'Losing Weight VS Burning Fat'
As a personal trainer I’m constantly asked ‘What’s the fastest way to lose weight?’ To which I usually answer something along the lines of ‘Have your leg amputated... Wow you just lost 30lbs in a few hours!’ Of course this answer is usually met with a cold hard stare at which point I go on to explain my rather sarcastic retort. Nobody should have the goal of ‘losing weight’. Everybody should have the goal of ‘burning fat’.
More and more nowadays I see people championing extreme diets and the associated rapid weight loss. It’s not unusual to see people posting status updates celebrating the fact that they lost 7 - 10lbs in the first week of their new ‘nothing but cheese’ diet. Whilst it’s great that they’re making some changes to their lives (hopefully not just cheese) this kind of weight loss per week is way too much and is certainly not just fat loss.
Your body is made up of fat, water, lean muscle, bones, vital organs and a few other things. When you aim to ‘lose weight’ you can lose it from anyone of these areas. You can lose water weight (dehydration), you can lose muscle weight (atrophy) you can lose bone density if your diet is poor enough (osteoporosis) and you can even lose weight from your vital organs! Yuck!
And NONE of these are GOOD forms of losing weight. The only GOOD form of losing weight is BURNING FAT!! Or perhaps having a hefty hair cut if you’re sporting a mullet.
Yes it is true that the only way to burn fat is to create a calorie deficit i.e. you have to eat less calories than you burn off each day. But if you cut your calories by too much or fail to appreciate the importance of meal times and macronutrient proportions (essential fats, carbohydrates and proteins), you’re so called ‘diet’ will undoubtedly end in tears as you nose dive into the first bucket of Ben & Jerry’s you see.
To understand why, it’s important to learn a little bit about a wonderful survival mechanism that humans developed centuries ago... Which is almost completely redundant now!
Starvation Mode:
If our ancient ancestors wanted to eat they had to hunt for it. And sometimes they would have to go a long time between hunts and feeds. As a species we developed the ability to feed ourselves even when food was scarce. We learned to store excess energy around our bodies as fat. When the food ran out for a while we were able to feed off our own fat stores, our muscle tissue and eventually our organs. Of course if it got that far we were in trouble! Heart and lungs don’t taste too good and we kind of need them for other things.
Nowadays in Western civilisation we rarely find ourselves starving but we still have this survival mechanism in place and guess what? Your body can’t distinguish between starvation and an extreme diet! When you restrict calories by too much over a prolonged period of time your body tells itself:
‘It looks like this is all the food we’re getting for a while so instead of burning it off, let’s keep hold of it! Oh and lets increase hunger and cravings too so we can get some more food!’
It sounds like your body is working against your fat burning dreams and in essence it is but only because it’s helping you survive. Thanks a lot evolution!
Not only does your weight loss slow down and eventually stop as you go into starvation mode, when you go on a diet you tend to lose muscle mass as well. That means that after a few weeks you congratulate yourself on finally squeezing back into those jeans you had when you were 18 but guess what? You’ve now got much less lean muscle tissue than you had before.
So your starving body starts giving into those cravings and committing ‘carbicide’ but because your body now has less muscle tissue you now have a slower metabolism. You very quickly pile all the weight back on and in most cases end up bigger and heavier than you were before you even started the pesky diet! Damn it those jeans are back in the closet again!
Here’s what you do instead of using a ‘one-size-fits-all’ diet. You calculate what will work for YOU!
Calculate Your Daily Calorie Needs - Accurately:
In order to know how to get to where you’re going, you need to know where you are now! How many calories does your body need every day just to survive and keep you going at the same pace you are now? This is called your maintenance dose.
Here’s a quick and easy way to figure that out:
This website is super easy to use and generates a pretty accurate result. Plug in your details and it will tell you how many calories you need per day to maintain your current status quo.
Once you have your maintenance dose simply minus 20% to get your calorie target per day for safe and effective fat loss. For example when I enter my details it tells me I have a maintenance dose of 3,100 calories per day (I’m a big chap and pretty active!). So I subtract 20% from that number:
3,100 - 20% (620) = 2480 calories per day.
That’s enough calories to feed me every day and prevent me going into starvation mode but because it’s less than my body actually needs each day I will have no choice but to start eating into my reserves i.e. my stored body fat. Yay! If I were to cut calories by more than 20% I would lose weight faster but it wouldn’t be weight from fat. It would be from my precious muscle tissue. Lose the guns!?! No way!
Add Exercise:
Far too many people attempt to burn fat using nutrition alone. That’s like entering a boxing match with one arm tied behind your back. Trust me that’s not fun! I tried it once. Never again.
When you burn fat using a calorie deficit created by cutting calories that you consume, you miss out on all the health benefits that come with physical activity:
- Increased energy
- Reduced risk of chronic heart disease
- Reduced risk of osteoporosis
- Increased lean muscle tissue (faster metabolism and better body composition)
- Improved mood (less stress and anxiety)
- Increased libido (so get your partner to train too!)
And if that’s not enough to motivate you consider this:
If someone who is not training has a maintenance dose of 2,500 calories per day, their calorie total for fat loss would be 2,000 calories (2,500 - 20%).
But if that same person exercised for 30mins each day and therefore burned off an additional 500 calories, their daily maintenance dose would increase to 3,000 so their total for fat loss would go up to 2,400 calories.
No shock there... If you train, you can eat more and still burn fat! So go ahead... Have that cheese!
It would take another whole article to go into the details of training to help fat loss and hopefully I will get to write that article very soon but for now I would suggest the following:
- Aim for 3 - 5 sessions per week, 30 - 45mins per session
- Incorporate some cardio exercise with every session (treadmill, jogging, bike etc)
- Incorporate resistance training for 2 - 3 sessions (weights, cables, machines etc)
- When using resistance and cardio in one session, do resistance first and then cardio
- Hire a PT if you’re unsure of what to do and need some guidance (we’re pretty cool!)
Please remember though... YOU CANNOT OUT TRAIN A BAD DIET!!
All the work in the gym is for nothing if your calorie intake is wrong so get that part sorted first!
Thanks for taking the time to read this article. I’ll be back soon with some more fat burning tips.
Train hard, eat well, sleep soundly and believe in you!
Yours in health and fitness,
Jonny Spurling'
If you would like to book in for a free Personal Training consultation or book a training session / nutrition session with Jonny please visit his website here: www.jonnyspurling.wix.com/jpsfitness
