3 Fat Loss Mistakes EVERYONE Makes (including you)

I'm a strength and conditioning coach at heart. But I'm smart enough to realise that most people get in to training first and foremost because of insecurity. We want to change the way we look, and as a result change the way other people perceive us. Which is why fat loss is the biggest fitness marketing sell out there. It's why a lot of regular people get caught up in things like fitness photoshoots, training like bodybuilders, unnecessary and ineffective supplements and crash diets and transformations. But I get it, and I want to help. I don't want you to make the same mistakes that everyone else is making when it comes losing body fat.

So here are 3 fat loss mistakes that everyone, including you, is making.

1) Training To Burn Fat/Burn Calories

Training to burn calories is a shortcut to hating training, getting nowhere, and giving up. Mainly, because it doesn't work. The concept of losing body fat is that you need to consume fewer calories than you burn (be in a calorie deficit), for an extended period of time.

So you need to eat less and move more, right? Well kind off. Your daily daily burn is officially know as your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE), and is make up of 4 component parts.

Your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR), which is the amount of energy you use at total rest. Lying in bed all day, not moving, just existing and staying alive. BMR makes up around 70% of your total daily energy expenditure (just being alive take a lot of energy unsurprisingly). The next biggest factor of Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT), which is all the movement you do during a day that isn't intentional exercise.

Things like getting out of bed, cleaning your teeth, walking to the water cooler, flipping off that person who just cut you up on the way home from work. All of these movements require energy, and there are so many of them that they add up to around 15% of your total daily energy expenditure. Next up is the Thermic Effect of Food (TEF). This is the energy required to consume, digest, absorb and metabolise food. The average person is going to be consuming 2000-2500 calories worth of food daily, and it take a good amount of energy to process that amount of food. Around 10% of your total daily energy expenditure. Which then brings us to Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (EAT). This is the calorie burn from your intentional exercise. This accounts for only around 5% of your total daily energy expenditure. Let me immediately address the outliers here. Sure, your favourite influencer who trains 10+ times per week, is hybrid AF and taking all their vitamins and saying all their prayers will get more than 5% of their total daily energy expenditure from intentional exercise.

But you're not them. As a busy everyday athlete you're probably at best training every other day, mainly because you have other important shit to do. So that 5% per is made up of maybe 3 days a week of a big fat 0% (and that's fine), and maybe 4 days where it's closer to 10%. Which is exactly why we can't rely on our intentional training to cause a significant calorie deficit. From an S&C standpoint, we need to utilise our nutrition to create that deficit anyway. So why not forget about calorie burn totally during exercise, and focus on performance based metrics. Things like progressing strength, progressing power, sprint times, run times, preparing for some kind of challenge or competition. That stuff is actually really fun, really rewarding, and has massive performance, confidence and health benefits. These are the sort of outcomes that keep you coming back for more, meaning you reap the benefits for the long run. A million time more than watching calories tick over on a treadmill or your watch, or feeling like you have to pummel yourself into a sweaty exhausted mess everyday to reach your calorie burn goal. Don't train for fat loss. Train for performance, strength, muscle gain, health and happiness. 2) Obsessing Over Macros

Macros are important. How much protein you consume is going to help determine how much muscle mass you build/retain through your fat loss journey. Carbohydrate is the bodies preferred energy source for high intensity activities like the strength training I always recommend. Fat's are an essential food group for cellular and hormonal health, and great long duration fuel source and a source of big flavour in meals. So we need to get enough of them in across our day on a consistent basis. But we don't need to hit any exact number on any specific day. Which is why macro based "nutrition coaches" do my freaking swede in. Whether you had 10g more carbs or not on Tuesday last week when you did 7 minutes more training does not matter. And weekly changing macro targets based off weekly weight loss progress that can be influenced by countless things beyond your macro intake is obsessive and unnecessary micromanagement. It becomes more of a barrier to adherence than it is an effective process.

Ball parks are fine. In fact, ballparks are better than fine.

Hitting somewhere beween 1.5-2g of protein per kg of bodyweight per day on average over a week is great.

Hitting 0.5-1g of fat per kg of bodyweight per day on average over a week is great.

Filling the remainder with carbohydrates so you're meeting your calorie needs +/-10% on average over a week is fine. But most importantly, all of these targets are not just effective, but they're realistic. They're forgiving enough to allow for fuck-ups. They're flexible enough to allow for a social life. They're effective enough to drive progress without draining the fun from your lifestyle and being a constant drain of mental energy. And they're easy enough to hit that you don't have to weigh every morsel of food that's going to pass your lips and turn up to evenings out having already eaten or with food in a plastic tub. Macros are important, but they don't take priority over a realistic fat loss lifestyle.

3) You Forget You're Human

You are not a machine. Yes, fat loss will ultimately come down to calories in vs calories out. But you're not a car that you put £40 of petrol in, drive at 40mpg and have a predictable fuel cost and performance expectation. You have much more shit going on in your life than the average 5 door family SUV. Which is where the biopsychosocial model of nutrition comes into play.

If your plan only account for your biology, and expects linear returns from training progressions, calorie and macro inputs and data from your Whoop, Garmin or Apple Watch, you're going to be seriously disappointed. Your psychology matters. Your thoughts, feelings, perceptions, previous experiences, worries and values are going to drive way more decisions and responses to scenarios than your macro spreadsheet. You social context matters. Your upbringing, social circle, work environment, education, culture, community are going to influence your behaviours, attitudes and adherence a lot more than your Whoop. They also bring with them factors that can help or hider your fat loss efforts. That can influence or affect stress, sleep, hunger, emotion, time management and more. All things that will influencer your progress and be a constant factor in your life as a fulfilled everyday athlete. You can't park these things for 8-12 weeks, fix the problem, then let them back into your life and expect things to go well. Your plan needs to account for all three areas. It's just everyone else always focussed on just the one. The biology. And they fail because of it. Remember you're human, and your diet plan and coaching needs to approach you as a human, not a robot or data on a spreadsheet. If you want to learn more about how to master your nutrition as an Everyday Athlete, to finally shift the last stubborn 5kg and feel, look and perform at your absolute best check out my High Performance Nutrition for the Everyday Athlete video series.