Category: Fat loss

In various places on the site, I have made the comment that such things as caloric intake and activity will have to be adjusted based on real-world fat loss.   This is a big part of the reason I tend to quick-estimate maintenance calorie intakes to begin with.  Any value you come up with whether you quick-estimate it or use some complex approach is only a starting point.  If you have to adjust it anyhow, the quick method is usually good enough.

But that raises the question of how to actually adjust the diet based on real world changes in body composition.  Even that is contingent on being able to get an accurate measure of body composition.  For the most part, I’ll be addressing moderate dietary deficits.  But the same information would mostly apply if large or small deficits were being used.

A Quick Note About Water Balance

Before I get into the meat of the article, there is one topic I want to bring up first. … Keep Reading

A question I frequently get in interview or podcast are what the the most basic components of a fat loss diet are.   Basically, what fat loss fundamentals must be present in every diet.

This is actually a very good question and, while I can generally answer it in about 4 sentences, I’m going to do my best to stretch it out into a full length article by overexplaining everything and giving at least some of my rationale for the different recommendations. In many places, I’ll be linking out to other articles on the site that go into individual topics in more detail.

Since this is going to get long, I’m actually going to divide the article into two parts. Today I’m going to focus on what is probably the most contentious area of diet set up, on Tuesday next week, I’ll cover the other factors that I use to set up a basic fat loss diet.… Keep Reading

Recently on the Internet, a common meme is that the application of thermodynamics to the human body is incorrect.  This usually comes out of people talking about something that they clearly do not understand in any way shape or form which is the energy balance equation.

This is usually used as a lead in to the idea that the “Calorie theory of weight gain and weight loss” is incorrect or what have you.   Some have taken this a step further to argue that it can’t be right because “calories are not real“.  You can’t argue with that level of ignorant.

Today, I’m going to do my best to clear things up about what the energy balance equation does and doesn’t mean and why people, who don’t really have a clue what they’re talking about, don’t understand it.  Hopefully by the time you’ve gotten to the end of this, you’ll understand it.… Keep Reading

Ignoring those people who deny the energy balance equation or even the concept of calories, the fact is that losing fat requires a calorie deficit.   But that raises questions of how to set the deficit (i.e. exercise vs. diet vs. a combination) or even the size of the deficit. Today I’m going to focus on the latter and examine the pros and cons of different size calorie deficits.

To keep the article from getting too complicated and long I am going to assume for simplicities sake that whether or not the deficit is created via dietary restriction or exercise the end result is basically the same. Please note that this really isn’t a safe assumption.  There are differences but those have to wait for another article.

Defining Different Sizes of Calorie Deficits

For the sake of this argument, I’m going to define the deficits as follows:

• Small: 10-15% below maintenance
• Moderate: 20-25% below maintenance
• Large: anything bigger than 25% below maintenance

Note, I’m not saying that these definitions are the exactly right ones, they are simply how I define the terms. … Keep Reading