Eating

How Did We Get Fat?

First off, we’ll look at the big picture to see if there are any major principles that we can get our teeth into. Sure, things like gluten and high-fructose corn syrup seem to grab all the headlines, but those tend to be minor details.

According to the USDA’s Economic Research Service, we’re currently consuming close to 500 Calories more per day than folks did 40 years ago ⁵. That’s actually a bigger hit of calories than you’d get from a Bacon McDouble ⁶ or five tablespoons of peanut butter ⁷.

Now that doesn’t sound like a trivial amount. And you only have to check out some photographs from Woodstock or the Summer of Love to see what people looked like back then.

A lot of hair, but very little fat.

So what would we be looking at if every one of those folks had consumed an extra 500 Calories each day? The summer of love handles.

Now at this point some people would try to pull some mathematical smoke and mirrors trick to try and “prove” that additional calories aren’t to blame. They’d claim that 500 Calories per day over one year totals 182,500 Calories (500 x 365 = 182,500), which is true.

Then they’d claim that over 10 years that comes to more than 1.8 million additional Calories. Which is also true.

Then they’d fumble and drop the ball. Here’s how it would go.

Their final claim is that 1.8 million Calories would result in a fat gain of something like 450 lbs over 10 years. And, as the average person is nowhere near that heavy, they argue that it can’t be about calories.

So off they go majoring in the minors, trying to find a scapegoat for why so many folks are overweight. But here’s how it really works.

Let’s say a 150-pound man is maintaining his bodyweight on 2000 Calories per day. Now if we bump his intake up to 2500 Calories per day, will he gain weight?

Almost certainly. But it won’t make him balloon up to 600 lbs over 10 years, or even a lifetime.

It will merely take him to a bodyweight where 2500 Calories becomes his new daily maintenance intake. That bodyweight could be 160 lbs, 200 lbs or anywhere in between.

But it definitely won’t be 600 lbs. Put it this way, even a 300-lb man would be unable to maintain his bodyweight on only 2500 Calories per day.

This isn’t just speculation. According to researchers, reversing current bodyweights to what they were back in the days of The Rockford Files and Hawaii Five-O would require a cut in calories to the tune of – you guessed it – 500 per day ⁸.

But it’s not just that we’re consuming more. Since 1960, occupation-related activity has nosedived by over 140 Calories per day ⁹.

And that’s just occupation related. It doesn’t include the fact that we now spend most of our free time sitting on our butts, too.

But there’s more.

Other research indicates that obese people tend to simultaneously overestimate physical activity and underestimate calorie consumption by up to 50% ¹⁰. Those folks were also more likely to believe their obesity was the result of unfavorable genetics or some kind of metabolic disorder.

So ultimately, here’s what it boils down to. Although we’re consuming more and moving less than the previous generation, we’ve somehow managed to convince ourselves that we’re consuming less and moving more ¹¹.

Now that’s bad news because it means we’re primed to believe all kinds of goofy reasons why we’re overweight.

We’re convinced that we’ve taken care of the majors – we hardly eat a thing – so we begin majoring in the minors. We start getting OCD about organic food, additives or 101 other details.

And when that doesn’t give results worth a damn, we fall into the trap of believing that we’re somehow unique and unable to lose weight. Instead of just facing the reality that we’re consuming too much and expending too little.

And the diet industry wouldn’t have it any other way. They don’t want you to know that the answer lies in the simple, not the complex.

Remember all those diet books claiming that you can lose weight while eating as much as you want? Now that does sound like a pretty sweet deal, especially if you have a thing for food.

But a few chapters in, they suddenly drop the bombshell.

Like you can only consume stuff from an approved list that omits all the calorically-dense goodies that are easy to overeat. Or maybe they restrict your eating window to six hours per day, which strong-arms you into throttling back on your intake.

But they never pitch it that way.

They’ll claim the diet works because we’re reconnecting with our primal eating pattern, optimizing our hormones, hacking our biology or some other mumbo jumbo. The fact that it’s basically just plain-old calorie restriction repackaged with a shiny new wrapper doesn’t get mentioned.

Now this doesn’t mean losing weight is simply a case of eating less and moving more. There’s a lot more to it than that, and we’re going to go about things the smart way.

But for weight loss to occur, an energy deficit is essential. That basically means expending more energy than we consume.

And the great news for us is that there’s no single best way to achieve an energy deficit. This means we’ve got plenty of flexibility to come up with a strategy that will work for each of us as a unique individual.

After all, nobody wants to shoehorn some regimented one-size-fits-all approach into their life. You wouldn’t feel comfortable wearing your boss’s pants or your neighbor’s shoes, so why force yourself to eat the same way they do?

We’re going to combine fundamental principles with some pretty clever science to help stack the deck in our favor. We want to get the biggest possible bang for our buck every step of the way.

So let’s start by taking a look at where our calories are coming from, where they end up going, and what we can do about it.

Count On It

Have you ever received your monthly credit card statement, looked at the total and felt your jaw drop? Sure, you remember buying the big things – the 50-inch TV or the washer drier – but the total is still way more than you expected.

You’re certain that they made a mistake this time. So you check your receipts and, boy, do all those little spends soon add up.

You know, the “it’s only $4.99” purchases that you forgot about the instant you slipped your credit card back inside your wallet. But they still made it onto your statement, and it turns out the total was correct all along.

It happens to all of us, and the problem is almost always with our recall. We’re just not very good at remembering that stuff.

Calorie intake works pretty much the same way. No matter how few calories we think we’re consuming, it’s almost always more.

The damn things just seem to have a habit of sneaking in under the radar. That’s why we’re going to kick off with the single most important thing we can do for our waistline and our health.

And if you’re anything like most folks, you’ll be amazed by what you discover. So here’s what we’re going to do.

Count the total calories and protein consumed each day for one week

Now I realize that may sound kind of lame, but stick with me here. Remember that we’re focused on things that actually work, not things that just sound good.

Counting calories happens to be the single most empowering thing you can do to get a handle on your eating habits. It’s as fundamental as knowing how much gas you’ve used if you want to calculate your car’s fuel consumption.

Now it’s true that not all calories are created equal. Our bodies don’t treat one Calorie of fat the same way they do one Calorie of protein or one Calorie of carbohydrate.

But that’s OK. Counting calories is more of an awareness tool than a foolproof way to adjust bodyweight with NASA-like precision.

A method doesn’t need to be perfect in order to be extremely valuable.

The same way the speedometer in your car isn’t 100% accurate. Although it only gives an approximate indication of the vehicle’s speed, it’s incredibly important nonetheless.

So whether you’re looking to lose body fat, get stronger or put on some muscle, counting calories is right at the top of the to-do list. And since all calories count, we need to make sure that we count all the calories we consume.

Nothing gets a pass.

The late night black-ops raids on the refrigerator and those stealthy visits to Starbucks? Yep, they count too.

The same way a meagre $1.99 purchase still manages to end up on your credit card statement, calories always make it through. They never just disappear.

But the good news is tracking them has never been easier. Twenty years ago, we would’ve had to go to a store and buy a nutrition book with calorie tables that were completely generic, and therefore not very accurate.

Today all the information we need is instantly available and, even better, it’s free. An online calorie tracker like MyFitnessPal is an awesome resource that’s both accurate and easy to use. There’s even a free app available for your smartphone. So let’s get the ball rolling by signing up for an account right now.

It doesn’t have to be MyFitnessPal, feel free to chose one of the many alternatives out there, if you prefer. The most important thing at this stage is that you actually sign up for an account.

Don’t worry, I’ll wait. All done? Now that may not seem like such a big deal, but you’ve just taken a definite step to becoming a Super Fit Dad.

Remember that massive success comes from doing small things consistently rather than the occasional big thing in isolation. Those small things really do accumulate to give life-changing results. So, if you haven’t already done it, go the extra mile and download the free MyFitnessPal app to your smartphone.

That means you’re now pretty much all set. Just make sure you have a decent set of kitchen scales at home so you can weigh your food accurately.

Also, do whatever you can to get your other half on your side. Explain what you’re doing and why. Having supportive people around you makes a huge difference and it’s only going to do good things for your progress. So now you’re ready to rock n’ roll.

Here’s how we’re going to do this:

Record all calories and protein consumed each day for one week without making any changes to your eating habits

Now the underlined bit is super important. At this stage we don’t want you to change a single thing about what you eat and drink.

That means you’ll need to ignore some of the advice that MyFitnessPal may give about things like target daily calories and projected weight loss. Don’t worry - we’ll be dealing with that stuff a bit further down the track.

But for now we’re going to keep on consuming exactly the same things as normal. That means all the food, all the snacks and all the drinks, in all the usual quantities.

Even the stuff that you know you really shouldn’t be consuming, but do anyway. Don’t change a thing.

All we’re going to do this first week is figure out where we are. We’re simply establishing a baseline of what’s normal for us.

Now here’s where things may get a little weird because sticking to your normal diet may actually take a bit of self-control. What happens is that the simple act of counting calories makes you more aware of what you’re consuming.

You then start feeling more accountable, and that can cause some folks to spontaneously throttle back on their caloric intake. So resist any urge you may have to do that.

We want to get a snapshot of your current diet, warts and all. That goes the same whether you live on organic broccoli and grass-fed beef or Mountain Dew and Pop-Tarts.

This week of calorie counting will achieve so much more than providing numbers for overall calorie and protein intake. It will also reveal exactly where those calories are coming from.

Now that’s a really big deal because, as we know, not all calories are created equal, and some are more easily punched out of our intake than others. So what we’re going to do is first identify those freeloading calories that aren’t pulling their weight, then we can start picking them off later on.

Think of this week of calorie counting as the reconnaissance stage. We’ll then be able to figure out the right plan of attack once we’ve got the information we need.

Here’s how that could work. Let’s introduce Jim as an example.

Now Jim is a regular Cookie Monster. The mainstays of his diet read like a list of what not to eat: pasta, pizza, desserts and beer.

He’s maintaining his bodyweight, but figures he needs to drop around 60 lbs. He knows that he’ll look and feel a lot better at 180 lbs than he does at 240.

Now the hardline approach would be to go straight for the jugular and cut out all the pasta, pizza, desserts and beer. Probably replacing them with something tasteless and unappetizing like steamed chicken breast and broccoli.

And wouldn’t you know it, that’s exactly what Jim does. After all, he thinks dieting means suffering, and suffering means progress.

So he starts choking down steamed chicken breast and broccoli three times a day. He’s on a diet, so he’s determined to make his life as miserable as possible.

He thinks that shows commitment. Anyhow, this self-abuse continues for a few days or maybe even a full week.

But it’s completely unsustainable, and before long he ends up throwing in the towel. It’s then back to the familiar pattern of hogging out on pizza and beer.

So Jim chalks up another failure and mentally beats himself up for not being able to lose weight. Sounds familiar, right?

Now the fundamental problem is that he’s flip-flopped from one dietary extreme to the other while ignoring the whole range of possibilities that lie in between. With this in mind, Jim hits the reset button and starts over again.

This time he begins by tracking calories and protein for a week. And he’s amazed by what he discovers.

It turns out that his beer, soft drink and latte habit totals over 700 Calories per day! Which may sound extreme, but it’s actually right in line with National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) data.

According to this, the average U.S. adult gets a whopping 20% or more of their daily calories from beverages ¹². Now that’s a really big deal because liquid calories are just brutal.

They slide down quick and easy, but don’t make us feel any fuller than if we’d had a glass of water. Eating 500 Calories of sirloin steak and salad will always make you feel much more satisfied than drinking 500 Calories from a 44 oz. soda.

So Jim makes the relatively painless switch to low-calorie or calorie-free alternatives. This alone knocks out more than 500 Calories per day from his intake.

And thanks to that one simple change, Jim is now consuming fewer calories than he expends. In other words he’s now in a caloric deficit, and that’s the driver for weight loss.

This starts working its magic and his bodyweight begins creeping down by around 1 lb per week. Even better, the weight loss is almost effortless this time around.

He doesn’t feel the pain of dieting because he isn’t on a diet. He just made a few smart decisions based on the information that came from the week of counting calories.

Being aware of what he was consuming was the first step to some very easy weight loss. Of course, Jim isn’t going to lose all 60 lbs just by switching to Miller Lite and Coke Zero.

But he now feels confident and empowered where previously he felt crushed by an unsustainable diet. This time he knows he’s in the driver’s seat, and that’s a real game changer.

Plus he’s only just getting started. Tracking calories allowed him to identify a bunch of other areas where he can pare back his intake without turning his life upside down. Now at this point he’s already won, he’s got this weight loss thing dialed.

Now it doesn’t matter if you eat better, worse or the same as Jim. Counting calories shouldn’t be seen as merely optional. It is the single most powerful thing you can do to understand your own eating behavior. And each person will have their own lightbulb moment.

For some it may be portion sizes that have gradually crept up, or a peanut butter habit that’s spiraling out of control. For others it could be drowning meals in olive oil.

Remember, just because a food is “healthy” doesn’t mean the calories magically disappear. Ultimately, what we all have in common is that we’re consuming a bunch of calories that we can easily eliminate without even noticing. Counting calories is the best method we have to identify those easy targets.

And we only need to do it for one week.

Counting calories also has some pretty awesome tag-along benefits. Before you know it, you’ll be able to eyeball food and have a decent idea of how many calories and how much protein it contains.

That’s when the fun starts because once you know how the system works, you can then make it work for you. So you can do things like:

Eat a 2000-Calorie breakfast while still losing body fat

Dive in to an all-you-can-eat pizza place for lunch and still keep your weight loss on track

Have a big night out and still end up ahead

Counting calories is the key that unlocks the door to all that and more. But if you still need a little convincing, take a guess at how many calories are in each of the following:

• A 10 oz. sirloin steak (broiled)

• Twelve Oreo chocolate cookies

• A McDonald’s quarter pounder with cheese

• Three 12 oz. cans of Mountain Dew

• Two 12 oz. beers (5%) followed by three 1.5 oz. shots OK, that’s kind of tough, so here’s a clue. They all contain approximately the same number of calories. So what do you think – 200? Maybe closer to 1000? The answer is 500 Calories. If you came nowhere close, don’t feel bad. Most people absolutely suck at estimating calories, but that can all change within a week.

This example also shows how not all calories are created equal. Consume 500 Calories from a big steak, and you’ll feel satisfied and full. Consume 500 Calories from beer and shots, and you’ll be on the lookout for a burger joint. How we consume our calories can have a huge influence on how much we end up eating. But we’re starting to get ahead of ourselves.

The first step is to track all calories and protein consumed each day for one week

Now tracking calories makes perfect sense, but what’s the deal with tracking protein intake? Why is that so important?

Well, this is where things get really cool. That’s because protein happens to be our secret weapon in the war against body fat.

There are three main reasons why we want to have protein on our side:

1. When we talk about losing weight, what we really mean is losing body fat. Having a high protein intake helps to preserve muscle mass while we’re losing body fat.

After all, a weight loss of 20 lbs doesn’t seem quite so impressive if 7 lbs of it came from lost muscle mass. Losing muscle not only means reduced strength (which is never a good thing), but it can also reduce the number of calories we end up burning.

2. Consuming a bigger proportion of our calories from protein helps to jack up our metabolic rate. That’s all thanks to protein’s high thermic effect of feeding (much more on this later).

At this point let’s put it this way: a higher metabolic rate equals more calories burned. And that means more weight lost.

3. Protein is more satiating than fats or carbohydrate, which means it makes us feel fuller for longer. The upshot is we’re likely to end up eating less when we consume a bigger proportion of our calories from protein.

So we can chalk up three big wins for protein. Now this isn’t something that just sounds good in theory, but doesn’t deliver in the real world.

After all, most of us have probably heard that low-carb diets are effective for weight loss. Which could make it sound like there’s something uniquely fattening or bad about carbohydrate.

But here’s a secret. The real reason they’re so effective is because of the high protein levels typically found in low-carb diets.

In other words, the magic’s not in the low carbs, it’s in the high protein ¹³. So we shouldn’t underestimate how powerful a fat-loss ally protein can be.

And while most folks are consuming way more calories than they realize, they’re eating nowhere near enough protein. In fact, if you’re losing weight while sticking to the government’s Recommended Daily Intake (RDI) of protein, you’re probably not doing yourself any favors.

Hiking up protein intake to above the DRI when eating in a caloric deficit has been shown to turbocharge fat loss while also putting the brakes on muscle loss ¹⁴.

The bottom line is that protein is a big deal and that’s why we should be tracking it along with all the calories we consume. Remember that we’re just tracking to begin with, so don’t change anything at this stage - just eat and drink as normal.

Now at this point it’s worth making something crystal clear. We’re not claiming that counting calories and tracking protein is the only way to lose weight.

What we’re saying is that it’s the smart way to lose weight. We want you to enjoy all your favorite foods while coaxing off body fat.

Keep in mind that the best diet is the one you can stick to, not the one that looks best on paper or is the current flavor of the week. Ultimately, you’re more likely to stick to a diet if it doesn’t feel like you’re actually on one.

And here’s something the diet books almost always fail to mention. Losing weight is less than half the battle.

There’s evidence that only around one person in five is able to maintain a 10% drop in bodyweight after one year ¹⁵. Now that shouldn’t really come as a surprise.

After all, think of the millions of diet books sold, and the billions of dollars of weight-loss supplements purchased. Yet the average person isn’t looking any slimmer.

Now a 10% drop in bodyweight may not sound like that big a deal. But it could make all the difference between being healthy or developing a life-threatening condition like metabolic syndrome.

Below are some real interim figures from a Super Fit Dads client.

Drop in bodyweight: 10% (245 to 220 lbs = 25 lbs)

Blood pressure: Improved from 134/75 to 107/67

LDL (“bad cholesterol”): Improved from 151 to 115

HDL (“good cholesterol”): No change

Fasting blood glucose: Improved from 114 (pre-diabetic) to 94 (normal)

In his own words, the single most important thing he did was to track calorie consumption. It beat hands down everything else he’d tried over decades.

Ultimately, the quick-fix approaches that most folks take simply aren’t sustainable beyond the short term. People either quit and resign themselves to being overweight, or hop from diet to diet in the hope that they’ll eventually luck out and hit on something that works.

We’re going to be different. We’re going to set aside short-term gratification and aim for long-term success.

We want the weight to come off and, just as importantly, stay off. Counting calories and protein is the catalyst that sets us up for that long-term success.

Getting results may be gratifying but understanding how we achieved them is empowering. So track your calories and protein for the next seven days while sticking to all your regular habits.

That’s where the journey begins.

Your Metabolic Advantage

Most people would agree that having a high metabolic rate/fast metabolism is an advantage for losing weight. But a number of folks seem to think that metabolism is something genetically predetermined and largely outside our control, like eye color and shoe size.

So they figure that lean people must be blessed with a fast metabolism. The flip side being that anyone cursed with a slow metabolism just has to suck it up and stay fat.

In other words, you play the hand you’re dealt. But is there any truth in that - are we really just victims of the genetic lottery?

Fortunately, no.

All of us have a massive amount of control over our metabolic rate. And if we’ve got a slow one, it’s because we haven’t done what’s necessary to get it moving.

But before we get into that, we need to do a quick crash course in metabolism 101. So let’s get to it.

Our bodies require energy to function the same way a car needs gasoline. And the only way we can take in energy is through the food and drink we consume.

The energy we take in comes from fats, carbohydrate, protein and alcohol. One gram of each contains the following energy (measured in Calories):

Fats 9: Calories

Carbohydrate: 4 Calories

Protein: 4 Calories

Alcohol: 7 Calories

When we consume fats, carbs or protein these have only one of two fates: either they get burned or they get stored. Nothing else.

We’ll ignore alcohol for the moment as it’s kind of a special case. Alcohol is burned immediately as there is no place in the body where it can be stored.

Now if we consume more energy than we expend, we’ll put on weight. On the other hand, if we consume less energy than we expend, we’ll lose weight.

So far, so good. But here’s the obvious question - how does the energy we expend relate to our metabolic rate?

Answer: The energy we expend is our metabolic rate.

Which means it’s not some fixed arbitrary number that we have no control over. In fact, metabolic rate is really just a fancy way of saying your body’s fuel consumption.

And, just like your car’s fuel consumption, your metabolic rate depends on a number of different things. So let’s take a quick look at what those are.

Your car needs fuel just to keep the engine idling even while it’s sitting in traffic or waiting at a stop light. Sure, the car may not actually be moving, but there are a whole bunch of systems that require power all the same.

Our bodies work the same way. Even when we’re lying in a hammock chilling out to some Bob Marley, there are still a bunch of essential bodily processes ticking over, and they all need energy.

This energy requirement is known as our resting metabolic rate or RMR. And when it comes to resting fuel consumption, our bodies are more Humvee than Prius.

For sedentary folks, RMR actually makes up the lion’s share of their total daily energy expenditure. What’s even more amazing is that the majority of our resting metabolic rate comes from powering just four gas-guzzling organs: the brain, lungs, heart and kidneys ¹⁶.

Fundamentally, a bigger body has a higher RMR the same way a bigger engine uses more fuel. Just to be clear, when we say “a bigger body” what we’re really talking about is lean body mass.

That’s everything in your body that isn’t fat. In other words, stuff like bone, muscle, internal organs and so on.

Now the good news is that it is possible for us to increase our resting metabolic rate. Adding muscle mass will certainly give it a boost.

In fact, each pound of muscle mass that we add will increase our RMR by around 6 Calories per day. Which may not sound like much, but it’s worth having all the same.

But there’s also a flip side. Each pound of muscle mass that we lose will cause our RMR to drop by the same amount.

So crash diets where we may end up losing 5-10 lbs of muscle mass are not a good idea if we want to keep our RMR high. And we do.

Fortunately, we have a neat little trick up our sleeve to help keep RMR high. The great news is that some types of exercise can actually jack up RMR by over 10% for several days following a workout.

This means we could be burning an additional 200 Calories or more per day for no extra effort. That’s the kind of science we like, and we’ll get to it later in the book.

For now, let’s just think of RMR (resting metabolic rate) as the body’s fuel consumption when we’re lying down doing nothing. So, what other things affect our overall metabolic rate?

Let’s go back to the car analogy. Obviously, how you drive your car also has a big effect on its gas mileage.

Giving it the beans from every stop light uses a lot more fuel than doing a steady 55 mph down the freeway. The same principle also applies to our bodies.

This is called the thermic effect of activity or TEA. How hard and how much we move determines how much energy we require in addition to our resting metabolic rate (RMR).

For sedentary folks, the thermic effect of activity may add only another 20% or so to their resting metabolic rate. Here’s a quick example.

Let’s say a sedentary person has a resting metabolic rate of 2000 Calories per day. That’s how much energy they would expend lying in bed all day doing nothing.

But during a normal day they actually do some limited activity. That could mean driving, desk work and watching TV.

The key thing is that all those activities require more energy than lying in bed. How much more? Maybe 400 Calories in total over a day.

On the other hand, a lumberjack or blacksmith could have the same resting metabolic rate as a sedentary person. In this example that’s 2000 Calories per day.

But those physical occupations can easily have a thermic effect of activity of 1500 Calories or more per day. Put simply, it takes more physical effort to make horseshoes than it does to sit at a desk.

Now that doesn’t mean we need to trade the job in a cubicle for a check shirt and a chainsaw. But it does mean we can increase our metabolic rate any time we want to by simply moving more.

That’s because more movement results in an increase in the thermic effect of activity (TEA). OK, time for a quick recap.

So far, we have two key players that make up our metabolic rate: RMR (chill-out calories) and TEA (moving calories). And we know that there are a bunch of things we can do to increase either or both of these.

What’s up next? Enter the thermic effect of feeding.

When we consume food or drink, around 10% of its energy is “lost” in the effort taken by the body to digest and absorb it. This is known as the thermic effect of feeding or TEF.

If we consume 1000 Calories, the body “sees” only around 900 of them. So we can think of the TEF as being like a transaction fee charged by the body.

This works the same way as when you pay for something with your credit card. Buy a $100 widget with your VISA card, and the store gets $97.50 while VISA pockets $2.50 as the transaction fee.

Now the macronutrients (fats, carbs and protein) don’t all have the same transaction fee. Carbs are around 8%, fats around 3%, with protein way out in front at around 20% or more.

This means consuming 800 Calories from fat costs the body only around 24 Calories to process. On the other hand, consuming 800 Calories from protein costs the body a whopping 160 Calories or more.

The upshot is increasing protein intake while keeping total calories the same will lead to a small, but useful, hike in metabolic rate. This could be by as much as 100 Calories per day.

OK, that may not sound like such a big deal, but it’s equivalent to a 185-lb man walking a mile at 4 mph pace ¹⁷. Remember, small increments of progress really add up. Now at this point we need to be clear about something. There’s a big difference between increasing TEF by making better food choices (like consuming less fat but more protein), and increasing TEF by simply eating more calories.

Now it’s true that eating more food will increase metabolic rate. Consuming 8,000 Calories per day instead of

3,000 will cause a significant increase in TEF – perhaps by 500 Calories or more. But that increase in metabolic rate is dwarfed by the huge net caloric excess you’re now in. Here’s another way to think of that.

Imagine that your local Honda dealer has a 10% off special on new cars for this weekend only.

Now, would you get your hands on all the cash you can, buy 20 new cars that you don’t need, and then congratulate yourself on saving $40,000? Hell, no! It makes no sense to spend $400,000 for the sole purpose of “saving” $40,000. And it makes no sense to increase caloric intake just to achieve a small increase in TEF.

So next time you read some advice about eating a large meal to “get your metabolism revving”, smile and shake your head. And think of a driveway full of unwanted Hondas. OK, here’s what we now have for overall metabolic rate:

RMR (chilling) TEA (moving) TEF (digesting)

Which looks like we’ve covered all the bases. But we just need to add in one more factor that’s now being recognized as the key to not only losing weight, but keeping it off too. Enter NEAT, otherwise known by its tongue-twisting moniker of non-exercise activity thermogenesis ¹⁸ , ¹⁹.

NEAT may sound complex, but it’s actually really straightforward. It covers spontaneous, unconscious movements like fidgeting, tapping your feet, and drumming your fingers. Now that sounds pretty lame compared to high-intensity activities like running or mountain biking, right? But here’s the deal. We need to shift our thinking away from intensity and more towards duration. The reality is doing small movements over a long duration can really add up. So, how much are we talking about here?

Well, throw in some fidgeting hands and feet to 5 hours of desk work, and you’ll rack up an additional energy expenditure equivalent to running 1½ miles ²⁰ ! So NEAT is a serious player in our metabolic rate.

It’s also the final piece of the puzzle. Which means we can now summarize our metabolic rate as follows:

Metabolic rate = RMR (chilling) TEA (moving) TEF (digesting) NEAT

The take-home point is that we all have a massive amount of control over our metabolic rate. And it’s way easier to increase than we may have thought.

Calories aren’t only burned when we’re dripping sweat or working out in a gym. We can turn our metabolic rate up a notch or two by something as simple as tapping our feet or taking out the trash.

It all counts.

Now, all this talk about metabolic rate may have you wondering what yours is in terms of Calories per day. How can we figure that out?

Well, we could go to the hassle and expense of getting it measured in a lab using techniques like indirect calorimetry and doubly-labeled water. Which is as OTT as it sounds, and completely unnecessary.

Or we could try estimating it from one of the many standard equations available. These will give us a reasonable idea, but could be off by quite a bit.

So if you’re really desperate to know a ballpark number, here’s one that works pretty well out in the real world. Just keep in mind that this is for sedentary guys.

Metabolic rate = bodyweight in lbs x 14

So a sedentary 200-lb man would have a metabolic rate of around 200 x 14 = 2800 Calories per day. Keep in mind this is just a guesstimate and could easily be off by several hundred calories or more.

But there’s a much more accurate way. And the great news is you’re already doing it!

Which means it takes no extra effort, and we get to kill two birds with one stone. Here’s how it works.

If the energy we consume through food and drink is greater than our energy expenditure (metabolic rate), we put on weight. On the other hand, if the energy we consume through food and drink is less than our energy expenditure, we lose weight.

But if our weight is stable, it means energy intake is matching energy expenditure. In other words, our average metabolic rate is equal to our average calorie consumption.

OK, stick with me here. Now we know our average daily calorie consumption because that’s exactly what we’ve been tracking.

Here’s how that might pan out. Let’s assume your weight was stable over the week you counted calories, and you consumed 2,900 Calories per day on average. That means your average metabolic rate is also 2,900 Calories per day!

Remember, our metabolic rate is the sum total of RMR (chilling), TEA (moving), TEF (eating) and NEAT. And we have a lot more control over it than most people believe. OK, that just about wraps it up for metabolic rate. Next up, we’ll look at the best ways to go about losing fat.

Lose The Fat

At this point we’re going to fast-forward a week and assume that you’ve finished tracking your calories and protein. If that’s still a work in progress, just file this information away in the back of your mind.

Whatever you do, don’t let anything you’re about to read influence what you’re consuming while you’re tracking your intake.

As we said earlier, tracking calorie and protein intake is like reconnaissance. And detailed reconnaissance is a key part of any successful mission.

Now, we know that losing weight means we need to consume less energy than we expend. We also know that the energy we consume comes from food and drink, and the energy we expend is our metabolic rate.

We also know that any weight we lose should come from body fat rather than lean body mass. Losing lean body mass effectively means losing muscle, and that’s never a good idea.

So we’re going to focus on losing body fat at a manageable and sustainable rate. Ultimately, this comes down to losing just a small amount of body fat each day.

All we then have to do is string enough of those days together. Almost before we know it, the belly will be gone and our abs will start to emerge from hibernation.

But in this on-demand and instant-download world, the first question that comes to mind is always how long will that take? So let’s take a quick look at that right now.

The fact is the more body fat a person is carrying, the more willing the body is to lose it. But as more and more fat comes off, the body starts getting increasingly concerned.

And as fat levels drop even further, the body heads toward full-on panic mode. Now that’s not a bad thing – in fact, we should all be very grateful.

Why? Because your body doesn’t know that you work in an air-conditioned office, shop at Trader Joe’s and carry an iPhone.

As far as your body is concerned, you’re a hunter-gatherer from 250,000 years BC. And dwindling fat stores mean only one thing.

You’re beginning to starve to death.

So it starts hanging on to its remaining fat stores with an increasingly viselike grip. After all, they’re the key to its long-term survival.

Fat is effectively the body’s energy bank. When times are good, we store the surplus that we can draw on in future when times are tough.

And when body-fat levels get low enough, the body starts looking elsewhere for fuel. After all, staying alive requires energy.

With body fat off the menu, it zeros in on your protein stores instead. In other words, it starts cannibalizing your muscles for energy.

Obviously, that isn’t something we want to happen. So we’re better off losing weight at a rate that doesn’t spook the body into doing that.

What kind of rate should we be aiming for? Well, that really depends on how much body fat we’re carrying.

If you’re very overweight, it would be reasonable to lose up to around 2% of your bodyweight per week. This means a very overweight 240-lb man could lose around 240 x 0.02 = 5 lbs per week at first.

But as he loses more and more fat, his body gets increasingly concerned. Is starvation just around the corner?

At that point he should ease the rate of fat loss down to around 1% of bodyweight per week. That will keep things moving along nicely without causing the body too much anxiety.

This means he’s now losing around 2 lbs per week. So, if he wants to lose 40 lbs in total, he’s looking at a duration of around 4 to 6 months.

That may seem like an eternity when you’re 21 years-old, but it’s the blink of an eye when you’re the other side of 40.

Now, fat can be lost at much faster rates than that. Some committed folks have put themselves through the wringer and lost 40 lbs in only 63 days ²¹.

So it is possible, and that can work just fine for exceptionally determined and motivated people. But the reality is most of us aren’t wired that way.

Remember how only 17% of Americans are able to maintain a 10% drop in bodyweight after one year ¹⁵? Even though those folks lost weight in the first place, it didn’t work out so well in the long run.

The thing is, those people didn’t fail at their plan, it was the plan that failed them. Now that’s hardly surprising when the plan uses the bull-rodeo approach to weight loss.

From the moment the gate opens, you go as hard as possible before the inevitable happens, and you get bucked off. You then head back to your old eating behavior with your tail between your legs.

And sure enough, the weight creeps back on. So if we’re going to succeed where most fail, we’ve got to take a different approach.

Instead of getting hung up on maximum weight loss right now, we need to focus more on the real goal. We don’t just want to lose weight, we want to keep it off, too.

And we want to feel good while we’re doing it. So here’s an alternative where we can actually enjoy the process of losing weight.

We’re going to turn this thing on its head. How about we aim to lose weight at the slowest rate that we would be satisfied with?

That way we can make steady progress without the pain of dieting. And we stick with the plan because we’re not doing anything radically different from before.

All we’ve done is make a few small changes, and great results come along for the ride. Sometimes doing things the longer way round is simply more effective.

We get more familiar with what works best for us as individuals, and we also tend to value the results a lot more. So instead of going at it hell-for-leather, let’s start out slowly.

Now it could be that you can handle rapid weight loss just fine. Maybe your body can tolerate it without going into a tailspin.

Or perhaps you’re just hard-headed enough to tough it out. But starting out easy puts us in the driver’s seat from the very beginning.

And it’s reassuring to know that we’re making solid progress while still having plenty left in the tank. We can always pick up the pace a little if, and when, we feel like it.

In fact, going at it balls to the wall has a nasty habit of biting people in the ass. Nowhere is this more true than with low-carb or very low-calorie diets. Now, if you take the plunge with this kind of aggressive diet, the initial honeymoon period can yield some jaw-dropping results. How does losing over 15 lbs in only 4 days grab you ²² ?

That sounds tempting even before we start doing the mental arithmetic. “At that rate I could be back to my old fighting weight in...” (frantic tapping on the calculator) “only 18 days. Woot!” But remember that not all weight loss is created equal. What we’re really interested in is losing fat, and fat isn’t where this titanic weight loss comes from.

It doesn’t even come from a loss of muscle mass either. Amazingly, the vast majority of the weight loss comes from nothing more exciting than plain old H20.

In other words, water. Now that puts a very different spin on things. Here’s how it happens. An aggressive diet forces your body to tap into its reserve of stored carbohydrate, which is called glycogen.

So you burn glycogen for fuel, and your bodyweight drops by the amount of glycogen that ended up being burned. Now if that’s all there was to it, it wouldn’t be so bad. But where you find glycogen, you also find water - the two are inseparable. In fact, 1 gram of glycogen typically associates with 4 grams of water.

In other words, glycogen causes your body to store a lot of water.

But when the body burns glycogen for fuel, that water no longer has a reason to be stored. So the body simply excretes it, and it gets flushed down the toilet. And it’s a one-shot deal. It only takes a few days for an aggressive diet to deplete your glycogen stores. And when that happens, weight loss slows to a crawl.

The wave of weight-loss euphoria that you were riding high on only a few days before just peters out. And that’s usually enough for most folks to throw in the towel there and then. But that’s where this glycogen thing really has a sting in the tail. What happens is that the body is primed to not just refill its now-empty glycogen stores, it wants to store even more glycogen than before. It wants to supercompensate.

So the glycogen-depleted person quits their diet and goes back to their old eating pattern. Glycogen storage then kicks into overdrive.

This storage can be as much as double what it was before the diet ²³. Can you guess where this is headed?

More glycogen stored equals more water stored. The end result is that the person is now even heavier than they were before they dieted.

For someone desperate to lose weight that’s just plain devastating. But the irony is that little of the original weight loss or subsequent weight gain was from fat.

It was almost all down to water. So if you’re tempted to give a low-carb or very low-calorie diet (VLCD) a shot, keep this in mind.

A sudden and dramatic drop or increase in weight almost always comes from nothing more exciting than water loss or gain. It’s practically impossible to lose or gain several pounds of fat in only a day or two.

Keep in mind that it’s also possible for a VLCD to lead to micronutrient deficiencies, even if it contains levels at the dietary reference intake ²⁴. Here’s a good way to think about micronutrients, and why they’re such a big deal.

If the macronutrients (protein, fats and carbohydrate) are the car’s body, engine and transmission; it’s the micronutrients (all those vitamins, minerals and phytonutrients) that are the nuts, bolts and welds holding them together.

So it’s no surprise that chronic micronutrient deficiencies are linked to a whole bunch of nasty stuff such as low testosterone, sexual dysfunction, and more ²⁵ , ²⁶. Ultimately, we’re better off losing weight the smart and healthy way.

There are no prizes for getting sick, cranky and depressed. So it makes perfect sense to start out with a small caloric deficit that’s just big enough to begin coaxing off body fat.

Weight loss is a marathon not a sprint, and nobody ever wins a marathon in the first 100 yards. This means we should be eating in an energy deficit that works with us, not one that hammers us into the ground.

And you’ll be glad to know that the science is on our side. Researchers were left scratching their heads when people instructed to eat at a 10% calorie deficit lost a similar amount of weight to people instructed to eat at a 30% deficit ²⁷.

Sounds crazy, right? But it’s true.

Basically, one group was told to eat a little less than normal, and the other group was told to eat a lot less than normal. But both groups ended up losing a similar amount of weight.

Which makes it sound like calories don’t count after all. But here’s what actually happened.

It turned out that the 10% deficit folks voluntarily ate less than instructed. Their target deficit was so easy to live with that it encouraged them to throttle back on their intake that little bit more.

On the other hand, the 30% deficit group had a pretty miserable time. They struggled with hunger and ate more than they should have.

In fact, they ended up consuming a similar number of calories to the 10% group! So here’s an interesting question.

For the same amount of weight loss, which group came out of it with the more positive and empowering experience? The 10 percenters!

The take-home point is if it’s easy you can always do more, but if it’s hard you’ll be reluctant to even do what’s been asked.

So it makes most sense for us to start out with a manageable deficit. And since we’re all individuals, that means different things to different people.

In reality there is no one-size-fits-all deficit that works equally well for everyone. The 20% deficit that works just fine for your friend could end up making you feel like hell.

And if you feel like hell, you’re unlikely to stay the course. Ultimately, we’re better off taking the long-term view instead of focusing on short-term gain.

A year or two down the track, it won’t matter if dropping 40 lbs took you 12 weeks or 24. What’s far more important is:

1. You lost the weight in the first place, and

2. You kept it off

So we’re going to ease into things with a nice and easy 10% calorie deficit. And this is where your calorie tracking really begins to pay off.

Thanks to that, you now know how many calories you’re actually consuming. Real-world numbers trump a theoretical equation any day of the week.

All we need to do is trim 10% from that number to get our target daily calories. So let’s say you’re maintaining your bodyweight while eating 3,000 Calories per day.

That’s the number you got from tracking calories for a week. Now to hit your target deficit you need to reduce this number by 10%.

In this example, that means you should consume 3,000 – 300 = 2,700 Calories per day. Even that modest deficit will get the weight-loss ball rolling. Now the obvious question is how should we achieve that deficit? Well, we could simply cut portion sizes by 10% across the board.

But we want to be smarter than that. Like in our earlier example with Jim, we’re going to start by chipping away at the easy targets.

Those are the calories that aren’t pulling their weight. The ones we won’t even miss when they’re gone. And right here is where your week of counting calories can really pay off. The big eye-opener for most folks is usually the number of calories they consume from beverages.

Keep in mind that’s where the average U.S. adult gets close to one fourth of their daily caloric intake ¹². All those lattes, juices and craft beers really add up. But the good news is that knocking out calories from beverages is actually pretty painless. You’ll hardly notice you’re doing it, plus you’ll save some serious cash to boot.

Forgoing one grande latte per day for a year will save you around $1000, while knocking out close to 40,000

Calories from your intake. As we always say, small changes applied consistently stack up to give big results. If you like sugar-sweetened drinks, go for calorie-free versions instead. And if you’re concerned about artificial sweeteners like aspartame, you can relax.

The overwhelming evidence is that these are safe even at insane levels of consumption ²⁸. That means up to around 20 cans every single day, for life. So consuming the occasional can or two is nothing to be worried about. In fact, research has shown that drinking artificially sweetened drinks can be part of an effective weight-loss strategy ²⁹.

How about other beverages? Well, if you’re into juice or smoothies, you may be better off eating fruit instead of drinking it.

You wouldn’t put your roast turkey and mashed potato dinner in the blender, so why do it with fruit? Downing an 800-Calorie smoothie is easy, but munching through the same volume of fruit isn’t. Just because we perceive the source as being natural or healthy doesn’t make the calories magically disappear.

That goes the same for soy milk, almond milk and everything else. Calories always make it through.

So if you like dairy, you could opt for low-fat or fat-free milk instead. But if you prefer whole milk, you can switch to smaller sizes or reduce how often you consume it - there’s always a work around.

Or maybe we could try something a bit out of left field.

Like how about going for green tea extract or oolong tea? In addition to being pretty much calorie free, research has shown that these can give metabolic rate and fat burning a nice little boost³⁰, ³¹.

Just to keep things in perspective, we’re only talking about a few percent here. But it’s a step in the right direction, and it all counts.

But where guys and liquid calories are concerned, one thing stands head and shoulders above the others. Alcohol.

First the good news. Moderate alcohol consumption is associated with a decreased risk of heart attack³², Alzheimer’s disease³³, and metabolic syndrome³⁴.

The key word here is “moderate”. The same alcohol that’s associated with all those good things almost vaporized ex-Guns ‘N Roses bass player Duff McKagan’s pancreas a few years back.

So we should always keep in mind that the dose makes the poison. Even things essential to life, such as oxygen and water, become toxic at some level of consumption.

Now where alcohol is concerned, everyone has their own take on what “moderation” means. For some, it’s a small glass of wine once in a blue moon.

For others, it means being able to wake up the following day without a hangover. So we need to have a definition that’s a bit more concrete.

Think of “moderation” as being 1-2 drinks per day, where “a drink” means any one of the following:

And you can rest assured that calories from alcohol are still just calories. There’s nothing inherently evil or fattening about them³⁵.

In fact, a study found that a group who consumed 10% of their calories from wine had greater levels of weight loss than a group who consumed 10% of their calories from grape juice³⁶.

Both groups also saw reductions in body fat, waist circumference, blood pressure, blood glucose, insulin, triglycerides and cholesterol. All good things.

So what caused the weight loss in both groups? Our old friend the caloric deficit.

The bottom line is that alcohol in moderate quantities has some important health benefits and can be part of a healthy lifestyle. But in large enough quantities it can destroy your life.

The dose makes the poison.

Now if limiting yourself to 1-2 drinks per day is a bit of a stretch, here’s something you may want to keep in mind. Research has found that consumption just slightly above this can put a dent in testosterone levels ³⁷. As we already know, testosterone levels start to slide naturally once we hit 30 years-old or so ¹. So it doesn’t make sense for us to hurry this along by drinking too much.

The bottom line is that, where weight loss is concerned, beverages can be an easy target. Whether alcoholic or not, they allow us to punch out a lot of calories from our intake. In fact, many people will be able to lose some serious weight by simply changing their drinking habits. And remember that we’re only just getting started.

Tracking calories for a week will have identified a whole bunch of targets that would’ve otherwise stayed off the radar. Like the snacks eaten at your desk or in the car. OK, so we may only be talking about a handful of nuts every couple of hours or so. But over a 10-hour day that can really add up.

Your “healthy” snack could be netting you over 500 Calories per day. Now we’re not saying that nuts are “unhealthy”. Whether a food is “healthy” or “unhealthy” ultimately comes down to the amount being eaten and the context in which it’s being consumed. More on this later.

The reality is most of us are now eating for all kinds of reasons besides hunger ³⁸. Emotions can wreak havoc with your waistline. You know the way it works. Feeling lousy and want something pleasant to focus on? Time for some peanut M&Ms.

Boss on your case again? Best pop open the Pringles. And all that seems to just happen without us even realizing. Where a two year-old gets comforted by sucking his thumb, we head straight for the cookie jar.

We’re caught in a pattern of behavior that gives us a shot of short-term pleasure at the expense of long-term pain. So we need to focus on breaking that pattern.

Let’s imagine that you’re about to start snacking. This means it’s time to ask yourself a few questions.

Am I really hungry? As in, my boss wanted to discuss trebling my salary, but all I could think about was heading over to Chipotle for a taco. Or am I just bored/tired/depressed/frustrated/[enter emotion of choice] instead? If that’s the case, you need to act fast.

What we need is a radical shift in focus, and the quicker we do it, the better. So how exactly should we go about that? Well, we could try to think about something else, but that’s often easier said than done. In reality, what’s most effective is to simply get your body moving.

Now that doesn’t necessarily mean we need to head to the gym or do some kind of formal exercise. Just try walking around the building or, better yet, outside. Even two or three minutes will be enough to get the blood pumping, and your focus will shift pretty much instantly. Hunger will be forgotten and you’ll start feeling re-energized.

Keep in mind that you’ll also be burning a few extra calories by moving around (our old friend TEA, remember?). So it’s a win-win situation. And you remember the saying “out of sight, out of mind”? Well, that applies to snacking in the office, too. Research has actually been carried out on the office candy dish. I swear I’m not making this up! They discovered that the more convenient and visible snacks are, the more likely we are to consume them ³⁹.

We’re also more likely to underestimate how many we ate. Which means we’re better off keeping snacks out of reach and out of sight. That will help us to consume less. Ultimately, we’re creatures of habit, and we’re shaped by the things that we do habitually. So if our current habits aren’t working for us, they need to be switched to ones that will. As the saying goes: If we do what we’ve always done, we’ll get what we’ve always gotten. For example, let’s say that you always stop at a certain drive-thru’, even if you’re not particularly hungry.

Before long it’s almost as if the car’s running on autopilot. So how do you go about breaking the pattern? Well, that could be as simple as driving a different route.

Take away the temptation and break the pattern. It works for the office candy dish, trips to Starbucks and pretty much anything else.

The first part of getting rid of a damaging behavior is recognizing that it exists in the first place. That’s one of the fundamental benefits of tracking calories.

And, once we’ve identified it, we can take small but definite actions to break the pattern that triggers it. Put the candy dish out of sight, take a walk when you feel like snacking, drive home a different route.

We can get big results from making small changes when they’re applied over a sufficiently long timescale. The same way a degree or two change in heading makes a huge difference to where you end up if you’re sailing across the Pacific Ocean.

Now, none of this means we should put any food or food group off limits. There’s actually no such thing as good or bad foods, there are only good or bad decisions.

Give a starving man a couple of Big Macs per day, and he’ll be in better shape than if you hadn’t. But add those same Big Macs to an overweight person’s regular diet, and you’re looking at something completely different.

Whether a food is healthy or unhealthy all depends on the person doing the consuming, and the context in which it’s being consumed. Let’s take a quick look at an example.

Is eating an orange beneficial for your health? Keep in mind that oranges contain essential nutrients such as vitamins, minerals and fiber.

The only answer we can give is, it depends. If those things are otherwise lacking from the person’s diet then yes, eating an orange is going to provide a health benefit.

On the other hand, how about if the person already has those nutritional bases covered, but they’re chronically deficient in protein? In that case, a big steak could be considered a healthier choice.

This actually makes perfect sense when we think about it. After all, how healthy would a person be if he consumed only oranges? Not very.

It also makes no sense for people to make alarmist claims that sugar is unhealthy or “toxic”. The reality is that countless people are being kept alive in hospital right now by being fed with glucose (sugar).

The bottom line is we should resist the urge to see things in terms of black and white. Let’s always keep in mind the importance of context.

OK, so far we’ve identified a couple of ways where we can reduce calorie intake simply and painlessly. Those are the beverages and snacks that slide down quick and easy, contain a ton of calories, and we tend to consume without even thinking.

For most folks, the lion’s share of their 10% caloric deficit can be made right there. Of course, that doesn’t mean we have to quit consuming them completely.

Being able to moderate intake is an important part of making any eating strategy sustainable over the long term. The best diet is always the one that you can stick to.

But how about if you don’t consume a bunch of calories through beverages or snacks? Or you don’t have any particular weakness for things like desserts or chocolate.

In that case, it makes sense to focus on portion sizes. Here in Japan there’s the saying 腹八分目 (hara hachi bun me), which basically means eat only until you’re 80% full.

Get satisfaction from leaving the table, even though you could still eat a little more. It’s also a good idea to start emphasizing the calorically sparse, nutritionally dense food that helps us to feel full.

That means easing up on the bread, pasta, rice and potatoes. Not because they’re inherently fattening, they’re just easy to eat in massive quantities.

Consuming 1000 Calories from pasta and bread is easily done. Consuming the same number of calories from meat and vegetables isn’t.

So make lean meat, fish, fruits and vegetables the majority of what’s on your plate. You could think of that as having a rule to consume only single-ingredient foods.

This is an easy rule to understand and apply. If it contains only a single ingredient, it’s in – think foods like fruits, vegetables, meat, fish, dairy and nuts.

But if it contains more than one ingredient, it’s out. That means processed foods like donuts, cookies and potato chips.

That alone is likely to be all you need to do to hit your 10% deficit. Then it’s just a case of waiting for the deficit to work its magic, and the weight will start to come off.

Keep in mind that it’s best to start out at a pace we can live with, no matter what. Like maybe the boss has you working crazy hours or the kids have you awake half the night.

We want our eating strategy to work in spite of all that. And when life eases up a bit, you can always push things a little more.

The bottom line is we want to avoid rushing in headlong with an aggressive and unsustainable approach. Start out easy with small steps that are big enough to provide measurable feedback that you’re making progress.

You can always do more when circumstances allow.

The Power Of Protein

We know that protein can be a powerful ally when we want to lose body fat. The fact is weight loss is just so much easier when we consume it in sufficient amounts.

Here’s a quick recap of why protein is so important:

• It helps us retain muscle mass in a caloric deficit ⁴⁰

• It provides a small but useful boost to metabolic rate thanks to its high thermic effect of feeding

• It’s the most satiating (makes us feel full) of all the macronutrients ⁴¹

As we mentioned earlier, the real reason low-carb diets are so effective is because they’re high in protein. Here’s what that means for us.

Consuming a larger proportion of our calories from protein means increased fat loss. And the reality is that the average person doesn’t eat sufficient protein to take advantage of its fat-loss benefits.

So we should increase the proportion of calories from protein, while still respecting our 10% caloric deficit.

The driver for weight loss is always a caloric deficit, but it’s where we consume those calories from that determines our body composition and general health. Here’s an extreme example of what that means. Imagine someone living on six cans of Coca-Cola and a couple of burritos every day for the next three months. They consume nothing else during that time.

Naturally, they’ll lose a massive amount of bodyweight. That’s because even though what they’re consuming is full of fat and sugar, they’re still eating in an energy deficit.

But there’s a price to pay. Coca-Cola and burritos contain very little protein and essential nutrients, so the person is likely to end up severely malnourished. They’ll also lose a bunch of muscle mass, feel like hell, and look even worse.

Now, if they had consumed the same number of calories from fruits, vegetables, meat and fish, it would’ve been a very different story. They would have lost more fat, less muscle, and they’d be a whole lot healthier.

Especially if they had also been doing a resistance training program. Much more on that later. For now, we’re going to set a daily protein target to go alongside our target for overall calories. And if you’re familiar with the U.S. government’s protein guidelines, this is going to seem pretty excessive.

After all, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) recommends a blanket figure of 56 grams of protein per day for all men age 19 to 70 ⁴². That’s in spite of the fact that this level of intake has been shown to allow muscle loss even when eating at maintenance calories ⁴³.

Keep in mind that to lose weight we’ll need to be eating at a caloric deficit. The upshot is we risk losing some serious muscle mass if we follow the CDC’s recommended protein intake.

So if 56 grams of protein per day isn’t sufficient, how much is? Well, the current research indicates a daily intake of around 0.8 grams of protein per pound of bodyweight is the cut-off point for protein’s muscle-protecting benefits ⁴⁴.

But if we aim for that level of protein intake, we could easily end up lowballing and consuming less. Just as importantly, this cut-off point applies only to protein’s muscle protecting ability.

Consuming protein over and above this level doesn’t reduce its ability to boost our metabolic rate (via the thermic effect of feeding). And a bigger protein intake will help make us feel even fuller, for longer.

Those benefits are always worth making the most of. That means we have enough wiggle room to come up with a figure that’s nice and easy to remember.

So here’s our target daily protein intake:

1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day

In other words, a 200-lb man should be aiming to consume 200 grams of protein each day. That’s probably way more than you’ve been consuming up until now, and it’s close to four times the CDC’s recommended intake.

Now at this point we need to make it clear that there is no evidence that a high level of protein consumption is harmful to folks who aren’t suffering from kidney disease. This number has actually been the rule-ofthumb in weight-training circles for over 50 years.

But the obvious question is how does that level of intake stack up in terms of real food?

Amazingly, the above list totals only 208 grams of protein. Which means our example 200-lb man would be looking to consume something similar to this every single day.

So food bills could get very expensive, and planning what you’re going to eat may end up becoming a real pain in the ass. Obviously, both of these are things we can do without.

But protein is so important to our fat-loss goals that a higher intake shouldn’t be regarded as optional. Now, if you’re able to consume that amount of protein from real food without overshooting your daily calorie target, that’s awesome.

But the reality is most of us will need to look at supplementing with an inexpensive whey protein powder. That will allow us to hit our target protein intake in an efficient and inexpensive way.

Fifty grams of protein from a whey supplement comes to around $1.70, while 50 grams of protein from canned tuna could cost twice that. Plus, canned tuna tends to get very boring, very quickly.

Now it’s true that a pound of dried pasta may contain as much protein for even less cash, but keep in mind that it also contains a load more calories. This could make keeping within your daily calorie target a major headache.

So do yourself a favor and get hold of a low-carb whey protein powder. I’ve tried countless protein supplements over the years, and these are my personal favorites:

• EAS’s 100% Whey Protein Powder

• Quest’s Chocolate Peanut Putter protein bars

But regardless of what brand you go for, the main thing is to consume sufficient protein while respecting your target caloric intake. Increasing our protein intake to 1 gram per pound of bodyweight per day means

we’ll need to decrease calories from elsewhere in our diet to compensate. Here’s a quick example. Let’s assume a 200-lb man is maintaining his bodyweight while consuming 3000 Calories and 80 grams of protein per day. Now, to start losing weight at a nice sustainable rate he’s going to:

1. Slightly reduce his daily caloric intake by 10%.

This means his target caloric intake will be 2700.

2. Increase his daily protein consumption from 80 grams to 200 grams.

As we can see, that’s quite a large hike in protein intake. And, no matter how he consumes the extra protein, it will still contain calories.

In fact, this 120 grams of extra protein will contain something like 500 Calories. And here’s something that’s easily overlooked.

Those 500 Calories from increased protein need to fall within his total daily intake of 2700 Calories.

This is important enough to be repeated. It’s essential to get in sufficient protein while still respecting your target daily calorie intake. Now, some folks may feel tempted to hit the caloric deficit, but ignore the protein side of things. Perhaps it’s perceived as unnecessary, or maybe the thought of consuming whey protein seems a tad extreme.

To be honest, I wouldn’t even think of whey protein as a supplement. It’s really just food.

And if that’s what’s standing between you and hitting your target protein intake, just buy some and start using it. The importance of protein to fat loss shouldn’t be underestimated. Consuming 1 gram of protein per pound of bodyweight per day is like bolting a turbocharger onto your caloric deficit. The effect really is that profound. Now, at this stage we’ve identified the two key elements to losing weight.

• A caloric deficit

• Consuming sufficient protein

We haven’t said anything about how much fat or carbohydrate we should or shouldn’t be consuming. Even though some folks would have us believe that micromanaging carbohydrate and fat intake can make a significant difference to our progress.

OK, maybe so if you’re an Olympic athlete nudging the limit of their physical potential. Sure, you’ll leave no stone unturned when trying to eek out microscopic increments of progress.

But that’s not you and me. For us, fat and carbohydrate intake is best left to personal preference.

There is no magical amount or ratio that will speed up weight loss. By far the most important thing is to keep total calories under control while getting in sufficient protein ⁴⁵.

So, if you prefer higher fat/lower carb, that can work fine. On the other hand, if you prefer lower fat/higher carb, that can work fine, too.

Ultimately, a caloric deficit drives weight loss. Consuming sufficient protein makes the deficit easier to maintain, while also improving body composition.

And eating carbs/fats in line with your personal preference makes the whole thing just plain easier to stick to. This strategy is more than enough to kick start some serious weight loss.

And don’t forget, we also have some neat weight-loss tricks up our sleeve, which we’ll get to soon. But for now, simple is best.

The Fat-Loss Clock

Once you establish a caloric deficit and consume sufficient protein, great things start to happen almost immediately. Just keep in mind that these things will be occurring right down at a cellular level.

That means it will take a little time for them to translate into results that we can measure and see. The reality is that fat loss can be one of the most mind-numbingly boring experiences there is if you spend too much time focusing on it.

Thinking about how much fat you’ve lost on any given day is a pointless thing to do. It’s a bit like wondering how much muscle a set of pushups will add to your body.

It won’t be very much. Of course, that doesn’t mean what you do today has no value or makes no difference.

Remember that big changes come from tiny increments of progress that accumulate over time. We’re living examples of that – after all, it’s exactly how we learned to walk and talk.

So the best advice is not to focus on the goal, but to learn to enjoy the process instead. Otherwise, it’s like taking a road trip across the country where you’re just focused on reaching the destination the entire time.

You’ll feel every bump in the road, and minutes will seem like hours. But if you make the effort to enjoy the journey itself, everything becomes so much easier.

All we need to do is set the body’s fat-loss machinery in motion, and let it take care of the rest. Your body is a lot smarter than you may think and it doesn’t need to be micromanaged.

We’ll just keep one hand on the wheel to make sure we stay headed in the right direction. That means we need to have a way of measuring our progress.

Now, a 10% caloric deficit will allow us to lose around 0.3% of bodyweight per week. For a 200-lb man, that translates to something like 2 to 3 lbs per month.

If you’re consuming sufficient protein and doing some resistance training (more on this later), that weight loss will be almost all from body fat. And if 3 lbs of fat loss doesn’t sound like much to you, go to the refrigerator and see what 3 lbs of butter looks like.

That will give you a pretty graphic idea of what we’re talking about. And don’t forget, we’re only just getting started - a 10% deficit is small and should be almost effortless to maintain.

Now, there are three questions that it’s good to keep in the back of your mind.

1. Am I making measurable progress?

2. Am I happy with the current rate of progress?

3. Is this rate of progress sustainable?

We’ll cover the best ways to measure progress next, but first let’s take a quick look at the last two of these questions. For most of us they’re actually flip sides of the same coin.

The rate of progress that we would all be most happy with is massive fat loss, fast. After all, who wouldn’t want that?

Of course, the downside is that it requires a really aggressive approach that’s not sustainable for most folks. On the other hand, the most sustainable situation will actually be little or no progress.

Now that’s exactly what most people are getting, although they’re not particularly happy about it. So finding a rate of progress that’s both sustainable and satisfying is a balancing act.

And that balance will be different for each and every one of us. What’s OK to your friend or colleague may be completely unacceptable to you.

Neither is any more right or wrong than the other – ultimately, the long-term result is what matters most. It’s not a competition.

So if progress is already coming along nicely, resist any temptation to get too greedy with your weight loss. If it isn’t broken, don’t fix it.

Naturally, any adjustments we make to our caloric deficit should be based on our real-world results. This means we need some simple and reliable ways to measure our progress.

Fortunately, we already have the most useful tools at our disposal. So there’s absolutely no need to buy any expensive gadgets, no matter how cutting edge they’re claimed to be.

Here are the five ways that we’re going to use.

1. How your clothes feel

OK, we’ve all done it at one time or another: you put on a few pounds, but try to convince yourself that it’s all muscle. Unfortunately, your pants tell a very different story.

We guys tend to store fat around our midsection. So one of the first signs of fat gain is your pants start feeling tighter around the waist.

The great news is that once you begin to lose fat, your pants soon start to feel looser. If you’re also doing some resistance training, your shirts may start feeling a little more snug around the chest and shoulders.

That’s a sure sign that you’re putting on a little muscle at the same time. People who are either new to resistance training or returning to it after some time off can easily gain muscle while losing fat.

Unfortunately, this distinction is lost on the humble bathroom scale. A 4 lb fat loss coupled with a 4 lb muscle gain can easily be interpreted as zero progress when considering bodyweight alone.

That’s why it’s best not to rely exclusively on a single measurement method. So pay particular attention to whatever your belt is telling you.

Mark the hole that you’re currently using as a reference point. Then every time you have to move down to the next smallest hole, give yourself a big pat on the back.

Reward yourself for a job well done, and do something out of the ordinary to celebrate. That way you’ll look forward to the next time you need to tighten your belt another notch.

On the other hand, if you’re stuck on the same notch for weeks on end, you may need to look at increasing your caloric deficit. There’s no need to go crazy – just start by lowering your daily caloric intake by a further 5%.

Be patient. See what happens after another week or two, and make any further adjustments based on that.

The reality is any time weight loss slows down or stalls, we just need to reopen the caloric deficit to get things moving again. It’s that simple.

Trust the science, and trust yourself. The human body has been doing this stuff for over 250,000 years.

2. The measuring tape

One of the hallmarks of being a guy is where excess calories end up getting stored. For most of us, they home in on our bellies and lower backs with cruise-missile precision.

The measuring tape helps to put some hard numbers on what your belt and pants are already telling you. Don’t flatter yourself by using sloppy measuring technique, be sure to include the love handles and the belly.

And resist the urge to tug the tape tight to knock off that extra inch or two. It’s also best to measure in the same condition each time, such as after using the bathroom upon waking.

Take three measurements, and average them to get the result. Perhaps just as important, be sure to record the result and keep it somewhere safe so you can track your progress in numbers.

3. The mirror

The bathroom mirror is a merciless tool for seeing the naked truth. Spend a little while in front of it every time you take a bath or shower.

There’s no need for a posing routine, just see yourself as you are right now. And if what you see is more Cartman than Batman, don’t get depressed, get motivated and get busy.

Anyone can turn things around with an energy deficit and a little time. Just think back six months and imagine how good you’d look right now if you’d started back then.

Now commit to being that person six months down the track. What the mind can conceive and believe, the body can achieve.

Of course, the mirror does have one downside because it’s difficult to judge progress over time. Which leads us nicely on to...

4. Photographs

Take a front, side and back shot with your camera or smartphone in front of the mirror every 2-4 weeks. It’s best to do this while wearing minimal clothing – a pair of shorts would be ideal.

Sure, it may feel a bit weird at first, but you’ll soon get used to it. Flipping back and forward through your selfies can give powerful visual feedback that numbers alone simply can’t provide.

Having an appreciation of how far you’ve come will also help keep you motivated and focused on making even more progress. What photographs do is help shift the emphasis from numbers to appearance.

When you can see the difference in appearance that losing 10 or 20 lbs gives, it changes the whole game. Suddenly, losing the next 10 or 20 lbs takes on a new and exciting edge.

You no longer see fat loss as just numbers on a scale. You see it as the key to a physical transformation that’s both real and achievable.

Finally, just be sure to always photograph yourself using the same location, lighting, and so on in order to make comparisons as valid as possible.

5. The bathroom scale

Taken in isolation, the humble bathroom scale can be a bit of a double-edged sword. As we know, an aggressive low-carb diet can see some folks losing the best part of 15 lbs in only a few days ²². With almost all of that weight loss coming from water. But that fact is overlooked by the bathroom scale.

As far as it’s concerned, weight is weight. It doesn’t matter if it’s fat, muscle, water, or anything else. Now that doesn’t mean the bathroom scale isn’t worth using. It does mean that it comes with a set of limitations the same way any other tool does.

We just need to be aware of those before we start getting fixated on bodyweight alone. As unpleasant as it sounds, keep in mind that sawing off a major body part will result in some impressive weight loss according to the scale.

But ultimately, weight isn’t the outcome that we’re interested in, it’s appearance. Scale weight is most useful for confirming that we’re headed in the right direction, long before that translates to visible results. Finally, when you weigh yourself is also important as weight can fluctuate by several pounds during the day. Once again, it’s best done after using the bathroom upon waking.

This reduces the confounding effect of other variables such as food and drink consumption, and visits to the bathroom. Now as far as measuring progress is concerned, that’s really all there is to it. There’s simply no need to make it any more complex than that.

Let’s keep in mind that these methods are all really just indicators. After all, what we want to lose is body fat.

But body-fat levels aren’t something that we can measure reliably and cheaply. So we’re using these indicators as proxies for fat loss instead. And the more of these indicators giving us the thumbs up, the better. Pants feeling looser around the waist and beginning to see the semblance of abs in the bathroom mirror? Bingo. You’re losing body fat and making definite progress.

It’s a good idea to use several (or all) of these methods at the same time rather than just one. But for your own sanity, don’t get too OCD about measuring. Once or twice per week is fine. And it’s important to put the feedback the measurements are giving you to good use.

When you make a change, you should compare the results that the change gives with the results that you wanted. You then make further changes as you go along. If fat loss is a journey, that’s what will keep you headed in the right direction. The same way a pilot will constantly make small corrections to his course so he arrives safely at his destination.

Now, you may have noticed that we haven’t mentioned body-fat percentage even once. And there’s a good reason for that. The fact is, it’s pretty much irrelevant. Now let’s be clear about this – that doesn’t mean the amount of body fat we’re carrying is irrelevant.

Not at all. But trying to pin a number on it is.

In reality, folks use body-fat percentage as a kind of shorthand for looking a certain way. We think of how we want to look, and then try to pin some arbitrary number on it.

That doesn’t really make much sense. After all, we can tell exactly how we look – and if we like it – simply by standing in front of a mirror.

If you don’t like what you see, you need to drop more body fat. Regardless of what percentage you happen to be.

And if you do like what you see, do you even care what your body-fat percentage is? Probably not.

But we’re guys after all, and that means we love measuring stuff. Body-fat percentages, standing quarter- mile times, and whatever else.

It’s just harmless fun, right? The trouble is, measuring body-fat percentage is far from an exact science.

Even measurements performed in a state-of-the-art laboratory can be off by a whopping 5% or more ⁴⁶. So a reading of 20% body fat could actually mean anything between 15 and 25%!

And keep in mind that’s using techniques like hydrostatic weighing, and DEXA (dual-energy x-ray absorptiometry). Which are as complex and costly as they sound.

So it should come as no surprise that home-measured body-fat percentages are so inaccurate that they’re pretty much meaningless. Regardless of what the manufacturers may claim, body composition analyzers are notoriously unreliable.

That holds true even for ones costing several hundred dollars. After all, if body-fat percentage can’t be measured accurately in a laboratory, how can it be measured accurately using something we can pick up at Walmart?

In fact, a study back in 2000 measured hunger strikers’ body composition using this very technique ⁴⁷. According to the device, starvation caused those folks to actually gain muscle mass.

Obviously, that’s complete nonsense. But it tells us all we need to know about the accuracy of those things.

Ultimately, if your pants are getting looser around the waist and you’re liking what you see in the mirror, you’re on the right track. Whatever your body-fat percentage happens to be at that point just is what it is.

Now it’s time to reveal some sneaky ways to keep the fat-loss ball rolling. Plus we’ll bust a few weight-loss myths in the process.

Stepping Things Up

By now things are moving ahead nicely. You’re in a deficit that’s quietly working its magic, without you feeling like you’re denying yourself or dieting.

You’re getting in sufficient protein, and you’re making sustainable and measurable progress. You’re on a roll.

And all this has come from picking off the easy targets. The spoonfuls of peanut butter, the boredom eating, and the “it’s only...” calories that really add up.

Maybe you’ve realized that your “occasional glass of wine” habit tends to be more than just a glass. And way more frequent than occasional.

Now we’re going to change tack and check out a few clever tricks that we can play on our bodies. We’ll split these into two groups:

• Things that actually encourage us to consume fewer calories without even realizing

• Things that boost our metabolic rate for little or no extra effort Let’s get started.

Effortless Calorie Reduction

People just love the idea of an archenemy. Whether it’s Lex Luthor, the Soviet Union, or high-fructose corn syrup.

Give it a black hat, label it “bad”, and we’re happy. But when it comes to food, this really makes little sense if you think about it.

How can food like wheat and white rice be “bad” when they’re happily being consumed by millions of people around the world. Who, incidentally, are way leaner and healthier than we are.

Tell folks here in Japan that consuming white rice makes you fat. They’ll nod, smile, and continue to eat it by the truckload, while having an obesity rate a hair over 3% ⁴⁸.

That’s only one-tenth of the obesity rate in the U.S.

Do grains really make us fat? Tell that to the Ethiopians who consume over 50% of their diet from them ⁴⁹.

Of course, a minority of folks may not do well on those foods. The same way some people can’t tolerate shellfish or dairy.

But that doesn’t mean they should be made off-limits for all of us. Ultimately, what we consume should come down to personal preference.

There really is no single best way, and most people would make much better progress if they stopped believing that there was. Nowhere is that more true than meal timing and meal frequency.

Now, we’ve all heard about having to eat every 2-3 hours to “keep the metabolism revving”. And we’ve all read that carbs eaten after 6pm will be stored as fat.

The trouble is, both of those are completely untrue. But that doesn’t stop them getting repeated all the time. The overwhelming evidence is that meal timing and meal frequency are of negligible importance to fat loss. The same way the temperature of your tires makes zero practical difference to your car’s gas mileage.

That’s actually great news because it means we don’t need to be tied down to a specific approach. If you’re hitting your calorie and protein targets while getting in sufficient micronutrients and fiber, that’s all the important bases covered.

Let’s take a quick look at meal frequency first. Now, all of us have probably heard that grazing (eating little and often) is something that we would do better on.

But the reality is some folks find that the same number of calories spread over a greater number of meals makes it harder to lose weight ⁵⁰ , ⁵¹. Why? Because smaller meals can actually end up making you feel less satisfied.

And that makes it more likely that someone will overeat and sabotage their diet. Of course, this doesn’t mean a higher meal frequency is a universally bad thing.

Some people may actually do fine on a greater number of small meals. It really comes down to the individual.

So the choice should be based on personal preference, not some perceived advantage that doesn’t actually exist. The bottom line is that you shouldn’t feel bad if you hate grazing and prefer eating only 2-3 times per day – you’re not losing out ⁵².

So that’s meal frequency.

But how about individual meals – are they all created equal? Or is breakfast really the most important meal of the day?

Fortunately, there’s some pretty cool research that has looked into exactly that.

Amazingly enough, studies show that both eating breakfast and skipping breakfast can be effective strategies for weight loss ⁵³ , ⁵⁴. So if you’re not hungry when you wake up, there’s no need to force down a meal that you don’t really want.

And that goes the same for any meal. But it is generally a good idea to make the first meal of the day – literally breaking your fast – large and high in protein ⁵⁵.

That applies whether you’re eating it at 7am or noon. A large, high-protein meal helps to keep the lid on calorie consumption later in the day.

Ultimately, no single meal is any more or less important than any other. What happens over the course of an entire day is more important than focusing on a particular meal or time period.

Let’s keep in mind that our bodies evolved to cope with a hard physical existence in an unforgiving environment. We simply aren’t so delicate that meal timing and frequency have that much influence on our fat stores.

Now, here’s something for those folks who tend to wolf down their food. It appears that more chews per bite can actually reduce food intake ⁵⁶.

The jury’s still out on why that happens, but it’s an easy way to reduce calorie intake. Just try slowing things down and chewing more when you eat.

It isn’t necessary to start counting chews per bite – that’s a little over the top. Just keep chewing until your food turns into a liquid.

Maybe think of it this way: drink your food.

Now as we already know, losing weight doesn’t mean that we have to give up alcohol. But when we drink it can have a serious knock-on effect to subsequent calorie consumption.

Alcohol can have a powerful stimulatory effect on appetite, so we’re better off consuming it while we’re eating instead of before a meal or on its own ⁵⁷. It’s also worth keeping in mind that “a glass of wine” means 5 oz, not brimming the largest vessel you can get your hands on.

That leads us on to some of the weirdest reasons why we consume more calories than we think. The fact is that the glasses, dishes and containers we use have a huge effect on the amount we end up consuming.

Researcher Brian Wansink has performed some truly bizarre experiments that reveal just how out of whack our perception can be. Such as:

1. Shape of glasses and alcohol poured

Even experienced bartenders tended to overpour alcohol in short, wide glasses compared with tall, slender ones ⁵⁸. This ended up being something like 20% more – which is a pretty significant difference.

2. Bottomless bowls

People who unknowingly ate soup from self-filling bowls(!) ate over 70% more than folks who consumed soup from regular bowls ⁵⁹. Amazingly, they didn’t perceive that they had consumed more, and felt no more satisfied than the other group.

3. Bad popcorn

Moviegoers were given stale 14-day old popcorn in large or medium-size containers ⁶⁰. Incredibly, the folks with the larger containers ate over one-third more, even though it tasted revolting.

4. Ice-cream illusions

Nutrition experts at an ice-cream social were given either a small or large bowl, and a small or large serving scoop with which to serve themselves ⁶¹. Larger bowls lead to serving increases of over 30%, while larger spoons lead to increases of around 15%.

The take-home points from all this are pretty clear.

First off, we’re not very good at judging how much food and drink we consume. That’s exactly what makes counting calories for a week such a valuable experience.

Furthermore, the plates, bowls and containers we use can have a huge effect on how much we end up consuming. All without us even realizing, or feeling any more satisfied than if we’d consumed less.

This is actually great news because it means we can reduce calorie consumption without feeling that we’re denying ourselves. Simply by switching to smaller food containers and tableware.

Wansink’s all-you-can-eat Chinese buffet study paints a similar picture.

People with a higher body mass index (BMI) were more likely to: use larger plates, go for forks instead of chopsticks, and dive straight in rather than browse first ⁶². They also chewed less per bite of food.

The bottom line is if we make eating a bit more of a chore, we’re likely to consume less. That could mean using chopsticks or smaller forks and spoons.

We can then complete the self-deception by using smaller dishes. It seems that our brains regard a plate of food as a plate of food.

It doesn’t matter whether it’s a regular size plate or an extra-large one. Clear your plate, and you’ll be satisfied.

So if you use a smaller plate, you get the same satisfaction bang from a smaller caloric buck. End result, effortless weight loss.

Now even if Chinese buffets aren’t your thing, it’s likely that you eat out pretty regularly. In fact, some estimates suggest that as many as one-third of the calories we consume come from eating out.

Which is no bad thing in itself, but here’s something we should be aware of. The calories listed on the menu can be way off what actually makes it to the table ⁶³.

Inconsistent amounts of sauces, dressings and portion sizes can send calories skyrocketing. Some restaurant items were actually found to contain double the listed calories.

And get this, some free side dishes bumped up the calorie count of the entrees they accompanied by even more than that! So when you eat out, it’s best to stick with simple stuff without sauces, dressings or oils.

Have those on the side so you can decide how much you add to your plate. Keep in mind that a big glug of olive oil can easily add a couple of hundred calories to your meal.

And beware of the free side dishes.

In fact, it’s a good idea to order something high in protein, like a big steak. Then fill up on fibrous vegetables as these are low in calories and provide essential micronutrients, as well as fiber.

Just like protein, fiber increases satiety and decreases feelings of hunger. As a result, we end up consuming fewer calories.

It’s actually been found that increasing total fiber intake to 25-30 grams per day can decrease energy intake by close to 20% ⁶⁴. Let’s just think about that for a moment.

A full-on 20% energy deficit just by eating sufficient fiber.

Now if you’re not sure what a fibrous vegetable is, this list is a good place to start.

Alfalfa sprouts, arugula, asparagus, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, endive, kale, leeks, lettuce, okra, onion, peppers, radishes, sauerkraut, scallions, spinach, string beans, tomatoes, zucchini

Just avoid consuming them slathered in butter or oil, as that defeats the purpose. We’re after the fiber and micronutrients, not a whole bunch of calories tagging along for the ride.

The reality is fibrous veggies can be a key player to help us drop body fat and improve health. So don’t overlook them, they punch well above their weight

Finally, let’s look at something a bit out of left field. Can drinking water really help us lose weight?

Apparently, it can. Drinking a 16 oz glass of water 30 minutes before eating can reduce subsequent calorie consumption by 10% or more ⁶⁵.

What could be a more effortless way to reduce calorie consumption than that? But let’s just keep something important in mind.

More doesn’t necessarily mean better.

So, we shouldn’t assume that drinking twice the amount of water (32 oz) will cause twice the effect (a 20% reduction in calorie consumption). Excessive amounts of anything, even water, can be harmful to health ⁶⁶.

Remember, the dose makes the poison. So let’s resist any urge to go overboard.

Effortless Calorie Burning

We’ve just seen how drinking water before a meal can help reduce subsequent calorie intake. Now that’s awesome news, but it gets even better.

In reality, water is far from being just a one-trick pony. It can help us on the energy-out side of things, too.

Drinking water actually makes us burn more calories by giving our metabolic rate a nice little boost. A 2003 study estimated that consuming four pints of 72 °F water would burn an additional 100 Calories ⁶⁷.

For many of us, that’s equivalent to a 5% or so increase in resting metabolic rate. Which is well worth having, and another good reason to stay hydrated.

What we choose to eat can also have a big effect on our metabolic rate. Remember that protein has by far the highest “transaction fee”, followed by carbohydrate in second place, and fat a distant third.

But there’s a bit more to it than that. How we consume the calories can also have an impact.

For example, a whole-food meal can actually have double the digestive “cost” to our bodies than a processed meal of identical composition and calories ⁶⁸. A bigger digestive “cost” meaning more calories burned.

That makes perfect sense when we think about it. Every time we drink a smoothie instead of eating the fruit in its natural state, we’re denying our bodies the work that was performed by the blender.

And that means we end up burning fewer calories to digest what we’ve consumed. This is another reason to go for minimally-processed whole foods whenever possible.

Not only will that help us get in essential vitamins, minerals and fiber, it will also give our bodies the extra work required for digestion. And extra work equals more calories burned.

The upshot is, minimally-processed whole foods mean both fewer calories in and more calories out. Which is exactly what we need for effective weight loss.

Now, here’s something that gives a whole new meaning to the phrase “sleeping it off”. Research has found that reduced sleep can put your appetite into a tail spin and cause you to eat hundreds of extra calories ⁶⁹.

Even worse, sleep deprivation can also shoot us in the other foot. Not only can it cause an increase in hunger and subsequent calorie intake, it can also depress energy expenditure.

It does this by lowering activity levels while simultaneously reducing both resting metabolic rate and the thermic effect of feeding ⁷⁰. Talk about a treble whammy.

On top of all that, insufficient sleep has an adverse effect on testosterone levels ⁷¹ , ⁷². Which is a real kick in the nuts that we can all do without.

The bottom line is we need to do whatever it takes to get in 8 hours of sleep every night. Switch off the TV, quit fiddling with your iPhone, and make a committed effort to getting some quality sack time in.

When it comes to body fat, it really is a case of you snooze, you lose.

Finally, let’s take a very quick look at some of the fat burning supplements that are commonly available. Now it’s best to tread carefully here as some folks can have an adverse reaction to these.

The combination of caffeine and ephedrine (aka the “EC stack”) is probably the go-to option, and has a decent track record in studies ⁷³. When it comes to dosages and effectiveness, Examine.com’s free online supplement database should be the first place you head ⁷⁴.

Other fat burners include green tea (as we mentioned earlier), yohimbine HCl and dehydroepiandrosterone (DHEA). Just be sure to do your homework before taking any of these products.

That way you’re going into things with your eyes wide open and one hand firmly on your wallet. The reality is the vast majority of supplements are nowhere near as effective as their marketing makes out.

Now, none of these metabolism-boosting tricks should be seen as an alternative to activity. Increasing general activity is a great way to keep calorie expenditure high.

And let’s not forget that some types of exercise can boost metabolic rate for days at a time. We’ll get into those when we start looking at movement, exercise and training.

But for now, let’s summarize how we can keep calorie intake down and calorie expenditure up without even breaking a sweat:

• Hit your target calorie and protein intake each day over the number and frequency of meals of your preference.

• Chew thoroughly – remember to drink your food.

• If you drink alcohol, it’s better to consume it while eating a meal.

• Use smaller tableware (plates, glasses, etc.)

• Make sure you’re getting in 25-30 grams of fiber a day. Fibrous veggies are your high-fiber/low-calorie friend.

• Drinking 16 oz of water 30 minutes before a meal can help put the brakes on your appetite.

• Drinking 4 pints of water per day can increase energy expenditure by around 100 Calories.

• Consuming unprocessed food has up to double the digestive energy “cost” of consuming an otherwise identical amount of processed food.

• Getting adequate sleep is one of the most important things you can do for your waistline and health.

• There’s strong evidence that fat burning supplements such as ephedrine/caffeine work. These may not be suitable for everyone.

Now, some of these may sound basic or obvious, but that doesn’t mean they’re ineffective. If you use some (or all) of these tips, you’ll be making a giant stride in the right direction.

Always keep in mind that massive results don’t come from the occasional big effort. They come from consistently stacking up small increments of progress.

Owning Your Fat Loss

By this point we’ve put a whole bunch of different things into action, we’ve seen the results, and we’re motivated to achieve even more. We’ve got this thing dialed.

Believe it or not, applying what we’ve learned so far will take most of us all the way to our fat-loss goals. Now, it’s worth reading that last sentence again – it may just be one of the most important in the book.

Progress doesn’t come from just learning, it comes from consistently applying what we’ve learned. OK, I realize that’s completely obvious, but it’s often overlooked.

So if you haven’t managed to milk much progress out of the simple changes outlined earlier in this book, you may want to go back and take another look. That’s where we’ll get maximum results for minimum effort.

But for folks who like to push the edge of the envelope, we’ve still got a little gas left in the tank. So what we’ll do is jump right ahead to the ideal scenario.

Then all we need to do is join the dots to there from wherever we are right now. Think of it as entering the destination into your in-car navigation system before you set out.

Even though the destination is set, the route you select and the time it takes to get there are completely up to you. Well, what we’re doing works exactly the same way.

There’s no obligation to make wholesale changes to your diet overnight. You could make one change per day or even one change per week.

What matters more than anything is that the changes are sustainable and keep you moving in the right direction. So here’s how to go about it.

First off, we need to figure out our target daily calorie intake. Naturally, that depends on the individual and their goals: weight loss, weight maintenance or, for some guys, even weight gain.

As we know, weight loss requires a caloric deficit, weight gain a caloric surplus, and weight maintenance occurs when calories in equals calories out. So once we’ve figured out our target caloric intake, we can get things rolling.

Just keep in mind that having a solid grasp of your target daily caloric intake means you should have first:

1. Tracked calories and protein for a week, and

2. Made some decent progress by starting with a 10% caloric deficit, and then adjusting this deficit based on how your weight loss is proceeding

That will familiarize you with your body’s energy demands better than any theoretical equation ever could. Plus you’ll know how your body responds to different levels of caloric restriction.

No two people will be exactly the same, so it’s really up to us to know our own bodies. We should then make sure that:

Ninety percent of our target daily caloric intake comes from minimally-processed, calorically sparse, nutritionally dense whole foods.

That means single-ingredient foods that our great-grandparents’ generation would have recognized and eaten. That way we’ll cover all our nutritional bases, while still leaving room for what are known as discretionary calories.

OK, that may sound science-y and dull, but it’s actually pretty awesome. It basically means we can consume 10% of our daily calories from ice cream, cookies, beer or whatever else we want.

Now, the obvious question is “won’t consuming junk food make us fat?” Answer: Not if we’re still eating at maintenance calories or lower.

Remember how a nutrition professor at Kansas State University made the headlines a few years back? His infamous junk-food diet allowed him to lose close to 30 lbs in only two months ⁷⁵.

But while that may sound tempting, keep in mind that there’s more to good health than just losing weight. Which means we’ll stick with our 90/10 rule.

So, what’s a good way to start working towards that? Well, for most of us processed carbs provide the most potential for cutting back.

That doesn’t mean they need to be eliminated altogether, we just need to keep a lid on their consumption. That’s because they tend to be high in calories and are easy to consume in massive amounts.

Pasta, rice and bread all come to mind here. Of course, these aren’t inherently fattening – no food is – so it really comes down to moderating intake.

Now, if there’s still some suspicion that eating foods like these automatically leads to fat gain, we should take a quick look at the mother of all weight-loss studies. Cue the infamous Minnesota Starvation Experiment carried out during World War II ⁷⁶.

In a nutshell, 36 conscientious objectors volunteered for a six-month long semi-starvation diet which caused them to lose at least 25% of their starting bodyweight. Not that these men were overweight to begin with.

One volunteer, Charles Smith, dropped over 30% of his bodyweight, and ended up at an emaciated 99 lbs. Not a single man failed to lose a massive amount of bodyweight.

And the kicker? The few calories that these men did consume came from things like potatoes, bread and macaroni.

In other words, the very things some folks claim make us fat!

And while we’re talking about bread, here’s something from a more recent weight-loss study. A low-calorie diet that included bread actually had better results than a low-calorie diet that didn’t ⁷⁷. Of course, this doesn’t mean we should all start ramping up our bread intake. But it does mean consuming stuff we actually enjoy is essential if we’re going to stick to our eating plan in the long term.

Ultimately, caloric quantity determines weight loss, caloric quality determines health, and eating foods we enjoy makes it all sustainable.

Now, it’s about time that we said something about the paleo diet. So, what exactly is it, and why does it work? First off, it’s pretty much impossible to pin down what the paleo diet is. There’s a lot of disagreement even among paleo diet devotees.

Some omit dairy, others don’t. Some omit corn, others don’t. So, it’s kind of a pick ‘n’ mix. Seriously, to some folks it’s almost a religion, and it can be taken to some pretty crazy extremes. Such as avoiding tomatoes, potatoes and bell peppers because they come from the nightshade family of plants.

Bizarre.

But eating paleo will make the average person lose an impressive amount of weight. So what’s the deal?

Fundamentally, the paleo diet ruthlessly eliminates the calorie-dense foods that are easily consumed in excess. Going paleo basically means waving goodbye to things like processed carbs, potatoes, peanut butter, and dairy.

So we lose weight because we’ve adopted a highly restrictive diet. Although it’s been cleverly packaged to not appear as one.

Now, if you have issues with moderation and self control, maybe eating paleo (or a watered-down version of it) could work well for you. After all, the end justifies the means.

But we’re better off seeing paleo for what it really is: a set of simple eating rules that make us spontaneously decrease our caloric intake. There’s no more magic to it than that.

The reality is it’s still possible to become overweight and unhealthy while eating paleo. It’s just way harder to do than by eating french fries and donuts.

So if you’re keen to give paleo a shot, we’ve got an extreme version coming up. It’s ideal for folks who want to eat as much as they can while losing a lot of weight, fast.

But it’s important to keep in mind that food should be enjoyed, not just endured. It isn’t something to be feared, or tagged as “healthy” or “unhealthy”.

That kind of thinking has actually helped create a new eating disorder where some people derive pleasure through not consuming things. It’s true.

Orthorexia nervosa...is characterized by an excessive or extreme preoccupation with avoiding foods perceived to be unhealthy ⁷⁸.

As we know, claiming that a food is “healthy” or “unhealthy” without specifying the context in which it’s being consumed is completely meaningless. It’s like saying an airplane is “better” than a ship.

OK, if you want to deliver express mail around the world, a 747 may be ideal. But it’s useless for transporting crude oil or new cars.

Our 90/10 approach focuses on the whole rather than obsessing about individual foods. In other words:

If you hit your target daily calorie and protein intake from a wide variety of minimally-processed, nutrient-dense whole foods, you’ve got all the nutritional bases covered.

And the great news is there’s enough wiggle room in there to enjoy a beer, too!

It really doesn’t need to be any more complex than that. Now, the obvious question is how quickly we should make the transition to a 90/10-style diet.

Well, that really comes down to the individual. Some folks may be able to dive straight in and make the change overnight.

You know the kind of person: they smoked two packs a day for years, then one day they just quit. No nicotine gum or patches, no gradual cutting down.

On the other hand, some people will take a lot more time to make the change. And that’s fine, too.

Keep in mind that it’s not about how fast you can make changes, it’s about making the changes stick. A year or two down the track, how long it took will be practically irrelevant.

What matters most is that you stick with it and get the results you want. So make changes at a pace that keeps momentum going, while not derailing your life.

Now, the best way to make gradual changes is to have a plan. And it’s better to have your plan written down instead of trying to keep it all in your head.

That way you’ll be a lot more focused and accountable.

Here are a few ideas for simple changes to get you started:

1. Make extra food at dinner, and take the leftovers to work for lunch the next day.

2. Reduce the number of times you eat out by one per week.

3. Plan your meals for the week in advance instead of ducking into the nearest place when hunger calls.

4. Learn to cook a new meal each week, even if this is something simple like chili, frittata or taco rice.

5. Anticipate. If you’re on the road, pack food in advance and take it with you. Some beef jerky, fruit and a protein bar beats eating at a pizza joint.

6. Save the money that you would’ve spent on stuff like waffles and donuts, and splurge it at the end of the month. Take your kids go karting or your other half to a fancy restaurant.

Now, if this is beginning to sound like your days of eating big are all over, think again. Once you get the feel for how it works, it almost becomes a game.

Here’s a real-world example.

Your kids suddenly decide they can’t eat the breakfasts you ordered for them, so you end up eating yours and theirs. That means the thick end of 2000 Calories or more – all that bacon, fried egg, sausage and hash browns sure does add up.

And it’s still before 9 am.

Is it possible for dad to maintain his six pack and 2400 Calorie per day diet under those conditions? Hell, yeah!

He realizes by 9 am that his target calories for the day are pretty much taken care of. So lunch is a protein shake made with water, and dinner the same.

Not forgetting a large mixed salad with no dressing or oil. He doesn’t eat any more than this because he knows that he doesn’t need to.

But that wasn’t his only option. There are always alternatives.

Like he could’ve opted for a regular lunch and dinner, and just knocked out some calories from the next day or two instead. The net result being an intake of 2400 Calories per day when averaged over those two or three days.

Incidentally, that’s exactly how modified alternate-day fasting works. And we’ll be taking a look at that very soon.

Alternatively, he could simply write it off as a bad day - it’s just a blip, after all. There’s no harm in that.

He just needs to make sure that one bad day doesn’t turn into two, then a week. The reality is everyone falls off the wagon from time to time.

But that’s not an excuse to set the wagon on fire and push it off a cliff. Having the right mindset – that we’re in control of how much we consume – is massively important.

Winning The Mental Game

The mechanics of weight loss is easy. We just need to maintain an energy deficit for enough time, and we’ll lose all the weight we want to.

So why do most people fail? Because they have the wrong psychology.

More than anything else, the real battle is in controlling our state of mind. Ultimately, our bodies and our lives are shaped by the decisions we make.

The reality is our lives can change forever the moment we make a decision. Sure, it may take weeks or months for the weight to actually come off, but the instant we make the decision is when everything changes.

We’ve all experienced this at one time or another: the moment you decided to quit the job you’d endured for years, or the moment you decided to ask your other half out on a first date.

Something happened inside you that said “from now on, this is how it’s going to be”. You didn’t merely express a preference, or think “wouldn’t it be nice...”.

You made a real decision that cut off all other possibilities. What you decided became a “must”.

That’s the moment your life changed. Deep down you knew that you were going to do it, no matter what.

And did you notice how you felt once you’d made the decision? It was like mentally you’d already achieved the goal.

It was then just a case of following through physically to make it real. That’s the power of a real decision.

And have you ever noticed how pull is so much more powerful a force for change than push? Even if the desired outcome is pretty much the same.

I’m going to be lean and strong is a much better motivator than I’ve had enough of being fat and weak.nBecoming lean and strong sounds exciting, while no longer being fat and weak focuses on the negative from the outset.

The bottom line is we’re better off creating positive goals that inspire us and draw us toward them than impotent goals that leave us cold. We can also learn a lot from any successes that we’ve had in the past.

It doesn’t really matter what the situation was, since applying the same strategy works across the board. Ultimately, massive success comes down to five simple steps.

1. Have a clearly defined goal

A pilot doesn’t take off from LAX with a vague idea of landing “somewhere else”. He knows exactly where he’s headed, and that’s exactly where he ends up.

So, a vague goal like “lose weight and tone up” isn’t going to get us very far. But if we make it “lose 30 lbs and fit into my 34” waist jeans by my next birthday” we’ve then got something we can really get our teeth into.

2. Be clear about why your goal is a must

If your goal is more a preference than a decision, it’s going to be tough to stay the course. Remember that a real decision means cutting off any other outcome, or possibility of retreat.

So we need to find or create a big enough reason to make achieving our goals a must. That’s where making the reason bigger than ourselves can really pay off.

Instead of focusing on ourselves, switch the focus to our families or kids instead – we’re doing it for them. That can see us tackling things head on that we’d otherwise back away from.

For example, some studies show that having an obese father significantly increases the odds of having an obese child ⁷⁹ , ⁸⁰. That’s even if the mother is a healthy weight.

On the other hand, having an obese mother and healthy weight father was not a predictor of child obesity. Sorry guys, but it looks like the ball’s in our court.

3. You’ve got to follow through

You have to take action and get busy working toward your goal right now. What doesn’t get started today will never be finished tomorrow.

This is where having a goal that motivates and inspires you is paramount. If it’s something you’re desperate to achieve, then you’ll do it.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to achieve it all at once. Any goal can be broken down into a series of small, manageable tasks.

It’s then just a case of picking those off one at a time.

4. Is it working?

Remember the pilot setting out from LAX? He doesn’t just set his course and speed, then kick back with a cup of coffee and a good book.

He keeps a close eye on things so he can make whatever adjustments are needed to keep him on course and on schedule. Well, it works exactly the same way for you and me.

We need to be measuring progress towards our goals to ensure that we stay headed in the right direction. Having targets and milestones – and rewarding yourself when you hit them – is essential for continued success.

5. Change until it does work

OK, here’s what usually happens. We start out full of enthusiasm and good intentions, and we make some decent initial progress.

But after a little while, progress begins to slow down. Or maybe even stall altogether.

Now we’ve all experienced this at sometime or other: whether it’s losing weight or learning to play guitar. Things start out fine at the beginning, then just kind of fizzle.

That’s where we get tested for the first time. How serious are we, and how badly do we want it?

We really need to understand why we’re no longer making the progress we wanted and expected. For weight loss, this could come down to:

• Were our original expectations realistic?

• Did we go too hard, trying to make progress at a rate that was never really sustainable?

• Did we go too easy, never really doing enough to bring about the desired change?

In any case, we need to make some changes to get back on track. Either to our expectations, or to the way we’re going about things.

And once we make a change, we need to allow enough time for it to filter through and appear as a measurable result. So, if weight loss has slowed down, we need to increase the caloric deficit slightly.

Then give it a week or so, and see what the results are. If you’re now back on track, just keep on going.

But if the results are less than expected, open the caloric deficit up a little more. The reality is every single one of us has the ability to do whatever it takes to get the job done.

As long as we have a big enough reason.

Now, we instinctively know this stuff because we follow these same steps every time we have success. Even if we don’t realize it at the time.

It really comes down to having the right mindset.

In the book Psycho-Cybernetics, Dr Maxwell Maltz describes how we will neither outperform nor underperform the basic self image that we hold in our minds. According to him, “All your actions, feelings, behavior – even your abilities – are always consistent with this self image”.

So there’s a world of difference in believing you’re “a person who needs to lose some weight” rather than “an overweight person”. The first is simply a statement, the second is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Studies have even shown how important belief can be when performing basic tasks. Now, most folks are familiar with the placebo effect.

That’s where the simple act of believing that something works is enough to bring about a positive result. It’s the main reason why sportspeople tend to have so many weird habits on game day.

Bizarre rituals, lucky underpants, rabbits’ feet – you name it. Well, a study back in 2000 took this one step further ⁸¹.

Experienced athletes were split into two groups. One group was given a substance that was said to improve repeat-sprint performance.

The other group was given a substance that was said to impair repeat-sprint performance. Both groups’ repeat-sprint times were then tested.

Unsurprisingly, the first group’s times became progressively faster with each successive sprint. And, as expected, the other group’s sprint times did just the opposite - they got progressively slower.

But here’s the kicker. The substance that both groups took was identical and completely inactive.

Basically, their minds convinced their bodies that the substance’s effect was real. So it became real.

And here’s something even more interesting. The second group’s sprints got slower by a bigger margin than the first group’s sprints got faster.

The upshot being that if we have a negative mindset, there’s no limit to what we can’t achieve. This leads us on to powerful techniques such as:

• Positive visualization (imagining how you’ll look, feel and act when you achieve your goals)

• Writing your goals down on a card that you carry with you at all times

OK, these techniques may sound a bit wiggy, but they’re used regularly by some of the world’s most successful people. So chances are that they’ll work for you, too.

Now, if this is starting to sound like a bunch of useless theory or positive-thinking woo woo, here’s a real-world example of the importance of mindset. This is the true story of the fishing boat West One as described by British bushcraft expert Ray Mears ⁸².

The boat sank in the Pacific Ocean off Hawaii, and the crew took to two connected life rafts. Both rafts contained identical provisions, with the ship’s captain in charge of one raft, and the first mate in charge of the other.

The men in the first mate’s raft took control – they rationed food and water, and mopped out the seawater to prevent salt-water sores. The men on the other raft did none of this, and appeared to resign themselves to their fate.

After two weeks adrift, they were finally picked up. The men in the first mate’s raft were able to climb on board the rescue ship unaided.

However, those in the captain’s life raft were too weak to climb on board by themselves. Tragically, the captain himself had died the previous day.

Here’s what an expert in the psychology of survival had to say:

“Those people who survive report an ability to break their survival down into separate tasks – smaller tasks – and to take it one step at a time. Survival is not a big task, survival is a whole series of small tasks”.

Just like becoming a black belt in kung fu, learning to read Japanese, or losing 40 lbs of body fat.

Lose Weight Without Counting Calories

To lose weight we have to consume fewer calories than we expend. Ultimately, that’s all it comes down to.

And we have only two ways to do that: by reducing energy intake or by increasing energy expenditure. There is no magical “third way”.

If our weight is stable, it means our energy intake is matching our energy expenditure. That’s true no matter how little we believe we’re eating, or how much exercise we think we’re doing.

Of course, it is possible to eat as much food as we want, and still not get fat. After all, dragging a 500-lb sled to the South Pole could burn through a whopping 10,000 Calories per day.

Which means we’ll lose weight even if we eat a Big Mac for every single hour that we’re awake. Beat that Morgan Spurlock.

Now, dragging a sled to the South Pole is kind of extreme. But what about, say, road cycling?

Some guys put in huge miles on their bikes so that they can eat and drink as much as they want. So it may be possible to out-exercise a bad diet.

However, that comes at a price. Dedicating endless hours each week to intense calorie-burning activities is neither practical nor fun for most folks.

But here’s where we have some great news. There are a couple of ways we can skip calorie counting, eat whatever we want (within reason) and still manage to lose weight.

So let’s check them out.

First off, we can restrict ourselves to foods where it’s practically impossible to over-consume calories. This is basically how the paleo diet works, although it’s still possible to put on weight with paleo if you overdo it with coconut oil and fatty cuts of pork.

That’s not possible with our version. You can consume as much as you want, any time you want, of any of the following, and still lose weight.

Our old friends fibrous vegetables

Alfalfa sprouts, arugula, asparagus, bamboo shoots, bean sprouts, bok choy, broccoli, cabbage, cauliflower, celery, cucumber, eggplant, endive, kale, leeks, lettuce, okra, onion, peppers, radishes, sauerkraut, scallions, spinach, string beans, tomatoes, zucchini

Low-fat meat

Lean beef, skinless chicken breast, venison, buffalo and ostrich fit the bill here. Any other low-fat meat is fine, too.

Low-fat fish

Cod, halibut, red snapper, sole and tuna are good options. Any other low-fat fish also works.

Any calorie-free drinks

Water, green tea, black coffee and calorie-free soda.

The ground rules are very simple:

1. Vegetables must be eaten raw or steamed

2. Meat or fish must be cooked with minimal oil

3. Low-fat/low-carb whey protein powder is OK

Now there’s no prize for guessing how this diet works. It’s high in protein from all the meat and fish, and high in volume and fiber from all the vegetables.

This will both increase our metabolic rate and keep hunger pangs at bay. And, let’s be honest, it’s also going to be mind-numbingly boring – so chances are you won’t feel like eating very much.

In reality, this is the dietary equivalent of wearing a hair shirt, but the upside is you’ll lose a lot of weight fast. Just keep in mind that this will be mainly water weight at first.

But the bottom line is this diet works. So, could you stick with it for a few weeks or maybe a couple of months?

Sure, if you’re determined and focused enough. Increase energy expenditure a little while you’re doing it, and you could be looking at 30-40 lbs of weight loss in under two months.

Now that’s awesome progress, but there’s a fundamental problem with this approach. What happens when you hit your goal weight?

After all, you only know two ways of eating. Your previous diet that ended up making you overweight, and the protein and fibrous veggie endurance test.

So people may start flip-flopping between the two extremes because they haven’t discovered the middle ground where moderation lives. As we know, the key to long-term success is to eat the foods you want so that you can actually enjoy the process of losing weight.

Now, there is another way you can lose weight without counting calories. Plus you get to consume all the foods you enjoy.

Enter intermittent fasting, the new poster boy for fat loss. So, what is it and how does it work?

Basically, fasting means either not eating (duh!), or severely restricting caloric consumption for periods of around 16 to 36 hours at a time. So it’s actually very simple.

But people really love to overcomplicate things. Which means there’s a whole slew of competing theories, with each one claiming to be the Holy Grail of fasting.

In fact, Amazon.com shows around 400 book titles under “intermittent fasting”. Let’s just think about that for a second: four hundred books about the best way of not eating.

Well, you can keep your money in your pocket because here’s all you really need to know about fasting. To keep things simple we’re going to focus on fasts that require minimal calorie counting.

So, why does fasting work? Basically, it’s an easy way to create an energy deficit without having to do too much thinking.

One of the simplest methods is alternate-day fasting, otherwise known as ADF. You eat as much as you want one day, and then you consume no calories at all the following day.

You then just keep repeating that two-day cycle. So it’s really straightforward.

The basic idea is that although you’ll be storing some body fat on your non-fasting days, you’ll be burning all that plus a bit more on your fasting days. Here’s an example.

Let’s say you require 3000 Calories per day just to maintain your current bodyweight at your present activity levels. Now, on your non-fasting day you’d eat whatever you wanted.

That may be as much as 4000 Calories. Then the following day you consume no calories at all.

So, over the two days you’ve expended 6000 Calories in total (two days at 3000 Calories per day). But you’ve consumed only 4000 Calories.

That means you’ve achieved a 2000 Calorie deficit in only 48 hours. Which is pretty impressive stuff.

But there’s a downside. Some folks may not be willing to endure the feelings of hunger on fasting days ⁸³.

Waking up hungry on your fasting day knowing that you’re not going to be consuming any calories until the following morning can be brutal. But there’s a way around that, too.

Enter modified alternate-day fasting. Studies have shown that this is an effective way to lose weight with minimal calorie counting ⁸⁴ , ⁸⁵. Here’s how it works.

On non-fasting days you consume whatever you want (within reason). Then the following day you consume only 25% of your normal calories.

So what would that mean for the person in our previous example? Well, on non-fasting days they might eat 4000 Calories.

The next day is now a modified fasting day. How many calories will they be allowed to eat?

Well, their normal intake was 3000 Calories per day, so we just take 25% of that

3000 x 0.25 = 750 Calories

Basically they’re alternating days of 750 Calorie and 4000 Calorie consumption. So how does that pan out over the two days?

Well, in total they’ll have consumed 4750 Calories over the two days. And because their energy expenditure over that time was 6000 Calories, they’ll end up in a 1250 Calorie deficit. OK, let’s just run through that quickly below.

Weight maintenance calories = 3000 per day

Over two days = 3000 x 2 = 6000 Calories

Caloric intake over two days = 4000 + 750 = 4750

Energy deficit = 6000 – 4750 = 1250 Calories

As we know, a sustained energy deficit is the key to weight loss. So, if you can’t stand the idea of counting calories, modified alternate-day fasting may be just the thing you’re looking for.

That said, we need to keep in mind that fasting isn’t magic. Calories don’t just disappear – they always make it through.

So if your non-fasting day means a 6000-Calorie orgy at Pizza Hut, look out. You could still end up in an energy surplus over the two days.

And an energy surplus means weight gain. So let’s not go too crazy on those non-fasting days.

Then on your fasting days use your 25% Calorie allowance wisely. That means plenty of lean protein and fibrous vegetables.

Studies have shown that modified alternate-day fasting allows similar weight loss to a linear diet where folks ate at a 25% energy deficit every day ⁸⁶. Now that really shouldn’t come as a surprise – after all, they’re just two different ways of achieving the same thing.

Ultimately, it comes down to personal preference. The approach that’s best for you will be the one that’s easiest for you to stick with.

This is where we can really make things work for us because we don’t need to be tied down to any particular fasting strategy. We can easily come up with our own.

As long as you’re in an overall energy deficit each week, how you go about achieving that is completely up to you. OK, here’s another example of how that might work.

Let’s say that you exercise three days per week.

Now, you could eat your regular diet on those days, and knock out some calories from the non-exercise days. Three days of normal intake, say 3000 Calories per day, and 1500 Calories (50% of normal intake) on the other four days each week will really get things moving.

That actually knocks out the equivalent of 2 days’ worth of calories over the course of a week. Keep that going and incredible weight loss is guaranteed.

The deal maker is whether you’re in an overall energy deficit when you average out your caloric intake. It really is that simple.

And it doesn’t matter how you proportion carb/fat consumption as long as protein intake is kept high. Research shows that matching calories and protein while varying the proportion of calories from carbs/fat yields pretty much the same result ⁸⁷.

That means weight loss, reduced waist circumference, and improved blood lipids (LDL-c and triglycerides). The bottom line is fasting is nowhere near as complex as some folks make out, and there’s no single best way to go about it.

Now this is great news for us.

It means we have a tremendous amount of freedom to come up with a strategy that will work for us as individuals. Ultimately, fasting simply allows us to achieve a sustained caloric deficit without too much micromanaging.

And if you’re fasting but still not losing weight, it really comes down to increasing the energy deficit until you do. Let’s take a quick look at that next.

HELP - It’s No Longer Working!

Wouldn’t it be awesome if weight loss was nice and linear? You start out at whatever weight you are, and steadily lose fat until you hit your target weight.

Now, we know it’s not as simple as that. We know it’s easy to lose weight at first, but progressively more challenging as the weight comes off.

So maybe our weight loss should look like this.

No hiccups, no blips, no “is it still working?” anxiety – just predictable, sustained progress. Well, sorry to break it to you, but it simply doesn’t work that way in reality.

Out in the real world, weight loss will look more like this.

 

Sudden and dramatic drops in weight followed by frustrating plateaus, and maybe even a little weight gain. Sometimes it feels more like a rollercoaster ride.

Now that’s to be expected. Our bodies are inherently dynamic and complex, so it would actually be really weird if weight loss was nice and linear.

Ups and downs are a normal part of losing weight.

But at some point our weight loss will stall. And progress will come to a grinding halt.

What was previously working so well now no longer works at all. So what should we do?

First off, keep calm and don’t panic. The answers are to be found in the simple rather than the complex.

So let’s not jump to conclusions like we’ve got a thyroid problem or some other undiagnosed condition. And let’s not abandon what we’re doing and jump ship to some fad diet in the hope of reigniting our progress.

Now, some folks may even convince themselves that they’re physically unable to lose any more weight. Almost like they’ve reached some kind of genetically pre-determined ceiling where further progress is impossible.

Fortunately, none of those things is likely to be true. The real culprit is that we’re now caught in the throes of metabolic slowdown.

Now that may sound a bit sinister, but it’s actually quite normal and predictable. Here’s how it works.

You’re still consuming the same number of calories as before, but you’re no longer losing weight. That can only mean one thing – your energy expenditure (metabolic rate) has taken a dive. Remember that if bodyweight is staying constant, it means you’re eating at maintenance calories. In other words, energy intake is matching energy expenditure.

So, what causes this drop in metabolic rate, and what can we do about it? Well, now that you’ve lost weight your body is smaller, and a smaller body requires fewer calories to maintain than a larger body.

It works the same way with your car. See how your gas mileage improves when the three sumo wrestler hitchhikers get out of your Fiat 500.

Put simply, lugging around less weight requires less fuel. But that’s just the beginning.

Remember that our dwindling fat reserves are interpreted by our prehistoric brains as a sign that we’re slowly starving to death. It doesn’t matter that we’re surrounded by convenience stores and drive thrus.

The body launches its counter attack to safeguard its resources and ensure our long-term survival. Resting metabolic rate (the calories we burn chilling out) will actually slow down by more than predicted by weight loss alone.

Here’s an example of what that means.

Take two otherwise identical people; one who has dieted down from 240 lbs to 200 lbs, and one who has always been 200 lbs. The person who has dieted down to that weight will have a slower resting metabolic rate than the natural 200 pounder.

This alone can amount to some 200 Calories per day or more ⁸⁸. The upshot is even lying down asleep no longer requires as much energy as it used to.

And that’s just one of the ways that metabolic slowdown can occur. Then there’s NEAT (non-exercise activity thermogenesis) which covers spontaneous, unplanned movement like fidgeting, maintaining posture, and so on.

When we lose significant amounts of body fat, NEAT can take a real hammering. The body reduces energy expenditure by making us fidget less, slump instead of sit upright, and be just plain more sluggish.

And get this. Even if you do take some exercise, the body can fight back by further reducing unconscious energy expenditure during the time you’re not working out.

Metabolically, you’re frozen in carbonite. And this restriction in NEAT can come to several hundred Calories per day ⁸⁹.

So here’s what it boils down to. Even though you may be consuming the same calories that previously allowed you to lose weight, your metabolic rate could have dropped by something like 500 Calories per day.

Which is more than enough to blunt your expected energy deficit or even cancel it out altogether. As a result, weight loss slows to a snail’s pace or comes to a grinding halt.

So what do we need to do to get it moving again? Obviously, we need to open up an energy deficit – that’s always weight-loss rule number one.

Which means we could continue to pare back our calorie consumption. But if you’re already at a pretty low intake – say 2000 Calories per day or fewer – life could start getting pretty miserable.

But if you’re consuming considerably more than this, poke around and see where you can weed out some more calories from your intake. Another strategy you may want to consider is taking a diet break.

If you’ve been steadily losing weight for a couple of months or so, this could be exactly what you need. A week or two of eating at maintenance calories can put you in the right headspace before continuing with your weight loss.

Just be careful that a diet break doesn’t turn into seven days of feasting like a starving man. As always, moderation is your friend. Where diet breaks are concerned, there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Some folks may like the occasional milestone of a diet break, while others may not find it necessary.

And if we do decide to take a diet break, we shouldn’t regret it as time that would’ve been better spent losing weight. If it plays its part in the process of taking us towards our goals, it’s time well spent. Right now we’re coming to the end of what we can achieve from working the energy in side of the equation. When it comes to weight loss, this always holds the greatest potential for progress. Let’s keep in mind that the best exercises for 6-pack abs are:

1. Fork putdowns

2. Table pushaways

3. Head shakes

So it’s now time to start looking at boosting our metabolic rate through movement, exercise and training. And, as we saw earlier, our metabolic rate is something over which we have a huge amount of control.

Even better, movement isn’t just the key to increasing and maintaining weight loss. It can make us stronger and in better shape than we would have ever imagined possible, even in our 20s and 30s.

So let’s get to it.