I don’t talk about weight loss much because I’d rather focus on getting you stronger and fitter for all your adventures, but weight loss is a huge topic in the fitness space.
There’s so much contradictory information out there, it can be really confusing to sort fact from fiction. So I’d like to set the record straight about nutrition and weight loss. This is going to be a deep dive, covering the biggest questions I get about losing weight, but I’ve organized the article so the most important information comes first.
The First Rule of Weight Loss
The first thing you need to understand about weight loss is this: if you want to lose weight, you MUST be in a caloric deficit.
You’ve probably heard the term “calorie deficit,” but if not, all it means is that you have to somehow burn more calories than you consume in order to lose weight. The opposite, a calorie surplus, is when you consume more calories than you burn. You need to be in a calorie surplus in order to gain weight (ie, putting on muscle, if that’s something you want to do).
Anyway, the golden rule of weight loss is that you must be in a calorie deficit. It doesn’t matter what some guru says on a podcast about hormones or “starvation mode” or any other pseudo-science-y BS. If you’re not in a caloric deficit, you WILL NOT lose weight. Period.
If your only goal is to lose weight, and you don’t care about health or performance, you could eat literally any food (all the “bad” junk people warn you against eating) and still lose weight SO LONG AS you stayed in a calorie deficit.
The inverse of this golden rule is also true: if you’re not losing weight, you’re probably not maintaining a calorie deficit, no matter how much you might think you are. It’s physics.
Yes, hormones and macros and meal timing and all the other buzz words you read about on click-bait weight loss articles can play a role in weight loss. But that role is minuscule compared to the role of calorie balance.
Bottom line: no calorie deficit, no weight loss.
How Much of a Deficit?
Okay, so calories are king when it comes to weight loss. But how much of a deficit do you need?
The answer depends on a lot of factors, including your activity levels and how quickly you want to lose weight, balanced against how miserable you want to be. A bigger deficit is harder to maintain, and can negatively impact your energy levels, focus, athletic performance, and mood if you stay in an extreme deficit for a prolonged period of time. A smaller deficit is easier to maintain and has a better chance of success.
There are a bunch of formulas for figuring out weight loss calorie targets, but I generally use a client’s current weight x10-12 as a starting point and adjust based on progress, or lack thereof.
For example, if someone comes to me with a weight loss goal, and they weigh 150 pounds, I’d instruct them to eat 1500-1800 calories per day. They’d track what they eat in a food diary app, along with their weight. If we weren’t seeing measurable progress after two weeks, I’d adjust their calorie range downward slightly by 100 calories, so that they’re eating 1400-1700 calories per day. Track for two more weeks, and continue adjusting as needed until we start seeing results.
Coach’s note: In my experience, it’s not usually the calorie target that needs to be adjusted, so much as a person’s adherence to the target. Hitting your calorie goal Monday through Thursday and “blowing it” on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday is not a recipe for success. So before you blame the recommendation, ask yourself if you’re actually adhering to the plan before you cut calories further.
The Second Rule of Weight Loss
The next most important thing after calories are something called macronutrients, or “macros” for short.
These are the “big” building blocks of the food we eat: protein, carbohydrates, and fats. Macros provide energy from food, and that energy is measured in calories. Fat has 9 calories per gram; protein and carbs each have 4 calories per gram. So if you know something you’re eating has 20g of protein in it, it has at least 80 calories (plus any calories from carbs/fat).
The most important macro for weight loss is protein because it keeps you feeling full, and eating protein helps to spare your muscles from being used for energy while you’re in a calorie deficit. In other words, eating enough protein will ensure that the weight you lose is from fat, not from lean muscle (and I don’t really know anybody who wants to lose their muscle).
In calorie-controlled studies where participants in two weight loss groups were assigned to eat the same amount of calories, but with either a high-protein or low-protein diet, the high-protein groups consistently lose more weight.
“Several clinical trials have found that consuming more protein than the recommended dietary allowance not only reduces body weight (BW), but also enhances body composition by decreasing fat mass while preserving fat-free mass (FFM) in both low-calorie and standard-calorie diets.” (Source: Clinical Evidence and Mechanisms of High-Protein Diet-Induced Weight Loss, PMID: 32699189.)
Not only does eating enough protein help spare lean muscle, it has been shown to accelerate fat loss. Win-win, right?
I recommend my clients eat roughly their body weight in grams of protein each day. If you have a lot of weight to lose, you could substitute your goal weight into that recommendation. For instance, let’s say someone weighs 200 lbs and wants to get down to 180 lbs. I’d probably recommend that they eat 180g of protein each day.
If that sounds like a high target, don’t worry about getting that much protein right away – if you currently eat very little protein, just try to increase your protein intake until you’re closer to the target. Let’s say you track your normal eating for a week to get a baseline, and realize you eat about 90g protein on most days. Aim for 100g next week, 110g the following week, and so on, until you get to that 1g/lb recommendation.
Note, it’s harder to get so much protein from a plant-based diet, so I often recommend my vegan/vegetarian clients aim for about 100g per day. More is great, but at least 100g is sometimes “good enough” to move the needle.
What about carbs and fat? Those macros don’t matter quite so much. People can successfully lose weight while eating either high-carb or low-carb, high-fat or low-fat. Keep in mind that fat does have more than twice the energy (calories) of carbs and protein, so if you want to keep higher fat foods in your diet, you just have to be careful about portion sizes. If you’re fairly active and/or care about your fitness performance, you’re probably going to want to lean toward a higher-carb diet to support your training. But everyone is different.
The Third Rule of Weight Loss
After calorie balance and eating enough protein, literally everything else comes in a distant third. This includes things like meal timing, fasting, macronutrient ratios, and everything else your favorite fitness influencer talks about.
Because weight loss is hard, we like to seek out complicated answers, so all those complex protocols sound good, but they don’t actually impact our weight loss progress all that much.
The third rule of weight loss is this: keep it simple. If it sounds like a “too-good-to-be-true” solution… it probably is too good to be true.
What Actually Matters
Some weight loss tips that are universally helpful:
-Drink plenty of water. Being dehydrated can slow your metabolism by down-regulating lipolysis (fat burning) and can also negatively impact your workout performance. Increased consumption of water has been shown to improve body weight and body composition in many studies. (PMID: 24179891; 18787524; 23803882)
-Stay active. Aiming for a higher step count than usual can increase the “calories out” part of the weight loss equation. Aim for at least 8,000 steps per day. If you’re way below that, try to increase your step count by 1,000 steps a day each week until you reach the target. If you’re already taking more than 8,000 steps per day, try to increase your step count by 1-2,000 steps/day. Walking is the best “fat loss exercise” you can add to your routine because it’s not stressful and requires little to no recovery period.
-Eat lots of fruits and vegetables. These foods are “nutritionally dense,” meaning they contain lots of vitamins and minerals while being relatively low in calories. Additionally, the fiber in fruits and vegetables can help you feel full while you’re in a calorie deficit.
-Sleep more! At least eight hours of sleep a night is ideal, but emerging research suggests that men can get away with less (7-ish hours) while women need more sleep (9-ish hours).
Skimping on sleep can hurt your weight loss efforts: “The National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) showed significantly higher rates of obesity in adults who reported an average of less than 7 h a night of sleep…. A chronic pattern of sleep duration of ≤6 h a night has been associated with a higher body mass index (BMI). Epidemiological and laboratory studies have consistently demonstrated that short sleep duration is a significant risk factor for weight gain and obesity.” (PMID: 35458110)
This happens because sleeping regulates our hunger and satiety hormones. Getting too little sleep can disregulate your appetite, causing you to crave calorie-dense foods instead of things like fruits and vegetables.
-Track your progress intelligently. Use the scale to collect data, but don’t let the numbers get in your head. Daily scale weight can be useful to track your progress over time. More frequent weigh-ins are best. Weighing yourself every once in a while isn’t super helpful. Try to treat the scale (and the numbers on it) like a scientist – it’s just data. If you can’t use the scale without getting attached to the numbers – don’t. Instead, take pictures, measurements, or try on the same pants/shirt every once in a while as a basis of comparison.
-BE PATIENT. That one’s in all caps because it’s the thing most people need more of when they set out to lose weight. You didn’t put it on overnight, it’s not going to come off in a day or two. Play the long game. Losing 0.5-1% of your body weight each week is a good rate of progress. If you don’t have much weight to lose, it might even be slower. Those “last five pounds” are always the slowest to come off.
What About Workouts?
While this article is aimed at nutritionally strategies to help you lose weight, people inevitably want to know how to adjust their workouts to help facilitate weight loss. The fact of the matter is, nutrition is the biggest driver of success when it comes to losing weight, and we don’t burn nearly as many calories from exercise as we’d like to think.
In terms of adjusting your training, I recommend continuing to strength train 2-4 times per week, or starting to do so if you don’t already lift weights. Focus your workouts on compound movements like squats, lunges, deadlifts, upper body pushes/presses, and rowing variations.
You can also add HIIT (high-intensity interval training) finishers after your strength workouts. This might look like 30-60 seconds of work, followed by two to three times the amount of rest. This ensures you’re able to repeat the same intense effort during each working interval. For example: 30 seconds of kettlebell swings or battle ropes, followed by 90 seconds of rest, repeated for 4-5 rounds.
Outside of strength training, I recommend getting as much low-intensity activity as possible – namely, walking.
In Conclusion
Weight loss can be a confusing topic due to all the misinformation on the internet and on social media. But losing weight is actually really simple: eat fewer calories than you burn through daily activity and exercise.
Simple doesn’t mean “easy,” so don’t take that to mean that losing weight will be a walk in the park. While it’s not easy to lose weight, the process doesn’t have to be complicated to be effective. Start by slightly decreasing the amount of food you eat and maybe slightly increasing your purposeful activity levels through walking and strength training. Measure and assess your progress every few weeks, then make adjustments as needed.