Fitness Basics 101 - fat loss.

At Compound Fitness we want to break down as much of the health and fitness jargon out there as possible. We want to filter through what actually matters and what will make a difference to you. If you typed,  ‘fitness plans to burn fat’, you would in return get thousands of different perspectives and thus make you even more confused. I want to use this blog series to cover some fundamentals that will pay off in the short term and down the road.

Starting with - How to lose fat. 

This is the number one secret that everyone wants to know and implement to see 6 pack abs ASAP, but sorry to disappoint, it isn't that sexy. There are thousands of bodily functions at play every second of the day and research paper after research paper has tried to better understand which fitness program and diet works best at targeting your body's fat.

The answer - reduction in your caloric intake and/or increasing your caloric expenditure.

So let's work it out how to do it:

To learn how many calories we need to consume we need to first workout the person's BMR (basal metabolic rate) this is defined as

“the amount of energy expended while at rest in a neutrally temperate environment, in the post-absorptive state (meaning that the digestive system is inactive, which requires about twelve hours of fasting in humans)”

In other words - how many calories we need to eat to just lie still all day and not have any negative effects.

To do this we need a person's gender, age, weight, height and how much they exercise. Let’s make someone up:

Sarah:

Gender - Female

Age - 30

Height - 5ft 4

Weight - 11 stone

Current level of exercise - Does not exercise

We simply type this information into a calculator (click this link to work out yours https://www.bmrcalculator.org) and get the information:

Sarah’s BMR = 1479 Calories per day.

We then do some more maths to find out how many calories we need to either lose weight or gain weight (note: I use weight instead of fat here because you will not just lose ‘fat’ but water, potentially some muscle and fat). We use the Harris-Benedict equation to calculate our daily calorie needs as it’s regarded as the most accurate equation and this also takes into account our levels of exercise throughout the day. 

For Sarah to remain as she is not exercising she’d need to consume 1775 calories a day. Now Sarah doesn't want to remain the same so we’re going to drop her calorie intake down 15%  - leaving us with 1508 calories a day, a reduction in 267 total calories.

Just a bit more maths now….

1 pound of fat contains 3500 calories so we can estimate that every 13 days Sarah will be losing lb of fat due to her new calorie restricted diet. Simples.

Although this may have sounded long winded once you get your head around it it is really quite simple. You might now be thinking, ‘yeah but what if Sarah just started exercising?’. Yes if Sarah was to increase her activity she could potentially eat more and still lose weight but we first must concern ourselves with total calories in before calories out.

I hope that has shed more light on how simple it is to work out how many calories we need in order to start losing fat and weight. You can read every blog and research paper written but all roads lead back to one - calories in vs calories out. We have to get this balance correct in order to see the results you want. In the next blog I'll be explaining what your macros mean and how they affect your fat loss journey. 

Any questions feel free to email me