When planning for your fat loss, you will need to know how much food you will need to eat. Easiest way to monitor that is by calculating how much fat you want to lose and pair that into how much caloric deficit you will need to create. You can also estimate, how long you may need to continue with caloric deficit.
Along with calculation method, I will also share several considerations you will have to understand before applying the plan.
Finding Where You Are
First thing you will need to know is where you currently are in terms of weight, body fat, and daily caloric expenditure. These numbers should be as accurate as you can make it. So for weight and body fat percentage you may want to use devices that can scan total body such as InBody scale with both foot and hand sensors or DEXA scan. When using these devices follow the protocol for better accuracy of the measurement. Majority of these type of device will require you to fast, eliminate caffeine and alcohol for 12 hours, no exercise for 8 hours and so forth.
For daily caloric expenditure you can reference to your smart watch or any device that track you daily caloric usage. Although it is not as accurate as we want, however, it does give a good enough information. Scale does include your calculated resting metabolic rate, however, it is not including your daily activity energy usage. Data on the right is showing my InBody results and calorie expenditure using my Garmin app.
My current body weight is 161.7lb with body fat percentage of 15.9% according to InBody. This means I have 25.7lb of fat mass. From Garmin app, my weekly average of calorie usage is about 2500 calories.
Calculation to 10% Body Fat
Now I got my baseline information. Let's say I want to bring my body fat percentage of 10% while maintaining 160lb. 10% of 160lb is 16lb. My current body fat mass is 25.7lb so I will need to lose 9.7lb of body fat mass. To keep the math simple lets say 10lb.
Now I need to know how much total calories I will need to burn to get to 10lb fat reduction. To lose 1lb of body fat we need to burn 3500 calories. Therefore multiply 10lb fat x 3500 calories, which comes to 35,000 calories.
Ideal calorie deficit is anywhere between 300-500 calories per day. Anything beyond that can lower your metabolic rate along with energy to train and accomplish your daily task at work or at home. For reducing 35,000 calories (10lb of fat) with 500 calories deficit daily will take about 70 days or little under 3 month. Because my daily energy expenditure is 2500 calories, I will need to be consuming about 2000 calories to reach my goal.
Finding Macronutrient Split
Now that I know how much calories I need per day, my next step is how much of what source of food I need per day. This is called macro nutrient split or macro split. Macronutrients are carbohydrate, protein, and fat. Gram per calorie of each macro nutrients varies. Carbohydrates are 4 calories per gram, proteins are 4 calories, and fats are 9 calories. Because I want to maintain 160lb of body weight I want to keep 160g of protein per day which is 640 calories. This is about 32% of the 2000 calories. Remainder of percentage will split into fat and carbs but this is where proper understanding is needed.
We know that carbohydrates will spike more insulin relative to fat. However, we also need carbohydrates to supply energy for training especially if you want to maintain your muscle mass. Another fact through scientific studies is consuming both fat and carbohydrates can drastically increase the insulin secretion. With that in mind I may want to have carbohydrate amount that is equivalent to half of my body weight and use fat for remainder of the percentage. Therefore, 16% (80g) of 2000 calories will go to carbohydrates
and 52% of 2000 calories goes to fat. Now, this may seem like a lot of fat. When you do the math it is 1040 calories of fat. In gram though it is divided by 9 calories, which comes down to 115g of fat. Which may still sound a lot but 1 cup of walnuts is 52g of fat, one medium avocado has 21g of fat, 8 oz. of salmon has 26g of fat. These three sources add together is already at 99g of fat.
Organizing Data
Let's summarize what we have so far.
Current Weight: 161.7lb
Current Body Fat%: 15.9%
Goal Body Fat%: 10%
Average Energy Expenditure: 2500 Calories
Target Calorie Consumption: 2000 Calories
Duration of Plan: 3 month
Macro Split per Day: C:16% P: 32% F:52% (C:80g P:160g F:115g)
Meal Consideration
Focus of this article is calculating calories and duration of plan for fat loss. To get maximum benefit, we need to think of meal frequency. 3 things that I want to make sure that is happening are 1.) keeping insulin down, 2.) getting enough protein, and 3.) giving digestive system a down time.
When we eat, there will be an insulin spike. Depending on what you are eating this may vary. With macro splits that I have arranged, insulin spike should be minimal. By the way, to bring nutrients into our body, we do want insulin to working for us. After every meal, I want to make sure that there are time when the insulin level is down. If I split my calories into 4-6 meals per day, the duration of insulin level being low is short compared to 2-3 meals per day.
Because I need 160g of protein I don't want to do 2 meals a day. 80g of protein per meal may be do able but my digestive system will not be happy. With 3-4 meals the protein intake can be 40-60g, which is more attainable.
Considering insulin level and protein amount I typically like to keep 3 meals per day with 60g of protein in first 2 meals and 40g protein on third meal. This way I'm giving both insulin level and digestive system about 6-8 hours of recovery and down time.
Other Considerations
It is important to understand that the calorie counting is just a way to quantify how much we are supposed to be consuming and device to measure may not be as accurate as they claim. It also does not include your current insulin level, cortisol level, cholesterol level, sleep habits, genetics and so forth. Just by calculating and following numbers may not be enough to see the results.
Depending on where you are in your fat loss journey, you may need more adjustment. For example, if you have sleep issues, this alone can raise your cortisol level which then can influence in increase in insulin level. This can automatically raise your body fat even when you are eating a right calorie and macro splits.
Exercising too much can also be an issue. Exercising too much to the point that the body cannot recover will eventually lead to cortisol elevation and cause metabolic rate to drop. This is not productive for energy expenditure especially for those who have larger amount of fat to lose. Keep your training sessions between 30-60 minutes for 2-4 times per week.
When you are following the calories and macro splits, and do not see any results in 2 weeks, keep the diet but check the other area of your lifestyle. Could be sleep, could be stress, could be inactivity, could be mindless snacking. You may also need to readjust your numbers. There may be a hormonal imbalance. Especially for women, during their cycle, the body weight can fluctuate significantly. When weighing-in make sure to keep that in perspective. This can be a great education material to understand what body composition change you will see in before, during, and after the cycle.
Monitoring Progress
By following the above numbers, I should be losing about 1lb of fat mass per week. However, as mentioned earlier, these numbers are not absolute. They are guide. At the same time, body does adapt to the new conditions and may plateau. Therefore, it is important to monitor the progress weekly or more frequent. More data you have, you can see the trend better.
It is ideal to monitor the same way you've gathered your initial data. For me will be with InBody for body fat mass and daily energy expenditure in Garmin app. For InBody, I want to make sure that I am following a same protocol as my first measurement. I also want to make sure that my muscle mass is not declining as much and I can monitor that through InBody.
Consistency
Consistency is key to the success. Once the plan is set (ideally on Sunday) start the following day and don't stop. You may make adjustment but don't stop. Majority of time we get derailed and waste the results and effort that you have placed. This could be social gathering with too much drinking, eating out because busy, someone baked you and instead of just a bite you at 3-4 cookies, and list can go on.
Especially when you are seeing results, stay consistent until you reach your goal.
Kota Shimada
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