If you have done even the smallest bit of exploration into the fitness industry you likely would have heard phrases such as “build lean muscle” or “build muscle and stay lean”. It’s quite an attractive prospect and one that would certainly grab anyone’s attention. After all, it is appealing to gain muscle and stay lean right? It is also appealing to have a lean muscle rather than just muscle.

The reality is that for people who don’t have the A1 genetics or are not using performance-enhancing 3 Point supplements. (PED’s), it’s likely not the best use of your time to try and gain muscle but stay lean.

Let’s dive in.

Firstly we will clarify that there are 3 types of muscle within the human body. Skeletal (which we are concerned about here), cardiac muscle and smooth muscle. Now what you don’t see on this list is ‘lean’ muscle. Further, if there was such a thing lean muscle does that means there is also ‘fat’ muscle? In both cases the answer is no. Muscle is muscle, it’s not lean nor is it fat. People will certainly develop different muscle shapes and sizes largely dependent on genetics, training experience and things like insertion points but what people don’t have is ‘lean’ muscle. We all just have regular old muscle.

What people are actually referring to is just having muscle and very little fat covering that muscle, giving you a lean appearance. If a lean person who looked ripped and defined began to gain fat, they are not going from ‘lean’ muscle to ‘fat’ muscle. They are simply just gaining fat on top of the same muscle they already had. Being lean is a look. Your muscles aren’t lean, you are lean. You have muscle and you have a low body fat percentage over the muscle.

Building muscle and staying lean or getting leaner occurs best in 3 different scenarios:

· You’re brand new to the gym

· You take PED’s

· You’re returning to the gym after an extended break i.e 6 months

We all know that your first 6-12 months of resistance training produced unbelieve results. You would have likely noticed changes in your body almost weekly and just looking at a barbell seemed to add muscle to your frame. Whilst I’m not doubting you put in the hard work, the payoff you get from simply eating well and training hard during this point of your lifting career is far great than what was to come. Now you’re a few years into training and results have slowed dramatically. How do you keep adding muscle whilst maintaining a low body fat percentage?

First, we will first lay down the basics of what it takes for each of gaining muscle and losing fat.

To optimally build muscle, you need to give your body the resources to do so. Just like if you want to turn a single story house into a two story house, you need more material to make this happen. That material your body needs for optimal rates of growth is food. Now, it is possible to gain muscle eating at maintenance but the rate at which you gain will be a lot slower. Especially as you become more advanced in your training, these gains will become relatively insignificant. Spending a decent time in a surplus will likely mean your recovery ceiling is higher, meaning you can afford higher doses of stimulative volumes and intensities. This probably correlates to more muscle growth compared to a slightly lower recovery ceiling we would have eating at maintenance.

Spending extended periods of time in a surplus is going to be your best solution to gaining muscle unless you are of course on ‘that good shit’. If you are on ‘that good shit’ then that is totally fine and a choice of yours, although you will likely still need to follow the same principle to get maximal results anyway.

Fat accumulation is a bi-product of being in a calorie surplus. As we eat more, a percentage of this will go to muscle and a percentage to fat. The more we gain, the more this skews in favour of fat accumulation and the less muscle per kg of body weight change. So whilst we need to accept some fat accrual, we don’t want to let this get out of hand.

Staying lean means that we probably just finished dieting and were previously in a state of negative energy balance or we have gone through a few diets in the past and are currently quite lean as a result. A negative energy balance is not conducive to building muscle. Taking the above example, if we want to build that second story but we don’t have enough materials we can’t expect to finish building can we. We can’t expect to build a significant amount of muscle without enough food coming in. The best we can do is to try to maintain it.

If you have just finished your diet and you want to stay lean, this would assume that you are currently consuming enough to maintain your physique. This means whilst our situation in terms of the potential to grow muscle has improved, we are still going to be lacking the necessary resources to build muscle at ‘optimal’ rates. We may be able to build muscle very slowly but the rate at which we can build muscle in maintenance will be a lot slower than in optimal conditions such as a surplus.

So how do we have both? Simply, in the short term we can’t, long term we can. Unless you fit one of the 3 categories above then aiming to build muscle and stay lean is essentially setting yourself up in a hamster wheel.

Well how the f$%k do I get jacked and lean.

Using an example of an stock investor. A seasoned investor will invest money into a certain stock and likely leave it for years on end. If put into the right stock there is great potential for a substantial return on what you put in. But this takes time and patience. Compare that to a rookie who gets nervous when the stocks change even slightly. They invest money into a company and see that is has been going down for 3 months so they take their money out and cop a small loss. They reinvest into new stock and see after 2 months it has gone up so they take their money out. The cycle repeats and they are left with the same amount of money 2 years later.

If your overarching goal is to gain muscle and be lean then strap in for the long haul just like the seasoned investor does.

We know that muscle is most optimally grown when we have an abundance of energy. Being in a surplus allows our recovery ceiling to be higher and this in turn likely allows us to increase the amount of stimulative volume and intensities in our training. In an article by James Krieger on Weightology he states that “12-18 weekly sets probably gives you the best bang for your buck in terms of hypertrophy..” This is a recommendation that fits the mean, some people will sit outside these ranges. Schoenfeld et al. showed that up to 45 weekly sets can provide significant hypertrophy, although this is likely only practical to 1-2 muscle groups at a time in a specialisation phase. Being in a net positive energy balance, your best bang for your buck volumes ranges might be slightly higher than normal. So what might be 12-18 now could be 14-20.

If you position yourself in a surplus for an extended period of time, you are giving yourself every opportunity to gain muscle. Remember fat accrual is a bi-product of being in a surplus but the aim is to not let this get out of hand. We want to ensure the amount of muscle we gain per kg is still reasonable and we don’t overdo the fat gain in a surplus. For example if we spend 4-5 months in a surplus and go from 14% BF to 20% BF as a male, it may be a good idea to mini cut and bring your BF% back down to 15 or 16% to allow you to continue your gaining for another 3-4 months. A mini cut is NOT designed to get you shredded and hence why it’s still considered part of a massing phase. Once you’ve spent time building, now it’s time to get lean and in terms of long term progression this cyclic approach we suggest will be the best use of your time.

Key Takeaways

– There is no such thing as ‘lean’ muscle. Everyone has muscle and if you want to appear lean then you firstly need to have built the muscle and then you need to diet to reduce bf%, ultimately given the illusion of a lean muscle.

– Trying to gain muscle whilst staying lean likely an inefficient use of your time if you are natural. Gaining muscle and being lean are best done in isolation. That is, being in a surplus for an extended period of time to allow for optimal muscle growth rates and accepting that fat gain is a bi-product of this.

– Getting lean means dieting your fat away. This is best done being in a deficit for an extended period of time. Staying lean means you will be eating just enough to maintain your current physique. Some muscle can be gained here but optimal rates cannot be achieve as you do not have the abundance of materials required.

Training during a fat loss phase is a large area of contention within the fitness industry. Given that body composition improvements are arguably the leading goal of your average gym goer and that same gym goer would likely rather train hard than diet hard, this often leads to questions such as:

“What’s the best type of training for fat loss?”

“What are the best exercises for fat loss”

And so on.

This article aims to give the reader an overview of how to best apply training (resistance and cardio) as it relates to a fat loss phase in order to optimise body composition.

Before we begin, we will outline the basics of fat loss.

The Physiology Of Fat Loss

The fundamental concept to understand when it comes to fat loss is energy balance. As humans we have energy that comes into the body via the food and drink we consume. We then use this energy to function. Within the body we can then have 3 different conditions. These conditions can be summed up via the following equations:

Energy In > Energy Out = Weight gain.

Energy In = Energy Out = Weight Maintenance.

Energy In < Energy Out = Fat Loss

Zoning in on the last equation, we need to consume less energy than we expend and this is what we refer to as an energy deficit. Our body will always prefer to sit at its current maintenance and so when the energy coming into the body doesn’t match the energy going out, we have to find energy from another source. When this occurs, the body amongst other changes will begin to mobilise stored fat and break it down to be used for energy and this is how we lose fat.

In order to tip the balance of this equation in favour of fat loss we need to understand what each side consists of.

The energy in side is fairly straight forward. It’s simply the food and drink we consume. The energy out, side of the equation consists of the following:

• Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR): Amount of energy needed for the body to perform vital functions at complete rest. Energy that “keeps the lights on”.

• Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT): This is energy used for normal non incidental day to day activities. Walking to work or taking the stairs for example.

• Exercise Activity (EA): Energy used for purposeful exercise.

• Thermic Effect of Food (TEF): This is the energy needed for the digestion of food.

Combined, these all comprise of our daily total energy expenditure (TDEE).

Anyone that has spent a long time in a deficit or lost significant amounts of fat knows that it’s not as simple as just dropping calories once and breezing through. Our body is adapted for survival and when we create a deficit our body naturally moves to mitigate this deficit and bring the body back to an equal energy balance. Specifically, it does this by manipulating the 4 components of energy output. These 4 factors will see a down regulation in an attempt to bridge the energy gap created and to ultimately restore energy balance.

BMR reductions during a fat loss phase are largely a result of a down regulation in the secretion of Thyroid hormones. Put simply, one of the main roles of thyroid hormones is to set the base metabolic rate for all cells in the body so it makes sense that if we see a decline in its secretion, BMR would also down regulate. Depending on the length and severity of the diet we may see entire systems become affected. A classic example is when females lose their menstrual cycle from long periods of dieting as energy is pulled away from non essential systems and redirected simply to survival.

As we lose fat we also become smaller, meaning we cost less to function i.e A 90kg person likely has a higher BMR than an 80kg person simply because there is more of them. Unfortunately for BMR there is not much we can do in order to preserve it as thyroid function is largely dictated by energy intake and if you’re losing fat, bodyweight reductions will obviously occur.

NEAT is a key player for energy expenditure. Less energy coming in will cause the body to reduce energy going out from various non-purposeful activity. You’ll inherently begin to fidget less, you’ll sit every chance you get, take the elevator instead of stairs, some people even speak slower. These changes often creep up on you without even noticing and this can lead to frustrating stalls in fat loss.

EA will be addressed in the cardio section below but essentially it’s another ‘tool’ we have to assist in creating the required deficit. Resistance training also falls within this category but as you will read, our opinion is that energy expenditure is not the primary goal of resistance training as it relates to a fat loss phase.

The amount of food we eat is going to be significantly less during a diet and this will in turn cause our TEF to be lowered. We can do our best to offset this as much as possible by consuming a diet high in protein with sufficient levels of fibre (vegetable and whole grains) as these along with total food intake are the main contributors to TEF.

Training For Fat Loss

To best dissect training during a fat loss phase we believe it should be split into two categories. These categories being resistance training and cardio and each coming with their own objectives.

Resistance training as it relates to fat loss should be designed with the goal in mind to maximise muscle retention. When we refer to improving body composition the aim is for specifically fat loss, not weight loss. The difference is that weight loss simply refers to a total loss in body mass, no matter where it comes from. This means weight loss doesn’t account for or put in place measures to prevent muscle loss and this is something we want to avoid.

Cardio as it relates to fat loss should be designed to:

1. Help maintain a baseline energy expenditure in order to allow the deficit created by decreased food intake to have an effect or,

2. To work synonymously with decreased food intake to increase the energy deficit.

Resistance Training & Fat Loss

In a fat loss phase, obviously fat loss is our primary goal. But in order to achieve the best body composition possible we want to hold onto our muscle mass, hence why muscle retention becomes a very important secondary goal. When resistance training is combined with a calorie surplus and a sufficient protein intake, we have the 3 key players for effective muscle growth. During a fat loss phase we lose that calorie surplus and therefore expecting significant muscle growth should be out of the question. We can however turn our attention to muscle retention and this is accomplished through resistance training and sufficient protein intakes.

The question is, how do we best organise our resistance training for fat loss?

‘What ever built muscle, keeps muscle’

That’s right! The best place to start is to change nothing at all. The same training principles that helped you build muscle will help you retain it in a deficit. Obviously there are some considerations we need to take into account mainly around fatigue management but if you want to view resistance training in its simplest terms, the least you change the better. What does this likely look like/ what are the current recommendations? In general you’ll be:

• Volume: 10-20 working sets per muscle group per week

• Frequency: Training each muscle group 2-4 times per week

• Intensity: Working with an absolute intensity between 60-85% of 1RM or relative intensity/RIR of 1-4.

Structuring your training around these 3 parameters and progressively overload as adaptions allow and you’re 90% of the way to a productive training program regardless of your net energy position.

In saying all that, there are some considerations that you may need to take into account as a fat loss phase will clearly have it’s own unique set of obstacles to work through. The above is a good starting point for most, but it doesn’t mean there can’t be any flexibility within that framework to better suit a fat loss phase.

Exercise Selection

Fatigue management should be always be an important consideration in your training but during a fat loss phase you have conditions that will likely make it somewhat harder to navigate. On one hand we ideally want to maintain and potentially progress our training volume in order to maintain muscle mass but we also need to account for the decrease in energy intake compared to what we are accustom to. Whilst fatigue accumulation should be expected and is a necessary bi product of training and dieting, too much can lead to things like injury, poor training and low compliance.

Is maintaining our training volumes optimal? Yes, it likely would be we must take into account our limited recuperative abilities. Given training with similar volumes will probably give us the best chance to retain muscle, how can we afford to do it without grossly ignoring the concept of fatigue management. One way we can do this is exercise selection.

When selecting exercises we can look to ones that are highly stimulative of the target muscle but don’t generate the systemic fatigue it’s counterparts do. Muscles respond to stimulus not exercises. Your quads don’t know if they are squatting, leg pressing, lunging or doing leg extensions but they are getting a stimulus from all these exercises.

This is where we come to the stimulus to fatigue ratio which was developed by Mike Istratel of Renaissance Periodisation.

The stimulus to fatigue ratio is the amount of stimulus an exercise provides to the intended muscle in relation to the amount of fatigue it brings to your body. Ideally we move to exercises with a high stimulus and low fatigue cost during a fat loss phase. To determine if an exercise is stimulating you are looking at the following metrics

• Pump

• Mind muscle connection

• Local soreness

If you get a really good pump, have a great mind muscle connection during the movement and have a degree of soreness in the following days then it’s likely a stimulating exercise. You want to try and find exercises that tick the above but don’t induce heaps of fatigue. For example, a deadlift is a common exercise people use to target glutes and hamstrings. Whilst is does provide a good stimulus on these muscles, the systemic fatigue it induces is huge and this may affect the productiveness of subsequent exercises, workouts and your recuperative ability while energy availability is limited. Another proposed exercise to hit your hamstrings and glutes would be RDL’s. The increase in hip flexion moves the glutes and hamstring through a greater ROM with a lighter load, a 2 fold benefit. The fatigue cost of an RDL is much lower than a conventional deadlift for comparatively similar stimulation of target muscles. In its full use, the stimulus to fatigue ratio can be determined numerically (hence ratio) but we believe you can still develop a good understanding of appropriate exercises without this just based off training experience.

Re Organise Your Training Split

From a fatigue management stand point, reorganising your training split and increasing the frequency you train muscle groups may prove beneficial especially in the back end of a fat loss phase. Increasing the frequency doesn’t necessarily have to correlate to more volume. If you take 15 sets weekly sets of quads and divide them into 1 session with 8 sets and 1 session with 7 sets VS 3 sessions with 5 sets, volume remains the same but session frequency increases in the second scenario.

How is this potentially beneficial for training during a fat loss phase?

With the increase in fatigue associated with a fat loss phase we can potentially avoid a drop off in weekly set quality if training frequency for muscle groups increases. Let’s go back to our quads example where you have a total of 15 working sets over the week. Whilst in a surplus your training split may be lower, push, pull, lower and upper. The quad exercises in your first leg day are 4 sets of BB back squat, 3 sets of leg press and 2 sets of leg extension. The second lower day has 3 sets of hack squat and 3 sets of walking lunges. Remember that these exercises will be combined with other glute/ham dominant exercises so your typical lower body sessions likely has 5-8 exercises. In a surplus this is fine. Deep into fat loss phase a leg session starts to become quite a daunting prospect and it’s likely that session quality will begin to tail off as you get further and further into the diet. Instead of 15 good quality quad sets, we may get 10 quality sets and then the other 5 we just float through. Obviously not ideal but we may be able to combat this by re organising training. For example, in the last training block of our fat loss phase where fatigue is at its highest and motivation lowest we might train with a split that looks like full body, full body, full body, full body and upper. In 3 of those full body days we train quads, allocating 5 sets to each session. This is much less daunting than a thought of having to do 8 sets of quads plus our glute and hamstring work in a full lower body day. 5 sets of quads and likely 1 posterior exercise and it’s over for that session. After that you can rest, eat and get ready to go again. Now we have a situation where we are giving ourselves the best chance of 15 quality sets over the week.

It should be noted that some research suggests that reaching around 8 sets and above per session per muscle group is needed for to achieve optimal muscle stimulation within a single session. The reality is that appropriate levels of stimulation can likely be achieved either side of this figure in a range. Therefore just because you don’t reach 8 sets for a particular muscle group it doesn’t mean growth hasn’t been stimulated, there might just be slightly less of it and remember we are likely training that muscle again in quick succession. For example, dropping to 4 hard working sets per session for a muscle group should still be stimulating and allow for this growth.

Fat Loss Workouts and Best Exercises For Fat Loss

Above we stated that:

“Resistance training as it relates to fat loss should be designed with the goal in mind to maintain muscle mass.”

This means that creating a calorie deficit with resistance training should NOT be at the forefront of your mind. Often we see people who are looking to improve body composition switch from a well-designed resistance training program into what something that resembles F45. The training focus switches from muscle stimulation to:

• How many reps/exercises can I cram into this session.

• How exhausted can I make myself within this time.

Whilst there is nothing wrong with this style of training (all forms of exercises are great), we can all agree that for the purpose of hypertrophy and muscle retention it’s not ideal. Muscle hypertrophy has no correlation with how exhausted you can make yourself.

With that being said, the best resistance training for fat loss is the one that best helps you retain muscle mass. Leave the energy deficit to food and a little cardio.

Cardio

Again, as we have stated earlier,

Cardio as it relates to fat loss should be designed to:

1. Help maintain a baseline energy expenditure in order to allow the deficit created by decreased food intake to have an effect or,

2. To work synonymously with decreased food intake to increase the energy deficit.

Unlike resistance training, cardio’s main role is to contribute to the energy deficit. It should be viewed as a tool to at the very least uphold our baseline starting energy expenditure. From there to assist in creating a further deficit where reductions in food intake are already in place. All of this whilst again taking into consideration its role in fatigue.

Cardio Should Work To Compliment Decreased Food Intake Not Replace It

If you try to train or exercise your way to fat loss then you’re in for an unpleasant time. There are generally two ways in which you’ll create your starting energy deficit for a fat loss phase.

• Through an appropriate reduction in energy intake.

• Mostly through a reduction in energy intake and a slight increase in energy output.

After the first initial reduction, the relationship for decreases in food intake or increases in output will be dictated by the individual’s circumstances. Never in my coaching career have I attempted to get someone lean by only increasing energy output without considering food intake. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, creating a deficit through food is much more accurate and measurable than measuring energy expenditure from exercise. Whilst it’s not perfect as we have to account for human error, it’s a hell of a lot more accurate and practical than a treadmill monitor. Second, cardio doesn’t burn as many calories as we might think for the amount of effort we put in. Subjectively we can feel like it’s been a very challenging session but the reality is the number of calories used will be far less than what we’d hoped for. This means that trying to simply train your way to fat loss is a very inefficient way to go about it. You will end up with the required cardio being far beyond what’s maintainable due to time restraints and fatigue accumulation.

So how do we use cardio? If all we do during a fat loss phase is reduce our food intake, there is the potential to be eating very little quite soon. Cardio helps prevent this or at the very least, delay it. Everyone will stall at some stage(s) during their fat loss phase. Whilst we could take 200 calories out straight away, another viable option would be to drop by 100 calories and add 40 mins of cardio into the week. Anyone that has seriously dieted knows the difference 100 calories can make and would happily add 40 minutes of cardio to their week to keep those 100 calories (Note: If can’t add more cardio because you’re at a point where it’s already too high for further increases and calories very low then it’s time to think about ending the fat loss phase).

We can also take a step back and look at cardio as a means to uphold baseline output. Remember above we mentioned that when we create an energy deficit your body will spring into action in an attempt to bridge that gap. One way it does this is through attempting to reduce your NEAT. Essentially you will begin to move less both consciously and subconsciously and this can potentially negate the deficit initially created by food. NEAT is often simply measured by daily steps. So if your coach programs you for a 20 min walk each day in the aim to hit a desired step count, yes it is cardio but the aim is to offset reductions in NEAT from you moving less in other parts of your day.

Type Of Cardio

“Which type of cardio is best for fat loss?”

In general we have two main contenders, these being

• High Intensity Interval Training (HIIT)

• Low Intensity Steady State (LISS)

HIIT is characterised by short bursts of maximal effort followed by rest periods. LISS is characterised by longer single bouts of low intensity exercise like walking. When considering which one to choose you need to make a decision based on recovery, enjoyment, energy levels and time.

All training during a fat loss phase will require a fine balancing act. As we have said fatigue is expected and a necessary bi product but if not managed it will commonly result in non-compliance. If time is a not an issue then from experience LIIS would be generally be our recommendation when it comes to cardio. When calorie expenditure is equated, the recovery cost and perception of fatigue will likely be higher from a bout of HIIT training than LISS. Although it requires a longer duration it doesn’t appear to be accompanied with the same fatigue. Further the more intense the cardio, the higher the likelihood we will see a drop in activity for the remainder of the day. For example, you’re much more likely to want to chill out on the coach all day after a 20 minute all out HIIT session as opposed to a 60 minute brisk walk.

As we just touched on, time is another important factor for a cardio. Some people simply won’t have 45 – 60 minutes (sometimes more) in their day on top of everything else to dedicate to LISS. This means a HIIT session or a combination of both will need to suffice.

Arguably the most important is which form you enjoy the most? Fat loss success is largely dictated by our adherence and adherence is made easier if we enjoy what we are doing.

If you take all the above factors into consideration as it relates to choosing a cardio modality then you are well on your way to making a well informed decision.

Conclusion

There you have it! Hopefully this article has answered all your training related questions when it comes to fat loss. In summary

• Resistance training should have the goal of retaining muscle mass during fat loss and therefore it should follow the same principles as if you were in a surplus. What builds muscle, keeps muscle.

• Exercise selection and smart re organisation of our training week can help accommodate for the increased fatigue that comes with being in an energy deficit, while still getting appropriate stimulation.

• Cardio should have the goal of assisting in creating the energy deficit with decreasing energy intake being the primary method. Cardio prescription can also be a means of simply accounting for natural decreases in daily activity.

• LISS and HIIT are both common cardio modalities. Time allowance, fatigue and enjoyment must all be considered when making a decision on which to do.

We all know that hunger is a bi-product of dieting for fat loss. In a prolonged energy deficit with the aim of losing fat you should expect that at some stage a level of hunger will develop and is something that you will have to consistently deal with on the path to a leaner physique. Let’s be honest, dieting would be a breeze for everyone if hunger wasn’t an issue. In terms of addressing hunger, eating to satiety is the obvious answer which of course is not always conducive to fat loss. You could wrap an internal band around your gut to help, but I don’t recommend it (unless medically it’s been advised)

Feeling hungry and craving food is a large part of why so many fat loss diets fail. Our bodies don’t like being in a net energy deficit and therefore it will do a number of things physiologically to get you out of that deficit. Combine this with psychological factors that arise from that same deficit and you find yourself in a situation where every bone in your body is telling you to eat until you are full and sometimes even further!

So how can we mitigate the effects of hunger? Well aside from cognitive restraint and some determination to reach your goal, we can look into way to increase satiation from the resources we have available.

Defined,

“Satiety is the feeling of fullness after a meal, while satiation is the end of the desire to eat”

Satiety is somewhat of a ‘diet hack’. Essentially there are groups of foods that if you eat more often than not will help make you less hungry in a fat loss diet? We see quite regularly the advocating for eating any foods you want that fit your macros or more specifically any of the yummy tasty foods you want to fit your macros. Whilst the underlying concept is not wrong as you’re still aiming for a calorie deficit, executing the required behaviour proves hard in most cases. Why? If the goal is to fit as much so called ‘junk’ food into our prescribed macros, the thing that will catch up to the majority of us is hunger. It’s all well and good to enjoy eating palatable foods when dieting, but be prepared to be hungry. The reason being is that these foods are what you’d categorise as calorie dense. This means for the volume of food you ingest, the calorie content is relatively high and whilst you may enjoy your meal you’ll likely be left hungry. Further, highly palatable foods are designed to make you want to go back for more as they generally have high sugar and fat contents. If you instead temporarily sacrifice the need to eat these tasty palatable foods for more filling foods, your dieting experience might require much less cognitive restraint to see you through to the end.

Halt et al. produced a satiety index of common foods.

38 different foods were tested with 240 calories of each food being provided. They found that boiled potatoes had an satiety index of 323% compared to white bread being the reference food having an SI of 100%. “Serving size of the test food was the strongest predictor of SI.”

There is a vast array of food outside of the 38 foods listed which will also provide high ratings on the satiety index, some are lean proteins such as steak and chicken, numerous vegetables and fruits.

Foods that are highly satiating are what we categorise as having a low calorie density. Essentially you can eat large volumes of that food for a smaller number of calories. These foods generally include 1 or more of the following.

– High protein

– High fibre

– High water content

– Generally less fat

Eating these types of foods will result in large bulky meals containing low calories. The ability to eat these volumes of food will cause gastric distention which will enable the stomach to send signals to the brain to recognise satiety. Highly palatable small meals on the other hand won’t have the same desired effect. With satiation being so low with the aforementioned meal, the desire to eat again sooner will ultimately make your dieting experience that much harder to deal with.

Practical take aways and lessons learnt

On the surface, the concept of simply adhering to a calorie target with whatever foods you like seems relatively straight forward. Anyone who has dieted for to relatively lean or long periods of time will tell you it doesn’t generally work that way. Whilst it may be doable, it would come with a cost and you have to ask yourself, is it really worth spending all that time being hungry, craving more food and fighting the good fight to remain in cognitive control of your food consumption? Or is a temporary sacrifice of stepping away from the most palatable foods in a bid to increase your satiety during a diet more worth your while. If you are the outlier that can resist temptation to eat during extreme hunger for weeks on end as long as you get your food fix then go for it. But for the majority of the population this won’t cut it I know for a fact that I would rather feel full during the length of a diet than have a burger each day. Opting for foods and structuring meals on the high end of the satiety index will help you remain fuller for longer and in turn help you to navigate the harshness of dieting.

A term that has gathered some momentum in recent times is the concept of starvation mode. Like many of the other new age terms floating around the fitness industry, it lacks substance and generally has a very simple explanation.

So what is starvation mode?

Starvation mode basically claims that at some point when your body is subject to a lengthy dieting period or low calorie intake your body will halt fat loss in order to survive. Basically, no matter what this person does they can’t lose fat.

Whilst the concept does have some truth to it, a better understanding of the actual mechanisms at hand would allow people to put actions in place to ensure future fat loss success.

The part of starvation mode that holds true is that your body will respond to periods of time in an energy deficit and after long enough there will be a point where that calorie deficit will no longer yield results. This is actually a well-known mechanism within the body called adaptive thermogenesis. This is a natural process your body will implement in order to restore the balance between energy coming into the body vs energy going out. More on this in a second. Before that you need to make sure you are super clear on how fat loss is achieved.

The underlying principle that will dictate successful fat loss is calorie deficit. If you don’t know what that is, basically the amount of energy we expel day to day, week to week must be more than what we consume day to day and week to week. In a calorie deficit your body will mobilise stored fat in order to produce energy needed to survive and function. Outside external intervention (surgery) there is no other way to lose fat and if you are in a calorie deficit for a long enough period of time there is no way you won’t lose fat.

What does this tell us?

Basically, you can look to address any other factor you like but at the end of the day if it doesn’t help you achieve a deficit you won’t get your desired result. The reason I say this is because people often put a lot of effort into everything but achieving that deficit. It’s like having a math exam coming up and studying for science and english. You’ll end up very knowledgeable in science and english but that’s not going to help in passing your math exam. No matter how many fitness supplements you take to ‘balance your hormones’ or superfoods you eat to ‘reduce inflammation’ if you’re not in an energy deficit fat loss won’t occur.This is not too say that addressing other factors will not be effective or necessary and in some cases they are. But if the main goal is to lose fat then they must be implemented in order to ASSIST achieving the required deficit, not REPLACE it.

Ok, so now it should be clear that if you are in a deficit then you will lose fat. Provided you are engaging in resistance training and eating a high protein diet, fat is your bodies preferred fuel source in negative energy conditions. We also mentioned that the mechanism behind fat loss stalling and what makes it hard for people to continue is adaptive thermogenesis, NOT starvation mode. The human body doesn’t like being in an energy deficit. It would much rather have balance, that is the right amount of energy coming in for what it expends. For that reason when we reduce our food (energy intake) the body will find ways to reduce energy output and even try and increase energy input, this is how fat loss stalls. The easiest way to look at this is to see how the body expels energy and then how it is effected by dieting.

Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR)

All systems and metabolic processes in the body require energy. BMR essentially refers to sum of these energy outputs when our body is at complete rest.

In order to conserve energy, the body will begin to lower the output of some of these systems and become more efficient. Firstly, the bigger the individual the more energy the body requires to “keep the lights on”. If you lose weight and let’s say drop from 90kg down to 80kg, you are carrying around less weight and therefor you cost less to run hence a decrease in BMR.

A classic example of body reducing energy output is the reproductive system. When females have been dieting for an extended length of time they will lose their menstrual cycle as survival is the body’s current priority, not reproduction.

Non Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT)

NEAT is the amount of energy you burn from your day to day unplanned activity. To paint the picture, a construction worker whose job requires manual labour is going to have much higher NEAT than an admin worker who sits at a desk all day. When an individual diets, reductions in their NEAT become a huge reason why progress stalls. Basically, your body will respond to the deficit by making you move less. You will sit at every opportunity, take the car instead of walking and even fidget less. Some people even speak slower. All of this reduces energy output and is the bodies way to contribute to offsetting the deficit that you have created through eating less food.

Exercise Activity (EA)

The is pretty self-explanatory. This is the energy burnt from planned exercise. A key thing to consider here is that whilst you don’t want this to drop, it also doesn’t burn as many calories as people think. This means that if you purely try to exercise your way to fat loss then you’re taking a very inefficient approach.

Another reason why using exercise as your main driver of creating an energy deficit is not a great idea is because you can’t really accurately track how many calories you are burning (that’s right, your treadmill and/or watch is not that accurate, it is all pretty general). Tracking food whilst it may not be perfect, is a much more reliable and effective approach.

Thermic Effect of Food (TEF)

The thermic effect of food basically states that the process of digesting food requires energy and some foods require more energy to digest than others. Eating less as required in a diet, will mean the amount of energy expended digesting food will be less. Consuming high protein and fibrous foods will help offset this reduction as much as possible.

With all these physiological factors in effect, it would be remiss of us not to mention we also have a psychological drive to eat more. That is being hungry all the time and a higher perceived food focus. But we won’t go too far into that rabbit hole.

As you can see from that overview, fat loss is a constant fight between you and your body. You create a deficit and lose fat but at the same time your body is making adaptions that eventually mean you will no longer be in a deficit due to adaptive thermogenesis. What this tells us is that it’s not impossible to keep losing fat BUT it can become more difficult.

In terms of addressing adaptive thermogenesis, you first need to ensure you are actually creating a calorie deficit with your food. Do you actually know how many calories you should be eating and if so are you actually sticking to those calories consistently? If you can’t answer ‘yes’ to both of those questions then that is where you need to start first.

Say you were on the money with your calories and after 3 weeks of losing fat, you have plateaued! What can you do from there? You need to again tip that energy in VS energy out equation back in favour of energy out. From an energy in perspective it’s relatively straight forward, decrease your calories. In terms of energy out, we need to look at the systems above that expel energy. In summary;

BMR: There are probably no mechanisms or strategies you can use to increase BMR or maintain it whilst dieting.

TEF: With food intake decreasing, TEF will also decrease but you can do your best to keep it as high as possible by eating plenty of protein and fibre.

EA: As we mentioned, you shouldn’t be trying to ‘exercise’ your way to a deficit. It’s very inefficient. In terms of training, we recommend you aim to maintain similar levels as to what you were performing previous to your cut.

NEAT: Natural decreases in NEAT as we diet can quickly bring progress to a halt if not monitored. This is often a big reason to why you hear people say “I am so strict with my calories but I am not losing weight”, their NEAT has dropped drastically. The individual could have been doing 11k steps a day prior to a diet, now 8 weeks in their steps are averaging 5k per day. That’s a massive difference in terms of weekly energy output. Monitoring the individuals step count can be a very effective measure to control NEAT.

So we have determined that ‘starvation mode’ is essentially a misinterpreted version of adaptive thermogenesis. We have also just shown you that adaptive thermogenesis will create stalls in progress that can be dealt with by decreasing calorie intake or increasing energy expenditure. Now as you keep decreasing calories and increasing expenditure to address these fat loss stalls there is going to eventually become a time where it is no longer viable or sustainable.

But what if you still have fat you want to lose?

This is likely the reason people come to the conclusion that they have hit ‘starvation mode’. A prime example is someone that has yo yo dieted for years and are now in a position where they have fat they want to lose but are maintaining on very low calories. They will make initial changes that will result in a small loss but very quickly they will get too a place where their calories are very low, activity is very high and they just can’t push it anymore. But again, the reason that fat loss is not occurring isn’t because it can’t, it 100% can. It’s because the calorie deficit that is required is very hard to achieve and is likely unsafe or simply not viable. If this is the case you will need to do a reverse/recovery diet to set yourself up for future fat loss.

Summary

The term starvation mode is simply a misinterpretation of adaptive thermogenesis. The critical difference between these terms is that when fat loss stalls, starvation mode states that there is nothing you can do to keep pushing fat loss along. As we explained in this article, this is false. You can continue fat loss, but what that would require is often not viable or acceptable. Adaptive thermogenesis is a survival mechanism of the body that you would be happy to have if you were stuck on an island as it decreases your energy output and can prolong your life. Dieting, we don’t really want it but it is an unavoidable situation. Whilst it does make fat loss increasingly harder, it does not make it impossible.