One of the most common things I hear women say about their bodies is that they want to feel good in their skin.
They want their clothes fitting better.
They want to feel good, strong, healthy.
Well friend, if that’s you, after reading today's post, you will have the tools you need to start losing fat and maybe getting those clothes fitting better too. Let’s dive in!
If you haven’t read part 1 of this series, take a second and go read that now so that you understand the foundation of why this method I’m going to teach you works.
One is a starter approach, it’s called the Plate Method. It’s simpler and easier but the trade off is that there’s more room for error.
The second approach is a more exact method and more reliable for most people. This is calorie tracking approach.
Most people will start with the beginner approach and then transition to the calorie tracking approach. You can decide which approach is right for you.
I’m going to start by discussing the calorie tracking approach first.
The calorie tracking approach sounds really scary and time intensive, but I promise if you stick with it, it gets MUCH easier and it really works. I use this approach myself.
Side note-if your first response is “I don’t have time to track my calories” that’s fine-use the Pate Method. But let me tell you, if you have time to scroll through Instagram for 30 minutes a day then you have time to track your calories. It’s all about priorities. I say this in the most loving way possible.
Go in your phone settings and check your app usage on your socials and see if there’s opportunity to cut back there so you can put your efforts to something that is going to help you achieve your goals.
You can use a task app to set up reminders to track your meals at your meal times for the first few weeks if you want to get started calorie tracking. This will help create a habit.
Ok, lets get started with calorie tracking method.
Step one is we need to estimate our maintenance calories. This is the amount of calories you need to stay at the same size you are now.
There’s a few ways to estimate this.
You can use what’s called a predictive equation, which is basically a formula where you put in some information about yourself, your gender, age, weight, height, and it spits out a calorie number that is the amount of calories you need for your body to run if you did literally nothing all day but lay around.
Then you would multiply that by what’s called an activity factor, which is how active you are normally, and it would give you a rough estimate of your maintenance calories.
These equations are not perfect, but they are a good starting point.
Alternatively you can use just a number multiplied by your body weight, this is a number of calories per pound.
For maintenance calories, a range of 14-16 should get you a rough estimate.
Again, this is not perfect. Everyone’s metabolism is different. But this will give you a starting point for tracking your calories.
Use the estimate you were given and track your calories well (which means, yes, you may have to measure your food out) for a few weeks to a month and see what happens.
Adjust it up or down by 100 calories depending on what’s going on.
If you are weighing yourself, is the scale going up? Down? If you aren’t weighing, are you losing inches or cm or your clothes fitting better?
It’s going to take some time to figure out your maintenance calories, but that’s OK because we are in this for the long haul, right?
We are changing our lifestyle and we are tired of crash diets and fad diets and losing 10 lbs of weight in 1 week for it to end up being water weight the whole time, am I right? So feel free to be curious about your body and take that time to figure out how many calories you need to stay at your current size. A couple weeks to a month should be fine to figure that out.
If you don’t want to take that time, which is fine, then use the estimate you figured out, and then go to the next step.
Step 2 is we take our maintenance calorie number, and then we cut 20-25% off of it. This gives us our calorie deficit.
So if I weigh 150 lbs and I used the calories-per-pound method (I’ll just use 15 since its in the middle of 14-16) then my maintenance calories would be 1950.
Take 25% off of that and I’m at 1462, so you can round to 1475 or 1450. This is my fat loss calorie goal.
Try this number for a month, while weightlifting and see what happens, and then you can adjust up or down.
So, some people may say to only cut 10% off your maintenance number, but I like being more aggressive with it because…. results are MOTIVATING.
Once you start seeing that you are headed in the right direction it’s motivating to stick with it. Also I’m a firm believer in being in a fat loss phase for the least amount of time.
I am going to do an ENTIRE episode on how to track calories and record so you get the best results because it’s a whole thing and too much for us to go over right now.
And for those of you who immediately hate the thought of tracking your calories, don’t leave yet! I like to use the least restrictive approach when it comes to food. You don’t have to start being super exact about it.
So now we are going to talk about the Plate method approach.
If you are a complete newbie with eating right, you want to first focus on what is called the “Plate Method” where at your lunch and dinner meal you eat half your plate veggies, a quarter protein food, and a quarter a carb food.
So for example; half my plate is roasted green beans, a quarter of my plate grilled chicken, and a half a roasted sweet potato would fit about a quarter of the plate for the carb part.
See what doing that for a few weeks does for you. And if you start noticing your clothes fitting better, or the scale going down but you are still upping your weights and reps in the gym, then congratulations you are losing fat!
To help you with this, I made a free guide for you, it’s called A Simple Guide for Fat Loss without Tracking Calories.
Alright, so on to step 3. Eat enough protein.
We need to be in a calorie deficit, either by using the Plate Method or tracking our calories, but we also need to be eating enough protein because we need to give our muscles what they need to recover from lifting weights.
Your actual muscle is made up of fibers made of protein.
Weightlifting tears your muscles and allows them to grow back bigger and stronger. Well, if you aren’t eating any protein, or not enough protein, then your body doesn’t have much to use to repair your muscles and grow them stronger. Protein is SO important, especially if you are in a calorie deficit.
We are not giving our body any excuses to use our precious muscle fibers for energy, we want them all to stay in our muscles, so we eat enough protein.
How much? It really is individual. The science supports about 1.6 to 2.0 g/kg/day.
If you just went WHOA that sounds WAY too complicated, don’t freak out yet!
The research studies often use kilograms, you figure out how many kilograms you weigh by dividing your weight in lbs by 2.2.
So if I weigh 150 lbs, divide that by 2.2 and that means I weigh about 68 kg. It's simple!
Which with that range I gave above which was 1.6-2 g protein per kg, would put me at 109-136 g protein per day. 1.6x 68 kg is 109 and 2x68 is 136.
My source I used here is the National Academy of Sports Medicine, I found similar recommendations elsewhere as well.
I personally have found at eating about this amount of protein has worked out really well for me.
Protein also helps you feel full, so when you are in a calorie deficit feeling full is a big plus. If you are doing the plate method, just aim for 3-4 oz of a high protein food per meal, and 1-3 high protein snacks. This is all outlined in detail my free guide on my website.
Protein is found in SO many foods. Meat is a big one, low fat meats have less calories per oz than higher fat ones, so for example chicken breast has less calories in it per ounce than bacon.
Dairy like Greek yogurt or cottage cheese is a great source of protein.
Side note, cottage cheese is having a MOMENT! I see so many cottage cheese recipes and I am here for it! Greek yogurt was getting all the attention for a long time.
I make a cottage cheese cheesecake as a bedtime snack and it is delicious! And…I added it to my free guide as a little bonus for you! It seriously makes me feel satisfied at night because I’m a big sweets person, and night is the hardest time for me.
This cheesecake is super high in protein because of the cottage cheese, but its not super high in calories because I’m personally in a season of fat loss right now.
So back to protein sources, tofu is a great source of protein, any kind of fish, beans, peas, lentils. Eggs. These are all good sources of protein. I talk about all this in my guide.
Keep in mind that a lot of plant protein sources like beans and peas will also have carbs in them, so for sure eat them but be mindful of that. You need carbs to fuel your training. I like to eat a meat, dairy or egg as my primary source of protein and then have my carb be a high protein carb like beans or lentils to give me a little extra protein in addition to fiber.
So this week, your practical tip is to eat your protein and lift your weights!
Use the info in this post to see how many calories you need and grams of protein you need.
Tell your body that you are USING these muscles and give them the protein they need to grow while eating less calories than you need, and you will lose fat.
If you want to go above and beyond and get results faster, then download a free calorie tracker like MyFitnessPal and start tracking your calories and protein. It seems like a lot at first but it WORKS, and it gets easier over time.
If you don’t want to do that, then give the plate method a try and go get my free Simple Guide for Fat Loss without tracking calories.
But above all, take ACTION. The reason I give you a practical tip every week is because you need to take action for this to work.
Results require action. It’s good to learn about something you want to change or get better at, but if you never step out and do something about it, then it’s a waste of time, right? So take action.
Stay tuned for next week! Next week we finish the Nutrition for fat loss series by talking about what is sabotaging your efforts.
Happy lifting!
-Rachel
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