3 Tips To Help You Lose Fat Fast
- ianwoodsc
- Jul 10, 2024
- 6 min read
If you've followed me for a while, read some of my blogs and listened to some of my podcasts, you'll know that I'm not a big fan of trying to lose body fat fast.
I'm a big proponent of giving it time, taking pressure off yourself, and in turn likely finding a process that is much more sustainable, and not too dissimilar to the process that is going to help you maintain that result for the long run.
But... for some people trying to lose fat fast can be the right option.
It could be a genuinely short deadline (not just impatience), or a short window of time where the "everyday" aspect of your everyday athlete lifestyle presents a great opportunity to invest in yourself (a 6-8 week gap between work projects for example).
It's not going to be easy, and it's going to take a second phase of learning and implementing after to make sure you maintain the result (what gets you there isn't what keeps you there), but it is possible.
So here's 3 tips to help you lose fat fast successfully.
The Barriers
To create a successful fast fat loss plan we need to understand what the barriers are to fast fat loss first, so that we can implement some strategies to help negative them.
From working with thousands of people on their nutrition, I think I'm in a pretty good position to say that these barriers are most likely to be:
High Hunger
Low Energy
Shitty Moods
To lose body fat you must be in a calorie deficit. You must be consuming fewer calories than you expend over an extended period of time.
When I coach people with my usual methods, I'll often start with the target of a 10-15% calorie deficit as this is enough to drive progress, without creating an excessive amount of hunger, a huge lack of energy, or a massive drop in mood. But to lose fat fast, you need to be in a bigger calorie deficit. This could be something along the lines of 20-30%
For an average guy who's maintenance calorie amount may be 2500 calories per day, that could mean a drop to 1750 calories per day. For an average girl who's maintenance calories may be 2000 calories per day, we could be looking at 1400 calories per day as a big deficit.
When you ask your body to operate with that much of an energy deficit, you will understandably feel low on energy. This will clearly have an impact on your mood. You body will also start screaming at you to eat more and drive up those hunger cues to re-find some semblance of balance.
But there are some ways to minimise these negative outcomes from a big calorie deficit with the aim of fast fat loss.
So here's 3 actionable tips you can implement to help you lose fat fast without feeling quite a hungry, flat, or irritable.
If you want to lose fat and not feel hungry every second of every day, a higher protein, higher fibre diet is going to be extremely important.
These two food groups are the most satiating (filling), meaning that after a meal with high amounts of protein and fibre you will feel fuller for longer.
Protein is hard for your digestive system to break down, meaning your body will slow your digestion and take more time releasing the nutrition from it, which helps you feel fuller for longer.
It also has the added benefit of being the building blocks of your muscle tissue, and is muscle sparing when it comes to losing weight.
That means that with a higher protein diet, you are more likely to lose weight in the form of body fat rather than muscle mass compared to if you were on a lower protein diet.
I usually recommend 1.5-2g or protein per kg of bodyweight per day, but for a fast fat loss diet I would recommend right up to the top end of that range. Prioritise 2g of protein per kilogram of bodyweight per day.
For me, at 90kg. bodyweight, that would be 180g of protein per day.
Fibre is also very satiating as it is a form of carbohydrate which cannot be broken down by your body.
Because of this it too slows down your digestion, meaning you feel fuller for longer.
Consuming 25-35g fibre per day should be a non-negotiable (lower end if you're smaller, upper end if you're bigger), and spreading it across your meals to slow down your digestion throughout the day.
Prioritising these two macronutrients should be step one in your fast fat loss diet process.
2. Consume Higher Carbohydrate
We have two main macronutrients which provide us with energy in our diets. Carbohydrates and fats.
On a fast fat loss diet I would prioritise carbs over fats for 2 reasons.
First is for readily accessible energy.
Carbs are the body's preferred fuel source for high intensity activities like weight training and shorter runs.
It is also your brains preferred fuel source for things like focussing, concentration, and generally not living in a mind-fog throughout your diet phase.
So in a period of time where you're going to be in a bigger calorie and therefore energy deficit, we want to prioritise the preferred energy source for the activities we're likely to be doing through our dieting phase.
Which means higher carbs, lower fats.
The second reason is food volume.
Carbohydrates have 4 calories per gram.
Fats have 9 calories per gram.
If you have a higher fat diet, you will have a noticably smaller amount of food on your plate due to that higher energy density in fatty foods.
And when you're already in a big calorie deficit which will always mean an element of restriction, we want to prioritise food choices that promote a higher volume of food. This will help "fill" your stomach, get that satisfaction you need from each meal, and give you some quicker use energy to help you feel better in your calorie deficit.
3. Exercise Less
Some social media influencers love to dumb down fat loss to the simple soundbite of "eat less, move more". There is a problem with doing both drastically at the same time. If we're pushing a more aggressive diet with a bigger calorie deficit as I've suggested, energy will be lower. We are by definition in an energy deficit. We can try and trick the system by consuming higher carbohydrates as I've also suggested. But at the end of the day, we are still going to be in a 20-30% calorie/energy deficit. You will have less energy to train. So a couple of key things will happen.
You will have lower quality training sessions.
You won't recover as well between training sessions.
You will have progressively worse training sessions as a result.
And at the end of the day, only around 5% of your daily energy expenditure will come from your training session. If you dial it back a bit, you're not really losing much in terms of calorie burn. Which is why I recommend you train less. 3 sessions a week would be plenty.
15ish working sets would be plenty.
Keep it heavy, and avoid short rest periods and HIIT style workouts.
Keep any cardio to low intensity zone 2 work (there's a reason bodybuilders do this coming into a show).
And keep your session to 40-45 minutes including a warm-up. By dialling back the training you'll be able to:
Maintain most of your training intensity
Enjoy most of your training sessions
Maximise your potential for recovery between sessions
Maintain your energy and mood for the rest of your life demands
And most importantly, it will keep your hunger down as much as possible.
High training volumes and high intensity interval style work is number one for driving your appetite up. And in a big calorie deficit, that is already going to be a big enough issue without you piling more of it on top. Especially when it isn't necessary. Ian
P.S. Want some help in losing fat fast? Want my guidance and support the whole way through your journey to help you balance your training and nutrition in a way that delivers big results without hating the process?
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