Is losing Weight just about Calories In Vs Calories Out?
Most of the time when people refer to losing weight, they often refer to only 1 part of the fat loss continuum, reducing over all calories consumed to force the body into a deficit.
Now, don't get me wrong; I'm sure this works perfectly fine to get the ball rolling but you will need a 3 tier dietary and lifestyle approach to losing weight to achieve optimal results. Especially results that don’t fade away due to the energy balance equation. For example, one month you’re in a calorie deficit and the next you’re making bad decisions blowing any and all success achieved in the previous month out the door.
Another popular way of losing body fat in the mainstream is buying supplements that induce “fat burning effects”.
If you were to try to get lean by just taking a few diet supplements your results would also be very suboptimal. Especially since many supplement approaches increase fat mobilisation, and don't improve fat oxidation. Basically you can consume diet pills or powder all day long, but if that fat isn't oxidised (combined with an appropriate exercise program and hypo-caloric diet), those fatty acids will just be recycled – and sent right back to those same fat cells where they came from.
Here’s another perspective, if you try to get leaner by dieting only, you're also bound to lose muscle mass over time rather than exercising appropriately. Our goal is to prevent the body from losing that hard earned muscle tissue and optimise fat loss. When we lose muscle tissue, it will significantly reduce our overall BMR (Metabolic Rate) and affect training intention in the gym.
Lastly, if we only focused on training in the gym to lose weight, we wouldn’t be able to even come close to meeting the demands of neurologically adapting to enough training volume and intensity in 1 session to make up for a non-balanced nutritional plan or lifestyle.
Instead of staring at a tree, look at the forest.
We have to look at the bigger picture when trying to achieve a specific result that best reflects our ability to improve. Getting healthy isn’t complicated, but it does take time to achieve the results you’re after. Spend the time finding a good relationship with proper movement, intentional exercise and nutrition. When you connect the 3, you won’t have competing forces working so hard against one another trying to seek homeostasis.
A good starting point is ;
Have a daily step goal to achieve consistent NEAT (10,000 steps is a great and popular goal)
Go to the gym and strength train. This is our best defence for muscle breakdown, especially when we are in a fat loss phase. We always recommend training 2-3 times a week.
When thinking about nutrition, always stick to single ingredient foods, consume protein with every meal and get an adequate amount of green leafy vegetables every day.
