Fat Loss Supplements & The exact amount of calories and protein YOU should be eating
If you’re taking fat loss supplements in hope they can make you leaner with a diet that isn’t hitting the right amount of calories and protein consistently you’re wasting your time. I like to compare it to trying to empty a swimming pool with a teaspoon .. while it’s chucking it down with rain. (Your body being the swimming pool, the rain/water being the bodyfat) 😉
How do I work out the amount of calories and protein I need to drop body fat consistently though?
Easy.
First though .. it’s important to know that every successful diet plan NEEDS to be simple and easy to follow.
If your diet is overly complicated, requires too much time cooking/preparing/cleaning and is expensive then you probably won’t stick with it!
However.. if your diet is simple, straightforward and convenient then it is much more likely you will see the diet all the way through. Resulting in looking pretty damn awesome 😉
You can expect to drop between 1-1.5 lbs of fat per week (0.5kgs) with what I’m about to share. THIS is the rate of fat loss that you will be able to stay satisfied, gain strength, maintain your muscle and possibly even gain some muscle size while consistently dropping bodyfat each week.
Those that try to lose 2 lbs or more per week on crash diets are the ones that lose strength and muscle and break their diets gaining all of the weight back.
Note
When you break under the 10% body fat range then fat loss should be much slower. 0.5-1 lb per week of fat loss is the maximum rate that I recommend.
Okay okay back to working out exactly how many calories YOU need as an individual to start dropping the right amount of bodyfat each week!
First – Determine Your Maintenance Level Calories
There are all sorts of complicated calculators and formulas to determine your maintenance level calories. However, most of these calculators seem to overestimate your daily energy expenditure quite severely.
The most accurate method I have found for determining your maintenance level calories is to take your bodyweight in pounds and multiply it by 15.
This is assuming you get an hour of exercise per day (one hour of walking or one hour of strength training).
This is just a starting point; it may require adjusting in the future depending on your rate of fat loss. For some people this number may underestimate their energy expenditure, and they may lose fat a little faster than expected.
This is completely fine, and you can simply add 200-300 calories to this number to keep fat loss in the 1-1.5 lbs per week range. If you’ve found you haven’t lost then just take out 200-300 calories.
Bodyweight in pounds x 15
170 lbs x 15 = 2550 calories burned per day
Second – Set Your Calorie Intake
Now that you know your maintenance level calories you can now set your calorie intake for fat loss.
I recommend using a 20% calorie deficit. The simplest thing would be to take your current bodyweight in pounds and multiply it by 12.
Bodyweight in pounds x 12
170 lbs x 12 = 2000 (550+ calorie deficit)
Third – Set Your Protein Intake
Protein should make up at least 40% of your total calories when eating at a deficit. This will keep you the most full and will optimise the retention of lean mass, while also leaving ample room for fats and carbs in your diet.
So if you’re eating 2000 calories per day then you’d multiply this number by 0.4. 2000 x 0.4 = 800 protein calories
There are 4 calories per gram of protein. Therefore you will need to divide protein calories by 4 to determine the number of grams of protein you should be eating per day.
800 divided by 4 = 200g of protein per day
Make up the rest of the calories with fats and carbs – so you have 1200 calories there to play with each day (of course a lot of protein sources have carbs and fats in with them too so be very careful when tracking!!)
Now onto the supplements that I take 🙂 take a listen to the video below if you’re interested.