Pillar One:
Fat loss and Muscle Retention
This is the first of the major pillar articles, this one focusing on fat loss and keeping or even building muscle simultaneously, and seeing results consistently. You’re in for a long read, but I promise it’s worth it. Below, you will find information, resources, studies, and clear explanations of how fat loss works. This is meant to serve as a guide that would allow you to be self-sufficient when it comes to achieving sustainable and healthy fat loss. Enjoy!
Section One
An Overview of Fat Loss Mechanisms
Calories in, Calories out
What is a calorie?
The most fundamental principle for fat loss is calories in, calories out. A “calorie” is a unit of measurement describing energy, specifically the amount of energy required to increase the heat of a certain amount of water by one degree Celsius. This means calories exist independent of food and macronutrients.
This means that whether the caloric energy is in the form of fat, carbohydrates, alcohol, protein, or part of a conversion equation to see how much caloric energy is generated when revving an engine, the energy is just that: energy. For reference, fat contains 9 calories per gram, carbs and protein contain 4 calories per gram, and alcohol contains roughly 7 calories per gram.
It is a descriptive term coined by physicists, and adopted for nutrition as a convenient way to describe how much energy our bodies need, and how much energy food gives. This is likely due to the fact that it’s much easier to derive how much caloric energy food contains than say, something like kinetic energy. Though, admittedly, it would be fun to watch cakes get dropped in a vacuum at exceptional speeds in the name of science. If you’re interested in reading more, I have a short article here on the nature of calories. Onwards to Calories in, Calories out, or CICO for short.
CICO: Is it all it’s cracked up to be?
Calories are king when it comes to weight loss. This is not speaking of the nutritional value of calories in terms of vitamin and mineral density, which is extremely important for other things, but rather that when it comes to weight manipulation, calories are the singular factor. There has been diet enthusiasts of all sorts who have advocated for other approaches. They suggest that CICO is too simplistic, or that certain macronutrients cause fat gain or stimulate fat loss independent of calorie consumption, such as this study here[1].
The issue with the study above is that their appeal to a more complex system is not based on the shortcomings of calorie counting, but rather the shortcomings of 1) calorie reporting on processed foods and 2) the lack of nutritional value for overly processed foods, resulting in one both overeating and being malnourished. While these are important considerations, they have nothing to do with the role of calories and rather have everything to do with food quality and related health outcomes.
Fortunately, studies like this one [2] have gone the distance in refuting things like the CHO-insulin hypothesis about obesity. The conclusion is clear:
Calories are King
The CHO-insulin hypothesis predicted that lowering dietary CHO significantly should cause insulin levels to fall, leading to release of fat from adipocytes that would 1) increase fat loss and 2) increase EE to claimed amounts in the range of ≥350 cal/day (range 400–600). Neither of these effects was observed in two current and highly rigorous metabolic ward studies, one of which was the actual NuSI study being discussed.
Weight gain or loss is not primarily determined by varying proportions of CHO and fat in the diet, but instead by the number of calories ingested. Changes in EE, which metabolic pathways are used and other considerations are quite modest when compared with caloric intake. Until high-quality, metabolic ward primary data become available indicating otherwise, a calorie is still a calorie.
“Calories in, calories out” and macronutrient intake: the hope, hype, and science of calories – Scott Howell and Richard Kones American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism 2017 313:5, E608-E612
When it comes to fat loss, our goal is to reduce calories enough to put ourselves in a caloric deficit, at which point the body will start breaking down already-existing tissues. Which tissues the body decides to break down is a matter of stimulus, and this will be covered later.
To Reiterate
A calorie is a calorie when speaking in terms of energy. You could theoretically lose weight eating a diet composed purely of Twinkies. But we cannot mistake this weight loss as healthy weight loss. The calorie component is just one aspect of food, specifically the one that governs weight. It’s extremely important to make sure you’re getting adequate vitamins, minerals, and fiber in your diet. This means eating a diet rich in fruits and fibrous vegetables, which are conveniently low calorie most of the time. Food choice matters for overall health, even if calories are the only thing governing weight loss when strictly speaking mathematically.
Now, how in the world do we know if we got into a caloric deficit?
Breakdown of TDEE [3]
The acronym TDEE is short for “Total Daily Energy Expenditure,” or how many calories you burn in a single day. This can be broken down into 4 categories:
Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)
Your BMR accounts for about 70% of all the calories that you burn. As the name suggest, this is the amount of calories required to just keep you alive, no activity included. If you were sleeping 24 hours a day, this would be how many calories you burn. This is altered only by changes to your body composition, and even then, it’s not going to change much. However, if you lose a substantial amount of weight, this will substantially affect your overall TDEE due to your BMR being lower since there is less of a body to support.
Nonexercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)
When it comes to variables you can alter meaningfully, NEAT is king. That being said, this king only owns about 15% of the land. When looking to increase your caloric expenditure, NEAT is your best bet to try and alter. This includes simple things like going for walks, but even more minute actions like talking with your hands, tapping your foot, or being energetic. It’s also one of the main ways your body can down-regulate (reduce) your caloric expenditure subconsciously.
What Affects Neat?
When you’re either 1) in a deficit for too long or 2) in to severe of a deficit, your body will try to make up the difference by decreasing your NEAT. Given that a solid chunk of your NEAT is subconscious, there’s not much you can do to combat that. However, the primary tool you have for combatting this is making sure to get your daily steps in. It’s a simple, controllable variable that accounts for a reasonable amount of calories. Just walking more likely won’t raise how many calories you burn by much, but not walking at all will substantially reduce how many calories you burn.
Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)
This accounts for roughly 10% of the calories you burn, and it’s basically your body’s way of collecting taxes. This source of calorie expenditure comes from chewing your food, digestion, the process of absorbing nutrients, and everything else that entails digesting your food. This number will fluctuate pretty much whenever you don’t want it to. If you’re trying to eat less, you’ll be spending less calories via digestion. If you’re trying to gain weight, some of those extra calories are instead going to be lost in the process of digestion.
Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT)
This includes voluntary exercise like running, resistance training, sports, etc. Surprisingly, this has the smallest contribution to energy expenditure! Coming in at about 5% of our TDEE, exercise is basically a drop in the barrel when it comes to how many calories you’re burning. Exercise should not be about burning calories, but preserving muscle.
Fat Loss Calculator
With all that being said, here’s a resource to help you get started on figuring out how many calories you need. When selecting your activity level, set it to the lowest setting (1.4), and when asked about how much you will increase your activity by, keep it at zero. This will help you get a baseline level of calories you’re burning. I’ll show you an example of a weight cut I’m currently doing.
My goal is to lose 11lbs in 8 weeks (roughly 5%). This is a rate of 0.625% a week. This calculator is within 50 calories of what my measured TDEE is. That’s pretty good for a simple algorithm. Your mileage may vary, but this is meant to be an estimate. Start with the recommendation, track your data, and adjust from there. Treat these numbers as a jumping off point. If they’re spot on, great. If not, feel free to adjust as time goes on.
Your Body Tries To Prevent Fat Loss
As we covered in the NEAT section, your body will do lots of things to halt fat loss. Some of these include biological processes outside of your control, like “adaptations in mitochondrial efficiency” [3], but some of these are manageable, like making sure you continue to get enough steps in throughout the day.
As athletes create an energy deficit and achieve lower body fat levels, their weight loss efforts will be counteracted by a number of metabolic adaptations that may persist throughout weight maintenance.
…
Athletes must aim to minimize the magnitude of these adaptations, preserve LBM [lean body mass], and adequately fuel performance and recovery during weight reduction. To accomplish these goals, it is recommended to approach weight loss in a stepwise, incremental fashion, utilizing small energy deficits to ensure a slow rate of weight loss.
Trexler ET, Smith-Ryan AE, Norton LE. Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2014 Feb 27;11(1):7. doi: 10.1186/1550-2783-11-7. PMID: 24571926; PMCID: PMC3943438. Emphasis mine.
So why the slow weight loss? Because, as you increase your calorie deficit, the body will fight increasingly harder to not only keep weight on, but promote behaviors to make you regain weight. This includes making you exhausted so you stop moving and driving your hunger through the roof. Take Trexler et. al.’s advice, go slow and steady.
How long should diets last and how fast should you lose weight?
This used to be a somewhat of an elusive question, but luckily the folks over at Renaissance Periodization have done some incredible work with their diet app. This app has allowed them to collect incredible amounts of data and give some really solid recommendations. The findings make a ton of sense when you consider having to work against your body to lose weight. The main idea is this: keep the magnitude of the diet small (about 0.6% to 0.8% of your weight per week) and keep the diet length short (6-8 weeks at a time). This allows for a high chance of success along with substantial weight loss.
It’s understandable that some people want to lose lots of weight very quickly. However, it is extremely likely that you will fail. Your body will throw every mechanism it has at you to stop you. You will become ravenously hungry, exhausted, irritable, unable to sleep, and have zero energy in the gym. Then, when you finally give up, you will likely binge eat your way back up to your original weight, or higher. Take your time, diet slowly, and achieve results that stick.
Considerations for eating habits
Another pitfall I routinely see when people diet is that they change what they eat entirely. They throw out all the food they love, and only eat “clean”, which usually means chicken breast, broccoli and brown rice. Or, they will go down the keto route and cut out all carbs. Or maybe they start fasting! The issue with these approaches is that when the diet is done, they also abandon these habits. But these habits are what allowed them to lose weight, and the old habits they went back to are the ones that got them in that position in the first place!
So then, what should you do?
Focus on the basics. Focus on getting lean proteins at each meal, focus on eating fruits and veggies, and focus on portion sizes.
Analyze your diet and see if there’s any serious issues to address.
Are you drinking soda or high calorie drinks every single day? Consider cutting those back to just occasional treats.
Are you eating take-out often? Consider cooking at home more often, or ordering less calorie-dense take-out options.
Don’t adopt a diet you don’t plan on continuing. Adopt a lifestyle change that actually allows you to eat flexibly without unnecessarily stringent rules.
How critical is Resistance to fat loss?
So we’ve gone over the calorie component of exercise and found it was largely irrelevant. So what is the point of resistance training at all?
Easy, you’re going to build muscle, get stronger, and improve your body composition. I wrote about this exact topic here, but here’s the synopsis:
So why should you include resistance training to any weight loss plan?
1) Your metabolic health improves.
2) You can gain lean muscle mass.
3) You can improve your cardiovascular fitness.
4) Your strength, bone density, and coordination will all improve.
5) You’ll get a taste of those sweet post-workout endorphins.
6) Literally a million minute reasons follow after endorphins.
7) You’ll experience minor improvements to your caloric expenditure.
Speaking of fat loss and resistance training, this brings us to the second section of this pillar.
Section Two
How Fat Loss affects Muscle
Is it Fat Loss, Muscle Loss, or both?
When people say they want to lose weight, it normally means they want to lose body fat. Some people want to lose body fat purely for health reasons, others have aesthetic concerns. Whether the reason is health or aesthetic, maintaining muscle and losing fat should be the goal. Building and maintaining muscle positively contributes to health by actively guarding against, or fighting against in some instances, sarcopenia.
So how do you know if it’s fat loss, muscle, or both? By tracking relevant data.
Tracking with a scale is only one data point. The scale does not tell you the composition of your weight, and the ones that claim to not only have a huge margin for error, but are wildly inconsistent with their own readings. So here are some ways to track for specific types of tissue loss. It’s important to note, these methods are not perfect. None of these measurements are meant to be a one-stop shop. They’re meant to paint a broader picture that helps you figure out what’s going on by giving you more specific information.
Body Measurements
Body measurements are a great way to see if you are losing fat. and a decent way to see if you are building muscle. I generally measure a couple of spots: Glutes, Hips, Chest, Waist (smallest part, generally just above your belly button).
You can measure more or less. At a bare minimum, I would suggest using waist and hips so you can get a waist-to-hip ratio. This is a common way of determining whether one is overweight or not. You can get a full rundown here.
By utilizing body measurements, you can start to see where fat is coming off of first. You can also potentially detect muscle gain during a fat loss phase if your weight isn’t going down, but your measurements are.
Story Time:
The Scale, The Shirts, and the Wardrobe
I had a client in the past whose stomach shrank so substantially he had to buy an entire new ensemble of dress shirts for work.
We had been working together for about three months and he would do resistance training with me. We just focused on building muscle. He went for long walks on his own to help burn more calories and be more active. A few days after telling me that he’d had to buy all new work clothes, he came to me with another concern: the scale hadn’t moved in two weeks. He had gotten stronger in every single exercise, all his measurements were improving dramatically, his face was substantially thinned out, and he was worried about the scale. The scale in question, mind you, was a “body scan” provided by the gym, which was horribly inaccurate.
So what gives?
He had built a ton of muscle, which you could clearly see by how his shoulders fit into his new shirts, and lost a ton of fat. This resulted in the scale not moving a ton, but all of his clothes no longer fitting. His body was shedding fat tissue and building lean muscle mass. This is very typical for people who are new to proper resistance training! He learned an important lesson: the scale does not tell the whole story. It is one data point among many and must be understood in the context of other data.
The other way to determine the kind of tissue you’re losing also revolves around data.
Tracking Your Gym Performance
Tracking your performance session to session in the gym will also give you valuable information. When you first start out, you will get stronger and develop muscle almost inevitably. But as time goes on, you’ll need to pay more attention.
When you’re trying to progress, it’s important to be consistent with your exercise choice. Part of that is being able to track your progress from session to session, week to week and so on.
If your strength is increasing over time, whether it be doing more reps at the same weight, or more weight with the same reps, or just more reps for more weight, that’s a great sign that you’re building muscle. Muscle loss directly correlates with decreased strength. If you’ve been dieting for 8 weeks but your strength has increased across the board, your muscle is more than likely fine! The increasing strength is a sign that you maintained muscle and, if you’re new, it’s a sign that you may be building muscle as well.
Scale Weight
Now that we’ve emphasized that scale weight is not the only way to track data, let’s actually talk about proper use of the scale and some things you should understand.
When it comes to scale weight and any other data, we are looking for trends. Both fat and lean tissue come and go very slowly, so these trends should be at least 3 weeks long. You would ideally track your weight every day at the same time under the same conditions. If you can’t measure your weight every day, three times a week is about a minimum you want to use.
Your body weight fluctuates drastically throughout the day due to eating, using the restroom, and hydration. Try weighing yourself in the morning after using the restroom is just your underwear. This will set you up to collect consistent and meaningful data.
Speaking of fluctuations, keep your eye on the long game. Weight can fluctuate pretty drastically day to day. There’s lots of reasons why, but the most common are due to water retention, dehydration, or perhaps digestive/intestinal issues. One thing it won’t be is spontaneous tissue gain. Both fat and muscle require calories. If you see the scale move drastically, it’s probably not worth worrying about.
After a month or so of consistent collection, you can look at your weight on a chart and tell whether it’s trending upwards, downwards, or staying the same.
How Sleep Affects Muscle Retention and fat loss
Sleep should be held in tandem with both training and nutrition for importance. If you have training and nutrition, but your sleep is suffering, you almost invalidate the other two. This study took people and put them into two groups: sleep restricted (5.5 hours of sleep) and non-sleep restricted (8.5 hours of sleep). The group with adequate sleep lost near-equal parts muscle and fat. The group that was sleep restricted lost 4x the amount of muscle than they did fat [4]!
While this study is performed in non-resistance trained populations, the take away is simple: sleep matters, a lot. When dieting down, the goal is to lose fat and maintain muscle. Muscle takes much longer to build than fat, so if you’re losing only 1/4 of your weight as fat, you’re likely never going to improve your body composition.
Cherish your sleep and make it a top priority.
How resistance training affects muscle retention
Competing Stimulus
When your body is in a caloric deficit, having less energy coming in than what is required to fuel the body for its daily activity, your body must break down already existing tissue. Without going too far down the biology rabbit hole, I’ll sum it up:
Your body wants to keep body fat. Body fat helps you stay alive in times of famine, and the body very much likes being alive. It will try to retain body fat as a rule.
Your body values muscle as much as its used. If you’re in a deficit and spending lots of time on the couch, your body will find muscle to breakdown for energy as a means to spare the fat, because the fat is ultimately what allows you to live. If you are in a deficit but spending lots of time resistance training, your body is going to think it needs to retain the muscle in order to keep up with the demands of the muscle. It will then burn the fat instead, or at least burn a far more limited amount of muscle.
Overtraining while Dieting
While resistance training is crucial for muscle retention, it’s important to remember that your body is in a caloric deficit: this means you have less energy to spare! There’s a myth that to lose fat you need to have intense workouts. That is false. Sweat, exhaustion, and extreme, long lasting soreness do not correlate nor cause fat loss or muscle gain.
That being said, you want your workouts to be effective. When it comes to preserving muscle during a deficit, you’ll be well-served by utilizing a higher volume approach rather than a high intensity approach. This means you should be focusing on using higher rep ranges (5+ reps) for a moderate amount of sets. Fatigue will be less forgiving when you’re losing weight, so don’t be surprised if you can’t do quite as many hard sets as you were able to when you were getting bigger or just maintaining. If you’re new to resistance training, then you likely won’t need to worry about this too much. All of these things are highly individual once numbers start getting involved, so numerical recommendations are difficult and probably unhelpful to make. If you’re unsure what you should do, play around with it. If you want to take the guess work out, a coach is a wonderful option!
High Protein for Fat Loss
Why You Need Protein
It’s no secret that protein is important when it comes to building muscle. There’s a reason that “Gym Bro” and “Chicken and broccoli” correlate in most peoples’ minds. That being said, if you don’t know, protein is highly important for muscle development. Protein is used by the body to build lean tissue, specifically muscle.
When you lift weights, you cause damage to your muscles. Your muscles require both energy and building blocks to repair them. If you’re in an energy deficit, then the budget is already tight and the body is looking for reasons to breakdown the muscle instead of the fat anyways. If you’re in an energy deficit and you’re also not eating enough protein, there’s a reasonable chance you will lose more muscle than you otherwise would have.
How Much Protein You Need
The general recommendation for protein intake is about 0.64 to 1 gram of protein per pound of body weight. If you’re carrying a lot of extra body fat, make it per pound of body weight at your desired weight. Eating high protein will ensure you lose less muscle mass, and in some cases even allow you to build muscle mass during a deficit. There’s also some solid evidence that eating toward the higher end of the spectrum with protein produces better results. This has to do with protein having a higher TEF than carbohydrates (and carbohydrates are usually the first to go when adding in more protein). So as a consequence of eating more protein, you will also burn more calories by virtue of protein being harder to break down. Studies such as this one have shown the benefits of eating high protein relating to overall better body compositions, likely due to both fueling muscle growth and increasing the TDEE of the subjects. [5]
Some simplified ways to achieve a high protein intake is to make sure you’re eating a lean piece of protein at each meal. Lean generally means lower in fat, but does not mean zero fat. Whatever you choose, just make sure it fits within your caloric needs as well as within your protein needs. If eating that much lean protein proves difficult, protein shakes are also a solid way to reach your protein goal! They’re nothing special, just convenient. Think of it as powdered chicken, but less disgusting.
Overall Recap
- Don’t diet for too long.
Take your time and make sure you can adhere to it. It might take longer, but it’s better to get results you can keep than crash diet and end up losing all your results later. Try capping your fat loss efforts at 8-10 week intervals with maintenance periods in between. - Don’t diet too severely.
It’s one thing if you’re experienced, but otherwise, avoid creating a huge calorie deficit. Aim to lose anywhere from 0.5%-1% of your bodyweight per week. The harder you go, the more discipline it will take to stay on track. Be honest with yourself and plan accordingly! - Train, but be mindful of your limited recovery.
It’s important to continue training hard and pushing yourself, however, train hard relative to what you are capable of during a fat loss phase. The amount of work you can tolerate will go down as you drop your calories. Take this into account when deciding how you’re going to approach training.
Looking for Coaching?
While this guide will certainly enable you to fend for yourself, it’s also a lot of work. I encourage my clients to understand why we do what we do, but most people who hire me do so because they don’t have the time to dedicate to learning about diet and exercise in great detail. If you’re like them and looking to get solid results, but just don’t have the time for trial and error, head over to my coaching section and sign up now. Getting coaching means all of the finer details are taken care of for you.
The coaching is not a top-down approach, but rather something we work together on. We figure out the goals you want to accomplish, and we achieve them in a way that fits your lifestyle and preferences. That being said, nothing comes easy. If you have serious goals, you need to be ready to put in serious work. I want the absolute best results for you and I’m going to be honest with you when I tell you what it requires to get there. No frills, just consistently applying basic training principles day in and day out. If you want a coach whose methods you can understand and can actually be explained, then you’ve found him.
Citations
- Salvador Camacho & Andreas Ruppel (2017) Is the calorie concept a real solution to the obesity epidemic?, Global Health Action, 10:1, DOI: 10.1080/16549716.2017.1289650
- “Calories in, calories out” and macronutrient intake: the hope, hype, and science of calories – Scott Howell and Richard Kones American Journal of Physiology-Endocrinology and Metabolism 2017 313:5, E608-E612
- Trexler ET, Smith-Ryan AE, Norton LE. Metabolic adaptation to weight loss: implications for the athlete. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2014 Feb 27;11(1):7. doi: 10.1186/1550-2783-11-7. PMID: 24571926; PMCID: PMC3943438.
- Nedeltcheva AV, Kilkus JM, Imperial J, Schoeller DA, Penev PD. Insufficient sleep undermines dietary efforts to reduce adiposity. Ann Intern Med. 2010 Oct 5;153(7):435-41. doi: 10.7326/0003-4819-153-7-201010050-00006. PMID: 20921542; PMCID: PMC2951287.
- Antonio J, Ellerbroek A, Silver T, Orris S, Scheiner M, Gonzalez A, Peacock CA. A high protein diet (3.4 g/kg/d) combined with a heavy resistance training program improves body composition in healthy trained men and women–a follow-up investigation. J Int Soc Sports Nutr. 2015 Oct 20;12:39. doi: 10.1186/s12970-015-0100-0. PMID: 26500462; PMCID: PMC4617900.
- Kreider RB, Campbell B. Protein for exercise and recovery. Phys Sportsmed. 2009 Jun;37(2):13-21. doi: 10.3810/psm.2009.06.1705. PMID: 20048505.