First off, thank you so much for the love on my last post! I didn't expect so many new visitors to my blog. If you're a new reader, hello and welcome!
In that post, I mentioned that I want to break down the mechanics for weight loss; however, I stated how fat loss and weight loss are completely different avenues. This is something that I didn't understand when I started attempting to lose weight. As I learned, I found that my goals were much more maintainable, and I could successfully make my structured plan that was tailored to "fat loss." Up until then, I had been weighing myself almost every other day and trying to get the scale to go down. But when I reached my "goal weight", my body didn't look how I thought it would look. Muscle definition wasn't there; I didn't feel strong (in fact, I felt weaker than when I started); I was unsure how to begin building strength.
Weight loss
Do you ever watch shows about weight loss (I'm looking at you, "Biggest Loser") where the contestants try to lose a significant amount of weight in a short amount of time? Or have you seen an ad for a program or a meal plan or a product that claims to achieve a 20 pound weight loss in 2 weeks? We see it everywhere, and society has picked up on this; there's now a plethora of false information, and the health/fitness community has earned a negative reputation.
My big goal is to get back to the root of everything and educate people on maintainable, safe, and effective ways to lose weight, change body composition, and heal our bodies overall.
Let's start with basic weight loss. Maybe you just want to shed a few pounds. Or maybe you've been advised by your doctor to lose weight. Maybe you're starting at square one like I did, and you haven't been active in a long time, and all of your meals are extremely heavy and processed.
In this case, my biggest piece of advice is to START SLOW. There is a very helpful calculator online called the TDEE Calculator. I'll link it here: https://tdeecalculator.net/
TDEE stands for "Total Daily Energy Expenditure." This is how many calories you burn in a day when also taking into account how active you are; it helps if you do work out or you have heavily active work days. You can pick how active you are in a day, and your age and gender, and it will give you an estimate. But the huge helpful factor the calculator uses is finding your BMR.
Let's pause and talk about BMR, which stands for "Basal Metabolic Rate." This is how many calories you burn if you were to do nothing all day...basically if you were to lay in bed for an entire day, this is how many calories your body needs to fuel all of the internal processes in the body. This is the big component involved when people refer to metabolism. And here is the simplified reason of why it's a bad idea to jump into extreme calorie cutting: Let's say you immediately decide to cut your daily calories to 1,200. You will start losing weight because you are burning more energy than you're consuming. HOWEVER, your body's sole job is to keep you alive. It will learn to adjust to those calories because it needs to utilize those calories for the most crucial bodily functions. Therefore, your metabolism will "drop" to burn less calories throughout the day in order to stay alive. So if you ever decide to jump back up in calories, it'll be more likely that you'll gain weight, since your body has adjusted to burn less. This is a huge reason why people with severe/quick weight loss (example: "Biggest Loser" contestants) typically gain some pounds back.
Now you might be thinking "well what the hell do I do then?" Here's the basic place that I started: I tracked my food on the MyFitnessPal app for a day to see how much I was eating. (Disclaimer: if you currently, or have, suffer from disordered eating, be careful with the numbers and remember that these are just tools. They're not going to be 100% accurate because apps don't know YOUR body specifically) Since I was pretty much getting fast food 2-3 times a day, I was eating an insane amount of calories for my body type. Next I used the TDEE calculator and got my BMR calories. After seeing the average/minimum of what my body needs in a day, I then focused on the TDEE number (since that roughly takes into account my activity levels) for a few weeks. I started losing weight!
Once I seemed to "stall" in weight loss, and was ready to lose more, I dropped my calories by about 200-300. Keep in mind that this part is going to be different for everyone and you'll need to experiment. But as you adjust, stick with the new plan for at least 3 weeks so your body can adjust and actually show you what is working and what isn't.
What I want you to take away from this section is to take your time and go slow. The goal for us is to keep our metabolism efficient and not deprive ourselves! This is why long-term weight loss is the most effective; say goodbye to the frustrating cycle of rapidly losing and rapidly gaining over and over!
Fat loss
So far we’ve covered weight loss. If you want to lose weight and that’s it, you simply need to figure out your calories. But now we’re going to discuss fat loss; how do you gain toned muscle while losing fat? How do you change your body composition?
Here’s a huge myth that I’d like to call out: spot reduction. Unfortunately you cannot spot reduce specific parts of your body that you want to lose weight; doing 100 sit-ups won’t get you abs, etc. However, you can manipulate your muscles and train certain body parts, which will build those muscles. Have you ever heard somebody say “a pound of muscle weighs more than a pound of fat”? If you think about that, it’s a bit incorrect. A pound is a pound no matter what it is. HOWEVER, a pound of muscle takes up LESS SPACE than a pound of fat. It is more dense. Therefore, when I started working on building lean muscle, the scale did go up slightly but I looked a lot smaller than before building that muscle. As you gain lean muscle, your metabolism definitely becomes more efficient; muscles need more fuel to function than fat, so your body will need more food to maintain the new muscle!
This is the portion where I want to touch on macros. You probably hear “macros” a lot right now, which is short for “macronutrients.” The macronutrients that the body needs are protein, carbohydrates, and fats. I’ll have to dedicate a separate post on this topic because it’s hefty. But macros will play a role when you get to the muscle-building phase. This is where it gets deeper than just “calories in and calories out.” For example, protein is vital for muscle maintenance and other important bodily functions. You’ll benefit from finding the proper macros that you need. But here’s what I’ll say for now: be careful when you take macro advice from people. A lot of influencers online post their meals or macros that they eat, and there’s nothing wrong with that! But the people watching sometimes think “Ok, this girl eats 200 grams of protein, 300 grams of carbs, 150 grams of fat. She looks great so I’m going to do that.” But you have to figure out what YOU need. I still adjust constantly based on my goals, and I adjust WHEN different macros are taking place. For example, I feel really good when I start my day off with a hearty, protein-filled breakfast. But other people feel more energetic and satisfied with carbohydrates in their breakfast like oatmeal or toast. It will depend on you and your training and your schedule and your digestive tract.
So besides fueling your muscles, we need to talk about: how do you GET lean muscle and lose fat??
I used to be a cardio bunny when I was trying to lose weight. Anything involving cardio was my BFF. Eventually I got into HIIT-style cardio, which stands for “high intensity interval training.” This was very effective for weight loss and having more endurance. But then I wanted a bigger booty and abs and a defined back, but that just wasn’t happening; at the time, I didn’t understand why. I was training so hard and not seeing those changes that I wanted; in fact, I accidentally lost a little more wight and it was noticeable.
Finally, I got into resistance training, and this is where the gains started. When you train with weights, you are putting stress on your muscles. Little “rips” form in the muscle as you push them in this way. Then when you’re resting afterwards or taking a recovery day, the muscles are repairing themselves; but as they repair those little tears, they are growing (keep in mind this is the most simplified explanation ever; there is way more science behind this!) So I cannot recommend resistance and weight training enough. Even if you are trying to just lose some weight, I encourage you to incorporate weight training into your routine; lifting burns a lot of calories, and sometimes burns more in a shorter amount of time than cardio.
I’ll admit, I do get annoyed with that huge hype around resistance bands. You know what I’m talking about, right? The bands people use in videos on Instagram to train their glutes or other body parts. And if you’re just starting out, bands are a great tool to challenge yourself and get more of a burn. But this won’t last long once you’re stronger. Eventually you will need to add weights in order to shape your body and build more strength. It’s not all about “feeling a burn.” You need to put legit “stress” on your muscles and most importantly, BE CONSISTENT. Consistency is everything. A lot of people talk about “shocking your muscles” by changing the workouts every time, but that’s bullshit. If you want to change it up or activate new muscles, research different foot positions and different rep amounts and different tempos. It’s important to be consistent with training so you can actually get stronger! It took me over a year of consistent weight training to see growth in my glutes; even now, it’s taking me quite some time to move my level of weights up again.
This post is getting long, so I’m going to tie it up with this: don’t be afraid of getting “bulky.” I cannot stand that word! I think, as a society, we are moving in the right direction. Usually when I’m at the gym I see more girls in the lifting area than men! But I know there are still a lot of people out there that are afraid to touch weights. When you see an extremely muscular person, please keep in mind that it took them a lot of time and hard work, and they were probably working towards that specific goal. They eat in a caloric surplus. That doesn’t happen overnight, and it’s incredibly difficult to do. Like I said before, it's taken me years to build the small amount of muscle that I've gained. It's all about patience and consistency. It's easy to get frustrated when you don't see the results as quickly as you'd like. But these methods are fool-proof and science-based; it does work, but it is not a quick fix and it's not a fast "diet" solution. We're in this for a lifetime! But I promise there is a way to incorporate fitness and health into your daily routine. It's a marathon, NOT a sprint.
The next post will probably be a dive-in with macronutrients and micronutrients; that would've made sense in this post, but it's quite lengthy now.
I hope you found this informative and I hope that it inspires you to do some independent research. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out and I will do my best! This summer, I plan on potentially taking more nutrition classes along with my current major so I can get some additional certifications. From there, I'd also like to get my Personal Trainer certificate. My passion for properly educating people on these topics is growing, and I just want to do whatever I can to clear out all the bullshit that we've been taught. The fitness and wellness world is constantly changing and it can be overwhelming to figure out what's true and what's simply a marketing scheme.
Thank you SO MUCH if you've read this. It means everything to me. I'll talk to you soon!
Sources: most of my information has come from my school classes/textbooks. Some websites include healthline.com and menshealth.com and my father, who is a certified personal trainer.
*picture is my own