if you click this video you've most likely set the goal of trying to lose some fat this year this is my goal for the new year as well I'm trying to get under 10 body fat for the first time in a few years however if you follow Fitness content at all you've probably also heard that most diets fail over the long term this is true just take a look at this study on The Biggest Loser contest which followed up on the participants from the 2009 show six years after the show was over out of the 14 people who participated in the study only one person had kept their weight off after six years five of the 14 subjects had regained all of their weight back and two of the 14 ended up weighing more than they did before the show even started so fully half the subjects had at least gained all their weight back similarly this 2020 systematic review on the challenge of keeping it off will the results have eight separate weight loss studies and found that while all the studies were able to induce weight loss during the dieting period they also all saw average weight regain after the diet was over with a few studies showing overshoot beyond the original starting weight now I think a large part of why this trend is so common is that people often don't realize that getting lean for a temporary time frame like a fitness event or a wedding or a photo shoot is a different goal with a different set of strategies than getting lean and staying lean over the long term now before we get into those strategies to get everyone on the same page give me one minute to explain how fat loss actually works fat loss occurs because of a caloric deficit this means that you're consuming less calories than you're burning you consume calories by eating food and you burn calories in four ways there's your resting energy expenditure which is the number of calories your body Burns just sitting there so to keep your heart beating and so on there's your exercise activity thermogenesis this is the number of calories you burn from exercising there's your non-line exercise activity thermogenesis or neat this is any activity that isn't exercise so stuff like getting up sitting down typing and tapping your fingers and then there's the thermic effect of food which is the small number of calories your body Burns digesting the foods you eat so let's say we add all that up and it comes out to 2000 500 calories burned over the course of a day and then we tally up everything you ate that day and it was 3 000 calories that would mean you ran a 500 calorie Surplus for that day but if instead of 3 000 calories you only ate 2 000 calories now that would mean you ran a 500 calorie deficit for the day and if you sustained that 500 calorie deficit over time you'd lose about one pound per week which is actually a reasonable Target for most people to aim for so that's all pretty simple but there's a very important part that many people Miss it's important to realize that as you lose weight the number of calories you burn will decrease this is called metabolic adaptation as you lose weight you won't burn as many calories through resting energy expenditure because your body is getting smaller you won't burn as many calories per unit of exercise because your body is becoming more energetically efficient you won't burn as many calories through meat because your body is becoming less hyperactive in fidgety and you won't burn as many calories through the thermic effect of food because you're eating less food so keep in mind that the 500 calorie deficit you started out with probably won't be a 500 calorie deficit after a few weeks or months of dieting and that's because when you decrease the number of calories you're eating you also indirectly decrease the number of calories you're burning and sometimes these adaptations can happen very quickly even within days so to account for metabolic adaptation which will occur you may need to lower calories a bit further to keep up with your desired rate of weight loss or you can simply accept the fact that your weight loss may take a bit longer than expected alright so in order for any fat loss diet to work it needs to have three crucial things a sustained caloric deficit to cause fat loss weight training to support muscle mass and enough protein to support muscle mass usually 1. 6 to 2. 2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight or 0.
7 to 1 gram per pound is a good Target to aim for and pretty much everything else including the number of meals you eat the timing of those meals and what specific Foods you focus on can be largely dictated by your own individual preferences so those are the basics for how you lose fat now from here most people turn to short-term strategies to try to get that fat off as quickly as possible but this is a mistake yes all the most popular fad diets will cause fat loss in the short term that's what actually caused them to become so popular in the first place but low calorie crash diets tend to result in more muscle loss and eventual weight regain and yes isolating yourself from social events and avoiding restaurants may help you fend off tempting foods for some time but can also deteriorate your relationships and eventually make the diet feel unsustainable and yes cutting out entire food groups may help you avoid overeating for a while but can eventually lead to nutrient deficiencies and uncontrollable Cravings that make weight regain inevitable so if you want to not just get lean but stay lean you need to take a better approach so next let's dig into three specific strategies that'll help you not only lose the fat but keep it off over the long term the third strategy on my list is the most frequently neglected in my experience but also probably the most important alright the first long-term strategy is to diet more slowly so that it barely even feels like you're dieting at all now the general science-based cutting rule is that you should aim to lose around 0. 5 to 1 percent of your body weight per week on a fat loss phase so if you weigh 200 pounds right now you should try to lose one to two pounds per week or in other words if you want to cut 20 pounds it should take you 10 to 20 weeks to get there this is what I typically recommend as well however there may be some benefits to going even slower in fact on my own current weight loss Journey I've lost 24 pounds or 11 kilos and that Journey has taken me 40 weeks or just about nine months I started my cut at 187 pounds or 85 kilos and now I'm down to 163 pounds or 74 kilos that evens out to an average weight loss of just over half a pound per week and because I've taken my sweet time with it the weight loss itself has felt incredibly easy ridiculously easy I've been eating out at restaurants going out with friends eating pizza and Sushi and the slower pace of things has helped me be very chill about my diet now you can see a few times here where my weight spiked noticeably the first bike was in the middle of August when some friends came to visit Stephanie in Toronto we were eating out almost every night I gained two or three pounds that week but when I back it's really just a tiny blip in the overall trend this other Spike lasted for most of November I gained four pounds that month but I was visiting stuff in New Orleans it was during Thanksgiving and again it's not a big deal at all when you zoom out and look at the overall trend and I think this mindset is not only okay but actually smarter because it'll help you not only be chill throughout the diet process it'll help you stay chill once you get to your goal weight by going slow you won't feel deprived or eager to get off the diet because you won't feel like you've been dieting very hard all along this will help you maintain the leanness you eventually reach much more easily and I think it'll be worth that extra bit of time it takes for you to get there so to make sure you're losing around that ideal rate of 0.
