The “Real” on How to Lose Weight

Everyone wants to know how to lose weight. With that, there are all kinds of diets, Keto low carb If It Fits Your Macros, Intermittent Fasting, and the list goes on and on and on and on

In the end, all that matters is that you are in a caloric deficit. Meaning you have to burn more calories than what you eat.

Are you struggling to lose weight? “The complete fat loss guide” teaches you how to lose weight and how to keep the pounds from ever coming back.

Track your macros, not your calories.

Step one on “how to lose weight” is to track your macros and not your calories. Food labels are not very accurate when it comes to calories. The FDA allows for a 20% discrepancy in the number of calories listed on the label. That means that your 100 calorie bagel could fall in between 80 calories or 120 calories.

The way we can overcome this guessing game is to, track our macronutrients (protein, fat, carbs) instead of tracking our calories.

Calorie breakdown of macros:

A gram of protein and carbohydrates each yields four calories, respectively.
A gram of fat yields nine calories.

Now that we have this information, we can figure out the number of calories of a particular food.

For example,

Let’s say that a 100 calorie bagel has 5g of protein, 20g of carbs, and 3g of fat.

Now we use math.

5×4=20 calories from protein

20×4=80 calories

3×9=27

Total calories: 127

By using this formula, you can set up your diet around macronutrients instead of calories.

Know Your TDEE

If you want to figure out once and for all how to lose weight, then we need to figure out your TDEE. Your Total Daily Energy Expenditure is the total amount of calories you burn in a day when you add up your RMR, TEF, NEAT, and Exercise.

Do not worry; I’ll explain what all this shit means in a second.

how to figure out you TDEE

Your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR) is the amount of energy your body uses to keep you alive.

RMR accounts for about 60 to 75% of calories burned throughout the day.

Factors that affect RMR:

Age, RMR decreases as we age.
Body composition, the more muscle you have, the higher your RMR.
Crash dieting destroys your RMR.
Gender, men’s RMR is higher than women’s due to the differences in lean body mass.

A simple way to estimate your RMR is to multiply your weight x 10.

Use the Thermogenic Effect of Food to your advantage

The thermogenic effect of food (TEF) is the calories your body uses to process and digest macronutrients. The TEF accounts for about 10% of your daily calorie expenditure.

You can manipulate this to burn more calories. Protein and fiber burn about 30% of their calories to digest foods. Carbs use in between 5 to 10% and fats between 0 to 3%.

So obviously if your goal is to learn how to lose weight, you would eat a diet high in protein and fiber.

Neat (Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis)

Your (NEAT) is the number of calories you burn performing daily activities like taking a shower, putting on makeup, or wiping your baby Jeremy’s bottom. The number of calories, depending on how active you are throughout the day. I mean, you’ll burn more calories by cleaning the house than by sitting on your ass for 2 hours.

Exercise

The number of calories you burn varies on the intensity and duration of your workouts. Exercise, when added with NEAT accounts for about 15 to 30% of your TDEE.

So how do we calculate our TDEE?

To estimate how much energy you use in a day, you will need to multiply your RMR by the following activity factors:

1.2 Sedentary – You mostly sit down all day and never exercise.
1.375 Light Activity – This is for people that either work at a desk job but do regular exercise or don’t exercise but have a job where they stand most of the day. I.e., a nurse or teacher.
1.55 Moderate Activity – Most of us fall into this category. For people who train super hard and work a sedentary job or for those that stand most of the day and also regularly exercise or for people that work a super active job but do not exercise. I.e., warehouse workers or construction.
1.725 Very active – For people that have insane workouts and also have a very active job.
1.9 Super Active – For the mad people that work a super intense job plus go to the gym like five times a week or people that train most of the day. I.e., triathletes.

RMR x Activity Factor = TDEE

& Finally

prioritize sleep

Prioritize sleep

You heard me. Lack of sleep can destroy every single ounce of effort you put into your fitness goals.

Lack of sleep causes your ghrelin (the hunger-signaling hormone) levels to go up and your leptin (the satiety hormone) levels to go down. Lower levels of leptin and higher levels of ghrelin make you feel a lot hungrier throughout the day.

Adequate sleep also allows you to burn more fat.

In a study performed by the University of Chicago, people were split into two groups. One group slept 8.5 hours a night while the second group slept for 5.5 hours. Both groups ate a 1450 calorie diet during the study. Both groups lost about 6.5 lbs, but the group that slept for 8.5 hours lost more fat, lost less lean body mass, and had a higher metabolic rate compared to the sleep-deprived group.

Figuring out your RMR and TDEE are the first steps to learn how to lose weight. Step two is to set up your macros, which can be found here.