Fat loss is all about balancing calories in vs calories out, right?
Actually, no. While a great idea in theory, body fat percentage is about so much more than simply how many calories you eat. It depends on the quality of the calories, how often you’re eating, whether you’re snacking, how much sleep you get, your genetics, how you move your body, and many many other factors.
Jonathan Bailor, the author of The Calorie Myth, explains,
“Eating less does not create the need to burn body fat. Instead, it creates the need for the body to slow down. Contrary to popular opinion, the body hangs on to body fat. Instead, it burns muscle tissue, and that worsens the underlying cause of obesity. Only as a last resort, if the body has no other option, it may also burn a bit of body fat… What does metabolism want more of when it thinks you are starving? Stored energy. What is a great source of stored energy? Body fat. So when your metabolism thinks you are starving, does it want to get rid of or hold on to body fat? It wants to hold on.”
So if we’re not restricting our calories, what can we do instead?
1. Don’t snack
Eating frequently doesn’t actually improve your metabolism.
Having breaks from food does. You don’t even need to eat immediately after your workout (unless you exercised fasted, in which case it is recommended to eat after your workout).
Eating frequently also increases your glycemic variability (swings in blood sugar levels), making fat loss even more challenging. Our bodies were not designed to have a constant influx of food; our digestive systems need a break.
Eat 2–3 meals a day and try not to snack in between. Your metabolism will get a boost and your digestive system will get a break.
“It is hard enough for the body to monitor hormones, genes, and clocks for someone with a strict eating routine. But when eating occurs at random times throughout the day and night, the fat-making process stays on all the time.” — Dr. Satchin Panda
2. Reduce stress
Cortisol can disrupt insulin activity, leading to weight gain.
If you’re overly stressed, you’ll be producing large amounts of cortisol. Furthermore, when your body is in a stressed state, it is more likely to hold on to body fat, with a link between cortisol levels and abdominal fat.
Find ways to relax and destress that work for you, and try to include them in your routine each day. Here are some examples:
- Exercise
- Yoga
- Meditation
- Prayer
- Reading
- Breathwork
3. Do HIIT rather than cardio
“Extreme bouts of cardio, such as running 50–100 miles in a single day, actually train your body to hold on to fat because your body wants to store energy for your next bout (fat), and shed unnecessary weight (muscle). So when you perform increasingly gruelling death marches, your body gets rid of muscle and stores fat to prepare for each bout of cardio.” — Ben Greenfield, fitness expert
Rather than engaging in chronic cardio, do shorter, more intense bouts of exercise. High-intensity interval training (HIIT) leads to greater fat loss than steady-state cardio.
A very effective form of HIIT is a Tabata set, which I wrote about here. This consists of 8 rounds of 20 seconds extremely hard in an exercise of your choice (good examples include: running, biking, rowing, kettlebell swings, or burpees) followed by only 10 seconds of rest, for a total of 4 minutes.
Training at a high intensity like this will also increase the amount of fast-twitch fibers in your muscles, which can improve your metabolism.