whole food sources: Lean meats, chicken, turkey, oily fish, eggs, probiotic yoghurt, cottage cheese and other light cheeses.

Supplemental sources: Low carb Protein shakes and diet meal replacements.

Fats for fat loss – Fats got a very bad reputation in the 80’s with the belief that fat kills you and you can pretty much ignore it with its dense calories. The only problem was, when everybody cut fat from their diets they denied the body a lot of essentials. Fats provide a lot of the raw ingredients for hormones, so testosterone crashed off the chart, the exact opposite of what a trainee needs. Fats also make up most of the joints and essential connective tissues in our body, not to mention most of our brains are made of fats. Fats are not created equal however, there are good fats that improve our bodies and health and ones that slow us down and cause problems. Generally EFAs (essential fatty acids) need to be eaten to keep us alive and MCT (Medium Chain triglycerides) can offer us a healthy form of energy almost a rival to carbohydrates. There are also specialist types of fat like CLA which have actively shown to reduce stored body fat. When you reduce carbohydrates on a fat loss diet the quality of oils chosen becomes more important to your health and success in getting lean. (Calories per gram 9)

Whole food sources: Eggs, avocados, olive oil, coconuts, oily fish, light cheeses.

Supplemental sources: EFA oil blends, fish oil and CLA capsules

A special note about carbs when dieting: Although low carb diets have shown a lot of success for those needing to drop body fat often people neglect the healthy foods offered by carbs. Green vegetables as well as tomatoes and other vine fruits offer a huge amount of fibre as well as vitamins and minerals that would be missing from your diet otherwise. However as most of these are made of water and fibre they contain very few calories. You can essentially eat as much green veg and handfuls of vine fruits without seeing any impact on fat gain or stopping fat loss. So fill up your meat and egg dishes with plenty of salad or veg sides.

Calorie calculations for Fat Loss:

Fat loss requires a slightly more regimented approach than mass gain. Eat too little and you will lose weight rapidly but a lot of it will be healthy tissue loss and not stored fat, you’ll end up looking gaunt, being ill and unable to shift stubborn fat at all. Eat too much and you can be wasting your time on frustrating plateaus. So it can involve a lot of fine tuning.

The simple way to start a calorie calculation is to take your bodyweight in pounds and times this by a number to reach a basic guideline.

For fat loss in men we generally start at BM x 12 = calorie count starting line.

For fat loss in women we generally start at BM x 11 = calorie count starting line.

So for example a 180 pound man would be 180 x 12 = 2160 calories.

A woman of 125 pounds would be 125 x 11 = 1375 calories.

These are of course just initial estimates and everyone’s metabolism, work load, physical activity for work and hobbies and activity in the gym or sports will make a difference.

Now unlike mass gain altering calories is rarely the best initial method to altering your body. The best method during mass gain is to reassess your progress and increase or balance calories accordingly. With fat loss eating much less than your maintenance calorie count is likely to lead to your body entering an emergency metabolic slow down. This means drops in muscle mass and healthy tissue, lack of energy, collapse in strength and the exact opposite of what we want – less fat used for fuel.

So if eating less and less is not the answer what can we do to increase calorie deficit? Well we can look to examples of people that are ultra lean and yet maintain powerful muscular bodies. Look at any Olympic track and field athlete, cyclist, gymnast or swimmer. They eat a lot more than the average person but tend to be far leaner. Is this genetics? Partly. But it’s also a lot to do with them doing a lot more physical work.

The answer of course is to increase expenditure. Every week reassess your fat loss, if you are losing a quarter inch or more from your waist line (or around 1 – 2 lbs per week maximum) then continue on track – if fat loss and definition have halted add an extra session of energy systems training one morning (high intensity cardio for example) or add on a ten minute sprint session after one weights work out a week for example. You can increase these by five minutes or add an extra 5 minutes in elsewhere until fat loss resumes. See the articles on Energy Systems Training for more ideas and tips.

Macronutrient ratios:

When eating for fat loss we can divide your calories up between the aforementioned carbs/proteins/fats and this ratio can help you work out how much of what you should be eating.

For the purposes of gaining we need to start with a ratio of approximately 30/40/30 as a start line. This means 30% of your daily calories coming from carbs/40% from protein/30% from fat. This is a good starting place but again will require adjustment depending upon your individual metabolism.

The ratio is important but food choices are also important. With this sort of ratio you are relying on meals based around protein with some carbohydrates and more oils than usual. It is also likely to look a lot less food than you may have bulked up with.

For most people protein can remain solid at 40% of total calories. This is a lot more than the average man or woman in the street will consume and spread over 5 or 6 meals will give you adequate protein to maintain muscle and lean tissues. Some people have suggested mega sized rations of protein however there does not seem to be much advantage in eating much more than suggested here. Although protein is the hardest of the food macronutrients for your body to convert into fat, eat far too much and eventually your body will become adjusted to burning protein for energy and storing excess as body fat. Remember 40% is still a lot and you will likely need a blend of whole food proteins and supplements to achieve this day in and day out.

When altering this ration, most people will find that it is the carbs versus fat rations that need adjusting. Naturally leaner and skinnier people will probably find that they can eat a higher ratio of carbs and reduce fats slightly and still lose body fat. Lean bodies and sensitive insulin mean the body is better at handling carbs for energy.

Those who put fat on easily or who have held onto excess body fat for a long time will likely see a better result by lowering carb intake and increasing good quality fats such as Coconut, olive oils, EFA blends, oily fish etc. Due to the blunted insulin response in those with higher body fat content, carbs are not your friend.

So begin with the 30/40/30 ratio and plan your diet. If you are relatively lean already and are just trying to harden up and shred off some excess fat you can alter this to 35/40/25 with increased training. For those who need to lose a lot of body fat or who find they have huge difficulty seeing a change in fat levels this conversely would be 25/40/35. In extreme cases you may alter this to 20/40/40 but this is likely to suit only those who need to drop fat fast and cannot exercise at a high level yet.

Re-assessment:

You cannot lose fat forever, there are limits to how lean you can become. There is also a point at which your body will begin to chew up healthy muscle no matter what you do to push it to its limits. The fatter you are essentially the longer you can remain on a fat loss cycle. Lean individuals may find up to 12 weeks is the most they can sustain before energy crashes and muscle losses become impossible to avoid. Much fatter individuals may find they can safely lose body fat for several years. This will all depend on how carefully you eat and train, how healthy you can be and of course, the sort of body fat levels you are aiming for.

Remember to reassess your fat loss weekly. Unless you have a huge amount of weight to drop you cannot really be losing much more than 1 – 2 lbs per week without experiencing muscle loss. It can also be helpful to use fat callipers to measure the actual body fat percentage rather than relying weight. Body fat monitor scales are usually somewhat inaccurate but they can indicate whether you are on track. The simplest method is to use a tape measure to take waist measurements. You can include other measurements as long as you always take them at the same place each week. Losing a quarter inch from your waist is a sure sign of decrease in visceral body fat and far more important in both health and visual leanness than overall weight.

Also after 4 – 6 weeks of dieting you will likely be smaller and lighter than before so you will need to reassess your overall calorie count using any new figures. This will ensure you continue to make reasonable progress.

Aids with fat loss:

There are a whole range of supplements that can enhance and speed up your fat loss. These range from insulin mimickers such as Alpha Lipoic Acid which clears excess sugar from the bloodstream without the insulin spikes that bring fat burning to a crashing end to various metabolic boosting fat burners and appetite suppressants. There are also a whole range of more esoteric supplements now appearing on the market that regulate fat burning hormones and responses in the body in new and imaginative ways.

Fat burning supplements generally come in 3 forms. Those that are stimulant based and cause a rapid rise in calorie output from adrenaline spikes. Those that cause a natural increase in thyroid output that increases thermogenesis without a stimulant nervous reaction. Finally those that regulate cravings and can suppress hunger during the difficult early and late parts of a diet when you are re-adjusting to new dietary regimes.

Fat burners have always been a popular item amongst the supplement industries. It’s generally an easy product to put together and market and users can feel the effects virtually instantly and many stimulants also promote a feeling of ‘euphoria’ which can help during the low moods and energy of a very strict diet. However it’s important to remember that even the very best and most advanced of the modern fat burning supplements cannot overcome poor nutrition and programme design. What they can do is help overcome sticking points and perhaps increase fat loss by a few extra percent. Sort your diet and metabolic training and when you see fat loss occurring naturally you know you have the foundation to try out all of the extra fat loss aids.

An often overlooked but important part of fat loss supplementation is actually those products which maintain muscle during stress. Unlike a bulking diet you may be skirting the edge of calorie maintenance meaning muscle could be sacrificed without great care. Supplements like creatine, glutamine and branched chain amino acids may not directly cause more fat loss but as they help keep all that metabolically active muscle intact on lower calories they do help you maintain a better composition and strength levels.

Putting it together:

Eating for fat loss requires a certain amount of planning and preparation. This does not have to go the extremes of weighing every item of food and worrying over the exact calories in each slightly different sized chicken but you cannot just grab food on the go day in and day out and expect great results to follow. Fat loss is a gradual process over days and weeks. You may even find days where you seem to have regressed slightly but try to assess your progress just once a week on the same day as we all have fluctuations throughout the week. The great news about fat loss is that by performing it correctly you will vastly increase not only the quality of your physique but your health and longevity – with virtually all markers of good health showing major benefits from lower body fat levels.

There’s more good news. Once you’ve achieved a lean body, it’s much easier to keep that way. Lean bodies are much more efficient at dealing with food. Fat bodies are sluggish and store almost all food as fat, becoming a vicious cycle in itself. Lean people can eat more (and eat more cheat foods now and then) and still stay lean. You may still need to restart a fat loss diet now and then to reach an extra level of leanness say for a holiday or photo shoot or wedding perhaps but this will be far easier than the first time you need to lose a lot of fat.

Dividing your meals up into at least six a day is also an excellent idea for getting a constant stream of nutrients into your system without overloading your digestion and insulin response (your body cannot burn fat in the presence of high insulin levels). Some people may even need seven or eight meals a day which will mean eating something every hour and a half to two hours throughout the day. This is where having supplemental shakes/snacks/ready-to-drink-mixes can come in handy to carry with you throughout your day.

Dieting for fat loss should still not mean going hungry or starving yourself. Although some discipline is required to plan ahead and avoid pit fall trips to the nearest Chinese buffet you should still be able to eat regularly to maintain muscle, encourage a fast and healthy metabolism and avoid hunger. You will generally become hungry close to your next scheduled meal. Remember drinking plenty of water helps alleviate hunger. Protein and clean fats are more satiating in the long term than quick carb snacks. Also fill up on fibrous vegetables and salad items, the extra fibre keeps you fuller for longer and makes smaller meals seem more satisfying.

Skipping meals in the hope of increasing fat loss is a sure fire way to sabotage all progress. A starving body loses muscle, slows its metabolism and becomes sluggish and weak. You are also setting yourself up for rebound fat gain when you move to a different dietary regime. Losing fat is one thing, keeping it off requires a strong, fit, healthy, well fuelled body working at full capacity.

The largest meals of the day should be breakfast and the all important post workout meal. Just because you are eating less starchy carbs than someone bulking for mass does not mean you should neglect the special post workout window. Even when aiming for rapid fat loss denying your muscle tissue adequate nutrition following a workout will ensure damaging muscle loss. Only in advanced fat loss plans (and only for very short periods of time) would you ever reduce carbs in the post workout meal. Following resistance training insulin is most primed to shuttle nutrients directly into muscle tissues and away from fat cells.

This will all require some planning at first but once you get into the habits of regularly eating for fat loss, it will become second nature. It’s a good idea to plan ahead in the evening to the next day – prepare food and shakes ahead of time if necessary so you aren’t forced to skip meals or eat the wrong things.

Remember eating for fat loss does require lots of willpower at first to avoid junk foods and limit high energy portions to force your body to utilise that unsightly body fat for fuel. It can help with will power to have one or two meals a week where you relax a little and eat a few favourite foods off the diet. This helps prevent cravings, gives you a psychological break and may even improve Leptin hormonal response by tricking your body into freeing up more fat for energy,

The trick with cheat meals is to not let them turn into cheat days…and before you know it cheat weeks! Plan ahead. Choose a breakfast and lunch once a week and decide what you might want to indulge in. Individuals who lose fat relatively easily may be able to get away with two or three cheat meals a week (preferably centred on one day a week to stop calorie overload on multiple days) while those with excess fat or who notice easy fat gain may need to limit it to a single cheat snack. If you find even this messes with your progress be prepared to drop it to once every two weeks. Although it’s hard at first the progress in the mirror will be encouragement enough after a short while.

Water

Water intake is essential to your fat loss goals. A dehydrated body simply cannot burn fat. A dehydrated body loses muscle fast. A dehydrated body stores water under the skin resulting in a bloated retention look that is not only disastrous for a good looking physique but can cause hypertension and stress the kidneys.

Alcohol consumption will generally lead to fat gain and disrupts a lot of muscle gain, however it’s also important to remember that the more alcohol you consume the more dehydrated you become, so extra water is needed whenever you drink alcohol (which you should limit if you want a muscular physique without the fat).

Summary:

Complete your calorie assessment and ensure you have chosen the correct macronutrient ratio for your starting point. Give around two to three weeks to re-assess your requirements adding or subtracting calories until you find a balance between fat loss and muscle maintenance.

Remember to not neglect strength and resistance training, you’ll need to still be working hard to keep all that hard earned muscle intact but be aware that strength may not be maximal during high fat loss dieting. Remember to find extra ways to expend energy without causing massive nervous system fatigue. Walk up stairs instead of using lifts or escalators, add an extra skip rope session before each workout, reduce rest periods during training to enforce lactic acid response (a powerful fat burning hormonal mode). Be aware that too much work and too little food will result in a flat weak physique so be prepared to back off occasionally without giving up in order to cut your stressed body some slack.

Always keep notes, it helps to know what you’ve done that worked so you can repeat and develop those times and avoid the ones where mistakes were made. You will make mistakes but having a log of where you went right and wrong will help you guide your future plans.

Good luck!