Losing Fat

At the peak of summer it’s prime time to be shredded. Get those abs showing or just be able to wear clothes that are somewhat comfortable without showing off the layer of fat you might have accumulated during the colder months where you could hide it all behind a few layers of clothing. So let’s hit the gym and jump on the treadmill, go on a new diet and hope to see some results.

Most people will mindlessly do this without actually knowing what they are trying to achieve and they can mess things up pretty bad or experience either no significant fat loss or some pretty slow results which aren’t worth their effort. Some have a rough idea of what they are trying to do but do too much at once and results slow to a frustratingly slow pace and you’re left with confusion and often giving up.

In this article I’ll try and explain what has worked best for me and how things may differ for people with different fat loss goals. That is, people who are just worried about losing fat or people who are trying to hold on to as much muscle as possible whilst losing fat. The latter is the harder and more complex of the two and it’s usually individuals who have been trying to bulk up leading up to summer that are faced with this task. It does take a lot more effort and is a tough challenge to hold on to all the muscle you've built since your last cut but it’s a lot more impressive when done properly.

What is fat?

Fat, apart from being a macronutrient, is an energy store. In fact, fat is the body’s most efficient energy store with a caloric value of 9kcal per gram of fat. It is easily stored in the form adipose tissue and is there as a vital survival tool that provides a source of energy in times where you may not have eaten for a while. This survival need isn’t as important now as it was thousands of years ago for humans. Now, unless you make a sustained effort to reduce your body fat stores they’ll probably stay there or grow larger seeing as you’re not likely to be short of food anytime soon.

The build-up of fat stores signals that you are consuming more energy than you are expending. Going back to the basics we need to look at this from a simple equation of energy balance.

To be alive your body uses energy i.e. you burn calories. Even to sit there and do nothing all day your body is burning calories, because there’s always something going on, even if you aren’t consciously aware of it or if you can’t see it happening. Now let’s add on the calories you need to carry out your daily tasks such as walking up the stairs, brushing your teeth, walking to your car, driving your car. All these activities burn calories. If you’re following a regular workout routine the energy requirement goes up further. How do you fulfil these energy requirements? Through the food you eat.

If you are burning 2200 calories on a daily basis and you are consuming 2200 calories on a daily basis, theoretically your weight will not change. You will be eating at maintenance. In order to drop fat you’ll need to be in a caloric deficit. To be in a deficit you need to be eating fewer calories than you are burning and when you create this caloric deficit your body turns to stores of energy which includes body fat hence a reduction in body fat.  

Fat is accumulated when you are in a caloric surplus, which is when you are consuming more calories than you are burning. When your body has enough calories to complete all tasks and has spare left over it puts these away in fat stores for later use. Whether they are used is up to!

The equations below should help sum up what I’ve just explained.

Calories In – Calories Out < 0 you have put your body in a fat burning environment.

Calories in – Calories Out > 0 you have put your body in a fat storing environment.

Please note this is a very simplified version of events. VERY simplified. So simple that you should be able to learn and manipulate it and get some sort of fat loss results.

So what can you do to reduce your body fat?

You have two main tools in your arsenal (no, not Ozil and Alexis). The first is eating less or reducing the ‘Calories In’ part of the equation above. The second thing you can do is increase your activity levels which would be increasing the ‘Calories Out’ part of the equation. Both of these will help bring the equation to equal less than 0 meaning that your body needs to turn to stored energy. Often people will do both in an attempt to speed up the process. Note I say attempt. Often this overkill leads to a failed attempt. I’ve overkilled and failed and tried harder and failed harder.

How should you approach your fat loss goals?

Timing it Right

The approach one takes to lose fat depends a lot on how much fat they hold and how much they want to lose. But for most people they will want to trim down the extra few pounds of fat anywhere around 10lbs of fat is quite an achievable target in an 8-12 week period.

Its all an illusion! Weighing around 90kg around 2 weeks into my cut on the left, weighing 85kg on the right 10 weeks down the line. Around a 10lb drop in bodyweight, most of which was fat.

For someone who is looking to hold onto as much muscle as possible during the fat loss period it is important to start transitioning to a fat loss phase with enough time before you want to be in your final form. Starting at the beginning of summer would mean you’re going to be in shape by around mid-late summer which is a bit late for most people. Starting around 8/12 weeks before you want to be in shape is probably around a good time to give yourself a good chance to hold onto most of the hard earned muscle you have built. Again this does depend a lot on the individual and how much fat they want to lose .

The importance of timing it right is mainly because of impatience leading to drastic measures. People who are not happy with the consistent slow loss of fat will begin to drop calories at a greater rate causing a larger caloric deficit while adding more cardio or longer workouts to go with this. This can lead to muscle loss which is not what you want. Even for people who are looking to lose fat without the worry of losing muscle mass it is important to stick will slow and steady results.

For people who aren’t as concerned about losing muscle mass I would think that you can keep dieting slowly as long as you still see results. The approach would be somewhat different and dieting decisions would be determined more by the way you feel and when you are happy with the results rather than looking at weight on the scale and being more concerned with body fat percentages. 

Nevertheless, it would be important to have a time frame in mind and have a set target milestone along with mini milestones along the route. The reason I say this even though they can be relatively more aggressive as they are not worried about losing muscle mass in the process, it still takes the body time to adapt to changes in diet and training so that it can keep using fat as the preferred energy source at an efficient pace.

I haven’t really had the aim of losing just body fat without maintaining muscle mass and when I did try to attempt this for a brief period I didn’t know what I was doing so I basically did what most people do and what most people advised me to do. Eat less, stay away from carbs (especially at night), do a lot of cardio and make sure it’s a torturous process. This is never going to be a maintainable way to keep the body you want and will result in you packing the fat back on after falling off track from this extreme diet.

Changes in Diet and adding Cardio

Now to lose fat you need to put yourself in a caloric deficit as explained earlier. To do this you need to know what your maintenance calories are. For someone who is regularly tracking their eating this will be something that they have a rough idea of. For those that don’t regularly track their eating it can be a bit trickier but the best way I have found in helping people understand their maintenance levels in by telling them to start tracking without changing their regular eating. Once they have tracked for a couple of weeks we know what they’re average weekly caloric intake is and we can use these figures along with their average weekly weight to determine whether they are in a caloric surplus, deficit or if they are consuming at their maintenance caloric level. Obviously we are making some assumptions here such as the activity level of these individuals and eating habits have not changed dramatically and they have been following more or less the same routine for these tracking weeks.

Now we can make a rough estimate on what this persons maintenance levels are from seeing how much their weight was changing and how many calories they were eating. So from maintenance we need to drop calories to start the weight loss process.

How many calories do you need to cut out?

Theoretically, one lb of fat has an energy value of roughly 3500 calories so to lose a lb of fat a week you need to be in a caloric deficit of 3500 calories a week or 500 calories a day. Once you know your maintenance calories you can deduct 500 calories from this and you’re left with your target calories for losing a lb a week.

Once you’ve started eating at this level you should experience some changes in weight as check your average weekly weight. As long as you are losing weight at a good rate you should stay at this level of calories until things start slowing down. At this point you can further reduce calories or increase activity levels through adding cardio sessions.

There is a lot of debate about whether cardio is essential to reducing your body fat and the simple answer which you’ve probably gathered by now is, no. Cardio is not essential but being in an energy/caloric deficit is. However, cardio can still be a very effective tool if used properly and different forms of cardio are more effective for people with different goals and preferences.

It is important for each individual to understand the way they respond to different changes and how their body responds to different drops in calories and additional cardio. Also constantly checking progress according to personal targets is important when deciding how changes should be made but more importantly it is crucial to set realistic goals in the first place. This is where most people can get confused and start losing track of how to change things when their bodies begin adapting to the lower calories or increased activity.

Obviously there are many things which haven’t been looked at in detail here such as macronutrient composition of your diet once you know your calorie target and how you should divide your efforts between dropping calories and adding cardio and how much should each effort contribute towards fat loss goals. Also there is a lot more to be said on how someone who is looking to maintain their muscle while losing fat can use different dieting strategies and techniques to help speed up the process and get past difficult sticking points which are usually different for each individual depending on their set-point. 

People with different somatotypes will need to approach fat loss in different ways including how long they can stay in a caloric deficit while minimising muscle loss. Somatotypes are basically different body types and usually people have a basic idea of which type they fall under. Some are prone to fat gain while others may find it harder to put on fat. Some people tend to maintain muscle easier than others who may find that they lose muscle relatively quickly when entering a caloric deficit. These are all factors which need to be looked at for someone who is looking to lose fat and especially for someone who is looking to maintain muscle while losing fat.

Also one very important factor for someone looking to maintain as much muscle mass as possible is lifting weights! There's a lot of misunderstanding about the way people train when trying to get ripped and this deserves its own article which ill post soon.

I’ll try writing a lot more on fat loss soon as it seems to be one of the areas with most interest and there is a lot more to talk about than I’ve covered in this article, but for now this should help you understand how the basic theoretical approach works and how it is important to set goals and track progress while aiming for gradual consistent results.