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D ET COACHING ADJUSTMENTS MANUAL Evrythin� yo� n� t� succesfll� cu� t� shrd�
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Part 1 Why Successful People Don’t Just Make Random Cuts To Their Calorie Intake........................... Intake....................................... ........................ ............... ... 4 Part 2 Forget Your Calculations – Why We Need To Track & Make Adjustments As We Diet ....................................................7 Part 3 Expect Fluctuations, Identify Stalls, And Anticipate Whooshes ........................... ....................................... ........................ ........................ ....................10 ........10 Part 4 How I Recommend You You Track Track Your Your Progress ........... ....................... ........................ ................. ..... 14 Part 5 How Quickly Should I Cut? C ut? ........................ .................................... ........................ ........................ ...................... .......... 19 Part 6 The Role Of The Diet Break ........... ....................... ........................ ........................ ........................ ..................... ......... 24 Part 7 When & How To Make Adjustments To Your Calorie Intake .............................. .......................................... ........................ ........................ ....................... ........... 27 Part 8 Full Examples Of How I Coached The Clients You Voted On ................ ............................ ........................ ........................ ........................ ................... ....... 38 Part 9 Coming Back Up To Maintenance To Maximally Maintain Your Shreds ............ ........................ ........................ ........................ ................... ....... 48
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Part 1 Why Successful People Don’t Just Make Random Cuts To Their Calorie Intake........................... Intake....................................... ........................ ............... ... 4 Part 2 Forget Your Calculations – Why We Need To Track & Make Adjustments As We Diet ....................................................7 Part 3 Expect Fluctuations, Identify Stalls, And Anticipate Whooshes ........................... ....................................... ........................ ........................ ....................10 ........10 Part 4 How I Recommend You You Track Track Your Your Progress ........... ....................... ........................ ................. ..... 14 Part 5 How Quickly Should I Cut? C ut? ........................ .................................... ........................ ........................ ...................... .......... 19 Part 6 The Role Of The Diet Break ........... ....................... ........................ ........................ ........................ ..................... ......... 24 Part 7 When & How To Make Adjustments To Your Calorie Intake .............................. .......................................... ........................ ........................ ....................... ........... 27 Part 8 Full Examples Of How I Coached The Clients You Voted On ................ ............................ ........................ ........................ ........................ ................... ....... 38 Part 9 Coming Back Up To Maintenance To Maximally Maintain Your Shreds ............ ........................ ........................ ........................ ................... ....... 48
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This book is not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for medical treatment, nor as an alternative to medical advice. Use of the guidelines herein is at the sole choice and risk of the reader. Copyright: © 2015 by Andrew Morgan. All rights reserved. This book or any part thereof, may not be reproduced or recorded in any form without permission, except for brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information contact:
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1 t r a P
Why Successful People Don’t Just Make Random Cuts To Their Calorie Intake
One of the keys to successful dieting is to eat as much as possible while still progressing. The typical ‘bro’ way of doing things is to cut out nearly all carbs and fatty foods immediately as the diet commences, eating a daily menu such as white sh, spinach and rice crackers for lunch, chicken breast, broccoli and rice crackers for dinner, for months on end, until shredded. This can actually work fairly well if you’re pumped full of drugs that help to maintain your muscle mass, and keep your hormones in check, but for the rest of us it’s really not a good idea. Why is this not a good idea? •
If we slash calorie intake too much we risk losing muscle mass. – There are limits to how much fat we can lose each day, and the leaner we get, the less we can lose. More on this in part 5.
•
You’ll have less energy for your workouts, and without sucient training intensity your ability to maintain your muscle mass will be hampered.
•
You’ll run out of places to make cuts to your calorie intake to keep progressing.
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You’ll end up eating less than you could have meaning that your hormones will be aected the most: •
your sex drive will tank,
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hunger pangs and irritability will be high,
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you’ll be so strung out by the time you reach your shredded condition (if you get there) that you’ll be primed for a binge and horrible rebound.
Part 1 Why Successful People Don’t Just Make Random Purchased by Richie Han,
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Here’s a scenario that you’re probably familiar with– two friends having a bet with each other about who can lose the most weight in a given period. Here’s how a conservative approach plays out against an aggressive approach to dieting – the ‘bro’ way vs the smart way of doing things.
Diet Competition – Andy & Bob Consider two friends whose maintenance calories are 2500 kcal per day. They decide to go on a diet to see who can lose the most weight over the next 3 months. Andy starts with a daily decit of ~500 kcal. Bob doesn’t count, but he slashes his carb and fat intake, and his decit ends up being an aggressive one, ~1500 kcal. The rst week… •
Bob starts losing weight faster than Andy.
•
Bob is happier than Andy and considers the hunger worth it because of how quickly the results are coming.
•
Andy is a little jealous of Bob’s progress, but doesn’t really feel hungry or deprived.
6 weeks later… •
Andy is feeling good, progress has been steady but slowed a little recently, still doesn’t feel particularly deprived though, and gym sessions are going well – strength is being maintained.
•
Bob on the other hand is suering. This is both physical and mental. The initial huge water-weight dump set him up with inated expectations of the fat losses that could be achieved per week. In the second week losses were a lot less, but still ahead of Andy so he could put up with the hunger. From then on the losses have slowed considerably each week, strength is being lost in the gym, it’s getting really hard to keep saying no to drinks with friends, and he’s lost interest in sex with his girlfriend.
After 6 weeks of dieting both Andy and Bob now need to decrease their macros to continue progressing. •
Bob has lost more weight than Andy, but Bob has really suered for it.
•
Andy is pretty relaxed about making a decrease and progresses onward.
•
Bob is faced with eating even smaller meals, or adding cardio. Both are unappealing. It’s just a matter of time before he cracks.
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It’s now the end of week 8… Andy and Bob are camping away with friends for the weekend at a music festival. They’ve had this planned for months. Everyone gets drunk on the Saturday night. With lowered inhibitions they both stumble over to the kebab stand at midnight. Andy has a kebab and stumbles o to the tent to call it a night. Bob, after weeks of heavy calorie restriction just can’t help himself and goes wild – he eats four, runs out of cash, steals a hotdog and wakes up in the car park surrounded by fast food wrappers. They both decide to declare Sunday a total day o. Monday morning Bob steps on the scales and nds he’s gained 8 lbs. He’s heartbroken, and a text message from Andy saying that he gained (just) 4 lbs pushes him over the edge. He quits the diet and concedes the challenge. Though neither of them realise it, part of the weight gained back in both cases was water weight – due to increased carb and salt intake – but Bob will have gained more fat because he’s hormonally primed for fat gain after weeks of heavy calorie restriction . With the challenge aborted, for Bob the fat gain continues over the next two weeks, despite not eating any more than he would have prior to the challenge, and soon Bob nds himself back to where he was 8 weeks ago.
*************
A Smarter Way Of Doing Things We want to make a macro/calorie intake reduction at every point that things stop progressing. To do that we need a tracking system, and we need to know how to interpret that data so that we can be as objective as possible when determining whether we need to make adjustments. This is not as simple as looking at either scale weight changes or body measurement changes. I'll go on to explain this in later sections. For now, I need to get something more fundamental out of the way – to explain why adjustments are necessary in the rst place. “Do these macros look right?” is the single most asked question I get the comments on the website. I would guess I’ve been asked this over 2000 times, but it is fundamentally the wrong question to be asking, “How are those macros working out for you? ” is the one that needs to be answered. A calculation cannot predict a diet’s progress accurately. Initial calculations of calorie and macro intake just provide a starting point from which to work. Here’s why…
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2 t r a P
Forget Your Calculations – Why We Need To Track & Make Adjustments As We Diet
Let’s look at the reasons that our initial calculations won’t pan out to reality before then moving onto what we can do about it.
1. Initial Calculations Are Just An Estimation
→
•
The calculations that you made to come up with your energy needs when you set up your diet were based on averages – average metabolic rate for someone of your stature and age, or average for someone of your lean body mass. You could be either side of that range.
•
If you used the Katch-McArdle formula to calculate your energy needs, though this is potentially more accurate due to it being based on the amount of lean mass you carry, you may have misestimated your body-fat percentage. In fact, due to the diculty of accurately assessing body-fat percentage, you probably did.(More on this later.)
•
Your activity multiplier was an estimation.
Our initial calculations are likely to be o and will need to be adjusted based on how they work out to reality. FOR COACHES: You’ll get some people try to track their daily activity with a tness tracker, like a Fitbit wristband or the like. This can be a useful tool for showing us how lazy we are, and illustrating how little energy we burn through walking around on an hourly basis, but I feel that the usefulness of these devices stops there. They are generally horrible at estimating energy expenditure, and even if they were accurate, what is the person supposed to do? Adjust their meals each day in order to maintain their target caloric decit? It’s just not realistic in the long term, and trying to micro-manage a diet like this is unsustainable and a recipe for disaster.
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2. Our Energy Needs Change As We Diet The Lighter We Get the Fewer Calories We Burn There are three reasons for this: •
The energy required to be you is less, so your base metabolic rate (BMR) drops.
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You’re eating less food, so the energy costs of digesting that food (known as TEF ) is lower.
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And because you are lighter, any exercise you do (known as the thermic eect of exercise, or TEE ) burns fewer calories. BMR , TEF , TEE
→
Because of these changes a single calculation made initially will not continue to work in the vast majority of cases. FOR COACHES: If the duration of the diet is short, and/or the decit was fairly aggressive initially (whether accidentally or on purpose), then one single calculation may be enough in a few cases to see people through to a shredded state.
NEAT Variance This is all energy expenditure that is not related to planned activity, (known as non-exercise activity thermogenesis, or NEAT ). We all feel more lethargic on diets right? Fidgeting, moving around, and our propensity to take stairs vs elevator etc., changes when we are in a caloric decit. The problem with NEAT is that there are vast inter-individual variances. Some people seem to respond minimally in this regard, some a great deal. →
No calculation can take into account these individual NEAT dierences.
Metabolic Adaptation This is the adaptive component of your BMR that is not predicted by weight loss. Basically it is caused by hormonal changes that happen when your body senses a caloric decit, and so starts doing what it can to decrease your daily energy needs in an attempt to stop you from starving to death. Modern dieting clearly isn’t a survival situation, but unfortunately our bodies can’t tell the dierence between prolonged caloric restriction and starvation, so it’s something we have to deal with.
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The harder you diet, the more your metabolism adapts. In the research, the largest decrease in BMR due to this adaptive component observed was in something called The Minnesota SemiStarvation study and was measured to be about 15%, once the change in total daily energy expenditure due to weight loss was taken into account. That would be 200-400 kcal depending on your body size – a signicant amount that could mean the dierence between extreme hunger and modest hunger if we could minimise it. →
It’s worth keeping away from excessively large calorie decits so that we minimise the severity of the metabolic adaptation and can eat more throughout our diets.
However, it’s important to note that this is what was observed during starvation conditions. Your diet will be less extreme, even if you decide to take what would be considered to be an extreme/ stupid approach (500 kcal/day for example) in the modern day. Thus, if you feel that you have an exceptionally low calorie intake and aren’t losing weight, barring legitimate medical issue, it’s likely that you are simply miscounting you calorie intake, or have some water retention masking the weight loss. FOR COACHES: Miscounting far more common than water retention. It’s worth getting a client that is completely new to dieting to put everything they put into their mouths into a calorie tracker for a week, as this will teach them a lot and help to rule out severe undercounting. As long as people aren’t wildly o of their targets I don’t think that miscounting has to be an issue. The key thing is that people are consistent with the way they count. I’ve got a good explanation of the system I use for counting here. If a client is worried that they are ‘metabolically damaged,’ it’s likely that they have read some nonsense online. Metabolic damage due to dieting too hard and long is something of a modern myth. So read that and educate them, or pass on the link so they can read it themselves.
Summary Recommendations Initial calculations of calorie and macro intake just provide a starting point from which to work. We can’t predict spontaneous physical activity (NEAT) changes, or metabolic slow-down, and it’s likely that our initial calculations of energy needs were a little o. The only practical way to proceed then is to adjust our intake when we don’t progress as planned. To do that of course, we require good tracking. ‘Good’ means tracking relevant data points so that we can make decisions as objectively as we can. Now the problem is that while fat loss happens linearly, the measurements we use to track it, usually do not respond linearly. We’ll cover why this is next, as it forms the basis of my recommendations on how we track things and it will stop you from panicking later on.
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3 t r a P
Expect Fluctuations, Identify Stalls, And Anticipate Whooshes
Not realising that uctuations in weight and measurements will happen, being unable to identify stalls, and not knowing how to anticipate whooshes are the key reasons that people fail their diets. Don’t let this be you.
Part 3 Expect Fluctuations, Identify Stalls, And Anticipate Whooshes
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We know from the discussion in the previous section that the further we progress with our diets, the slower the rate of progress we will get. This is represented by the curve in the yellow line. Compare that to how most people think fat loss will/can happen for a moment by looking at the green line. We can go faster at the start, slower at the end. Unfortunately, though fat loss is fairly linear, the way it manifests itself is not. The scale weight change is more likely to jump all over the place (the red line), which causes a lot of frustration. This happens due to uctuations in water weight, and unfortunately it is very dicult to consistently and accurately track the dierences between fat loss and water loss. However, we can look for signs in our tracking data to distinguish between the two. To do this we need to understand the reasons that these uctuations in water weight happen.
1. Why The Initial Change In Weight Is Probably Not Fat Loss A change in carbohydrate intake will bring with it a change in water balance in the body. This is because glycogen comes from the carbs we eat, and 1g of glycogen holds 3g of water and is stored in the muscles, waiting to be used as energy. Our muscles are made up of ~70-80% water. Some of the water comes under the skin, but most of it goes into the muscle. If you eat fewer carbs than normal, which you probably will when you start dieting, your body (the muscles mainly) will hold less water. The scale weight will plummet giving you the false impression that you’ve lost fat. It is possible in this way to drop weight without being in a caloric decit. (This is what boxers and MMA ghters do to ‘make weight’ before a ght.) → It
is prudent to ignore the rst week’s weight change when looking to establish your average rate of fat loss. Use data from the second week onwards.
2. Why The Sudden Weight Gain Is Probably Not Fat If you eat more carbs than normal, when you take a diet break for example, or go out, get drunk and wake up surrounded by pizza boxes that you swear aren’t yours, your body will hold more water giving you the impression that you’ve gained a lot of fat. This is just a temporary uctuation in water balance and will come down again when you resume your diet. A sudden gain in weight is likely to be water gain, not fat gain. One pound of fat takes 3000-3500 kcal to burn or store. If your maintenance calorie intake is 2500 kcal, even if we assume that any
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excess over regular calorie maintenance is stored perfectly as body fat (it’s not), then that’s more than 5200 kcal you’d have to consume on a single day to gain a pound of body fat. Possible, yes, but not likely if you are eating sensibly, and even if you really eat a huge amount and wake up 5 lbs heavier, it’s almost certain that less than half of it will be fat. The way to tell the dierence between what is largely a water weight uctuation due to an increased carb intake and just fat gain, is that with the former the muscles will look a lot fuller and the stomach measurements will change only a little, despite the disproportionate rise in scale weight. (This is easiest to spot if we take body measurements on other sites than just the stomach.) Plus, after a couple of days resuming your diet, your weight will whoosh downwards again as it drops the water. If you cycle carbohydrate intake, your weight (and appearance/level of denition) will uctuate from day to day across the week. Furthermore, any change in salt intake can temporarily bring about a spike in water balance. However, it’s very hard to track salt intake so I don’t recommend you even attempt it, but it’s a good idea to remember this point when possibly looking for an explanation as to why you are suddenly bloated one day. →
It is best to weigh yourself each day and note down the average at the end of the week.
→
It’s best to track measurements all over the body, not just the stomach.
3. Why The Sudden Stall In Weight Loss Is Probably Nothing To Worry About Fat cells can ll up with water as they empty, masking fat losses. This was rst hypothesised by Lyle McDonald. This is especially annoying because the stomach measurements won't change, and signs of progress are hidden. I’ve seen this many, many times over the years with clients, and while I have seen it happen to people without reason, those with poor sleep habits and/or a high amount of stress in their lives tend to experience this more often. Remember – fat loss will not start or stop suddenly unless calorie balance has changed. The reduction in total daily energy needs when dieting is a gradual thing (NEAT , BMR, TEF). Metabolic adaptation is not a sudden switch. So, if you have been consistent with your diet, and weight loss has been at ~1 lb a week for a while (for example) and the scale suddenly stops moving, you have a good idea that there is some water retention going on. The best thing to do in this case is to remain patient, and if sleep quality is poor, or stress high, then work on improving those areas rst. – We’ll come back to this in the client examples section.
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FOR COACHES: It’s not just about length of sleep, but quality of sleep. Does the client have a good mattress, a good pillow? Is the room too hot or cold? Is the room dark? Make sure that people get these basics sorted – they may sound obvious now but they aren’t always obvious to the client. →
It is a good idea to track qualitative measures of sleep quality and overall stress each week also .
4. Why A Sudden Whoosh In Weight Loss Is Not Something To Worry About It’ll be water. Either due to a sudden decrease in carbohydrate intake, salt intake, or is just a whoosh of water that has been building up in the fat cells and waiting to come out. →
It is best to look at the trends in measurement and weight data over multiple weeks, and ignore any big uctuations that can happen week to week.
Summary Recommendations We need to track progress based on more then just the scale weight. It is best to take body measurements, as well as track sleep and stress levels each week as the diet progresses, due to their ability to aect water retention. It should be expected that there will be stalls in progress, and we mustn’t panic when these things happen but embrace them as part of the process. Hopefully you will have already read the next section on how to track your progress from the site. I’m betting that it will make a lot more sense now. Here’s a heavily updated version
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4 t r a P
How I Recommend You Track Your Progress
Here's what most people do that I suggest you don't... •
•
Don’t rely on the mirror. The lighting will uctuate, and your condition will change depending on the salt and carb content of the foods you have eaten. Trying to track your progress by checking yourself in the mirror is a recipe for disaster, as in the short term the mirror will just screw with your head. Don’t try to track by measuring your body-fat percentage – there are accuracy and consistently issues with all commercially available methods. (BIA, BodPod, underwater weighing, callipers and DXA scan all have their issues.)
Here's how I suggest you track things... 1. Take 9 Points Of Measurement Once A Week Consistency is key to accurate tracking. This means that measurements need to be taken at the same time of the day, under the same circumstances. Do it yourself, as you are the only person that will always be with you. The best time to measure is in the morning, after you wake, after going to the toilet. Once a week is ne. •
Measure in nine places as per the illustration.
•
Tense/ex your muscles for each measurement as this enables more consistent results.
Part 4 How I Recommend You Track Your Progress
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•
To help you take the measurements in the same place each time, •
Use the widest part of your legs,
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Measure at the nipple-line for the chest, being sure not to get the tape at an angle or twisted,
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Curl your biceps in a pose like Arnold to take your arms at the widest point,
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Two ngers above and below the navel is a good guideline instead of measuring 2 inches each time.
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Consider getting yourself a Myotape/Orbitape (picture below) as it makes self-measuring more consistent and easier.
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Take and note measurements to the nearest 0.1 cm.
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FOR COACHES: Accept nothing less than a 0.1 cm degree of accuracy, regardless of what system they are used to. Not only is it exceptionally useful for noting small changes and trends in the data, it sets the client up with a mindset on precision – that they need to take the data seriously. Without the data, you are blind after all. I hammer this point home to clients at the outset – no data, no assessment point. People sometimes screw this up, so it’s worth checking that they have lled out the tracking sheet correctly in the rst week so that there can be no misunderstandings at the update point 2-4 weeks later where you have no data to look at, incomplete data, or data to the nearest 1 cm (or even more annoyingly, nearest half an inch).
2. Weigh Yourself Every Morning Here is a quick summary of all things that can cause uctuations in weight: •
Water & glycogen – due to an change in carb intake
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Water – the stall-whoosh eect.
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Water – due to hydration status.
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Water – due to a change in salt intake.
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Bowel content – some foods have a higher ‘gut residue’ (they stay in the gut for longer).
We want the conditions to be as consistent as possible when weighing ourselves, and the best thing for this is to weigh last thing at night, or rst thing in the morning. My preference is for the morning -scale uctuations can mess with people’s heads we don’t want sleep to be disturbed because of them stressing about this. Weigh yourself every morning upon waking, after the toilet (empty your bladder). Then at the end of the week calculate the average and note it. →
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You can expect to lose 1-2% bodyweight over night through the moisture lost when breathing, so denitely do not weigh yourself in the morning one day, and then the evening the next. FOR COACHES: Scale Weight Obsessors – If you’ve noticed that your client is completely obsessed with the scale weight and won’t get it into their head that there will be uctuations as they progress, you probably want to limit them to weighing themselves once a week. – The stress from the uctuations can cause water retention and will only make them stress more. Weighing once a week is not ideal by any means as it leaves you open to random uctuations in weight happening and screwing up your analysis. The downsides of this needs to be weighed up with stress from daily weighing that happens with certain personality types. Education on the causes of weight uctuations is usually a cure in most cases, but not all. Gut Residue – This point is worth bearing in mind for a client that needs to drop weight for a weigh-in but is close to their target. You’ll get people dehydrating themselves in order to make a weigh-in, but it’s rarely a good idea to play with this as it aects performance – and when taken to the extreme people have died. Switching to foods that have a low gut residue (generally less bre, more liquids) can help the someone drop 1-2% bodyweight over the course of a couple of weeks without the need for calorie restriction. Then when you add in some mild carb restriction a week out to decrease glycogen and water balance, and possibly a lowering of salt intake a few days before (if it’s being counted), you can get a 3-5% drop in bodyweight fairly painlessly.
3. Take Photos Once Every Four Weeks Take two photos, front and side. Use the same lighting conditions, camera, camera angle, time of day, and pose. I’ve experimented with weekly and fortnightly photos with clients and I’m convinced that every four weeks is best, and taking them more often can be counter-productive as the changes are often too small to be motivational. FOR COACHES: If someone comes to you with an initial set of photos where they have their stomach forcibly sticking out, ask them to retake them. Tell them to tense their abs from the start – it’s important to be consistent. The goal with the photos is not to have the most striking before-after shots, but to have a reliable visual gauge of progress.
4. Track Strength Track your strength in the main compound lifts you perform. Some days you will feel stronger than others, so note the best set for the week. The conditions must be the same for you to be able to compare – rest times, form, etc.
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FOR COACHES: I like to get clients to note the best session for each main compound lift that week, as it means I can look at all the data at a glance and I’m at less risk of missing anything. Of course, feel free to track the entire workout routine if you like, or the total volume performed for the week for a body part or exercise – when I coach clients through a bulk this is something I have been doing this last year. Total ‘hard sets‘ for an exercise or body part is another option of tracking training volume.
5. Track Diet & Training Adherence Rate your diet adherence as a percentage – If you get each macro target to within 10% either side, consider that to be perfect adherence (100%). The total percentage I’d suggest you write is the percentage of days you managed to achieve that. It’s also a good idea to list any instances where you feel you went well over the calorie balance for the day – that could be a big drinking session, wedding party, etc.. Note the date that you did this in your tracking spreadsheet (because otherwise you’ll forget) as you can expect a rise in the numbers that week. FOR COACHES: Some people are going to screw up their counting of things. Short of requesting a complete list of the client’s meals and their ingredients, (which I think may be overbearing, and possibly counterproductive because you get them stuck into a rigid meal planning mindset from the start) there is no real way to check for this, you just have to be aware of it. So, if someone isn’t losing weight as it seems they should for the macros you’ve given them, miscounting may be a factor. More on what you can do about this later. Rate your training adherence as a percentage. – This means the percentage of completed workouts, not how well you thought you performed. Fluctuations in performance are normal and to be expected.
6. Track Qualitative Factors Rate your sleep quality, stress level, and hunger on a 1-5 scale, each week. As you look back across your tracking data to see how you are progressing, if weight and measurements aren’t changing according to plan, check to see how your sleep or stress levels were for these weeks. – If they are high, then it is likely to be water retention rather than a lack of a caloric decit to blame. This is especially true if you have been nding yourself hungry at the same time. (Just note, hunger doesn’t always means you’re in a caloric decit, but it can be a good gauge that you are if other things point in that direction.)
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5 t r a P
How Quickly Should I Cut?
Very generally speaking, the body fuels itself in the ratio that it has fuels available. Unfortunately, the amino acids that comprise our muscle tissue are one of these fuels, so a caloric decit puts our hard-earned muscle mass at risk. However, by doing resistance training we send a signal to our bodies to hang onto the muscle tissue instead of breaking it down, and by keeping protein intake high we give our bodies the ability to do so. The problem is this – leaner we get, the less body fat is available as a fuel source, and the more likely the body is to break down muscle into amino acids for fuel. And if our energy decit for the day is beyond the body’s capability to fuel itself from fat stores, we will lose muscle mass. I guess this is just a long winded way of saying that: →
Fatter people can lose fat quicker than leaner people, and,
→
We should taper our fat-loss rate as we get leaner.
Now, it is possible to calculate the theoretical limits to fat loss as they relate to body-fat percentage, however I don’t think this is a very good idea to base recommendations for weight loss o of because even though we can lose fat at a faster rate, doesn’t mean that we should. There are four principle reasons for this:
1. Smaller Decits Open Up The Possibility Of Muscle Gain It is possible (even for advanced trainees) to gain muscle while in a caloric decit. This has been shown in the research, anecdotally, researcher Brad Schoenfeld has said that he’s seen it
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countless times during the course of his work, and I’ve noticed it in clients myself. Our ability to do this, •
Decreases as we advance with our training,
•
Decreases as we get leaner,
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Decreases with higher caloric decits.
For completeness, I should note that this is also related to the skill of the program designer, and related to the quality of your gym environment. But these things can’t outweigh those rst three.
2. Smaller Decits Make Diet Control Easier And Reduce Rebound Risk Think back to the story of Bob and Andy in the opening section of this book. It doesn’t matter what you can achieve in the next month, what matters is that you can sustain things over the coming months, and that you don’t reach the end of your diet so miserable that you can’t control a careful change to maintenance to keep your denition.
3. You Don’t Run Into Skin Elasticity Issues If you start losing much more than the rates above over an extended period, skin elasticity can become an issue, meaning, you could be left looking like a deated balloon for a temporary period after your diet. This is because the rate at which your skin could come tight again was exceeded by the rate of fat loss. Skin elasticity decreases with age, and decreases with the number of times it is stretched and has to come tight again. This is why you will occasionally see ‘masters’ division (aged 40+, 50+, 60+ etc.) bodybuilders with loose skin on their lower abs.
4. There Are Potential Health Risks Large reductions in energy intake mean a reduced nutrient availability for the body. Cut your food intake in half and you cut that in half as well. This can have negative impacts on health, especially if the restriction is over an extended period. This brings us to an interesting point on restricting to create a decit vs working harder to make one: If you do the latter (increase activity for example) then you get to keep the same nutrient availability, but at the cost of sustainability. There is no single right way to do things here, but my preference tends to be to keep towards moderate dietary restriction rather than making increases in weekly exercise (unless the person is sedentary in the rst place).
Purchased by Richie Han,
[email protected] #6478326
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How This Affects Our Targets It’s very hard to distinguish between fat loss and muscle gain – we aren’t able to trust bodyfat percentage measurement machines, and so we only have our weight and stomach measurement changes to give us clues about how fat loss is progressing. So, instead of setting fat-loss guidelines, it’s more practical, accurate and meaningful to set weight-loss guidelines that slightly lower than any maximal fat-loss rate as this will take into account the potential for muscle growth.
Weight-loss Guidelines
Body fat %
Loss /week
30%>
~2-2.5 lbs / 0.9-1.1 kg
20-30%
~1.5-2 lbs / 0.7-0.9 kg
15-20%
1-1.5 lbs / 0.45-0.7 kg
12-15%
0.75-1.25 lbs / 0.35-0.6 kg
9-12%
0.5-1 lbs / 0.2-0.45 kg
7-9%
~0.5 lbs / 0.2 kg
