How to optimize your diet for fat loss

Focus on these factors, and achieve successful sustainable fat loss.

“Calories in. Calories out.”

There are a few factors you need to get right in order to optimize to lose fat, and are mainly how much of the following you consume on a daily basis:

Total Calories :

Protein

Carbohydrates

Fat

So how exactly do you optimize each of these factors for fat loss?

1. Calories

If you want to maximize fat loss while minimizing muscle loss, then you have to pay close attention to how many calories you’re intaking. And in this case, more is definitely NOT better.

Research indicates that a moderate calorie deficit that enables you to lose around 0.7% of your body weight per week (~1lb of weight loss per week for most people) is ideal. In fact, a more aggressive calorie deficit was shown to hinder fat loss as opposed to accelerating it. Although you may lose more weight with a larger deficit, we want to maximize FAT loss rather than WEIGHT loss. Focusing on the latter will just lead to a "skinny-fat" physique with little muscle definition.

And if you’re unaware of what your calorie intake should be, a good starting point and something recommended from a 2014 paper by Eric Helms and colleagues, is to simply "multiply your bodyweight (in lbs) by 13."

So for a 170lb individual, your daily calorie intake would be somewhere around 2210 calories per day (170 x 13 = 2210 calories).

Although this won’t be spot on for everyone, you can start with that and then increase or decrease your calories based on how your weight loss progresses throughout the next little while.

2. Protein

As for protein, it’s the most important macronutrient you want to keep track of. Research has repeatedly shown that it plays a major role in maintaining muscle while you’re in a calorie deficit.

And although how much protein you should intake will always be a highly debated topic, a recent 2018 meta-analysis from the Journal of Sports Medicine found that intaking at least 0.73g/lb of bodyweight is enough to maximize muscle growth and maintenance.

However, I personally find that intaking a little more than this (~1g/lb) is beneficial when restricting calories since we know that protein is the most satiating macronutrient, so it can better help keep you full throughout the day and it just acts as a buffer to help minimize any possible muscle loss.

3. Carbs + Fat

Now as for carbs and fats, despite the ongoing debate between low fat versus low carb diets, a recent 2018 year-long randomized clinical trial with over 600 subjects, found that:

When protein intake is equated, both low-fat and low-carb diets are equally as effective for fat loss.

So in reality, these two factors are of lesser importance than your total calories and your daily protein intake and can therefore be adjusted based on what kinds of foods you personally enjoy.

But generally, the literature recommends a fat intake of around 0.25-0.5g/lb of bodyweight from healthy fats and then the rest of your calories, minus your protein, of course, coming from carbs.