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Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss 5
Written by James Faber
July 9th, 2010
Categories: Diet and Nutrition, Extreme Training, Mental Muscle
Heavy Duty
Time to Move Things to the Next Level.
By now you should have a pretty good idea where you are with your eating habits. You should have made some decisions concerning the number of calories to cut from your diet on a daily basis as well as identify the weak points in your diet. If not, review the prior articles in this series.
In particular you should be aware of the Times during the Day when you have a difficult time sticking with your diet plan.
Armed with this information, it is time to Fine Tune your Fat Loss Plan.
Establish your baseline calorie intake amount. In other words, what number of calories do you have to eat in order to maintain the same weight? Maintaining your food journal is essential in this process. Keep in mind that fat loss is not an exact science and everybody responds differently to changes in diet. For example, some people gain a fair amount of water weight when they eat high salt foods. We are trying to get beyond these nuances and dial in the average number of calories you need to consume to stay at the same weight.
Once this is done, it is simply a matter of reducing the number of calories you take in to start to lose weight. However, our objective here is to lose fat, not muscle. This is where things get tricky.
First, you want to spread the calories you eat evenly across the day into five or six small meals.
There is a fair amount of information which suggests that eating smaller meals five or six times a day is beneficial for fat loss. Beware that there also advocates who say that eating one large meal a day is also the way to go. The problem is less one of science and more of psychology. What will you actually do? Eating one meal a day is hard to do.
That being said, it is easier to eat three meals a day – breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and then add a snack during your weak times, or after a workout. This snack needs to be planned. For example. Breakfast at 8:00. Snack at 10:30. Lunch at 12:00. Snack at 3:00. Dinner at 6:00. Snack after workout at 8:00.
You can experiment by moving the number of calories involved in each meal to see if that makes it easier or harder to stick to your plan. For example, a larger snack at 10:30 may lead to a desire for a smaller lunch. Keep track of how you feel in your Diet Journal and see if you can come up with a plan that is actually easy to follow.
You can also experiment with the types of foods you eat at certain times and their effects. Fruit may make you hungry in the afternoon, but hit the spot in the morning. Rather than concern yourself with the types of calories – carbs, fats, or protein – at this point you are trying to find what works, in other words, what you will actually eat at the planned time.
Keep in mind that everybody is different. What works for one person may not work for another. That is why people have difficulty with intricate diets that tell you exactly what to eat and when. You may not want to eat a can of tuna for a snack, but are happy with a yogurt.
Second, you should make Healthy Substitutions as Possible. Eating before you get too hungry is a good tactic to employ in all cases. Often junk food is consumed because it is easy and accessible. If you have junk food in your house, throw it away. Eliminate the temptation from as many areas of your life as possible and eventually making the right choices will become easy. For example, Cheese Sticks make a nice snack. Something that makes you crave more and more of it, like chips or cookies, is not a good choice.
The reason why Junk Food is Bad, from our simple perspective here, is that it often leads to overeating. It is difficult to eat one potato chip. Once you eat one, you crave more. So, in a sense, the use of the term “junk food” here applies to foods that lead you to eat more than you should in order to maintain your daily caloric intake.
Remember, we are not focusing on what mix of carbs, protein and fat to eat. What matters at this stage is the number of calories you consume. If you want to eat something that others call “junk”, that’s OK as long as it doesn’t push you over your daily calorie targets.
Along the way you will discover that higher fat snacks, like cheese, tend to be more satisfying than salty carb snacks, like chips or pretzels. Of course, eating a balanced diet is important, but first we want to get the total number of calories under control. In other words, we are only focusing on one thing at a time. Eat less calories.
So, if you are really fond of a “junkie” snack, build it into your diet plan. Over time, your tastes, or nutritional requirements may change and you will find that the snack you used to crave just isn’t worth the calories.
Third, Reduce your Calories Slowly. In the last article we discussed reducing your caloric intake by 250 calories a day. See, Extreme Training: Real Fat Loss 4. That is not a very large amount, but over time, is very effective. In particular, your body does not sense that you are on a diet and does not shift into survival mode and try to spare every calorie by lowering your metabolism.
Most diets that are too calorie restrictive lead to a lowered metabolism and an even harder time loosing fat. Not to mention that many people become frustrated and quit the diet now that their metabolism is lowered which leads to Increased Fat Gain.
In this case, slow but steady works. And, if you keep maintaining your food journal, and start recording your measurements with a tape measure (you can record weight, but that is really a secondary concern at this time), you will see on a week by week basis, whether you have properly identified your baseline caloric needs and whether your reductions are causing the desired effect.
If nothing changes, it is time to take a closer look at your diet and perhaps slowly reduce some of the calories you consume until you reach the desired effect. Be patient! This process takes time and your body has many of its own tricks to play, as we will discuss later.
For now, work towards finding the baseline and making small reductions in calories.
Fourth, It is important that you Maintain your Current Fitness Activity Level During this Process. We are trying to make small adjustments in a way which provides us with information we can use in the future. Once your diet is dialed in we will turn to the important exercise component.
But for now, work on eating evenly spaced meals, making a slight reduction in calories, and recording everything you do as suggested above.
Once we have the daily caloric intake dialed in, it becomes mush easier to design and implement or make improvements to your training routine. Next installment of this series we will make the shift towards integrating your training in a way that helps Accelerate the Fat Loss Process.
If you found this article interesting or have any thoughts about this topic, please leave a comment below.
For now, Enjoy your Training and your Life!
