A Scientific Guide to Fat Loss

A comprehensive guide with actionable advice on the most effective ways to lose body fat and keep it off long term

In this article I will be dispelling a few fitness myths and providing a workable framework for you to achieve sustainable fat loss. We will cover how to optimise your macronutrient intake, how to count / track your daily calories effectively and time restricted feeding / intermittent fasting.

There is so much misinformation, incorrect facts, outdated advice and click bate headlines these days when it comes to nutrition and health. This can make it very confusing to know how to improve your health and what advice to follow, as things can contradict each other.

If I were to summarise the main pillars of fat loss, they would be: Sustained caloric deficit, progressive resistance training while consuming sufficient protein to maintain muscle mass, optimising sleep quality and stress levels.

An important thing to remember is that going 100% into a very restrictive diet that you can only maintain for a few weeks will never achieve the same results long term, as a less restrictive but consistent nutrition plan. The key here is healthy, sustainable habit formation. If you have been overweight for quite some time, then losing body fat will not be hard as you start making positive nutritional changes. However, keeping it off long term will be hard if you completely flip your old day to day habits upside down overnight and make changes that are impossible to stick with long term.

“The key here is continued progression, not perfection.”

Macronutrient Nutritional Info

Macronutrients are the nutrients we need in larger quantities that provide us with energy. They are comprised of Fats, Proteins and Carbohydrates and will be discussed below in more detail. They are measured in grams and elicit different effects on the body. Micronutrients are mostly vitamins and minerals, and are equally important for overall health, but are consumed in very small amounts. Macronutrients are comprised of:

Protein - A Gram of Protein = 4 Calories

Make sure you have protein with every meal that you consume to encourage muscle growth and minimise muscle loss while in a calorie deficit. Doing so will increase your body’s daily calorie requirements to fuel that new muscle, which people usually mistakenly refer to as increasing your metabolism. Either way, the end result is being able to be in a calorie deficit more easily while consuming a higher amount of calories then if you had less muscle mass. Building more lean mass also improves insulin sensitivity (reducing your risk of Type 2 Diabetes).

Aim to consume 1.2 grams - 1.8 grams of protein per kilogram of your body weight. For example, an 80kg person should consume anywhere between 96 – 144 grams of protein per day, spread out throughout their day. Protein is very satiating and will keep you full for longer, which will help you avoid snacking and binge eating. Protein digestion also has a greater thermic effect than digesting carbs or fats, this means a higher percentage of the calories consumed from protein sources are actually burned up just by digesting them. Roughly 20-30% of the calories are burned while the protein is digested by the body.

It is also important to keep protein intake high when cutting calories to make sure that the body weight you’re losing is body fat and not muscle. Eating enough protein throughout your life will help you to grow and maintain your lean muscle mass, which is very important for longevity. It will also help you to get over the post exercising aches and pains of training quicker than with lower than optimal levels.

Examples of some good quality protein-rich meals to include in your diet are chicken breast, turkey, fish, red meat (avoid regularly eating excessively fatty cuts of meat), nuts, eggs, protein shakes, cottage cheese and Greek yoghurt.

Examples of some high protein sources to avoid or eat less frequently are cheeses, deep fried meats and fishes, processed meats, overconsuming red meats and cured meats.

Fats - A Gram of Fat = 9 Calories

Make sure that you are eating healthy fats daily – Consuming enough good quality fat in your diet is very important for your health, hormones, longevity, mental/physical strength and body fat loss. Fats are more calorie dense then both carbs and protein, gram for gram, but also very satiating, so make sure if you are reducing the carbs in your diet and replacing them with some healthy fats for fuel that you don’t swap them out for a one to one ratio, i.e. don’t swap half a plate of rice for half a plate of nuts or you will be doubling your calories.

Examples of some good quality fat-rich meals to include in your diet are avocados, oily fish, olive oil, organic free-range eggs, nuts and seeds.

Examples of some unhealthy fats to avoid or eat less frequently are donuts, creamy cakes, creamy sauces, fried foods such as takeaways and fast food and overconsuming cheeses.

Carbohydrates - A Gram of Carbs = 4 Calories

Always opt for slow release / low glycemic index carbohydrates that are low in refined sugar and avoid heavily processed carbohydrates to ensure more stable energy levels and support a healthy weight. Aim to consume a small portion of them with your meal if you are keeping them in your diet. This will help minimise large blood sugar level spikes and crashes post meal.

Carbohydrates not used for energy will be stored as fat if your glycogen stores (internal carbohydrate stores inside the body) are full and most of us are not active enough or eat too frequently to deplete these glycogen stores significantly, resulting in a lot of our carbs not being burned off as energy, but instead being stored as fat. You have to earn your carbs with an active lifestyle!

If your body fat is high then going low carb temporarily is an extremely effective way to shed excess body fat. When reducing your carbohydrate intake, it can be important to add slightly more salt to your diet to avoid the energy level falls and headaches that can come about from the dehydrating effect of lowering your carb intake without adjusting salt consumption. Carbs make your body retain more water and you are more at risk to deplete your electrolytes if you go low carb or keto, so electrolyte consumption needs to go up to avoid becoming dehydrated. There is a contraindication to this if you have high blood pressure, so please consult your doctor if you suffer from that.

Examples of some good quality carb-rich meals to include in your diet are non-starchy vegetables, salads, high fibre vegetables, beans, legumes, lentils, sweet potato, oats, brown rice, basmati rice and low sugar fruits, such as berries.

Examples of some carbs to avoid or eat less frequently are breads, pastas, cereals, biscuits, cakes, noodles, fizzy drinks, and over indulging on high quantities of high sugar fruits, such as pineapple.

“You have to earn your carbs with an active lifestyle! ”

Getting your Macronutrient Ratio right for you

Some people operate better on a lower fat, higher carb, moderate protein diet and some people will operate better on a higher fat, lower carb, moderate protein diet. It is best to find out which balance of macronutrients you function best on and stick with it. Anyone who tells you that there is only one true diet to follow is lying to you or doesn’t understand the complexity of the human body. We have huge amounts of variations between us as individuals and how we process foods will differ from person to person due to our genetic ancestry, age, gender, gut microbiome, activity levels, current health, current body fat percentage, etc. Discover what balance works best for you with a bit of self-experimentation to find out what gives you the best energy levels and is the easiest for you to adhere to long term.

If you want to delve deeper than just surface level fat loss to see if you’re optimising your nutrition, get some health biomarkers checked from your doctor before changing your eating habits and re-test in 3-6 months time after adopting nutritional changes to see if it’s had a positive, neutral or negative effect on your overall biomarkers of health, such as HDL/LDL cholesterol, triglycerides, blood glucose levels, blood pressure, resting heart rate, biomarkers of inflammation (C Reactive Protein). This doesn’t have to be done, but is a useful way to further quantify if the way you’re eating is maximising your health long-term.

Regardless of your choice, make sure that protein is moderate to high and that you are not consuming a low protein, high fat, high carb diet as this is not conducive to fat loss. Fundamentally, your weight loss will come down to you consuming less calories than your body needs and enough protein to maintain muscle mass, so whether you chose to consume more of your remaining daily calories from fats or carbs will come down to your preference.

Please contact me if you would like to discuss in greater detail what macronutrient ratios might be optimal for you and to help you plan out your nutrition. Link below: http://www.catalystcompletefitness.co.uk/contact

“Make sure that protein is moderate to high and that you are not consuming a low protein, high fat, high carb diet as this is not conducive to fat loss.”

Counting Calories Advice

Tracking your nutrition is very effective way to help ensure that you are in a calorie deficit and also hitting your macronutrient goals daily. This can be a serious wake-up call, once you start to discover what the food you eat is made up of. If you decide to go down the counting calories route, then you can start by tracking your calories with an app like “Myfitness pal”. This can be time consuming at first, but you will soon start to realise how much calories are in your regular meals and it will help you make smarter nutrition decisions and the process will become much faster over time. Without tracking calories you’ll be guessing your calories each day and this will lead to unsatisfactory results, as its incredibly hard to do this accurately by guessing.

You will also need to work out how many calories your body needs just to maintain its current weight. You will then want to consume 250 to 500 calories less than this each day, aiming not to reduce calories by more than 500 below your maintenance level to avoid slowing your metabolism or losing too much muscle while you lose fat.

If you cut your calories more than this you will eventually stop losing weight and you will have to cut calories even further if you wish to lose more weight and this will become harder and harder to do sustainably. Also, another issue is that if you cut calories too drastically and your metabolism slows down and then you stop your diet (even temporarily) and return to your pre-diet day to day nutrition, then you will put on even more weight as your metabolism would have slowed down significantly due to your extreme dieting.

Cutting calories too drastically and slowing down your metabolism will also give you very bad energy levels and make you feel cold all the time, as your body enters a starvation mode state. Try not to cut your calories by more than 500 calories below your daily maintenance level of calories in order to make things sustainable long term until you reach your target weight.

When calculating your daily maintenance level of calories, you need to also take into account your activity levels. Firstly, you work out your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR) (a calculator to work this out can be found at https://www.myfitnesspal.com/tools/bmr-calculatoronline and can be calculated in a under a minute) and then multiply this by the decimal value below, which represents your average day to day activity level. Don’t overestimate your daily activity levels, as this could set you up to consume more calories than you need and will interfere with your weight loss. To determine your total daily calorie needs, multiply your BMR by the appropriate activity factor, as follows:

• Sedentary (little or no exercise) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.2

• Lightly active (light exercise/sports 1-3 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.375

• Moderately active (moderate exercise/sports 3-5 days/week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.55

• Very active (hard exercise/sports 6-7 days a week) : Calorie-Calculation = BMR x 1.725

The number you get after doing the calculation above will be your maintenance calorie requirement, adjusted for activity levels. Continuously consume less calories than this to be in a calorie deficit and to lose weight. As stated above, only cut calories by 250 – 500 calories and no more, as if you cut calories too drastically it is not sustainable, conducive to long-term fat loss and will instead lead to excessive muscle loss and slowing of your metabolism.

Now use an app such as Myfitness pal to track your calories throughout the day. Log everything, don’t forget to log drinks, dips and snacks into your daily calorie count so that it is accurate. Also, remember that as you lose body fat and build muscle that your weight will change and that will, as a result, change your Basal Metabolic Rate. Therefore, be sure to recalculate your maintenance level calorie expenditure every few months so that it is accurately showing you the number of calories currently needed. If you stick with the same daily number of calories a year on after changing your body composition then your numbers won’t be accurate.

“Try not to cut your calories by more than 500 calories below your daily maintenance level of calories in order to make things sustainable long term until you reach your target weight.”

Time restricted Eating / Intermittent Fasting

New research is showing that when we eat is as important as what we eat. Compressing your eating window means reducing the time from the first calories you consume that day, to the last calories you consume that day. Hunger works on a body clock circadian rhythm just like your sleep/wake cycle and you only get hungry at certain times of the day out of the habit of eating around those times. Think about a time when you were so busy with work that you skipped lunch, you had hunger signals and then they passed, instead of continuously building in intensity, they just came and went like a wave. Remember this; it will help you when you are adjusting and feeling hungry at first. Compressing your eating window might be hard to start with, but will become effortless after your body adjusts to it. I personally consume all of my daily calories in an 8 hour eating window, following a 16-8 protocol. I took the time to adjust to this by gradually reducing my eating window over the course of some months and now it is so easy I don’t even get hungry outside of my eating window.

This might seem too much of a challenge, but you can have great body composition results by being less extreme and just not exceeding consuming your daily calories in a 12 hour window each day, with the aim of getting down to a 10 hour eating window over time. Studies show that you can get results by sticking to this 5 days out of the week, so you don’t have to do it every day to get the benefits. Another benefit is that condensing your eating window will make it a lot easier to reduce your daily calorie intake, without tracking them religiously, so this is a great alternative to tracking your calories if the thought of that seems quite daunting. However, studies show that even when people consumed the same number of calories, but just condensed their eating window, there were benefits to be had. Such as increased weight loss, endurance, cognitive function, improved sleep and insulin sensitivity.

It is important to remember to drink water when you are fasting, as you’ll dehydrate quicker without consuming food, as foods water content is a source of hydrating. Side note; chewing gum or having milk in your tea/coffee or zero carb fizzy drinks will break a fast. Only water (tap, still or sparkling) and black coffee/tea without milk or sugar are allowed during the period you are not consuming calories to ensure you stay in a fasted state. Fizzy mineral water is great for masking any hunger signals while your body is adjusting to the condensed eating window.

“New research is showing that when we eat is as important as what we eat.”

Summary

So, to summarise, the key lifestyle changes to implement to achieve sustainable fat loss are; make sure you are eating a balanced diet ideally focusing on consuming mainly whole foods, hitting all of your macro and micronutrient targets, in a sustained caloric deficit, engaging in progressive resistance training while consuming sufficient protein to maintain muscle mass and while optimising sleep quality and stress levels. If you want to decrease you daily calorie intake, this can be done either by tracking and reducing your daily calories or tracking and reducing your eating window to achieve the same goal. If you would like more information on how to improve your sleep quality, then read my article on it, link below:

http://www.catalystcompletefitness.co.uk/post/top-tips-for-better-quality-sleep

If you would like any help or further advice on nutrition and exercise, then please get in touch, I’d love to help. Follow the link below to get in touch.

http://www.catalystcompletefitness.co.uk/contact

Please note: I am not a doctor and this is not to be taken, interpreted or construed as medical advice. I am a holistic personal trainer, everything mentioned in this document, I have researched heavily and am following myself. However, everybody’s body is different and reacts to things differently, so please listen to your body and consult your doctor before changing any of your habits. Do your due-diligence and further research anything I have spoken about. If you need to know more, I will always be more than happy to answer questions on what I know.

Copyright © Catalyst Complete Fitness Ltd. 2019

First Edition, First Printed 2019, London