The reason you aren’t losing weight isn’t because you can’t, it’s because you won’t. The science behind weight loss is straight forward and it is well known to anyone who knows how to operate google. You must create a caloric deficit to lose weight. So what’s stopping us? We are. We find it easier to keep doing what we are doing, vainly hoping for an easier way to lose weight, a magic pill, a new exercise routine, anything. We do this because we know that dieting is hard, and even harder to do consistently. This article will cover recent research on weight loss, it’s implications for functional fitness and strength athletes, and methods to increase adherence to a simple weight loss plan.
Now that paragraph might seem a little harsh, but it was written that way to plainly state what needed to be said. We are our biggest obstacle to weight loss, or more accurately, fat loss. The rest of this article will cover scientifically validated strategies for weight loss and their implications for functional/strength athletes. This research is a result of case studies and a meta analysis (research review) done by exercise researchers on competitive natural bodybuilders.
Now I know some of you are saying whoa, whoa, pump the brakes, bodybuilders aren’t athletes, they only concern themselves with aesthetics. True, they don’t compete in any physical events, but they do closely match the training and body characteristics of most strength athletes. They are also very good at manipulating their body composition, and as such, have been well researched. This allows us to more effectively separate bro knowledge from valid research. So if you were hoping for a review of Nose Tork (….yes that is a thing), then you should probably just hold your breath on that one.
The first thing we are going to cover is expectations and a realistic timeframe. First, the majority of your weight loss will come from fat. However, there will be some portion that will come from muscle loss. There are ways to minimize this, and luckily, once you finish the diet, you will quickly regain your hard earned muscle.
This diet will generally last 12-14 weeks and even longer if you have more fat to lose. It has to be this length to avoid excessive muscle loss, and to retain your sanity. Remember, if you try to make any significant change in your body, you must give it time and you must be consistent. Balls to the wall for a week won’t do a damn thing for you. Check out this awesome nutrition tool that will calculate your calories, and macros for muscle building or fat loss!
Nutrition Calculator for Athletes
Exercise
For this plan to work we need to develop a caloric deficit. Now we can do this by eating less food, exercising more, or both. In this case, we will choose both, with emphasis on our food. In terms of exercise, I recommend no more than 4 sessions per week. Those sessions should generally look like most classes, a good warm up, a heavier lifting portion, and a WOD. This should yield a 500 calorie burn if you are really pushing it.
There are some differences, for those of us wishing to lose weight and still participate in functional fitness. Most athletes will do one compound lift for no more than 5-7 sets of 8 reps at most. Most bodybuilders will do 20 plus sets, with 10 plus reps per muscle group. So, we need to increase our overall exercise volume in the lifting portion to more closely match the volume of bodybuilders. Below is a recommendation for one session during a weight loss cycle.
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Warm Up: Airdyne for 5 min, light stretching, dynamic stretching
Strength: Squat 5×10, Deadlift 5×8
WOD: 5 Rounds for Time or other WOD 15min or greater
Run 400m, 20 Pull Ups, 15 Squat Clean 135lbs men, 95lbs women
This workout is no joke, and it becomes even harder when you are in caloric deficit, but as the Marines said in an old ad campaign, I didn’t promise you a rose garden. Realistically, I don’t expect you to make to many PRs during the dieting period. You just need to get through the workouts.
You will also notice that this more closely matches a bodybuilder’s per session training volume. There are 10 total lower body sets, with 5 more sets of squat cleans. I recommend that your strength portion use some of the same muscle groups as the WOD, to keep the volume per muscle group high. So now that we have a template for training, lets move on to the harder portion of dieting, the food.
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Basal Metabolic Rate
The first thing we need to do, is figure out how much food you need to maintain your weight. To do this we need to calculate your Basal Metabolic Rate (BMR). This calculation is only a best guess, but it will suffice for the beginning of the diet. Once you have this number, you know that you must eat less than this amount to lose weight on non training days. On training days, you must eat less than your BMR + your exercise. Here’s an example
Tony is 5’9, weighs 197lbs and is under 30 years of age. His BMR is 1976 calories per day. If Tony works out for one hour, he will burn 500 calories, putting his total daily expenditure at 2476 calories. Now that we know how much energy we need, where does it come from?
Macronutrients
All food can be broken down into macronutrients, these are Protein, Carbs, and Fat. Protein and Carbs are 4 cal/gram, and fat is 9 cal/gram. Since we are dieting to lose as much fat, and preserve as much muscle as possible, we will aim to eat 1 -1.3g of protein per pound of bodyweight. Fat should make up 15-30% of your calories, with carbs making up the rest of the total. I know your thinking that you could eat more carbs if you didn’t eat that much fat. Unfortunately, dietary fat is crucial to maintain things like testosterone production. So don’t skip the fat.
Now lets figure out what Tony needs to eat to maintain his weight.
Protein: 200-268g
Fat: 65g
Carb: 78-147g depending on the protein you eat
You’re probably saying, “Jake, these are weird metric things and who knows how many grams of carbs are in a big mac?” First, there is the interwebs, which will tell you the macro nutrient break down of pre-made food. Secondly, I recommend an app called My Fitness Pal. It is a free exercise and food tracker. It will give solid estimates of calories used and your macro split, for any type of food you eat. Lastly, you might want to buy a cheap scale to weigh your food. This is a common practice in bodybuilding circles, but has yet to make the jump to other exercise realms.
Now that we know how much energy we need on training and non-training days, lets look at how much we need to eat to reach our target weight loss.
Rate of Weight Loss
Given our stated goal of minimizing muscle loss and maximizing fat loss, we need to keep our per week weight loss to no more than .5-1% of total mass. Unless you are very obese, losing weight faster than this will result in significant muscle loss.
I would recommend a target caloric deficit of 500 calories per day. Many people recommend this because, theoretically, 1 pound of fat is made up of 3500 calories. This is true, but your body is not a math problem. As a diet progresses, your basal metabolic rate will lower, sometimes to the tune of several hundred calories per day.
I recommend 500 calories as this is generally an aggressive enough reduction that weight loss will occur in most folks, and it will not make you feel terrible maintaining the deficit. We’ll maintain this level as long as it yields no more than a 1% of body mass reduction per week. If you are losing weight faster try adjusting to 300 calories. If you aren’t losing weight there may be several reasons.
Troubleshooting
First, you are likely not eating what you think you are. If you haven’t been weighing your food, do so, and if you haven’t been tracking it in a journal or an app then you have to do that too. No one can accurately guess the energy content of food better than a scale.
If you’ve got these wickets taken care of, you need to look at your exercise. Are you putting in the work, or are you bullshitting with your gym buddies most of the time? If all of the above are working, then you need to increase the caloric deficit by no more than 200 calories per day, for a week, until you reach the target weight loss. Reduce your carbs/fats to increase the deficit. Remember, fat and protein will help protect our muscle mass during the diet, so they are the last to be reduced. Lastly, if you have done all of this and none of it is working, you need to look at your recovery.
Exercise and Diet Insurance
Your recovery methods are you best insurance for a successful diet. Sleep is the most important factor. You can’t out-think or out-train 5 hours of sleep a night. Stress from work or day-to-day living can also preempt or stall your progress. Remember, your own beliefs about stress can change how your body copes with it. I always ask, “If the worst happens what are the consequences?” Oftentimes, they aren’t really as bad as we imagine, nor are they irreversible. Either way, you need to find ways to reduce your stress. If all of these things don’t work, I would consult a medical professional, as there may be a medical cause of your lack of weight loss. We have now checked the majority of the boxes for a successful diet, but we have yet to talk about food selection.
Food Selection
This area is left up to the individual. As long as you are tracking your macros and overall calorie expenditure, you can eat as you like, with the caution that the majority of your calories should come from clean sources. I generally recommend this, because healthier foods are generally less energy dense than their unhealthier cousins. You can have a lot more broccoli for carbs than donuts.
This article, has a good list of foods to consider in the meal plan. Try to limit your choices to the favorable portion of the chart, but a few unfavorable choices won’t hurt you, as long as you stick to your macro split.
Final Thoughts
You now have all the tools you need to successfully diet. This plan assumes that you are tracking several key metrics in terms of your food and weight. I recommend weighing yourself and taping yourself, twice a week, to get good average weight and fat loss numbers. This will give you a good idea if the diet is working. If you are having some trouble then take a hard look at the trouble shooting section again. If you can stick to this plan, you can lose 12-20lbs, with the majority coming from body fat, but you have to be the one to do it.
Remember that the main obstacle to our weight loss is us and our attitudes towards our day to day difficulties. Try thinking in shorter term segments than the whole 12 weeks. Make a promise to yourself that you will track your food, and bust your ass in the gym, one day at a time and soon enough that’s one week down. Keep this up for long enough and you will have reached your goal. Consistency is king for weight loss.
Now that you’ve probably lost all the weight, you’ll probably want to learn how to keep it off. I bet you find the answer in here.
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My BMR is 1425. Do you really recomend that I eat 925 calories per day?
No I’d recommend eating your BMR and trying to get in about 300 cal worth of exercise a day. When women go too low in calories is can have some adverse effects. 300cal is a good deficit to see if you lose weight.
my bmr is 1945, would you recommend me to eat 1945 cal each day and train or eat more and train?
It depends on your current physique and goals. Remember 1945 is what you need daily not factoring exercise. If you add in a typical crossfit class you are looking at somewhere between 300-500 cal depending on the programing. So at that rate you’re losing about a pound a week or slightly less. If you want to drop that kind of weight cool. If you are looking to maintain you’ll have to be in the 2300-2450 range. Hope that helps. Feel free to message me with more questions.
My bmr is 1658. I’m wanting to burn fat. I go to crossfit 6 days a week. I’m new to this whole macros. In order for me to burn fat, I would need to add 300-500 to my bmr on training days and just eat 1658 on non training days?
Stephanie, the only thing you should really keep in mind is that you will need a 300 cal deficit to start with. If you have 1650 as a bmr you will probably burn around 1750 with normal day to day stuff, not counting gym. If you are doing a normal crossfit class you’re probably around 300 cal for that. So i’d recommend the macro breakdown in the article, and eating around 1350-1450 calories on non gym days, and 1700 ish on gym days. Let me know how that works for you.
Hi Jake – I am at a similar BMR to Stephanie (although crossfit 3-4x a week) and quick question – should we vary macros for workout vs. non-workout days? As in, eating more carbs on workout days? And also – can you recommend a resource for sample meal plans for this recommended calories & macros- I find myself needing some guidance. I’ve been crossfitting for 10 months, initially lost about 15 lbs in the first month but no further weight loss since then (which sucks considering I want to lose another 40lbs), definitely some body comp changes but not enough for the amount I am working out — time to stop screwing around and try this macro thing 🙂
Good questions Nikki,
You are perfectly fine to vary your calorie intake on days when you work out. Just keep the deficit you are shooting for 300-500 calories depending on the workout and your body type. Remember we only want to use the smallest deficit that causes us to lose fat. If 300 calories per day works then 500 isn’t better. A few weeks of experimentation should work for you there.
For actual meals you can use something like this website. https://www.slenderkitchen.com/. Or you can google recipes with nutrition info to see if it fits. I generally find about 7 or so things I like to eat and cycle through them. Let me know if you have other questions. Remember fat loss is just creating a deficit and being consistent.
I’m getting a different message from a couple of my CrossFit coaches. I’ve been doing this for 9 months. I have initially lost 20 lbs. but have stalled. I went from 280 to 260. I am 6 ft. 1 in. and 43 years old. I haven’t lost anything measurable in 3 months and that includes a stint on Whole 30 in January 2018. That said, consulting with my coaches, they don’t believe I’m eating enough, and thus, my body isn’t willing to let go of the fat reserves I have for fear that the new demands I have placed on my muscles/body will not have enough from what I consume. I average 3-4 WOD’s a week. They have me on a 2600-2900 calorie diet with the Macro breakdowns you have in the article.
So is this right? Could my body be unwilling to burn the fat I have because I don’t eat enough to convince my body to do so?
Thanks for the question Rich,
I disagree with your coaches on this one. Your BMR is around 2350 calories which means that you burn this amount of calories sitting on your butt with no exercise. If you are WODing about 3-4 times a week thats about 1200 extra calories a week above your BMR. I’m assuming you don’t have a strenuous manual labor job, so this is what I recommend.
Lets keep this simple. Eat 2400 calories per day whether you exercise or not. You need 240g of protein, 100g of fat, 130g of carbs. I recommend tracking this on the My Fitness Pal app. Don’t change your exercise schedule.
What you’re coaches are telling you is possible, but it really only applies to people who are on a starvation diet. You’ve simply stalled losing weight because your output and input of calories has equalled out.
Let me know if you have any more questions.
hi, i read the comments and i calculated my BMR 1152.9; i am 23 female living in Italy (i don’t know if that help you to give me advice) my height is 173cm and my weight is around 68kg (that is 149,914 lbs). I tried the scarsdale diet, and i was wondering what is the fastest way to start seeing results, how much should i eat? and can i crossfit 6day a week? i am going to start crossfit classes next month, also on the 15 of may i will be fasting, can i still crossfit?
Deeja,
You’ve got a lot going on, so let’s talk about first steps. First, it sounds like you are new to crossfit. You should attempt to do 3-4 classes a week consistently for a month. Consistency is the MOST important part of looking good, and feeling great. I don’t think anyone should do 6 classes a week when they are just starting. That’s just not necessary.
For your diet I’ve calculated your BMR to be 1500 cal per day. This is how much you need to eat to neither gain nor lose weight. For the first month eat this much following the macronutrient guidelines in the article. You don’t need to worry about a caloric deficit for now, starting crossfit will do that for you.
After a month or two you can start to experiment with dropping calories if you want, but I believe eating your BMR plus 200 or 300 calories will actually allow you to look better. Remember if you lose 5 kilos of fat and gain 5 kilos of muscle the scale says you did nothing, but you look completely different.
Let me know if you have any questions.
Hey bro, love the article! I’ve begun with using the Fitness Pal App, which is awesome, but am a bit confused. I’ve been crossfitting MWF running 3 miles TTh for 4 years. I’m good at putting weight around my mid section and then taking it off with Paleo. Unfortunately, Paleo steals my strength/muscle and I’m no longer willing to put up with that.
So at 5′ 9″, 190 lb, 51 years old, I’ve calculated my BMR to be 1,784. I started to just enter what I’ve eaten and stop when I hit my BMR which is cool, but my macros are all jacked up. Looks like I should have 190-249g of protein. Holy protein shakes batman! I’m really pushing to get 90 grams. My breakfast is a shake (1 scoop of Gold Standard Protein powder, 1 scoop Vintage Build, 1 banana, and 10 oz of unsweetened almond milk) chased by a cup of black coffee and an RxBar. I eat meat with every lunch and dinner and still don’t touch the protein amounts I should be pushing. Do you have advise for me on this front?
Thanks MUCH,
Eric
Good to Hear from you Eric,
I think there might be some in accuracy in the amount of protein you say your are eating versus putting in the app. If you’re having meat with almost every meal, and protein shakes, then you should be pretty close to your protein goals. I’d take a hard look at that first off. This might be an error in using the app. You might try weighing your food for a bit, or really paying attention to your nutrition labels.
When I use this diet, I find that I’m basically eating mostly paleo with a little more carbs. I eat around 4 meals with 30-40g of protein per, and a snack or two. I find that works well. Give that a shot and see if that’s doable. Just remember any new diet will require some adjustment. Let me know if you have any questions.
Ahhh, so I need to stay paleoish, gotcha. So sandwich for lunch is probably not going to cut it most of the time. I’m finding I don’t have many calories left once dinner comes around sadly. I ordered a digital kitchen scale and should get it in today so I’ll check my meat weight. In the app, I enter how many slices of the Boarshead Honey Maple Ham are on my sandwich, but maybe my slices are thinner than the slices that the app is based on. I lost 3 pounds in the first week, but based on my macros, I’m sure some was muscle weight. I’ll try your 4 meal plan while introducing your scale for accuracy and see how that helps. Thanks!
Yep I think you’ll be surprised once you can become a little more accurate. Also realize that you’ll have to drop carbs so you can add protein. You’ll probably end up around 150 ish grams of carbs a day and around 200 of protein once you get the hang of it.
Can you give me an example of your 4 meals and 2 snacks? I have a hard time wrapping my head around getting 4 meals and 2 snacks out of the limited calories this app gives me. It’s telling me 1500 calories to achieve fat loss goals and I’m adding 400 for crossfit or 3 mile runs (weekends when I don’t work out I’m not allowed to eat squat, so I end up going over a bit with good food like blackened grouper last night, mmmmmm!).
Yeah no problem Eric,
Breakfast: 4 eggs and Cheese omelet with coffee. 350 Cal
Lunch: Cheeseburger (4oz 90% ground beef, slice of cheese, vegetables, ketchup, bun). 450 cal
Afternoon Snack: Greek yogurt 12 oz. 320 cal
Dinner: 16 oz Salmon and 2 cups buttered brocoli
Evening Snack: 2 Cups Strawberries and Cream
The trick is finding low density caloric food. For protein I like steak, ground beef, and salmon. For Carbs I like potatoes, rice and vegetables. Fats generally come from cheeses, red meats, butter and some sauce.
There are a lot of good recipe websites. Do some googling and I bet you’ll find tons of suggestions.
Thanks Jake, that was very helpful! 2 weeks and I’ve lost 5 pounds. Seems like healthy loss and haven’t noticed any losses in crossfit yet. Need to get my protein up, but not having any issues staying in the calorie zone…
Great work. Keep the protein in range and keep up what you’re doing. If you hit any snags let me know.
Hi there Jake, a wonderful article. I love that you took the time to respond each comments. It’s rarely found these days.
With the given BMR calculator, I have calculated my BMR as 1627 calories/day. I CrossFit 5 days per week (M through F @6am WODs) and walk about 1.5-3 miles at-least three times per week during work and/or after dinner. I am 5.6″ Female, 32yr and 187 pounds. My main goal is fat loss. I track everything I eat in myFitnessPal by measuring all the macros every single day. I am definitely seeing gain in strength during my wods and lifts, but I think my macros are a little off (or I can say, it’s a rough figure that am not sure if its right or not).
I currently consume between 1800-1850 calories/day with 245grams of Carbs, 100grams of Protein and 35grams of Fat. I am pretty consistent with my workout schedules, but I feel I am not exactly in fat burning zone. I however, take Saturday and Sunday rest days, so was thinking of taking Wednesday and Sunday off rather than 2 straight days, then train all other days except wed and Sunday. I do use a heart rate monitor (iwatch) which tells me I burn close to (if not a little more) 1000 calories on an active day, easily. So I am a little confused on how to adjust my nutrition/macros in order to put my body in fat burning zone.
Any tips or guidance is much appreciated.
Thanks for the great comment. It’s rare that people are as detailed in tracking their fitness, and in this case it allows me to really diagnose where the issue is. It’s pretty clear first off that you are over eating carbs and under eating fat and protein. Just to give you some perspective, I work out about the same amount as you and when I’m dieting I normally eat around 150g of carbs per day. I recommend you try eating around 1700 calories per day with the following split: 170g protein, 120g of carbs, 55g of fats.
The days off are really whatever you like and what works for your schedule. I often take the weekend off, or break them up throughout the week. Thats not a huge issue. Those activity trackers are not accurate at all I promise you aren’t burning 1000 calories per day. Walking 3 miles and a hard wod is probably 600-700 calories of expenditure which would put you at 2500 ish calories on a really hard day. Don’t worry about the iwatch calorie burn it won’t help you.
Try the nutrition recommendations above and don’t change anything with your fitness schedule. It’s going to take a week or two before you feel ok on the new diet, but you’ll adapt. Track your weight weekly, and use the tape weekly as well. This should fix your issue, and if you have any other question comment again and I’ll get back ASAP.
Hi Jake, thank you so much for the information. It definitely makes sense on the calorie burn perspective. I have adjusted my macros to 1700 Calories per day. I do have a question about breakdown of protein and carbs (fats-am able to hit the numbers closely almost everyday). So, to give an idea, below are how my macros are spread out –
pre-wod(meal1): pre-protein shake (7grams carbs 0g and protein)
post-wod(meal2): protein shake (0g carbs and 27g protein)
breakfast(meal3): steel cut oats + boiled egg whites (30g carbs and 26g protein)
lunch(meal4): grilled chicken(or turkey) + veggies + carsb(qunioa/sweet potato/squash/whole wheat tortilla, etc) (30g carbs and 30g protein)
snack(meal5): fats (like homemade nuts bar/ just plain nuts) upto 15grams of fats
dinner(meal6): grilled chicken/turkey + carsb(qunioa/sweet potato/squash/whole wheat tortilla, etc) + veggies (25g carbs and 30g protein)
Total comes up to: 93g protein, 102g carbs. This question is been lingering in my mind (or rather sort of left me in incomplete sense of knowledge) as to where exactly I have to increase the carbs or protein and at which meal. Sorry for being so dramatic in this question – trust me this has been my only research subject on internet exclusively trying to find a close to sensible answer (and then I stumble upon your post. YAY!!). Should I like, add some dextrose to my post-wod shake? or increase the pre-wod shake(double may be?) or add another protein shake for snack time!! The protein and carbs I carry for lunch and dinner make me full, and I am pretty sure I won’t be able to add more quantity to those meals for sure.
I consume only chicken/turkey and fish along with eggs for protein so that kind of makes it harder to hit the goal may be? I am not sure. But please pour in your experience and knowledge and shed some light on how to add on the missing macros.
Again, thanks, Jake, especially for your time!
Generally that diet looks pretty good. It can be a challenge to get protein in, but I have a few recommendations. Unless you really like a pre/post workout shake try just add those calories to actual meals. I find that when I’m losing weight I will skip breakfast, have an early lunch and then afternoon snack about an hour before I workout. I have a big dinner, and a pretty big dinner snack.
Most of the meals are going to have 30-50g of protein which is pretty doable. For example during dinner I might have 1lb of ground beef and some low carb noodles. Like meat spaghetti. Thats about 100g of protein by itself and about 800 ish calories.
The best advice I can give you is to play around with your protein sources and see what you find palatable and can eat a lot of. I like red meats, salmon, greek yogurt and steak. I find those easy to hit my goals. It can take a bit of time to get your ratio right, but don’t stress about this. If you’re 20g off one day your diet isn’t ruined. A successful diet is the total of your actions not any single choice you’ve made.
Thank you, Jake. I have made small changes and split up the protein and carbs, and I think that’s going well so far. Will keep posted on a few week of changes 🙂
Keep it consistent and you’ll be doing just fine. Keep us posted
What are your thoughts regarding the timings and volume of carbs?
I have noticed that when in a caloric deficit, I drastically loose performance during the WOD’s (especially Metcons)
Is there any way to avoid this. A good performance during the the WOD’s is a key motivating factor for me.
I think if you are in a deficit you’d be best served to eat carbs before and after the WOD. To be honest you will loose performance if you when trying to drop fat. You might also try using some caffeine prior to the wod to mask that feeling. I would also recommend eat more carbs after than before as working out with food in your stomach isn’t fun. Hope this helps.