Getting lean has been one of my goals for a long time alongside building muscle.

Here's me 6 months ago:

And here's me today:

Not only did I lose a lot of fat, I've also gained an impressive amount of muscle.

Today we'll mostly focus on fat loss and some general principles of retaining muscle while trying to lose fat.

To lose fat, we first need to understand how fat loss works.

How fat loss works?

Fat loss is driven by energy deficit.

You need to burn more calories than you consume.

You consume calories by eating. (Or drinking)

You burn calories in 4 ways:

1. Resting energy expenditure - The calories you burn just to keep the lights on
2. Exercise activity thermogenesis - The calories your burn by exercising (running for example)
3. NEAT - The calories you burn that don't include exercise (Writing for example)
4. Thermic effect of food - The calories you burn by digesting food

If you consume 2500 calories and burn 3000 calories, for that day you ran a 500 calorie deficit.

With that pace, you'd lose about 0.5-1 pound per week.

On the other hand, if you consume 3000 calories and burn 2500 calories, with that pace you'd gain about 0.5-1 pound per week.

An energy deficit must be in place to lose fat.

You can create an energy deficit by eating less, moving more or both.

How do we make sure that we lose fat not muscle?

When you're consistently eating in a calorie deficit, your body must pull energy from somewhere other than food.

Your body can pull energy from fat stores or muscle tissue.

To make sure that energy is being pulled from fat not muscle, here's what you should do:

• Stimulate the muscle to stay through resistance training
• Don't create too big of a deficit, 500 calories below maintenance is a good ballpark for most
• Eat sufficient protein, 1g of protein per pound of bw is a good ballpark for most

Eat mostly whole foods.

It's clear that if you want to lose fat, you probably need to eat less than you usually would.

One way "around it" is to eat mostly whole foods.

The thing with whole foods is, you can eat quite a lot of food without consuming that many calories.

The chicken mince I eat has 95 calories and 18g of protein within 100 grams.

Compared to 100g of McDonald's cheeseburger which has 263 calories in it.

So to total 1000 calories, I could eat 1 kg of chicken mince and only 4 cheeseburgers. (1 cheeseburger weighs 110 grams)

Same calories, double the amount of food with whole foods.

If 90% of your calories come from whole foods, you can eat quite a lot, even in a calorie deficit, which can make losing fat much easier.

Note: energy deficit must still be in place, eating whole foods just allows you to eat more.

In conclusion.

To lose fat you must eat in a calorie deficit, meaning you need to burn more calories than you consume.

To make sure what you burn is fat, not muscle, do resistance training and eat sufficient protein.

Eat mostly whole foods so you can allow yourself to eat more without consuming too many calories.

That's it for today.

Hope you have a good weekend!

- Tauri

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