The Crash Course On Dieting

With the summer around the corner, most of the questions I get lately revolve around fat loss.

When you lose fat, you lose it over all your body and not just in one spot. So you can’t just focus on belly fat and hope your six pack shows up while your face resembles a chubby newborns’. Simply put, there’s no magic trick: you need to lose fat.

Fortunately, fat loss isn’t rocket science. You need to spend more energy (physical activity, mainly) than you eat (food contains energy). You can do this two ways: spend more (more exercise) or eat less (“diet”).

Both approaches work, but the best in my opinion is the third one: do both. Read tip 3 from my Nutrition Revolution Preview blog post for more details about the energy balance. It’s basic stuff: read it right away if you didn’t understand the term “energy balance”.

The rest of this post is a primer on dieting, in bullet form.

• Stop dieting. Surprised with that one? I put it first because too few people know about it: to be successful at dieting, you need to give your body and yourself a break once in a while. How often? I recommend taking a full week off the diet every month, as well as taking two days off per week. For most people, those will be Saturday and Sunday, allowing you to go out and still have a life while you lose fat.
• Eat less. Overall, what you eat doesn’t count that much. The single most important thing for fat loss is how much you eat. If you’re just starting out, keep things simple. Eat the same foods you already eat, but take 3/4th of a serving instead of the full serving you’re used to. Ditch the low-carb or low-fat hype: it’s the total amount of food that counts.
• Eat protein. If you want to go a little further with your diet, eat an animal source of protein with every meal whenever possible. Good animal sources include meat, fish, poultry, eggs, and milk. Smoked salmon or eggs work for breakfast, and chicken, fish or meat fit for dinner or super. Protein help spare muscle while you diet, thus ensuring most of the weight you lose is fat. Saving muscle is good, because muscle itself burns energy, therefore speeding up your fat loss (is has to do with something called resting metabolic rate, google it if you’re curious).

That’s it for today folks. For A-class related content, I suggest Lyle McDonald’s Guide to Flexible Dieting or, for those in a rush to get in shape for the summer, his Rapid Fat Loss Handbook contains hands down the best method I know to drop weight in a pinch without making yourself sick.

What that useful? Comment below.

-CJ

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