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This article is written in the context of a weight trained male or female with a decent amount of muscle mass, trying to lose fat.

I felt this topic was worth writing about as I see countless people thinking that they have to make drastic dietary changes in order to see results. This often involves adoption of an extremist style diet such as paleo, keto, 0 sugar, or some other diet that involves a list of foods which you can and can’t eat. While these types of diet can and do work, for the short term, they are often unsustainable and so make long term progress difficult.

I do NOT advocate separating foods under “acceptable” and “unacceptable” labels like this!

Exclusion style diets are especially difficult to make continued progress with if quantitative (countable) calorie and macronutrient goals aren’t present. Why this is important is because energy and macronutrient content of a diet are the most important factors for weight change and body composition, NOT eating a select bunch of foods, or certain foods at certain times. This means tracking calorie and/or macronutrients (carbs,fats,protein) is important for continued progress. This article is not about arguing fundamental concepts of nutrition, though. I would advise everyone to watch the entirety of the Eric Helms’ Nutritional Pyramid series on Youtube if you haven’t already, it will inform or refresh you about what factors of a diet are worth paying attention to.

What Do I Recommend?

Firstly, before you attempt to lose weight, start to track every food you eat in a free online database such as Myfitnesspal. Do this for a week and average the data. This is in an attempt to gauge what your diet is made up from on average in terms of calories, carbs, fat, protein, and fibre.

The same week, weigh yourself at the same time of day (at least 3x per week but preferably every day) in the same conditions. Ideally in the morning after visiting the bathroom and in the same clothes/naked. This will give you a base weight to work from. Keep your caloric  and macronutrient intake similar for the week following this, and keep weighing yourself. Now, average week 1 weight and week 2 body weight and compare them. Over these two weeks keep activity & training consistent (ie don’t suddenly increase cardio by 2x during the 2nd week). You now should have some rough data about what a certain caloric intake does to your body weight.

For fat loss periods while maximising muscle retention, weight loss should be kept within ~0.5-1.0% of total body weight per week. More than this and you risk losing too much muscle, and a slower rate than this means you can probably get away with more fat loss without sacrificing much muscle. Now, in terms of macronutrient content of the diet, shoot for around 1.8-2.7g/kg of protein/day (1). The lower end of this range is applicable to most people. The upper range of this becomes more applicable when you are extremely lean, and are losing weight quickly (to maximise muscle retention). Fibre should be around 10-15g per 1000 calories consumed, which usually falls into 25-40g/fibre day. Carbs and fats can be whatever you prefer (within total calories). There can be arguments made for dropping one or the other more. Higher carb may help to spare performance while in an energy deficit and therefore preserve muscle, and higher fat will help with satiety (feeling of fullness) and so might make the weight loss phase easier. Your intake of one or both of these macronutrients will very likely need to drop throughout the weight loss phase, so drop whatever you prefer but keep fat at least 30-50g/day minimum for health reasons.

The food you eat doesn’t matter, it is the total caloric, macronutrient, fibre, and micronutrient intake at the end of the day that is important.

Cardio

track your cardiovascular exercise as well as your nutrition. The most replicable way to do this is to use a cardio machine and have a set goal per week of how many calories you want to burn through cardio. The calories burnt on these machines is not always accurate with what the machine says, but it’s usually consistent which is what matters. This makes tracking weekly cardio quantifiable, and you can adjust calories burnt per week through cardio upwards or downwards depending on what weight loss is doing. Do cardio post training or on rest days, low to moderate intensity is usually what I advocate so training is not affected. High intensity cardio can be useful too but space it away from leg training days. Remember cardio is this context is just a tool for expending more calories. Different forms of cardio don’t offer special magic fat burning properties over the other. You don’t have to do cardio, but it allows you to eat more and lose the same amount of weight compared to if you didn’t do it at all.

Track body weight changes with a graph. When your weight loss stalls (weight loss <0.5% of total BW each week for two consecutive weeks), add more cardio for example 500kcal/week extra, or reduce calories by another 100-200 through carb and or fat reductions.

Weight gain rather than loss, but an example of how weight should be tracked over time so accurate macronutrient changes can be made.

Hopefully you have a good grasp of how to effectively lose weight and remain healthy. Eat what you want within reason, hit suitable macronutrient and fibre goals, and eat 5 serves of fruit/veg day and that’s 95% of the dietary picture you need to worry about.

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Reference

• (1) Murphy, C. H., Hector, A. J., & Phillips, S. M. (2014). Considerations for protein intake in managing weight loss in athletes. European journal of sport science, (ahead-of- print), 1-8.

Everyone who trains wants long term progress. To efficiently achieve this, we need to understand what is important in a training programme and what is not.

Volume

Firstly, it must be understood that the main variable in dictating long-term muscle growth and strength, is an increase in recoverable volume performed, over time. Volume is the product of sets x reps x load, and should mostly be completed at >60-70% of your one rep max (1RM) when your goal is muscle/strength gain.. There are other factors which influence muscle growth, but improving volume performed between training blocks should be prioritised over goals such as “getting a pump” “feeling the burn” “raising the heart rate”. Not that these aren’t useful, they just aren’t nearly as important as volume. It is also more important than rep range utilised. An interesting study (4) found 7 sets of 3 reps to be as effective as 3 sets of 10 in increasing muscle size due to equated volume, going against the typical gym goer mentality of higher reps being superior for growth.

An increase in volume over time results in greater and greater mechanical tension on the musculature which is likely the primary factor driving hypertrophic (size) gains (3). For example, increasing your 5 sets of 5 squat from 100kg to 120kg would elicit progressive overload through increased mechanical tension, resulting in hypertrophy. The goal to increase the weight, sets, or reps (likely a combo of all of them) on the lifts that utilise the most musculature, should be the backbone of your programme, whether your goal is bodybuilding or powerlifting related.

As I stated earlier, the volume has to be recoverable. More is not always better. Too much volume can hinder recovery to an extent that compromises the next training session, and there is a cap on how much muscle you can synthesise from a single session. For example, 10 sets of 10 at 60% of your 1RM would be a huge amount of volume at a suitable percentage, BUT would almost always be too much to recover from in time for the next training session.

Frequency

After we train, protein synthesis and degradation are both elevated. Muscle proteins have been broken down, and new ones are being synthesised. In order to gain muscle, protein synthesis must be greater than protein degradation on average. Protein synthesis does not remain elevated to any significant extent 48-72 hours following a training bout of a particular muscle group. This means that drug free lifters would very likely benefit from training each muscle group 2-3x per week, rather than the traditional 1x/week advertised by professional bodybuilders and muscle magazines. 2-3x/week frequency has been shown as more effective for hypertrophy in research reviews such as (5).

Training each muscle group 2-3x/week allows protein synthesis to be elevated for longer periods of time throughout the week. A study (1) found 3 training sessions/week per muscle group more conducive of muscle gain than 1 session/week EVEN when volume was the same between groups. This illustrates the importance of multiple sessions per week per body part. 40-70 Repetitions per body part per session, while training each body part two or three times per week, are suitable recommendations for most drug-free trainees (2).

Summary

• Pay close attention to total training volume (recording it if late intermediate-advanced lifter) and control its increase over time to control your gains.
• Prioritise using more weight, doing more reps, or completing more sets, with the big, compound lifts.
• Train each muscle 2-3x/week to allow for higher average protein synthesis.

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References

• (1) Mclester, J. R., Bishop, E., & Guilliams, M. E. (2000). Comparison of 1 Day and 3 Days Per Week of Equal-Volume Resistance Training in Experienced Subjects. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 14(3), 273-281.
• (2) Helms, E., Fitschen, P. J., Aragon, A., Cronin, J., & Schoenfeld, B. J. (2014). Recommendations for natural bodybuilding contest preparation: resistance and cardiovascular training.
• (3) Schoenfeld, B. J. (2013). Potential mechanisms for a role of metabolic stress in hypertrophic adaptations to resistance training. Sports medicine, 43(3), 179-194.
• (4) Schoenfeld, B. J., Ratamess, N. A., Peterson, M. D., Contreras, B., Sonmez, G. T., & Alvar, B. A. (2014).  Effects of different volume-equated resistance training loading strategies on muscular adaptations in well-trained men. The Journal of Strength & Conditioning Research, 28(10), 2909-2918.
• (5) Wernbom, M., Augustsson, J., & Thomeé, R. (2007). The influence of frequency, intensity, volume and  mode of strength training on whole muscle cross-sectional area in humans. Sports Medicine, 37(3), 225-264.