“Calorie calculators tell you all you need to know about setting up your calories and macros”
There was a time when I used calorie calculators with clients and personally. I went through them all, Benedict-Harris, Katch-McCardle, Mifflin-St Jeor, you name it and I tried it. After the first couple of years, my view on them became something akin to Brian Fantana’s aftershave, Sex Panther by Odeon; 60% of the time, they work every time (if you don’t have a clue what I’m talking about, go watch Anchorman. You’re welcome.).
In theory, using a formula that requires you to put in such data as weight, age, amount of activity, height, and lean body mass would seem to provide a very accurate calorie figure from which to start someone’s diet. Don’t get me wrong, they can be useful in determining a start point, but that’s usually all you’ll need them for. It’s been the case when using calculators that they’ve given a maintenance figure that is much higher than a person’s actual intake. I’ll give an example to illustrate this and the potential implications of following the scientific number without evaluation.
A couple of years back I had a new client start with me who weighed around 130kg and was diagnosed as a Type 2 diabetic. I used a calorie calculator to calculate his maintenance calories from which I was then going to determine an appropriate deficit to help with the weight loss. His maintenance figures came to around 2500 calories, and a reasonable deficit would have been 2000-2200 calories per day to start off. After analysing his food diary, it was clear that he was having around 1100 calories per day, of predominantly poor-quality foods and liquids. Instead of going for the mathematical figure, I opted to meet him where he currently was at and started him at 1200 calories per day and we worked to clean up the diet. Over the course of the next few months, we gradually increased his calorie intake to around 2000, all while losing a significant amount of weight.
The point here is that there is often a big gap between what the literature says and what the reality is. Most times it’s a good idea to determine where a client is in terms of food intake by getting them to send pictures of their meals or filling MyFitnessPal for a week or two when collecting data because the degree of error is often quite high with online calculators. By doing so, you can also tailor any nutrition programme much more accurately to the person. The likelihood of adherence will go up because the plan is meeting the client where they’re at, which sets them up for better success, as opposed to where the numbers would dictate they should be.
“Higher meal frequency will speed up fat loss”
I’m not sure where this one originated from but over the years it’s gained a lot of traction with the general fitness population as a result of the bodybuilding community. The idea behind this one is that eating more frequently stokes the body’s metabolic furnace, resulting in a greater energy expenditure that will then help expedite the fat loss. The truth here is that there is no difference in overall fat loss when comparing diets with a lower or higher meal frequency. It all comes down to the overall energy balance and if this results in a deficit then fat loss will take place.
Now, that’s not to say that there aren’t benefits to spreading meals across the day if trying to lose weight, but these are not because of the metabolic effect they have. It can be less stress on the digestive system eating smaller meals more frequently in the day compared to 2-3 very big meals. It can also be more practical in terms of spreading protein intake across more frequent meals. From a psychological perspective, if the dieting process is difficult and the anticipation of your next meal is high, it can make sense to have smaller meals in between the large ones to prevent cravings and constant daydreams about food.
There are definitely practical and valid reasons for having a greater meal frequency, but it’s important to remember that this is not a magic bullet that will exponentially speed fat loss because it supercharges your body’s metabolism. This causal mentality is the reason why many mainstream diets have become so popular, and why myths like this persist.
“Training needs to be circuits and HIIT in order to lose fat”
When it comes to training specifically for fat loss, most people tend to do quite well with some amalgamation of bodybuilding and strongman style training. Let me clarify this. With fat loss, our goal is to enter into a state of negative energy balance either through managing calorie intake or manipulating training, ideally both. The training should be geared towards improving our metabolic rate and utilisation of glucose, which will be a consequence of increasing muscle mass.
What exercises are usually at the top for simultaneously improving strength, hypertrophy while requiring a large degree of output while performing them? You probably guessed that you’ll want to pitch your tent in the sagittal plane camp and get very proficient at doing squat variations, presses, rows, pushes, lunges, and hinge movements. That’s not to imply a one dimensional (or planar) view to exercise selection for fat loss, just a realistic one based on what most people who are looking to lose a significant amount of weight will probably find the most time and cost-effective doing.
How you set up the actual training will vary depending on the individual. The intensity will be determined by the training age and fitness level of the person, as will their ability to exert themselves during the training and coordinate muscular contractions. This means that circuits may not be necessary, to begin with. It may mean that supersets, tri-sets, and giant sets may be shelved and left as a tool to use if and when necessary.
Most people assume that they need to immediately start doing CrossFit style circuits and high-intensity interval training to lose body fat when really, they probably just need to clean up their diet and apply some level of progressive overload to a structured training programme. Circuits can be used if they are applicable and cardio, either in the form of steady-state of HIIT depending on preference and how it fits into the rest of the programme.
“You’ll enter starvation mode after a couple of months after dropping calories very low”
The concept of starvation mode refers to the energy-saving state the body will enter into once calories become too as an evolutionary survival mechanism. This will then put a handbrake on the weight and fat loss until this threat of low calories is no longer a threat and the body has no need to hold onto every little morsel of fuel that it’s provided.
The easiest way to eliminate the validity of this argument is, to put it bluntly. If starvation mode was a real thing, why do we see emaciated and virtually fat-free individuals depicted in history books and documentaries about prisoner of war camps? It’s highly unlikely that in such environments, individuals would have been provided a reasonable or even what we might perceive to be the lowest recommended calorie intake each day, yet they still continued to lose weight.
When we talk about starvation mode, we should really be talking about metabolic adaptation as a result of prolonged dieting and calorie restriction. In a sense, the enemy of fat loss is efficiency. Our bodies being the highly adaptable machines they are will become more efficient at performing physical activities such as weight lifting and cardio, and subsequently, burn fewer calories while doing so. Add to that, as a result of losing both fat and muscle (which is unavoidable), our BMR (basal metabolic rate) will drop as we no longer have as much metabolically active tissue that requires energy to be carried around. Our NEAT can drop as we unconsciously start to move less when we’re not training to conserve energy. This is usually seen by being sat down more, leaning, walking less, or avoiding unnecessary physical exertion.
The perceived starvation mode is more often than not a plateau caused by the dieting and training process that will usually require a reduction in calories or an increase in output (more training, steps, cardio) or in some cases a diet break or refeed to continue moving forward.
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