Overweight and obesity has become one of the major public health problems in the worldsuggesting the need for evidence-based dietary strategies for weight loss and maintenance.
Weight control depends on complex factors such as the amount of food eaten, the type of food eaten, and the timing of meals.
Although the energy deficit is essential for there to be a loss of body fat, there are other factors that are extremely important for a healthy energy deficit to exist. That is, it is not the same to lose body fat being a sedentary person than being an active person who performs strength training.
On the other hand, there other types of factors or strategies to follow that, although they are not so important for the loss of body fat, they can have their place.
A physical trainer named Ben Carpenter talked about this a long time ago. In this article we will separate in four categories all the keys and variables that influence the loss of body fat according to their importance.
Non-negotiable category
First we have the category non-negotiable for fat loss. In this group there is only one only condition, and it is the caloric deficit. As we have mentioned before, it is impossible to lose fat without being in a caloric deficit.
This means that if you need 2,000 kcal to maintain your weight, you will need to eat fewer calories to lose some of that weight. You can do this by increasing physical activity, that is, increasing caloric expenditure, or eating fewer calories, that is, reducing intake.
It is preferable that you produce this energy deficit through physical activity. Even so, the really important and non-negotiable thing is that there is a caloric deficit.
Category of highly recommended strategies
In this group we have the strategy of following a simple diet to maintain over time, that is, that it becomes sustainable and that it allows you to generate a good adherence.
Consume a sufficient amount of protein. If you do strength training regularly, do not consume below 1.8 g/kg/day. This is not a prerequisite, but protein is the macronutrient that can most help you improve body composition for its effect on muscle protein synthesis and for its effect on satiety.
Lead an active lifestyle so that every day you have significant energy expenditure. This will allow you to consume more calories per day and don’t be so hungry or anxious as you would if you had a sedentary lifestyle.
Prioritize unprocessed or little processed food above the ultra-processed ones, since the first one is much more nutritious, it is more nutritious and, in general, it satisfies more. This in the end will make it easier for you to end up eating less.
Get your sleep right. If you don’t sleep well you will be hungrier, lose less fat and your hormonal environment will be affected.
All these strategies They are very successful and can come in very handy for all of us. But we insist that without the energy deficit, which is the essential condition, there will not be a loss of fat per day.
All these strategies are focused on promoting good health and generating a caloric deficit.
Unimportant Strategy Category
The third category is the most worrying, since it groups the strategies that receive the most attention by the people and that nevertheless they are not as relevant.
This group includes strategies such as asking ourselves What is the best dietwhen there is no universal answer to this, rather, each diet should be individualized.
Worry about the number of meals we eat throughout the day. This does not make much sense because in the majority of the population meal frequency does not cause significant effects on body composition and performance.
Assessing the ratio of carbohydrates and fats ingested can make sense in some athletes depending on the sport they practice, intensity, duration, frequency, etc. But in order to improve body composition, Although fats can be somewhat more satiating, they are not very relevant in the rest of the population. If the caloric deficit is the same and the protein intake is the same, there will be no significant changes in body composition among people following low-carbohydrate and low-fat diets.
Cycling calories may make sense for fat loss because it can help make a caloric deficit more tolerable, but in the end, there will also be no differences if throughout the week the caloric deficit is the same.
Something that is not very important is worrying about whether the cardio we do is fasting or not. It doesn’t matter what state we do it in because what really matters is that we do it itself.
In the same way, we do not have to give much importance to the timing of food and training. In professional athletes, we should give it more attention because any improvement in performance counts, no matter how small.
Unnecessary Strategy Category
In this category would be:
- Restricting food groups for no apparent reason
- Use detox drinks and juices
- Use fat-burning infusions
- get carried away by unreal promises How to lose 10 kilos of body fat in 2 months.
We would use this category to warn that it makes no sense to do these things.
In short, losing fat as such is not difficult. Now yes, it is very important that there is a professional behind you to help you and guide you on how to do things. It has been seen that the abandonment rate is very high because, although at first it is very easy to lose fat, then it becomes more complicated because the body generates certain adaptations to return to the initial weight.
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