Fat loss should not come form a place of self hate or negativity, it should come from a wish to feel good and happy. Here are some tips to make the journey a bit easier, and most importantly how to keep the weight off.
PROGRESS TRACKING
Personally I never use the scale to track my progress. I prefer to take progress photos of my body once per month. Take it at the same time, on the same day, with one month apart. I don’t recommend comparing photos more often as there is too many daily fluctuations to see the results. Factors like being on your period, what you’ve been eating the day before, how intense your workout was earlier, or water retention. We want to focus on the big picture.
We tend to think that progress is a straight line going upwards, but in fact it’s a roller coaster. Some days you go a step back, and the you go two steps forwards, which can be demotivating, so we have to zoom out and look at the whole picture.
MEASURE YOUR ENERGY
Every week I rate how my energy levels are. If they are lower then 6, on a scale from 0-10, for more then 3 weeks, I need to do some changes to my plan.
SLOW AND STEADY
Going too hard into your fat loss journey can create risk of depressed biological processes, like menstruation, bone density, immunity, and digestive issues. This is something we want to avoid at all costs. Also, quick fat loss increases the ratio of muscle to fat being lost, but we want to keep that muscle.
Muscle and strength are very important to keep the fat we lose away. Therefore a slow and steady approach will be better long-term.
CALORIE DEFICIT
You want to aim for about 10% calorie deficit from your maintenance calories.
Personally I’m on 2000 calorie maintenance, I workout 5 times per week, so 10% is 200 calories.
Which means I would be eating 1800 cal per day to lose fat in a sustainable way.
Remember that deficit doesn’t only have to come from reducing your intake, it can also come from increasing physical activity. However, increasing exercise load whilst in a caloric deficit might make it harder to eat less.
PROTEIN INTAKE
It’s especially important to eat enough proteins while being in a calorie deficit. Depending on your activity level you should aim to eat between 1,3-1,6 % protein per bodyweight per day.
For me that looks like: 60kg x1.5g protein = approximately 90g protein per day.
EATING ENOUGH
Just because we are reducing calories, doesn’t mean we are reducing volume. We should not walk around feeling hungry, as this in most cases causes cravings.
Eat big portions of nutrient dense foods, like fruit, vegetables, lean meat and complex carbohydrates.
WORKOUTS
There are many ways to use exercise to lose fat. I believe in building strength in the gym, and reducing fat in the kitchen. The goal with my workout is to preserve muscle and strength, to have the best chance of keeping the fatty tissue away. At the end of the session it's a good idea to add exercises with high energy expenditure.
WORKOUT EXAMPLE
Four full body workouts per week, 45-60 min long.
Concurrent training has been proven to be a great way to keep muscle while loosing fat. It simply means a mix of strength and cardio.
Start the workout with hypertrophy, which means 8-20 reps of controlled movements with heavy weight, pushing close to failure. Good example can be squats, deadlifts, rowing.
Rest between 60-120 seconds between each set, which allows you to rebuild strength capacity to do 3-4 sets. Do 3-6 exercise like this.
End your session with some complex dynamic movements, where the focus is to push resistance with speed. Good examples can be squat jumps, thrusters, wall balls.
FIND A FORM OF EXERCISE THAT WORKS FOR YOU
The workout example over is just one way to do it. If you want to workout less, you have to optimise your workouts, if you want to workout more often, you might do a split instead of full body.
NO RESTRICTIONS
Even if we want to reduce our calorie intake, no food is off limit. Focus on eating less high energy dense food on an empty stomach, and eat them in moderation.
First eat your nutrient dense meal, then your high energy dense food, like brownies, ice cream, chocolate, popcorn.
MINDSET
Take small steps, there is no race to get to your goal. Getting in shape, and losing fat is a choice you make for yourself, so enjoy the journey. You deserve to feel good and happy. You are doing this whole thing to make you feel good.
And just a little heads up at the end. At some point in your plan, you will go way off your plan. I recommend you to plan for that! Life is unpredictable.
Do your best, and don’t throw everything away when you derail. Move on, get back on track and remember why you started.
You got this!