THE BEST GUIDE TO HEALTHY FAT LOSS

There are a lot of misconceptions surrounding the topic of fat loss and many people crash and burn while dieting and never achieve the results that they want.

With the help of this guide to healthy fat loss, you can make your own personalized weight loss program catered to your specific needs and you can finally achieve your desired physique.

1) DETERMINE YOUR ENERGY NEEDS

This first step requires some effort on your part but trust me it’s going to be worth it.

You can find tons of pre-prepared weight loss meal plans but the truth is it's most likely not going to get you anywhere simply because of the fact it isn’t catered to your needs.

How much calories one needs per day is widely dependent on many factors such as gender, the amount of lean muscle mass you have, what type of exercise you indulge in, how many times per week do you train, how intense are your training session etc.

As you can clearly see, there is no meal plan that can fulfill everybody’s needs.

So, how to determine how much calories you need per day?

Simply track your daily caloric intake for a couple of days using one of the many different weight tracking apps out there (for example my fitness pal). The more days you track your caloric intake the more accurate results you will get.

After that, simply take the average caloric intake of those days and you have found your starting point or you’re starting calories.

2) CREATE A SMALL CALORIC DEFICIT

After you’ve completed step one, you can move on to step 2 and that is creating a small caloric deficit of 10% below your starting calories point.

For example, if you have found out that on average you eat around 2000 kcal per day if we take away 10% of your calories you are now left with 1800 kcal per day. This is your new caloric intake where you will be dieting.

Why such a small caloric deficit?

Large calorie deficits are the main reason so many people crash on their diet, they are simply not sustainable and many people experience the so called yo-yo effect (where they get to the same point before dieting or even gain weight afterward).

Proper dieting, on the other hand, will never lead you to feel too hungry or lethargic and should give you enough energy to even build muscle and strength.

3) EAT ENOUGH PROTEIN

Eating enough protein is extremely vital when dieting as protein is muscle sparring ( study ), helps lose more fat mass ( study ) and has high satiety levels (study ).

This is why high protein diets have been shown time and time again to outperform low protein diets for fat loss purposes when calories are restricted.

So how much protein do you need per day when dieting?
Around 0.8 of protein per pound of body mass per day should be enough to cover your protein needs.

Depending on your level of activity and amount of lean body mass as well as how much time you have been dieting you can also gradually increase that number to 1 g of protein per pound of bodyweight per day.

So if you weigh 150 lbs that means your starting point of protein intake should be around 120 g of protein per day.
Considering the fact that a gram of protein equates to 4 kcal that means you will get (120 x 4 kcal =) 480 kcal from protein per day.

And If you have also determined that you need to eat 1800 kcal per day (like we did in the previous section) that will leave you with (1800 kcal – 480 kcal =) 1320 kcal left.

This 1320 kcal can be used on any foods you like. If you are an average guy/girl who just wants to lose weight and doesn’t want to get too lean (for a fitness competition for example) then the carbohydrate: fat ratio isn’t the most important factor to worry about at the moment.

4) CREATE A MEAL PLAN AND STICK TO IT

Now that you determined your daily calorie and protein needs you should make a personalized meal plan around that.

If you create a meal plan it will ensure that you stick to it day in day out and not fall off the diet wagon.
Make sure to include enough quality protein sources, non-refined grains, legumes as well as veggies and fruit to get enough fiber and vitamins and minerals.

I would also suggest having around 4 meals per day. Ideally, you can have on of those meals right after you have finished a workout session and one of those meals right before going to bed.

As you can see, you could include some junk food into your diet, but you will be very limited calorie wise.
Junk food is very calorie dense, meaning it contains a lot of calories per gram of food. It’s important to include a lot of low-calorie dense foods into our diet because they give you a lot of “volume” and keep you full.

Having said that, do not be too restrictive. If you want to indulge in some of your favorite foods simply play around with the numbers and make room for it.

5) INCORPORATE RESISTANCE TRAINING

This point pertains especially to females who often neglect training with weights.

Resistance training helps you retain (or even build) muscle mass even when on a calorie deficit as shown in this study (study ).

You have to understand that the goal of dieting isn’t simply to lose weight. It is to lose fat mass while preserving as much muscle mass as possible. This is how you truly achieve a great “beach body”.

Regardless of what type of resistance training you do, bodyweight training, weight lifting, using resistance bands etc, just pick one and stick to it during your fat loss phase.

6) WHAT HAPPENS IF WEIGHT LOSS STALLS?

This will happen to anybody at a certain point of dieting. If you have not reached your desired body with your current calorie intake you will have to raise your calorie deficit.

You can do this by either lowering calories or by doing more work exercise wise (possibly add more low impact aerobic type of exercise to your program, add another training session per week if you can etc) or ideally, do a combination of both.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t diet for too long. If you haven’t achieved the results wanted in a couple of months, taking a couple weeks off of dieting, raising your calorie intake and just focusing on building muscle mass rather than losing weight is the best option for you. Take the one step back, two steps forward mentality when dealing with this issue.

CONCLUSION

Proper dieting does require some effort, especially when it comes to building your own personalized weight loss meal plan.

But it’s definitely worth it in the end as you can actually achieve long term success following the steps provided in this article.