Do you need to drop fat and get in great shape ?

In this article I will provide you with a one stop shop to ALL the info and tools you need to help you burn the fat and feel great. It’s not going to be very technical but the best advice is always simple and easy to understand and apply. I suggest you buckle up for some home truths and the very best advice I can give in six simple rules.

Dominic’s 6 rules for fat loss

The best way to view fat loss is in a hierarchy of importance.

Rule 1 – Cut out the junk. Track and Record

There is no possible way you are going to drop significant amounts of fat if you persist in eating junk food daily. You are deluded if you think it’s OK to have muffins, lattes, soft drinks, cheap chocolate or worse on a daily basis and wonder why all your training is producing no results. It’s time to get honest and cut it back to 2-3 meals a week where you have a little of what you fancy and you want to have snacks or ‘treats’ that won’t completely kill your progress.

This is the most basic rule as the damage you can cause to your fat loss progress is quite amazing due to the amount of calories you can easily consume through junk foods because not only are these foods calorie dense i.e. they contain a lot of calories, but they’re also very unsatiating, meaning they don’t leave you feeling full and can lead to you easily consuming far more calories that your body requires.

There are 3,500 calories in a single pound of body fat so burning it off through workouts alone is darn hard work because that 30mins walk/jog (200-400cals for average person) isn’t going to make a significant dent in that 3,500 calories.

You have to accept that you are the way you are due to the way you have treated your body. Are you quite overweight and is it obvious you need to drop a lot of fat? Then it’s no accident how you look the way you do and why you  feel tired all the time. You had to have practiced eating the wrong foods over and over again in order to have put on the weight. You didn’t have a pizza and a giant coke yesterday and suddenly you’re two stone overweight today.

Keep this in mind when you’re in the infancy of your training and nutrition changes – it’s taken a while to get your body the way it is so it’s not going to change overnight, there will be setbacks but just keep making slow steady progress.

The clients I work with that drop all the weight they desire are without exception the ones that say “ok, no more messing around, I either get more honest about the food I eat or get used to feeling terrible and allow my clothes size to expand”. The difference is that those that drop all the obvious junk food do so because there is more pain associated with continuing to be fat than there is to making the necessary changes.

If you want to make massive changes then you need to associate massive pain with NOT making any changes or massive pain towards the foods that are causing your to feel terrible and their continual consumption is damaging your progress.

We need not look beyond any of the other rules unless you’re more honest with the obvious errors you’re making in your nutrition first.

When you’ve truly absorbed all of the above then I strongly recommend that you quickly calculate how many calories you should be taking in on a daily basis through using a formula that’s provided here.

This will then give you your TDEE – total daily energy expenditure or how much you need to maintain your weight,  which can then be adjusted up for weight and muscle gain or down for fat loss.

I recommend an adjustment of 10-15% up or down depending on your goal.

This means that if my TDEE works out at 2,500cal/day then when I consume 2,500cal/day I will maintain weight but if i want to lose weight I simply drop to about 2,250-,2,200cal/day and for weight gain I bump up to 2,750-2,800cal/day.

Keep in mind these figures will give you a rough guide that might need to be adjusted slightly and as you progress in your weight loss or gain as the numbers are dependent on your activity and weight.

An easy way to assess progress is to regularly get body fat tests done with a calipers.

You can then take these numbers and plug them in here MACRO CALCULATOR to tell you how this needs to be broken down among your macros (protein/fat/carbs).

The numbers above then need to be checked against what you consume on a daily basis to see how they match up.

You can use a free tool like MYFITNESSPAL for this job. Yes it sucks to track and record but it’s useful to do it for at least 2 weeks so you can see where you’re going wrong or right. Usually people tend to eat the same things so it doesn't take too long to know the calories of the foods you most usually consume.

What I typically hear from clients is after they track and record –

1. From them all – “I can’t believe the amount of protein I need per day”

2. From women – “I actually thought I would have to eat less”, Me –  “well you do if you’re not moving about all that much”.

3. From guys that need to put on weight – “I really struggle to eat enough”, Me – “train harder and get stronger and appetite will increase”.

4. From people that were eating well before I work with them – “WOW i was consuming way more fat than I needed, must cut back on the avocados, nuts, butter and coconut oil”.

This is the low hanging fruit of fat loss progress i.e. dealing with the easy stuff first, so sort your basic calorie intake FIRST versus thinking you have to cut out carbs, go vegan or massively increase exercise frequency.

Rule 2 – Quality first

Once you have cut way back on the junk foods and you’ve calculated your daily caloric needs you then need to focus on the quality of the food you are eating.  Your diet should consist of lots of fresh non-processed foods such as, meat, eggs or fish, vegetables, fruit, nuts, seeds, good oils and fats.

I have also done a video on what foods you need to have around you to promote fat loss and is explained in detail (Fat loss Nutrition 101) –

Without addressing quality you may just be substituting one junk food for what seems healthy but is just calorie dense and nutritionally empty e.g. chips swapped for pasta. Both have tiny amounts of quality nutrients (vitamins, minerals, antioxidants etc) and you would have been better off going for sweet potato, potato, butternut squash, basmati rice or a lower carb option like peppers, onions, broccoli etc.

Rule 3 – Do a carb count

Nobody is ever going to argue that the first two rules for optimal fat loss are not valid. However, there’s always an on going debate on carbohydrate intake (breads, rice, cereals, pasta, potatoes, junk foods, alcohol, fruit, veg) and it’s effect on fat loss.

What I have found through practice is that there are some people who’s primary goal is fat loss and they can lose weight successfully on a slight calorie deficit with 40-50% of their macros (MACROS = protein/fat/carbs sorry Ben AND Jerry’s is not a macro!) coming from carbs while others that are more ‘carb sensitive’ need to stillrun a deficit i.e. take in less calories than their TDEE, but need to do so with carbs making up a smaller percentage of their macros.

I have found that taking a body fat measurement in the upper back has given me a good indication as to how someone runs on fat i.e. if they tolerate carbs well or not. This might be something you should get done. I might also add that as a client leans out (drops body fat) then their tolerance for carbs CAN improve and they can run better on a higher carb intake. This is NOT always the case and again that upper back measurement will typically tell me where someone is in that regard.

If you want to experiment with carb timing, quantity etc then I recommend taking in the bulk of your carb intake post workout (after your workout), increase carb intake on days where you’re training hard and lower on days you’re not training. This might still mean that you’re diet macro breakdown is at 40% carbs but just adjusting the timing and frequency of said carb intake can help and it just common sense to wave carb intake up or down according to activity anyway.

Only after you’ve tried the above would I recommend that you play with lower levels of carb intake. Why? Because the above is easier to adhere to first. When dialing carb intake down remember to increase fat and protein intake along with it or you could end up running a calorie deficit that’s way in excess of what you need and can lead to a crash.

Rule 4 – Cycle carbs

If you’re going to be keeping your carbs lower because you run better at lower levels or because you feel that running them lower from time to time allows you to drop more body fat then I recommend that once every 4 days you increase your carb intake. This is as simple as having a bit more fruit and veg that day or it might be a day you decide to have some alcohol or junk foods. This does not mean you have to enter into epic meal time levels of food consumption so do it sensibly but if you do go a little nuts then accept it and get right back on point straight away.

NOTE – the leaner, stronger and more active you are the more you can get away with the above. So someone like me might get away with more epic meal times vs someone that can’t do pull ups yet, can’t squat their own body weight and has the fitness/conditioning of a smoker with a 40 a day habit.

Rule 5 – Eat fat to drop fat

From the diet journals I see on a daily basis the most common mistake I see with new clients is not eating enough fats and consuming excess calories. Now I am not talking about the harmful fats in fried foods and junk foods. These damaging fats are generally listed as hydrogenated or trans fats. There are no safe limits for these fats and should be avoided at all costs. The essential fats that you need for your body to function optimally are the omega 3 and 6 fats.

Foods that are rich in good fats are fish, avocados, nuts, seeds, extra virgin olive oil, coconut oil and nut butters like peanut and almond butter. Initially when I meet many of my clients they are so fat phobic and the mere suggestion of eating more fats is seen as crazy. Yet many of these same clients are extremely deficient in good fats. There is a mountain of research to show that eating more fats even saturated fat from meat, dairy foods and eggs are beneficial to your health.

NOTE – fats do contain more calories per gram (9cals) than carbs and protein (4cals) so this means that although good fats are great to eat you can easily throw back a bit too much of that nut butter and coconut oil so again we’re back to rule one on tracking and recording calorie intake.

Rule 6 – Train properly

The training side of things I cover on my site and I make suggestions on my social media all the time so if you’re new to all this why not get in touch and we can help you get a decent training programme put together for you in one of our 1-1 or semi-private personal training groups.

To conclude, if you want to drop fat and get in great shape you need to firstly address your diet, ensure that you are in a calorie deficit, cut back on the carbs if you know you don’t run well on them, focus your training around getting more mobile, stronger and with better conditioning.

The clients I work with that get and continue to get great results are the ones who REALLY want to know how this whole process works and not just know for knowledge sake but because they want to apply the info asap.