☝🏻#evidencebased

Here’s my step by step guide to building your own sustainable fat loss plan. Remember to check out my free calorie calculator for help establishing your targets! ✌🏻🍵

‘The Weekend Warrior’ is hands down THE most common and persistent barrier I see preventing women (and often men) reaching their fitness goals. Here’s how to tackle it. #weekendwarrior ✌🏻🍵

Coach: ‘a calorie deficit is the mechanism of weight loss.’ Client: ‘so you’re saying could just eat junk food and still lose weight as long as it’s within my calories?’ ——— I have this convo daily. And the answer is; in reality, no, you CANT eat only junk food ‘within your calories’ and lose weight. While it’s theoretically possible, and may work pretty well under laboratory conditions, in the real world you’ll just end up crashing out of your diet and giving up. I know this because I see it constantly. However, I also frequently encounter people struggling to see results because the diet they’ve set themselves is so ‘healthy’ it leaves no room whatsoever for anything they enjoy AKA dietary preference. This can be just as damaging for achieving long term body recomposition or weight loss goals. Maintaining your target calorie intake comes back to finding a BALANCE between sensible diet quality and your personal diet preferences. #sustainable✌🏻🍵 —— Link in bio for quick-start nutrition plans 💪🏻

Restaurants and boozers are back open 👏🏻 here’s my top tips for enjoying your social life while staying on top of body composition goals! ✌🏻🍵

There’s lots of good physiological reasons to include high amounts of protein in your diet. But if the practicality of trying to eat so much is making your diet miserable and non-inclusive of foods you enjoy, it’s going to be much less sustainable. You can still get all the protein you need from your diet without having to go overboard and compromise food preference and sustainability. 💪🏻

Typically your main meals are going to be where most of your nutrient quality comes from, your protein, essential fats, veggies and fibre. Most clients I meet tend to eat reasonably well at these meal (whether they think so or not) but are often focused on ‘should I cut out the carbs’ or ‘should I have a salad instead of a sushi’. 

The much bigger window of opportunity is with the ‘extras’, the snacks, the coffees, the booze, the starters in restaurants, the brunches on the weekend. These things are where a lot of calories and very little nutrient quality are coming from. Focus your willpower here to see the best bang for your buck changes on both calorie intake and nutrient quality. 

Diets of mixed leaf salads and two bottles of prosecco never end well!

*I’ve used 1300-2000kcal as 1300kcal serves as a good ‘base’ for 1500kcal diets, leaving room for an additional 200kcal snack. 2000kcal serves as a good ‘base’ for a 2000kcal diet, or a 2500kcal with a couple of 250kcal snacks. 1500kcal, 2000kcal, 2500kcal are the most commonly prescribed calorie intakes for different goals based on the size, goal and activity level of the individual.

This is one of the most common things I see when working with nutrition clients for fat loss or body recomposition goals. Often they are doing a huge number of different things all with the hope of achieving their goal. While there might not be anything wrong with any of these things individually, spreading the focus so wide and giving yourself so many different things to ‘fail’ at often becomes the problem. The result is some level of adherence to some of it, with different aspects dropping off at different stages. When the net result is unsuccessful you can be left feeling like you’re trying everything and still not seeing results. 

A much better plan is to take a step back from it all, reassess where the biggest windows of opportunity for change are in your diet. In the case of fat loss, this would usually be looking for calorie reduction. Choose the three biggest areas and double down your focus and willpower on these. Suddenly you have a lot less balls in the area and can keep more accountable to these key areas. 

Make clear ‘rules’ around these areas that are actually realistic. If you’re currently getting takeaway and drinking twice a week, maybe don’t say ‘ill never drink again.’ Put in sensible parameters about the frequency, quantity and type of takeaway/alcohol that you can accommodate each week or month and make this your goal. 

Similarly for snacks. Quantify an appropriate snack window. For most of my clients this ends up being around 300-400kcal a day. Now use sensible methods to fill this window with some nutrient dense foods i.e fruits and make sure there’s room for something you really like… aka biscuits.

Focusing 100% on the one to three biggest areas is usually all we need to bring about change, and far more effective than focusing 3% of your willpower across 30 different things! The ‘key three’ can differ across individuals, but these three above are usually a good place to start!

This is true for anyone, but especially true if you are a sedentary woman who’s calculated calorie target for weight loss is depressingly low. Instead of trying hopelessly to eat less and less while getting more and more fatigued and less and less likely to exercise. Why not START by addressing that activity level before thinking about cutting calories. Get yourself up to ‘lightly’ or ‘moderately’ active by adding 3-4x40 minute exercise sessions a week and doing your best on your step count. Suddenly your old ‘maintenance’ calorie intake is in line with weight loss targets at your new activity level... and you didn’t have to worry about eating less. Now you’re training more and helping build muscle in line with body comp goals. You’re finding it easier to hit your protein and nutrient quality because you’ve got more calories to play with and you’ve even got more room for a little flexibility in the diet. Generally speaking, we’re always better eating more and doing more, than eating less and doing less. 💪🏻 [If you’re already hitting good activity levels the biggest window of opportunity for fat loss is going to be reducing calorie intake 💪🏻]

Appropriate calorie and protein intake are essential for the positive outcome of any body recomposition goal, particularly fat loss. However our approach to hit these targets needs to be sustainable if we intend to stick to it for any length of time. This is where the balancing act between nutrient quality and ‘lifestyle factors’ come in.

Nutrient quality [AKA getting all your essential fats, fibres, vitamins and minerals] can massively aid adherence to an appropriate calorie and protein target, namely through improved energy levels, gym performance, recovery and satiety when compared to a diet low in nutrient quality (think crisps, sweets, ice cream). However, a diet that completely prioritises nutrient quality and satiety over our enjoyment of life can heavily damage the sustainability of a nutrition plan. Not being able to have a glass of wine with friends or some chocolate in the afternoon may be sustainable for a few weeks, but if your nutrition plan requires you to completely forego aspects of your life you enjoy, you may quickly start to question why you’re doing it (quite rightly).

Anyone can give you that calorie and protein target (in fact there’s a free calculator in my bio) but the true success of a fat loss intervention is how well you can manage that balancing act between quality and lifestyle to find the sweet spot for your own adherence. ✌🏻🍵