Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How Many Calories Should You Eat to Lose Fat & Not Muscle?

Episode Date: December 5, 2017

If someone feels they’re carrying around too much fat, they’ll probably say they need to lose some weight. Ironically, if that’s their only goal–reducing the number on the scale–they’re like to run into a new problem along the way: becoming skinny fat. You see, the phrase “weight loss” is tossed around by just about everyone, including myself, but what we really want is a bit more than that. We don’t want to just “lose weight”–we want to reduce our body fat percentage and thus improve our body composition. That is, we want to reduce our total amount of body fat without reducing our total amount of lean mass. If this is obvious to you, you’re in the minority. Most people don’t realize how much muscle they can lose with a poor “weight loss” diet and are puzzled when they succeed in losing weight only to be disappointed by a weak, soft physique staring back at them in the mirror. Well, in this episode we’re going to talk about how many calories you should eat to lose fat and not muscle. To make these calculations easier, I created a simple and accurate calorie (and macronutrient) calculator: → https://legionathletics.com/how-many-calories-should-i-eat/ Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

Hey, this is Mike and welcome to another installment in my in five minutes or less series where I answer one common question quickly and simply because while long form content is great, sometimes it is also nice when someone just gets right to the point and tells you what to do and how to do it in five minutes or less. And that's what I do in these episodes. Okay. So this time let's address the question of how many calories should I be eating to lose fat as quickly as possible and not muscle. And let's start here with a quick primer on why calories matter because these days it's kind of trendy to say that calories don't matter if you just know how to eat the right foods or set your macros up properly and so forth. That calories in versus calories out is an antiquated model. And that more recent science is proving that if you just eat the right foods and you'll change your hormones, then it won't matter how many calories you eat, blah, blah, blah.

No, it's all bullshit. While it's true that the calories provided by Skittles are different, they do different things in the body than the calories provided by chicken breast. And this is especially true for looking at body composition. It's also true that the primary determinant of body weight is energy balance and nothing else. It is the amount of energy that we're eating or the relationship between the amount of energy that we're eating versus expending. That alone will determine what happens with our body weight. So in that sense, a calorie is very much a calorie. If we are consistently eating fewer calories or less energy than we're burning, our body weight will go down over time because our bodies are going to have to get that energy from somewhere. It's missing out. Let's say we are eating 400 calories

fewer than we're burning. So this is, again, this is real energy. A calorie is not just some abstract thing. It represents real energy that we are providing our bodies and our bodies are burning real energy. So if there's a deficit there, if we're burning more energy than we're eating, our bodies have to get that energy from somewhere or our cells would just stop working. Everything would shut down. It needs energy. Where does it get that energy from? Primarily from fat stores. energy. Where does it get that energy from? Primarily from fat stores. That's the first place it goes for energy. If it's not getting enough from the food or if it simply has finished processing a meal, so there's no food energy available, it turns to fat stores. So when you maintain that deficit, what happens? Over time, your fat stores dwindle down. Think of it like a savings account. If you have to regularly dip into your savings account to pay your bills because your income isn't high enough, your savings account dwindles. Same thing with your fat stores. They get smaller and smaller over time. Now, can you lose weight without counting calories? Sure. You could reduce your

meal frequency like with intermittent fasting. You could restrict certain food groups. You could portion your meals out according to certain guidelines. But don't forget that the only reason why any of those strategies can work is because they simply promote an energy deficit. They make it easier to eat fewer calories than you're burning. And if you don't get that right, easier to eat fewer calories than you're burning. And if you don't get that right, then none of those other things matter. If you are not eating significantly fewer and by significantly fewer, I mean anywhere from 10 to 25% fewer calories than you're burning every day. It doesn't matter what you do with your meal frequency. It doesn't matter what you do with your food choices. It doesn't matter how you combine foods. It doesn't matter when you do with your food choices. It doesn't matter how you combine foods.

It doesn't matter when you eat them. None of those things matter. You will not lose weight and you will not lose fat effectively without that energy deficit. Now, I mentioned earlier that calories in versus calories out is a good starting point and it is a fundamental aspect to dieting, but it's not everything. The calories from the Skittles are not the same as the calories from the chicken breast. And the reason why that is true is because while many people say they want to lose weight, really what they mean is they want to lose fat and not muscle. Those are two very different things. So if someone were truly just to want

to lose weight, if they were to say, I just want to see that scale number go down, and I really don't care whether I lose fat or muscle, then they actually wouldn't need anything other than just calories in, calories out. All they'd have to do is make sure that they are eating significantly fewer calories than they're burning every day, regardless of where those calories come from, and that number would go down. Now, unfortunately, they would probably lose a fair amount of muscle in the process. And especially if they did a bunch of cardio, which many people that don't really know what they're doing with their diets also tend to do when they want to lose weight, because that's just simply the mainstream advice, which is basically starve yourself and do a bunch of cardio. So the problem is you burn away quite a bit of muscle and you reach a lower body weight,

but you look in the mirror and you're like, wow, I look like shit. I look skinny fat. So really what we want to do is we want to lose fat and not muscle. That's key. And to do that now, you have to go beyond calories in and calories out because now where those calories come from matter. And the first thing you have to know is that in that context, protein is king. The calories from protein are more important than the calories you get from carbs and fats. And there are several reasons for this, but the main ones are simply that research shows that high protein diet is best for both losing fat. So you tend to lose fat faster on a high-protein diet,

and preserving muscle. And it also generally increases satiety, so you generally feel fuller on a high-protein diet, which makes it easier to stick to your diet. And the second thing you should know when you are wanting to lose fat and not muscle is that carbs are not your enemy, unless you are very overweight and very sedentary. But if that's not you, then carbs are actually your friend because research shows that high carb diets are far better for preserving muscle than low carb diets. And they're just as good for losing fat when protein intake is matched, meaning that so long as you eat enough protein, you are not going to lose fat faster with a low carb diet. You may lose weight faster,

at least at first, because a low carb diet is going to flush water out of your body. So you're going to get that initial hooray of rapid weight loss, but it's not rapid fat loss. And when you stretch it out over time, multiple studies have shown that total fat loss is the same between high carb and low carb dieters. So long as you're eating enough protein. Hey, quickly, before we carry on, if you are liking my podcast, would you please help spread the word about it? Because no amount of marketing or advertising gimmicks can match the power of word of mouth. So if you are enjoying this episode and you think of someone else who might enjoy it as well,

please do tell them about it. It really helps me. And if you are going to post about it on social media, definitely tag me so I can say thank you. You can find me on Instagram at Muscle for Life Fitness, Twitter at Muscle for Life, and Facebook at Muscle for Life Fitness. Okay, so how many calories should you be eating if you want to lose fat and not muscle? So obviously you know now that if you're going to eat fewer calories than you're burning, you have to first determine with approximate accuracy how many calories you're burning every day. And there are several ways to do this. I think the easiest and most practical one is to first determine approximately what your basal metabolic rate is, which is simply the amount of energy that your body burns at rest. If you weren't even to move a finger, how much energy does it take to stay alive?

And then account for your physical activity level and the energy that it takes to digest and absorb the food you eat, which is called the thermic effect of food. You've probably heard of that before. Now, in terms of determining your basal metabolic rate, there are several equations out there that you can use. I like the catch McArdle because it takes into account your body composition. And if you want to just make it simple, click on the link in the description, you'll be taken to an article that I wrote on this subject. And if you scroll down a little bit, you will find a calculator that will just do it for you. So once you have your BMR, and also just for the sake of comparison, in case you're wondering, I'm 6'2", I'm 195 pounds, I'm about

8% or 9% body fat, and my BMR is about 2,100 calories. But anyways, you have your BMR, and then what you can do is you can multiply it by a number that represents the activity level. So the catch McArdle comes with pre-made activity multipliers that I've found in my experience, working with thousands and thousands of people to be a bit high. I feel like these multipliers tend to overshoot people's actual total daily energy expenditures or TDE. That's what we're getting at here. So I've kind of come up with my own multipliers that are a bit lower and that work like this. If you are sedentary, then I recommend, so if you do very little exercise, very little physical activity, then I recommend you multiply your BMR by 1.1 to get your approximate total daily energy expenditure.

If you are lightly active, so if you lightly exercise or engage in light physical activity, one to three days per week, then I recommend you multiply it by 1.2. If you are moderately active, so if you do moderately intense exercise or moderately intense physical activity of any kind, three to five days per week, then I recommend you multiply by 1.35. And if you're very active, so if you engage in intense exercise or sports six to, maybe 1.5. And if you are super active, so if you do a lot of intense exercise and sports and for long periods of time, six or seven days per week, then you may need to go as high as 1.8 or as low as 1.6 or 1.65. And if we want to simplify it even further, we can say that most people will need to eat about 10 to 12 calories per pound of body weight per day to lose fat effectively.

I could have just thrown that out there and said, here, just do that. But I also wanted you to understand some of the logic behind how you actually calculate your numbers and behind that 10 to 12 calorie number that a lot of people throw around. All right. So now that you have your total daily energy expenditure, or at least a fairly accurate estimate of it, you want to eat about 75% of that number every day. So you want to be reducing your calorie intake by about 25% of that number. And that is what is going to drive your fat loss. That 25%, that energy deficit, that's where your body's going to have to go to fat stores each and every day. And so then over time, that will add up to a leaner you. And keep in mind that these are

starting points and that you need to assess how your body responds and adjust accordingly because total daily energy expenditure is a moving target. We're not going to get there with a hundred percent accuracy, regardless of how fancy we want to be. So really what we want is we want a good starting point. We want to see how our bodies respond and then adjust. And what that really comes down to is we're looking to lose anywhere from a half a pound to two pounds per week. And that really depends on your starting point. So the more overweight someone is, the more fat they can lose. So I would say, let's say if a guy is 20% body fat and above should be looking to probably lose

one and a half to two pounds a week, but a guy at 10% body fat should be looking to probably lose one and a half to two pounds a week. But a guy at 10% body fat should be looking to lose maybe a half a pound or at most a pound per week. And for women, I would say those numbers are probably like a woman at 30% body fat and above should be looking to lose about one and a half to two pounds per week. But a woman at 20%, or when that same woman gets down to 20%, she needs to lower her expectations of fat loss because it just slows down to a half a pound to a pound a week. All right. Well, that is it for calculating your calories to lose fat and not muscle. And if you want to take this a step further and you want to figure out how to break those calories down into proper macronutrients then i will drop a link down in the description below and for those

of you that are listening outside of youtube then you can just go over to legionathletics.com and search for macro and you'll see an article i don't remember the exact title but it has macro nutrient calculator in it. Check that article out and it will help you set everything up quickly and easily because it has a calculator in it. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful. And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from.

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