Nick Smoot- Owner of Smoot Fitness
Smootfitness.com
Starting a diet is pretty simple. Decrease food intake (by either reducing the amount of calories you are currently taking in or using a formula to determine your estimated caloric target), add in a day or two of cardio, and you are right on track to a leaner physique and an increased frequency of public restroom mirror selfies. But fat loss isn’t linear, you will hit a plateau, and the challenge lies in making adjustments to your macros and cardio that will break through the plateau and re-stimulate progress.
Which variable do you adjust first? How large should the adjustment be? When do you get to stuff your face full of carbs again (refeed)? No two people will have the same macros, calories, or cardio regime, so there are no clear cut answers to these questions. There are however universal principles for safe and effective fat loss, and everyone can follow similar guidelines when making adjustments to their nutrition plans in order to stimulate the most optimal results.
Starting Point
Where you start your diet will ultimately determine where (or if) you finish it, so you want to start with as many calories and as little cardio as possible that will still stimulate fat loss. Shoot for a pound or two of weight loss per week (any more than that will lead to losses in lean body mass and is reason to introduce calories back in), and this can be accomplished with about a 500 calorie deficit per day.
Start by decreasing food intake by about 250-300 calories below maintenance levels. Macros are highly individual, but I think a good starting point for most people is to have protein set at 1.1-1.4 grams per pound of bodyweight (the leaner you get, the more protein you will need to consume to maintain lean body mass), fats set at .3-.4 grams per pound of bodyweight, and the remainder of the allotted caloric total filled in with carbohydrates. This will obviously need some tweaking based on individual needs and goals (some people will do better on higher carbs, others on higher fats, etc.) but the majority of people should see good results starting with these ranges.
Now performing cardio at the start of the diet is not mandatory, but doing so will allow you to keep calories a little higher while still meeting the deficit you are aiming for (500 calories). Because I like to eat food more than I hate to perform cardio, I generally opt for this approach. Start with one or two days of cardio for about 30 minutes.
Any more cardio is really unnecessary unless needed for a specific sport or activity, and overdoing it on cardio from the beginning will only hinder recovery, eat away at lean body mass, and eventually force you to maintain a large amount of cardio to maintain a small amount of weight loss. Use cardio sparingly. If done properly, the majority of fat loss should be accomplished through training and diet alone.
Which Variable Should You Adjust First?
The variable you choose to adjust is really up to you, but there are two things to keep in mind:
- Food intake must be kept high enough to meet micronutrient and fiber goals, and to support high performance in the gym.
- Cardio must be kept low enough that it does not hinder recovery or decrease lean body mass.
Everything is situational. If you have a fast metabolism, you can get away with performing less cardio because you have ample calories to pull from without any negative effects. If you have a slower metabolism, you will be forced to perform additional cardio so that dietary intake stays at a healthy level and you can support your intensity in the gym.
It’s really just a balancing act that all comes down to feel. When fat loss stalls, analyze your current food intake, cardio regime, mental state, energy levels, and gym performance, and make your decision from there. However you decide to go about it, realize that it doesn’t take much to get fat loss rolling again, so you ideally want to adjust cardio or dietary intake, not both at the same time.
How Large Should The Adjustment Be?
Aim for the SMALLEST adjustment possible that will break through the fat loss plateau and re-stimulate progress. For some, this may be only 100 calories. Others won’t see a change without dropping 500 (pretty rare in my experience). There is no way of knowing how large the adjustment needs to be to re-stimulate fat loss until you make the actual adjustment, so start small (100-300 calories) and monitor your results. If nothing happens, keep dropping another 100-200 calories until you start to notice change.
For most people, a decrease of 200-400 calories seems to do the trick. This can be done by decreasing food intake (protein should stay relatively constant throughout the fat loss phase, so the decrease should come from carbs, fat, or both), adding in another session of cardio, or increasing the duration of your current cardio sessions. If you can get away with only dropping 100 calories and continuing to make progress, then only drop 100 calories. Fat loss is a marathon, not a sprint (Cliché I know), and the larger the adjustment, the less you will have to pull from when you hit the next plateau.
When to Implement a Refeed
Prolonged dieting doesn’t have the best effects on the metabolism, and the leaner you get, the more frequently you will need a reefed (increase in carbs/calories) in order to boost your hormone levels (leptin, T-3, T-4, etc.) and ensure continued fat loss. There are two factors I look at when deciding if a refeed is warranted:
- Progress/Bodyfat Level
- Mental State
The more body fat you lose, the more frequently you will need to refeed. Some fantastic guidelines from Layne Norton’s “Ultimate Cutting Article” (Click HERE for the full article) are:
– Refeed once every week or two weeks if you are above 15% body fat.
– Refeed once per week if you are between 10-15% body fat
– Refeed twice per week if you are below 10% bodyfat.
These guidelines can be tweaked up or down depending on the individual and the adaptability of their metabolism, but these guidelines seem to be pretty spot on for most people.
The second thing to take in to account is mental state. No matter how good a plan is on paper, it isn’t going to generate results if a person doesn’t follow it. Adhering to a diet takes a lot of discipline, and some people need a refeed or free meal to help them stay on track.
If this sounds like you, implement a refeed right at the start of the cut (even if you are at a relatively high amount of bodyfat). Just realize you might need to decrease calories during the rest of the week to make up for the higher calorie day if you aren’t at a point where a refeed is actually needed.
Summing Up
Those are my guidelines for adjusting macros and cardio during a fat loss phase. Fat loss is a huge grey area, so trial and error is really the only way of figuring out what will provide you with the most optimal results. Fat loss is a process; not a quick fix. Maximize food intake, minimize cardio, make small adjustments, and stay patient. This will allow you to maintain good health and maximize performance as you slash body fat and continue to work towards your goal physique.
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