Snacks #002: Fat Loss Can Be Easy... Here's How:

Welcome to issue #002 of my series of snack-sized newsletters

Each weekend I'll be bringing succinct practical advice and takeaways for you to apply to your training and nutrition for the upcoming week.

Today I’m going to talk about how easy fat loss can be, but only if you let it.

If you can wrap your head around the mechanism of fat loss, then you’ll be able to create a simple system for yourself to achieve it.

When we burn more energy than we eat, we lose weight. I’m sure you’ve heard this a thousand times, but bear with me because I’ll direct you to put your effort where it counts. 

To demonstrate below, you can see that energy intake has one component, and energy output has three components.

Unfortunately, most people fail with their body composition goals because they add 100 extra things into their lifestyle, psyche themselves out, and end up back at square one.

Instead of adding allllll of these things in:

• hydration goals
• meal preparation
• morning mantras
• HIIT/cardio sessions
• resistance training
• expensive supplements +/- fat burners
• unachievable step goals

Try just focusing on this first:

• taking away calories (creating a calorie deficit)
• consistency over time

Focussing on what you eat (energy input) is much easier and more time-effective than trying to alter the physical activity component of  'energy out' in so many ways.

(And yes- whilst we can tip the scales towards burning fat instead of muscle by adjusting macronutrients and doing weight training, burning excess fuel isn’t going to happen without achieving the calorie deficit first.)

Do this:

1. Work out how much energy (calories) you burn in a day. This can be done with many online calculators such as  https://tdeecalculator.net
2. Set a moderate calorie deficit by taking away 15-25% of these calories.
3. Eat this number for 2 weeks in a row. (Going over these calories significantly on the weekend will disrupt your data and you’ll have to start again - stay consistent!)
4. If you’ve lost weight after the 2-4 weeks, congratulations you have found the correct number of calories to lose fat on. If you haven’t, then you’ve overestimated your energy burn or under-calculated how much you’ve actually eaten over that time. Recalculate with a lower energy factor or greater tracking accuracy and repeat.
5. After you’ve found your correct number of calories, now you can focus on refining everything else. Macronutrients, meal patterns, walks, step goals, routines, meal prep and sleep can now start to be optimised to support the fat loss that you’re already achieving, instead of creating roadblocks to your success.

In summary:

• If the goal is fat loss, pay attention to the ‘calories in’ side of the equation first.
• Don’t overcomplicate it by adding 100 subgoals that detract from your focus
• Be consistent in order to assess your success
• Nail the calories, then move on to the next thing

Now that you know where you might be wasting your energy, you can remove the barriers to change and focus on the important thing first.

Yours in health,

Dom xx