The secret of weight loss

This is not going to be a full blown physics lesson, just a simple idea that could enlighten you. Amongst all the bull out there about low carb, low fat, low fructose, low everything foods and diet plans, only one thing has been scientifically proven to work.... EVER. 

Want the physique of your dreams? Listen up

Losing weight is a game of energy in v energy out. What does this mean? Well, in order to slim down, you have to either decrease the amount of energy coming into your body on average (those last two words are very important), or you have to increase the amount of energy going out of your body. Simple huh?

When you are in an energy surplus (more coming in than going out), that energy has to be stored (the body will not waste it unfortunately, millions of years of evolution have ensured that). Where is it stored? Fat cells, muscle cells, liver are the main places. Theoretically, we would prefer the body to store the excess in our muscle or liver, although in reality, regarding pure weight loss/gain, this is completely irrelevant. If you are an athlete needing to replenish muscle glycogen (muscle fuel) stores quickly, then it becomes more relevant, but most reading this will not fall into that category.

Bottom line is, as we take in more energy than we burn, we will put on weight; And the reverse too, as we burn more energy than we take in, we will lose weight. Some of this will be muscle, some will be fat. The influences for this are;

• Genetic - people will tend to gain fat and muscle and lose fat and muscle in the same ratios. For example, random Joe puts on 10 pounds, 7 of this is fat and 3 is muscle. This also works in reverse - Joe loses 10 pounds and 7 of it is fat, 3 of it is muscle. This is called our P-Ratio, and is largely genetic. 
• Gender - Men will tend to lose less muscle than women will with the same weight loss.
• Your current fat% - the more fat you are holding, the higher proportion of fat you will lose when you lose weight. Obese people can lose almost exclusively fat with no muscle loss. As you get leaner, more muscle tissue is lost as a percentage. But this is generally not a problem until you're in the athletic ranges of bodyfat %
• Age - Regardless of gender and genetics, we all get worse P-Ratios as we get older. In other words, we will tend to gain less muscle and more fat when we gain weight. Life's a bitch eh!

None of the above things are in your control. The below things ARE;

·         The types of food you eat - can influence (to a lesser extent) where that excess energy is stored. Eating certain macronutrients (you will know these as Carbohydrates, fats and proteins) can increase the amount of fat lost through decreasing the amount of muscle lost during dieting (and also the reverse during weight gain). This is not the magic bullet that most people think it is though.

·         Exercise – certain types of exercise (click link) can decrease the amount of muscle lost during a dieting stage, thusly increasing the amount of fat lost.

·         Drugs – steroids, clenbuterol, testosterone, HGH etc can all improve your body’s ability to both store excess energy in muscle tissue, and decrease energy losses from muscle tissue during dieting. That’s why bodybuilders use them – although none of my advice will involve any of this. Some other drugs can improve or worsen your energy expenditure through metabolism drops/increases.

Regardless of the above information, if you are in an energy deficit YOU WILL LOSE WEIGHT, some of it will come from muscle, some from fat. Why would we want to maintain muscle? For guys, this is a no brainer. For girls, maintaining muscle is going to keep everything toned and firm leading to the look you probably want. And I am talking about maintaining as much muscle as you can – building muscle is a different game, and you are not going to do that with your female hormones in a dieting situation. So no worries about waking up liking like the hulk, you are more likely to wake up looking like the below picture. The muscly women you see in bodybuilding mags are usually either insanely low bodyfat (like Maddonna) or taking huge amounts of steroids to achieve that look.

In Conclusion

• Decrease average amount of energy in (within reason)
• Keep energy out as high as possible (within reason)
• Improve the partitioning of those energy sources, so that more of it comes out from fat stores
• Maintain this for long enough to see a noticeable effect on our physique

The last one is very important, I will go through all of them in more detail. Look out for the next updates (follow my posts by putting your email address into the bar at the top of the page), I will be explaining how to do each of these thoroughly. I will also get to the good parts - how can we eat whatever the hell we want in large quantities, and still lose weight.