Fundamentals of Fat Loss

I have previously talked about what our bodies are made of, and made the distinction between body fat and lean body mass, and in my last entry I talked about metabolism and how that affects our ability to lose fat.

So, armed with this information it should be possible to put together a list of fundamental principles for the safe, effective loss of body fat.

1) There Must be a Calorie Deficit

The human body lives of fuel which is measured in calories. As mentioned in my entry about metabolism, one pound of fat equates to around 3500 calories. Therefore if you wanted to lose 1lb of fat a week, you would want to drop your weekly calories by around 3500. It's not quite that simple, but nothing else will matter if you don't grasp this concept first.

Your body burns a certain number of calories through the course of a day and this is affected by many things - age, weight (kind of), your activity level etc. You feed your body via the food and drink you consume. Generally speaking, you'll want to match up the calories that your body needs with the the calories that you consume. In order to lose body fat you need to create a 'deficit' which means that you give your body less calories than it needs thus forcing it to metabolise parts of itself (sounds nasty huh!) - hopefully just the fat and not the lean body mass, in order to survive.

We all know what happens when you give your body more than it needs - it stores the excess calories as body fat.

For most people, when they decide they want to lose some fat they take one of three approaches:

1) Just eat a lot less
2) Cut out all the 'crap' from their diet
3) Ignore the diet, and exercise lots instead

Any of these three approaches has the potential to work but all have their pitfals. To really lose fat effectively, we need to be a little scientific about it.

The main trouble with the approaches above is that they all rely on guesswork. If I eat less than I was before, or eat less of the high calorie stuff then I should lose fat. Or, if I do loads of exercise I should burn off enough calories to lose fat. The theory is sound, and it may work for some people if they just happen to guess correctly. But how do you know how many calories less you are eating than before? How do you know how many your body needs? Thus, how do you know what deficit you are creating? I'll go into these things in more detail in another entry. For now, just realise that this guesswork approach is risky at best.

2) Metabolism Must be Kept High

As I explained in my last entry, any calorie deficit maintained for too long will eventually invoke the body's starvation response which will drop the metabolism and thus negate the calorie deficit that you have created. You absolutely MUST keep that metabolism up to avoid this from happening. There are lots of techniques, here is a summary of them:

1) Keep the calorie deficit relatively small, no more than 25%
2) Eat little and often through the day
3) Don't skip meals
4) Do daily exercise, preferably not last thing at night

Lets go over these in a little more detail...

If the calorie deficit is too large, the metabolism will drop very quickly and dramatically. You'll also feel like crap because you're just not eating enough to function properly. By keeping the deficit small, like 20-25% of your daily calorie needs you are far more likely to be able to offset any small drop in metabolism via exercise. Plus, by basing it on a percentage rather than a fixed amount, it can work for anyone regardless of their needs.

In addition to changes in your 'base metablism', it also dips and rises throughout the day in response to the food you eat and the exercise you do. If you skip meals such as breakfast or lunch and go for hours without food, it will drop. By spreading your food out into 4-5 small meals a day you will stop this from happening. There are other advantages to this approach too. The body needs fuel on a regular basis (hence the dip in metabolism when there is no food), so by eating regularly, you will find that you are not hungry as much and you'll experience a lot less hunger pangs and cravings which can be diet destroyers.

Exercise can instantly boost your metabolism, and of course it burns off calories. Some exercise, particularly strength training, can also have an 'afterburn' effect which means that the metabolism stays elevated for some hours after the exercise is performed. So if you do this kind of exercise some hours before you to go bed, you'll be burning more calories than normal as you go about your normal daily routine. Of course some times this can't be avoided. I do karate twice a week and the class is held late in the evening. By the time I get back I just have time for a quick shower and then its time for bed so I dont benefit from the afterburn here. However, this is just a bonus.

3) Your Must Retain Your LBM

LBM = Lean Body Mass, in case you forgot! Your base metabolism is based mainly on your LBM. In another entry I'll show the formula for working this out. Its crucial that you hang onto your LBM and only lose fat. The easiest way to do this is to ensure that you incorporate strength training into your routine. This tells your body that you need your muscles for the work they are doing and encourages your body to look elsewhere (such as your fat deposits) for its energy.

Also, by training hard you may even be able to gain a little muscle and actually increase your base metabolic rate. However, don't rely on this because in general, for muscles to grow they need a calorie surplus and we're putting ourselves into a calorie deficit. Its possible to lose lots of fat and gain a *small* amount of muscle at he same time, but dont expect to lose loads of fat and gain loads of muscle - it just can't happen.

That's the basics of fat loss and we can summarise all of that into three things:

1) Diet
2) Cardio
3) Strength Training