Just because you’re working your butt off in the gym, sweating profusely, gasping for oxygen, experiencing all the post-workout soreness and seeing your weight dramatically decrease, doesn’t mean you’re burning fat. Yes, the truth really hurts, even more than your muscles do after a week at the gym.
I’ve been a personal trainer, online health coach and fitness influencer for the past 8 years, helping tens of thousands of people reach their goals. Time and time again, people tell me they’ve tried wonder pills, the latest fad diets and extreme classes, and guess what - no matter how much money you throw at the problem, these quick fixes never deliver.
In my first post for Forbes, I’ll reveal why one simple, scientifically-proven piece protocol holds the key to success, and how you can achieve it in 5 simple steps.
So how can you specifically promote fat loss, whilst simultaneously maintaining or increasing lean muscle mass for a shaped and toned lean body? Science states that 1lbs of fat is equal to 3500 calories and bearing in mind that a calorie is a unit of energy, 1lbs of fat is therefore 3500 calories of stored energy.
It’s important that you understand what a calorie is as it will give you a greater appreciation for what foods you’re consuming and how easy it is to go into a calorie surplus and inevitably gain weight. As well as how hard it is to then burn those stored excess calories, hence our growing obesity and healthcare epidemic.
In order to lose 1lbs of fat, we need to create a calorie deficit equal to 3500 calories and for 2lbs of fat, you guessed it, a 7000 calorie deficit. This is where training smart and eating smarter will help you achieve a healthy, sustainable and most importantly safe calorie deficit to achieve the body you’ve always wanted.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve witnessed people training themselves close to death, to then undo all their hard work by gorging on that convenient sandwich that’s hiding 500+ calories under its health claiming package. People simply don’t understand or appreciate that a calorie is a unit of energy and no matter how many times you kill yourself in the gym, if you don’t watch your calorie intake you’re not going to lose weight in the form of body fat.
- How many calories do you need?
The most important part of fat loss is adhering to the rule of thermodynamics or in layman’s terms, calories in vs calories out; you need to create a calorie deficit, ideally through a combination of diet and exercise. Before we even attempt to comprehend this we firstly need to calculate how many calories you need based on your TDEE (total daily energy expenditure), so dust off your calculator, pull out your pen and forget Pythagoras and pi, I’m about to give you the most important equation of your life.
The Harris Benedict equation is made up of two parts, the first being you’re BMR (basal metabolic rate), simply the number of calories you burn each day to support both your current weight and life sustaining functions if you were to just lay in bed all day.
Men, you need to complete this equation:
BMR = 66.5 + (13.75 × weight in kg) + (5.003 × height in cm) – (6.755 × age in years)
Women, you need to complete this equation:
BMR = 655.1 + (9.563 × weight in kg) + (1.850 × height in cm) – (4.676 × age in years)
Now we have your BMR, we now need to calculate your TDEE based on your daily activity levels. Using the activity multiplier below, choose which description best describes you and complete your equation.
Sedentary = BMR x 1.2 (little or no exercise, desk job)
Lightly active = BMR x 1.375 (light exercise/ sports 1-3 days/week)
Moderately active = BMR x 1.55 (moderate exercise/ sports 6-7 days/week)
Very active = BMR x 1.725 (hard exercise every day, or exercising 2 x/day)
Extra active = BMR x 1.9 (hard exercise 2 or more times per day, or training for marathon, or triathlon, etc.
Now you have your calorie requirements to again support your BMR, we need to create a conservative calorie deficit which I would recommend to be 20%.
Example:
TDEE = 2500 calories - 20% = 2000 calories
Providing you stick to your calorie deficit, you can expect to promote fat loss each week; that being said, your macronutrient split (proteins, fats and carbohydrates) is also extremely important, which leads me nicely onto point 2.
- Macronutrients
Let’s keep this simple, take a 30% protein, 50% carbohydrate and 20% fat split for your TDEE calories following your 20% deficit, bearing in mind that 1g of protein and carbohydrates are equal to 4 calories and 1g of fat being equal to 9 calories.
Example:
2000 calories
150g Protein = 600 calories
250g carbohydrates = 1000 calories
44g Fat = 400 calories
The reason I always encourage my clients to adopt this macronutrient split when following a weight training programme is to simply offer an adequate amount of protein to promote muscular repair, recovery and growth, carbohydrates to fuel your workouts, replenish muscle glycogen and to keep you feeling fuller for longer, and finally healthy fats to nourish our body and support hormonal processes.
If you can stick to your daily calorie requirements to promote fat loss and lean muscle maintenance/growth and adhere to the 30/50/20 macronutrient split, you can be guaranteed to completely transform your body composition when combined with a periodised weight training programme, again leading me nicely on to point 3.
- Hit The Weights
Forget what you’ve seen on the ‘gram’, we’re going to keep things simple and focus on compound (multi joint) exercises to maximise recruiting multiple muscle groups, allowing you to move more load/weight and thus increase energy expenditure (burn more calories). You need to be performing at least 3 resistance sessions per week to provide the body with adequate external stimulus to promote adaptation; I would therefore recommend either 3 full body sessions with a day of rest between, or 2 upper and 2 lower with a day of rest between, by all means including active recovery in the form of cardio on rest days providing it’s relatively low intensity. I’ll share a suggested programme of weights in a future post and explain why you don’t need to shell out hundreds of dollars on an expensive weights kit.
- Increase your NEAT.
NEAT stands for ‘Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis’ and refers to anything that will increase energy expenditure (calorie burn) but isn’t directly considered as exercise.
Example of way to increase your NEAT:
- Carrying a shopping basket rather than a trolley.
- Taking the stairs rather than the lift.
- Even chewing gum (just be sure to dispose of it appropriately, save the planet and all that).
By changing your daily habits so you move more or force your body to work a little harder you’re going to subconsciously increase energy expenditure and thus promote a greater calorie deficit; even if you only increase you’re NEAT by 50-100 calories per day, that’s still 350-700 calories a week and brings you that one step closer to reaching that 3500-7000 calorie requirement to burn 1-2lbs stored body fat. It’s the small daily habits that really add up.
Further to the above, by simply changing your daily habits to encourage moving more, you can still promote fat loss and save yourself the costs of a gym membership.
- Know your fat-burn zone.
One of the most frustrating things I see on a daily basis is people killing themselves on the treadmill, watching the calories rack up, sweating like a pig and gasping for air like a fish out of water, thinking that their undeniably hard efforts are going to promote fat loss; weight loss certainly, but again, weight is made up of a number of factors and once people have exhausted their available carbohydrate reserves which likely won’t be much as they’re probably on a low carbohydrate diet, because of-course carbohydrates make you fat (eye roll), they will need an alternative fuel source and that’s when they’ll burn muscle.
Now I’m sure you’ve heard about the apparent fat loss phenomenon HIIT (high intensity interval training), in fact if you’ve bought into the likes of Joe Wicks AKA ‘The Body Coach’ or forked out a small fortune on boutique fitness classes, then you’ve likely been knee deep in the above and become a member of the HIIT occult for some time now. But have you heard of LISS?
If you’re performing at a high intensity for prolonged durations you’re inevitably going to reduce your ability to primarily burn fat as your fuel source, because your body simply can’t break down and convert stored body fat into energy quickly enough to sustain exercise intensity above approx. 70% of your MHR (maximum heart rate).
Providing you exercise at an intensity of 60-70% of your MHR, you will be performing at the higher end of a low enough intensity for your body to convert stored body and use it to fuel this LISS (low intensity steady state) cardio.
This is why it’s so important that your calorie intake is based on your TDEE and macronutrient split is on point, to ensure you’re consuming enough protein to maintain your lean mass and enough carbohydrates to fuel and replenish energy levels, whilst maintaining a calorie deficit to promote your body using stored body fat as an energy source.
- Train smart, eat smarter
When it comes to the food you actually put in your mouth, try and stick to whole foods, they’re both calorie and nutrient dense and will naturally increase satiety levels keeping you fuller for longer and consequently reducing the likelihood of you overeating or experiencing cravings.
- Meal frequency is solely down to personal preference; however, based on recent studies, I would recommend eating smaller meals every several hours and aim for 20-30g of protein per meal and 30-60g carbohydrates made up of starches and fibre. By all means, if you would rather have 3 large meals a day then that’s also OK providing you again adhere to your daily calorie requirements and macronutrient split.
