Wow, I really suck at this writing-regular-blog-posts game. I was supposed to be writing these on a weekly basis. And here I am, writing my third blog post almost 6 weeks after my second. Well what can I say? Between work and working out and video games and cheat meals and working out again, I really haven’t been able to make the time. However, 6 weeks is better than 7 weeks as they say, so here we are. While my first two posts were really about giving an introduction to my fitness journey and what drives me (sorta), from here on, we are going to get a bit technical. Now many of us get into fitness for various reasons. Some want to get “into shape”, some want to enhance performance in a particular sport, some just want to live a healthier and more active lifestyle. But for a lot of people, fitness is also about trying to take control of your body. Depending on when and how your fitness journey begins, you might want to get back into a shape that you once had, or if you are like me, you want to try and find the true potential of your body. This includes strength and stamina, but yes, no lies, it does include aesthetics.
But whatever your goals are, there’s a good chance that you either are or you know someone for whom a large part of the fitness goal is to lose weight. Sure, there are people who want to get toned, some guys who want to add size, some women and men who want to add strength and flexibility, but there also a lot of us who start out just wanting to lose weight. Excessive weight has a number of health concerns and has been linked with a number of heart conditions, and if not for aesthetics, there are a number of people who want to lose weight just to try and live a healthier lifestyle.
Having said that, this is no way an endorsement of fat shaming. There is nothing fundamentally unaesthetic or unhealthy about being fat as long as one is fit. There are a number of people who are fitter than any of the ripped skinny dudes who would be considered fat by most people. The parameters of fitness vary. I am not a medical expert so I will not presume to lecture someone on whether they are too fat to be healthy. But if losing weight is one of your goals, as it was mine, that’s fair too. As long as your goals and your definitions of fitness are your personal journey and you don’t impose them on anyone else, you are fine. In short, don’t engage in fat shaming. That shit is for douchebags. And you are better than that.
One of the side effects of my transformation has been being asked for advice by people who are starting their own fitness journey. And one of the most common questions is how to consistently lose weight? Well here’s the kicker. The key is not to lose weight, but to lose fat. Let’s break it down like this. Take one kilo of fat and take one kilo of muscle. You will notice that the muscle takes a lot less space than the fat. Which is why two people of the same height weighing the same, might look very different. The more muscular person will look leaner and more taut while the other person would look bigger.
Now sure, you could lose weight, but with every pound of fat you lose you also lose muscle. But the more muscle you have, the easier it is for you to burn fat. Which is why dieting is crucial but if you really want to keep your weight off, if you want to stick to a consistent weight that doesn’t go off the charts every time you slip up on your diet, the key is to add muscle mass.
See the human body is a machine. And this machine gets more efficient with more muscle mass. Fat is nothing but energy. So the key to lose fat is to use this machine, to exert yourself. And be smart about your nutrition, about the fuel you put in this machine. We will get into each of these aspects in more detail but for now let’s start with a simple concept: caloric deficit.
So let’s break this down. At any point of time your body needs a certain amount of energy, measured in calories, to function. For your heart to pump blood, for your digestive system to work, for you to walk to the bus stop, for you to have sex, for you to even snore, every human activity you can possibly think of, requires energy in the form of calories.
Every person has a TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure). But where do you get this energy from? Food. Food is our fuel and our source of energy, once again in the form of calories. There are various online calculators for TDEE, I recommend the one on https://www.iifym.com/tdee-calculator/ as it works for me. Also many gyms will do a reading for you of your body fat and metabolism and also calculate your TDEE for you. Now let’s suppose your TDEE is 2000 calories. This means that for you to maintain your body weight, you need to eat 2000 calories. When you eat more, the excess energy is stored on your body. And when you eat less, well that’s the interesting part. When you eat less, your body uses energy you have stored up in your body. This is a combination of your fat and muscle. So the key to consistently losing weight? Maintain a caloric deficit, silly.
If you maintain a caloric deficit of 3500 calories a week (500 a day) you will lose a pound a week. Wait so why not just go all out and starve yourself? Why not have a caloric deficit of a 1000 calories a day? That way you will lose twice the weight? WRONG. That’s a terrible idea. This is why crash diets are rubbish and starvation diets are bad for you. The idea is to have a moderate caloric deficit so you lose weight in the right way in the right places without losing muscle, hurting your metabolism and sabotaging your health in the long run. The thing about fitness is, you need to have patience and consistency. There are crash diets and fads but trust me, if the results come quicker than is healthy, it is not worth it.
Ideally your caloric deficit should extend from 20 to 30% depending on how much weight you want to lose. The more you want to lose, the higher you can go, but be mindful that as you get leaner you need to ease off the deficit or risk losing crucial muscle mass. Muscle mass is also what lends your frame a certain structure so though you might not see it now, even from an aesthetic viewpoint, you might want to hold on to that shit. So by that calculation, for a 2000 calorie TDEE, you should have a deficit of 400-600 calories. So you should eat 1400-1600 calories daily.
But are all calories equal? Nope. So we will get into what is an ideal diet and macronutrients and the kind of workout that will go into your goals in the next post. (Which hopefully will not take another six weeks). Meanwhile, if you are just starting, keep it simple. Maintain a modest caloric deficit and try and stick to it for a few weeks. If you have not done it before you will start seeing a difference, I promise. Best of luck!
Let The Funk Flow 