The Guide to Cutting Fat

We all want to be shredded lean. Or at least we often want to be a leaner version of ourselves now. While it may not be sustainable or even healthy to walk around in bodybuilding conditioning, if we plan and execute correctly, we can maintain a leaner physique year round. When it comes to cutting fat there aren't many caveats, and there are even less short cuts or magic formulas. Unfortunately for many, they just don’t understand it takes time, sacrifice, and discipline. Those that embrace that fact are much further into obtaining a leaner and often healthier physique. 

If you are reading this you are probably like a large portion of the population. You want to lose fat. You may want to lose fat to be healthier, feel better, or hell, even to look good naked. There is nothing wrong with wanting to look good for yourself, the opposite sex, your family, or even your spouse. While it may be unhealthy to be obsessed with getting leaner, usually we can maintain a healthy mindset behind losing fat if we understand how it works, and further know and avoid some pitfalls.

Being in bodybuilding I have seen the journey to fat loss get dark. I’ve even experienced it. I’ve been put in positions I never thought I would be. Putting pressure on myself I couldn’t sustain, I even had some bulimic tendencies during one contest preparation in particular. My mind was in a dark place and I had no business preparing for a competition. I learned from this and worked to put myself in a much healthier position mentally for coming competitions. I have successfully not repeated those patterns, but still battle with overeating post competition. Bodybuilding is extreme and while it may not directly cause eating disorders, it can certainly aggravate any existing issues. Chances are you aren’t part of the tiny percentage of the population that wants to willingly starve themselves for aesthetic goals and a plastic trophy. That’s totally fine. The thing to remember is having a healthy mindset centered around health and getting to a reasonable body fat percentage is key. Otherwise you may become lost in the process and fall short. If you are into bodybuilding, the same concepts apply, it is just a matter of taking them further and longer and dealing with more bouts of hunger and sacrifice.

The concept of losing fat is remarkably simple. It boggles my mind how people think they can cheat biology and lose fat fast, easily, and without any compromise to their current lifestyle. The thing to remember is there has to be lifestyle change. There has to be some sacrifice. Because if you don’t change then, well, nothing changes. Losing fat comes down to simply eating less than your body needs. Perhaps you are coming from a place of consistently eating more than your body needs, and even then, this will be a sacrifice. It isn’t about eating magic foods or even “the right foods”, but simply less total energy throughout the day, week, months, and in some cases years to come. We need to understand if we approach this from unsustainable means, we will, often quickly, return to our bigger states.

The first thing I would recommend before talking about how to calculate how much you should eat each day, is to exercise. I don’t recommend hours on the treadmill. That doesn’t sound sustainable and can be mentally dangerous. I recommend lifting weights. Lifting weights will maintain or even in some times increase muscle mass. A leaner physique with some remaining muscle mass is usually much more desirable and considered attractive. I don’t necessarily mean bodybuilding levels of muscle, but having and sustaining muscle mass will make this easier and help us avoid some plateaus. Refer to previous blogs on creating a workout program and how to best progress through it for best results.

Once we establish a good routine and determine that a cutting fat phase is what we need to do, lastly we just need to plan our nutrition. This is a little easier said than done, but being very close to our targets consistently, we can figure out our bodies energy needs, and then ensure we are undershooting these needs. I would recommend using a BMR calculator to start. You can find these all over the internet. This calculator just simply compounds data to estimate your needs. A body fat scan can help this be more accurate along with some idea of how active you are. Start by plugging in the data such as age, height, weight, activity level and body fat percentage if it is known. If body fat is not known, an estimate will suffice. The calculator will spit out a number estimated on your daily energy consumption needs. From there we will need to undershoot it to ensure tissue is lost over time. Maintaining a challenging weight lifting program will ensure the tissue lost is mostly body fat.

From this number we can take a percentage of the daily need and diet plan. 90% of the daily need is a good start. If weight loss is not happening or happening too slowly, you can increase this to 80%. If 80% isn’t making it happen then the calculator may have overshot your needs and you may need to continue to drop until weight starts to change, and change at a desirable range. 1-2 pounds of body fat is a good target. 1 pound of loss is more sustainable and likely more enjoyable, but of course takes more time. Anything under 80% of your true needs may be more uncomfortable and less likely to be sustainable. I see many try to go too fast, drop weight fast, then gain it right back because they couldn’t sustain those targets, so be smart. Let’s take an initial calorie estimation and calculate the target calorie goal.

Daily needs: 2,500

Smaller 10% reduction: 2,250

Larger 20% reduction: 2,000

Once calories are set we can plan our macronutrients. Macronutrients are the energy producing nutrients fat, protein, and carbohydrates. Protein will grow and maintain muscle mass primarily so this is very important. Fats and carbohydrates are mostly energy producing. Carbohydrates are needed for energy, especially in the case of weight lifting. Maintaining appropriate carbohydrates will help ensure better gym performance that will support muscle mass. I would consider them the second most important. While we can do a very low or 0 carb approach, in most cases I wouldn’t consider this ideal. Fats are needed to support hormonal activity and serve many functions in the body, but aren’t the most readily used fuel and aren’t as impactful for muscle retention as the other macro nutrients. For these reasons, in most cases, I limit fat before other macronutrients. The priority remains on protein with the second priority being carbohydrates. Here are some ranges to set your macro nutrients. Fat and carbs can be a sliding scale. If you prefer more fat and less carbs that’s perfectly fine as long as you are at a level of carbohydrates to support improvements or at least sustained gym performance. Tracking your numbers in the gym will help you determine this.

Protein: .8-1.0 grams per pound of bodyweight

Carbohydrates: 1 gram or more per pound of body fat

Fat: .2 grams or more per pound of bodyweight

The simplest way to do this is to set your protein and adjust the others as, again, a sliding scale. 1.0 grams per pound of fat is ideal, but with higher levels of body fat, the lower end of the range is acceptable. From there we can set carbs at at least 1 gram per pound or as close as we can to that bottom limit. In some cases this may not be possible, and in the case of higher body fat, it may be ideal to go a bit lower. You can also fit your fat and fill in the carbohydrates as needed. I find in many cases higher body fat individuals respond best to higher fat and lower carbs, yet more muscle mass must maintain a higher carbohydrate need. Let’s take 2 examples. The first being someone with more muscle mass, the other having a higher body fat level.

More muscle mass male at 180lbs

Protein: 1g per pound

Carbohydrates: 1.2g per pound

Fat: .3g per pound

Higher body fat at 180lbs

Protein: .8g per pound

Fat: .4g per pound

Carbs: .8g per pound

The higher body fat individual will likely burn less energy naturally. Let’s break down the numbers and match the macros with the calories. Each gram of both protein and carbs are roughly 4 calories. Fat will be at 9 calories per gram. We can use the calorie target to set the deficit in energy and the macros accordingly. We can set two metrics and do reverse math to decide the remaining calorie allotment and assign the third macronutrient target. Let’s take an example.

More muscle mass example

2,500 calorie need at 180lb male with more muscle mass

15% deficit

Goal calories: 2,125

Protein: 180 grams (1g/lb)

At 4 calories per gram

720 calories from protein

Fat: 54 grams (.3g/lb)

At 9 calories per gram

486 calories

Protein and fat total: 1,206

Remaining calories: 919

Calories per gram of carbs: 4

919/4 = 230g of carbs or 1.28g/lb

Less muscle mass example:

2,100 calorie need at 180lb male with less muscle mass

15% deficit

Goal calories: 1,785

Protein: .8g/lb

144g of protein at 4 calories per gram

576 calories from protein

Fat: .4g/lb

72g of fat at 9 calories per gram

648 calories from fat

2,100 - 576 - 648 = 876 remaining calories

876 calories/ 4 calories per gram of carbs

219g of carbs

More muscle mass targets

2,125 calories

180p/54f/230c

Less muscle mass targets

1,785 calories

144p/72f/219c

Now that we have our targets we can do one of two things. We can plan a diet or number of diets to prepare and keep us on target or we can track throughout the day. We can use a number of apps to formulate a diet or track. Many use MyFitnessPal. I prefer Avatar Nutrition or Chronometer. These apps have the nutrition of foods programmed into a database. We can put in portions of each item for a diet we plan to align the targets, or we can track and work to hit those targets daily. Having a good idea on what foods are heavier in each of these three macronutrients is a good idea. I suggest natural foods as opposed to processed items for health, hunger control and the best results. Using this method over time you can accomplish any fat loss goal. If the target weight is not moving or if the body isn’t visually improving it’s back to the drawing board. Undershoot the original calorie goals and rework the macro targets. Once body weight is dropping at a desirable rate, continue the plan until the goal is achieved.

While this may seem complex on the surface, it is really just simple math and understanding these concepts. Diet planning and/or tracking is a skill that may take some practice. Whichever method you choose, make sure it is sustainable and helps maintain a healthy mindset around dieting. With some homework and a little practice you will be an expert at controlling your own body and working to achieve your ideal body. If you want to cut out the trial and error, or just hate math, consider hiring a coach. This often takes out the thought, keeps you accountable to your goals, and can often make a fat loss phase an enjoyable, effective and stress free learning experience.