Pulling It All Together Part II: How to Get the Body You Want
The first part of this post primarily concentrated on building muscle. This part discusses burning fat: how to do it, how to keep doing it and most importantly, how to maintain your physique when you are done losing fat. Between these two posts and the linked content already on allnaturalmuscle.com, you should be well on your way to achieving and keeping the body want.
Burning fat is all about making calories in < calories out consistently enough so that the desired amount of fat loss can occur. That might sound easy, but it's not always the easiest thing to achieve. Why?
Your Metabolism Decreases Over Time
You may of heard people discussing their maintenance calories. 'Maintenance' is the number of calories required where calories in = calories out. So, in theory, if you can find your 'maintenance,' then you can just eat less than that and lose fat. That might work for a little while. But the problem is that 'maintenance' changes over time. If you eat fewer calories and your body will adapt to living on fewer calories. The net result is that your 'maintenance' drops. And the longer you try to maintain a caloric deficit, the lower your maintenance drops and the harder it is to lose fat.
I've known people (and maybe you have too) who run for hours a day, eat like a bird and still can't manage to lose any weight. And it is for this exact reason! Their bodies have adapted to their increase energy expenditure and their decreased calorie consumption. As a result, they now have to do tons of exercise and eat next to nothing just to maintain weight.
Fighting a Slowing Metabolism
I outline a solution to this problem in A Better Way To Cut Fat. Reverse Dieting also accounts for these metabolic adaptation, by taking advantage of it, so that cutting calories doesn't have to mean starvation. And on the other side of the coin, Carb Cycling can help maintain fat loss and combat the effects of a slowing metabolism due to a prolonged caloric deficit.
Some people might argue that the lower caloric requirements due to prolonged fat cutting are a factor of reduced body mass. They might tell you that all you have to do is recalculate your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). However, in my experience (and darn near everyone else's who has achieved significant fat loss), your actual TDEE drops much faster than any TDEE calculations might have you believe, even if you take it really slow.
Other people might suggest ultra low carb diets. Most of the time it seems like these kind of diets border on starvation. Sure, it might sound easier to just say "Cut out an entire classification of nutrients from your diet if you want to lose weight." But talk to someone who's done that for a while and see how happy they are with what they get to eat. Better yet, ask them what their plan is to eat like a normal person again.
Maintaining a Lean Physique
OK, you've achieved the physique you want. Now what? You can always Reverse Diet to get your calories back up to a healthy level while limiting fat gain. But you will probably gain some fat in the process. However, if you really want to keep it lean on a reverse diet then there is always Taking Your Reverse Diet to the Next Level.
The point is that there is life after cutting fat. And it doesn't have to mean severely restricting calories, carbs or anything else. It just takes a little patience and time. Then you can look at your friends who can't even stand the sight of a carb without gaining weight and confidently tell them that you can stay lean and eat pretty much whatever you like.
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