The following is the second installment in a series of posts revolving around what makes a diet sustainable enough to be the primary driver for a successful fat loss phase. No matter the goal body weight or body fat percentage, you’ll never find yourself arriving there if you can’t adhere to long-term diet modifications that coincide with that goal. Though there are several different ways to manipulate the variables necessary to create a caloric deficit that burns fat and spares muscle, I believe that the methodology laid out in this series is helpful in creating a logical progression for a diet that is effective without causing you to be miserable and quit soon after starting.
Disclaimer: The following dietary recommendations are not intended for the treatment or prevention of disease, nor as a substitute for any kind of medical treatment or an alternative to medical advice. Use of the following dietary recommendations is herein at the sole choice and risk of the reader.
Efficient Body Recomposition
The act of “recomping,” aka swapping out body fat for muscle is an extensive process for most folks. Logically, this is due to the fact that losing body fat requires a net catabolic state over time, while building muscle requires just the opposite: a long-term net anabolic state. Now, there are some people who provide examples of getting away with gaining appreciable muscle and losing appreciable fat simultaneously, and they usually fit into one of the following groups:
- People who are absolute rank beginners (especially those with an excessive amount of body fat)
- People who significantly increase the demands of their training (going from piddling around to training with purpose and progressive overload)
- People who start using performance-enhancing drugs (duh)
- People who significantly increase their dosing of performance-enhancing drugs (kitten-doses to bobcat-doses to tiger-doses)
Now, if you currently fit into one of these aforementioned groups, you officially have my permission to stop reading. However, you should still bookmark this page and come back to it when you can no longer play your magic recomping card and have to improve your physique in a phasic manner like the rest of us. Most of the general population who trains, including those who train very seriously, just don’t fall into any of these groups (and if they do, they don’t stay in them forever).
This leaves the majority of us with the reality of chasing one goal at time: lose fat or gain muscle, i.e. drive a caloric deficit or surplus. This means that aside from just requiring a lot more time and subsequent patience, we also must apply a good chunk more thought to the process. In this case, we are accepting the reality that we won’t be building any new muscle mass during a fat loss phase due to the necessary caloric deficit. However, just because we won’t be building muscle doesn’t mean we should be content with throwing it away alongside the fat… it took a lot of time and effort to build that muscle, after all!
In other words, you can lose “weight,” but not optimally in terms of fat loss if done incorrectly. Following the latest crash diet may result in you dropping 8 pounds of scale weight relatively quickly, but if 5 of those pounds are lost water, 2 pounds are lost muscle mass, and only 1 pound is lost body fat, I don’t think you can call that a successful “fat loss diet,” just by definition alone. I probably speak for everyone reading that I would ideally wish to see 8 pounds of fat gone with no muscle loss in that scenario, which will certainly look better aesthetically and be more beneficial to metabolic health overall.
I do live in the real world, however, where I must accept that some muscle loss is likely to occur over the course of the diet, or at least somewhat at the tail end of it. The good news is that we now have sufficient research to suggest that if done properly, we may still not be able to keep muscle loss at absolute zero during a progressive fat loss diet, but we can get pretty darn close.
Keeping Muscle Around
So what must we do to avoid unnecessarily throwing away muscle mass during a diet? Luckily, it doesn’t involve some long to-do list or specific instruction manual. The strategy really boils down to two main bullet points:
- Resistance train
- Consume a relatively high amount of protein
That probably seems underwhelmingly simple (it is), but I’ll go ahead and elaborate.
First off, if you’re resistance training prior to a diet, you need to continue resistance training. If you’re not resistance training, you need to start (in this case you may fit into that beginner group and see some simultaneous recomp – yay!). As old-timey as the saying “if you don’t use it, you lose it” is, there is truth to it. Muscle mass carries a large metabolic cost, which is cool for us in the modern world, but wasn’t quite as cool when our ancestors were trying to survive in the wilderness for many generations with a scarce food supply. Therefore, your body just isn’t going to prioritize hanging onto a bunch of energy-consuming muscle mass if you don’t put it to use and send the signal that it’s needed.
Resistance training while dieting tends to put people who are meticulous about their resistance training metrics on edge when their numbers being to decline a bit, but again, it’s just another small trade-off. It may also seem uninspiring or somewhat meaningless to go into the gym and get psyched up to train if you know in the back of your mind that you’re not working to gain any noticeable strength or muscle while doing so. I realize this and often wrestle with it myself, but you must continuously remind yourself that the process still has a purpose, and 9 pounds of fat loss with 1 pound of muscle loss still looks way better than 5 pounds of fat loss with 5 pounds of muscle loss.
Also, as a general recommendation, I think it’s perfectly fine to pull the reigns back a bit with your resistance training when dieting. There’s more and more data emerging showing that most people can maintain muscle mass on a relatively low dose of training volume, which is relieving to know when you’re in a substantial calorie deficit and just no longer have the psychological fuel to go in and train like machine. This can also help you re-sensitize your body to hard training for strength and muscle growth, which may potentiate the effectiveness of future training periods. For example, you may train really hard to grow muscle for 8 weeks, then do a fat loss phase for 6-8 weeks where you spend more time “cruising” through training and letting yourself heal up, then follow that with another intense 10-12 week muscle growth phase that is now more effective because you’re starting it fresher with no injuries or burnout, as well as at a much more favorable physiological state.
One more thing to keep in mind with resistance training while dieting: although I believe it may need some more evidence to back it up, keeping track of your strength levels in the moderate rep ranges (8-15 reps or so) may be a good proxy for gauging muscle loss. If these numbers start to plummet, you may want to modify your calorie intake to a less aggressive deficit or take a second look at your protein consumption. If these numbers stay relatively stable, I’d say the possibility that you’re losing any appreciable amount of muscle mass is pretty unlikely.
As for protein intake, this should be the second biggest diet consideration after your calorie requirement is decided. Most people who are experienced with resistance training are familiar with the old one-gram-per-pound rule, which estimates that the amount of dietary protein intake needed to maximize muscle protein synthesis is approximately equal to one gram per pound of body weight. Again, as old-timey and “bro-ey” as this anecdote may seem, research continually shows that it’s pretty much spot-on. There are a few other estimates that are slightly more accurate, but most people are more or less splitting hairs at that point. You can certainly go a lot higher safely, just don’t expect a further dose-response relationship between protein intake and muscle growth, which is a rate-limiting process. So by now we basically know what amount of protein to eat to maximize muscle growth during a gaining phase, but what about when we’re trying to get the scale to trend the opposite way?
Well, as counter-intuitive as it may seem, we should probably keep protein intake the same, or even increase it to a reasonable extent. This means that yes, inevitably you’ll be cutting calories from fats and carbohydrates, not protein. Deal with it – you’re doing this for a worthwhile goal. Similarly to sending your body the message to keep muscle around by continuing to train, another good way to prevent muscle loss is keeping a solid amount of muscle-building material (i.e. amino acids) streaming in. Going even higher than one gram per pound of body weight may be of further benefit due to protein’s thermic effect and its tendency to increase satiety.
Another factor worth noting is the supplementary role of carbohydrates in preserving muscle mass. Although not directly responsible for building muscle tissue, carbohydrate consumption aids in building and preserving muscle mostly due to its effect on insulin, which shuttles nutrients into muscle cells and promotes glycogen storage within muscle. Although chronically high insulin levels accompanied by consistently large caloric surpluses aren’t favorable for metabolic health, consuming adequate carbohydrate while in a calorie deficit will help keep muscle mass fully recovered, topped off in glycogen, and a lot less likely to be lost.
General Calorie & Macronutrient Metrics
Although giving estimated metrics for the general reader is always a shot in the dark, this post would feel rather incomplete if I didn’t provide an example of what this strategy looks like on paper as far as a calorie/macronutrient breakdown. I’ll use myself as an example.
I’ll set calories first. Now, this can take some trial and error, especially if your daily activity level fluctuates day to day. I’ll set a range first. I can’t say that I’ve ever worked with anyone who couldn’t gain weight while eating 20 calories per pound of body weight. Similarly, I’ve never suggested anyone lose weight on less than 10 calories per pound of body weight. Split the distance between two endpoints and you end up with 15 calories per pound in the middle. If I estimate this to be a reasonable “maintenance” level of calories, then I’ll start just south of this figure at 13-14 calories per pound. At a current body weight of 185 pounds, I need to establish my target calories right around 2,500 calories (I can titrate this number up or down after gauging its correlation with my weekly average body weight).
Hopefully you’re with me so far.
Now that I’ve decided on a reasonable calorie goal, I need to set protein. Because I need to hit at least 185 grams of protein per day, I’ll go ahead and round it up to an even 200 grams to give me some room for error. There are 4 calories in a gram of protein, meaning that 800 of my daily calories will be accounted for by protein. Subtract that from the total calorie amount and I’m left with about 1,700 calories to split how I please between carbohydrate and fat. Since I personally do better with adherence if I’m able to eat more carbs while dieting (mostly due to calorie density/food volume – see my previous post!), I’ll skew my remaining calories that way. What I end up with is this rough breakdown for my day-to-day diet:
- Protein: 200 grams/800 calories
- Carbohydrate: 255 grams/1,020 calories
- Fat: 75 grams/675 calories
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- Total Calories: 2,495
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Again, this would be a logical starting point. As with most anything blending mathematics and biological systems, things always need to be adjusted withing a range. But given this example, you can see how eating habits can still be kept fairly flexible for a while. No crash dieting needed. No huge water losses skewing scale data. No demonized foods. Steady, consistent fat loss that takes a bit more time but is assuredly actual fat loss. And the best part: you get to keep your muscle!
Practical Food Choices
Without a doubt, most people have no issue eating adequate amounts of carbohydrate and fat – sugar and grease make just about anything taste better, after all. However, it’s common to see a lot of folks struggling to hit a protein requirement of one gram per pound of body weight or higher, especially when dieting and trying to stay under a certain calorie amount at the same time. I find a good strategy for this is to shift your primary sources of protein towards foods that are almost solely protein. Without the extra fat or carbs added on, you can eat more of these protein sources and hit your goal without exceeding your calorie limit.
There are all kinds of protein sources out there now that are low-fat, fat-free, or sugar-free and still taste pretty good. At the very least, there are also plenty of zero-calorie sweeteners and seasonings available that can be used. You can get as creative as you wish, so long as the numbers fit, but here’s a quick list of my go-to foods that are high in protein and not much else (along with some practical suggestions):
- Sirloin/Bison
- Swap out 80/20 or 85/15 ground chuck for 90/10 or 95/5 ground sirloin or ground bison. The biggest trade-off here is price.
- Chicken/Turkey Breast
- Trim what little fat there is, if you can even find any. Cheap and can be seasoned with just about anything.
- Tuna/Tilapia
- Canned tuna is so cheap it’s silly, and the pre-seasoned kind in packets is still pretty low in calories. Also cheap, tilapia has no taste in my opinion, but that just means you can make it taste like anything
- Egg Whites
- Wean yourself off of whole eggs over the course of a diet if you have to by using less and less of the yolks – an incredibly easy way to shave down fat intake if you typically eat a lot of eggs.
- Nonfat Yogurt/Cottage Cheese
- Pretty self-explanatory from the name… if you’re used to whole-fat dairy products, you may want to transition to reduced-fat first before jumping to nonfat.
- 1%/Skim Milk
- I’m a big milk drinker and I love whole milk, but I just can’t sustainably drink it while I’m dieting because of its fat content and corresponding caloric density. That being said, transitioning to 1% milk is an easy way for me to cut quite a bit of calories by default. I don’t know that I could bear drinking skim, but more power to you if you can.
- Whey Isolate
- I’m not a huge supplement proponent, but I do regularly use whey protein powder as a tool to quickly and conveniently add quality protein to my diet. Admittedly, most of what I use is a bit higher in calories, though. Whey Isolate is a type of protein powder that is solely the whey protein concentrate without any added carbs or fat (and therefore calories). Unfortunately, it usually tastes awful because of this, so I suggest experimenting with low/zero-calorie flavorings if you go this route.
Recap
- Favorable body recomposition is achieved through the sum of long term net results from alternating phases of gaining muscle/minimizing fat gain and losing fat/minimizing muscle loss.
- Maintaining muscle mass while dieting for fat loss requires you to continue resistance training while keeping protein intake relatively high
- When setting up a fat loss diet plan, establish your calorie limit first and your protein requirement second.
- A logical strategy for keeping protein intake high while staying in a caloric deficit is to choose protein sources with little to no extra calories from fat or carbohydrate.
Strength Scrolls 