I am not a fan of fad diets because there is a reason why they are really popular for a while and then kind of fade a way. I am a purist and the science is behind what I have to say and how could it not be. Our bodies are complicated machines sure, but at the end of the day your body is like a car that has reserve gasoline tanks. The parts of your body like fat and muscle are the reserve tanks. and the food you intake is like filling up at the gas station.
There is so much bullshit on the internet these days because influencers and people with channels have to always be coming up with new things in order to keep you engaged and keep you buying their programs or bullshit supplements that they, the speaker, don't even use themselves. I hate it when I hear big time people like Joe Rogan talking about how he uses something every day when he is clearly reading a script. No you don't!
I believe that the one and only true way to weight / fat loss is by doing something that Piers Morgan upset a bunch of body positivist people with saying
Obviously the guests lost their damn minds when he said that but he's correct. If you put less gas in your tank than it needs to get where you are going in a day, it has no choice but to access the reserves. This is just pure, simple science.
There's a lot of hacks out there like fasting and what not and you know what, go ahead and believe that if you want to but the end result in the same: If over time you are consuming fewer calories than you are burning YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT... period.
The over-complication of all of this is mostly because people want to make money by saying what appears to be educated things on the internet, but most of the time these guys are all snake-oil salesmen. I know two people personally that make a living doing videos and getting subs from fitness advice and we talk about it in private and they let me know (provided I promise to never call them out) that they don't actually do half of the stuff they talk about in their videos.
The other day I was talking to a friend about caloric deficit and how I believe this is the only thing that matters other than making sure you get enough protein as well. The real battle with caloric deficit is getting enough protein but there are ways to make that happen if you just plan ahead, I will talk about this in greater detail later.
But the other day, because i had like 5 cups of coffee and was on a sort of pain medication that mixes with the caffeine to turn me into a no-food-needing machine, the entire day had gone by and I found myself post-run in a huge calorie deficit and wasn't even hungry.
Now here is the thing folks. To some, this might seem like a big fucking win because 2500 calories is nearly the equivalent of a pound of body fat. 3500 is the rounded estimate of how many excess calories that comprises a single pound of body fat.
So for some, they might be celebrating their express route to a loss of a pound in a day but this is a terrible strategy for a lot of reasons.
Look, I don't know how this is determined, but there are a lot of researchers out there that have discovered that since your body is such a complicated and intelligent machine, if you subject it to such massive caloric deficits, it will switch your body over to what many call "survival mode." Without your permission, your body is going to slow down a lot of processes including digestion, so that you don't starve to death. Your body doesn't know that this is just something you did by accident, it sees it as an emergency and takes the steps necessary to protect you.
If you were to do a calorie deficit like this many days, your body may just decide to set your metabolism very low and keep it there. So that's maybe why a lot of people from that show "The Biggest Loser" who are starving themselves for the TV show, end up gaining all or most of the weight back once they show is over and they return to eating normally.
So what is the sweet spot? I'm not going to pretend to know the answer to that and neither do many other honest fitness people out there. But a general rule of thumb is that if you are in the 300-500 calorie deficit per day, that your body doesn't treat this as an alarm and it will slowly but surely use your "reserve tanks" instead of just shutting down. At this rate you will lose a kg every 2 weeks and honestly, this is a safe, sustainable method of weight loss.
If you are impatient and/or lazy, just get liposuction. That's lame, but it is a lot safer than fucking around with your metabolism.
Things get more complicated when you want to both lose weight and gain or maintain muscle, but there are ways to accomplish this as well. Most of the methods are a lot less difficult than you might be thinking but just like anything in the fitness world, it is going to take some level of devotion on your part to make it happen.
It doesn't have to be as hard as you might be thinking, but the point of this write-up is that if you find yourself one day with thousands of calories as a deficit, you really should find something to eat. This is not a good thing and you shouldn't be proud of it... you could actually be stunting your progress.
I base this not on being a professor, I have no education background to qualify me for this but I can show you this
The first one is me in my 20's still reeling from having an unstoppable metabolism by virtue of being young. The second picture is me at 110 kg.. a fat fuck that couldn't really do anything.... the last picture is me, after I got a plan, dropped the weight, and gained more muscle than I have ever had in my life. I drank beer through all of them... life is balance, it isn't starving yourself... check it out!