Figuring out how to lose some weight and get fit is at the hearth of every fitness journey. Perhaps, you don’t know where to start from so… you ask Google and after doing your research for the best workouts and diets for fat loss you begin to feel overwhelmed. The information you found on the net are contradicting all what you knew and now you don’t know where to start from.

If you put weight faster than you lose it, the methods below will help you to understand why and how to stay in track with your fitness journey’s goals.

The crash diets

You hear about new diets pretty much every week, the most common ones are the keto diet, the paleo diet, the Atkinson diet, the juice diet but you possibly never heard of the champagne diet, the chocolate diet and the cabbage diet.

The goal of all those diets is to lose weight, some of them are drastic and dramatic tools to induce weight loss to the point that can be considered dangerous and unhealthy, some others are actually helping your body becoming a fat furnace machine keeping you healthy, fit energised and young. For some of those diets there is no science or proof behind to support the practise. Others have been around for thousands of years.

How about detox diets? Those are designed to remove from the body toxins that have been building in our bodies for some time. Detoxing your body will give opportunity to your organs to clean up and reset, making it easier to function. Often the result of a detox diets is a rapid weight loss that tends to attract more and more people into it than ever. But do you actually need to detox? In most of the cases NO, YOU DON’T.

Calories in 1 kg

So, you want to lose 1 kg per week, right?! It’s time to crunch the numbers to know what you should be doing.

Obviously, we want to lose 1 kg of fat only, not muscles. Each gram of fat is composed by 9 calories, so 1000 grams of fat (1 kg) multiplied by 9 calories = 9000 calories to burn 1kg of fat.

However, body fat is not just fat, there are proteins and fluid mix in a fat cell, so we now round up the figure at 7.7 calories each gram of fat. Let’s do the maths again 7.7 times 1000 = 7700 calories. That’s the number of calories you need to burn in order to lose 1 kg of fat per week.

Calories deficit

For you to lose weight of any amount you need to be and maintain calories deficit or better you need to consume more calories then you eat.

A common myth is to keep your deficit at 500 calories per day but is that actually right? Let’s go back to do some maths.

We need to burn a total of 7700 calories in a 7 days period so 7700 divided by 7 days = 1100. That’s the magic calories deficit number you need to achieve PER DAY in order to lose 1 kg per week.

“1100 is a lot!” you would say but yes that’s the number. There is a way to make this work and I am going to show it to you.

Let’s take a hypothetical individual that has a maintenance calories of 2000 calories per day. Removing 1100 calories from that individual would be very unhealthy, instead we will take away 550 calories leaving a more reasonable 1450 calories to eat during the day instead of 900. The other 550 calories of deficit will be created by working out, moving about more and standing up more then seating.

The importance of muscles

One thing we didn’t talk about is the Rest Metabolic Rate, which is the number of calories an individual need to keep the body functioning and alive at rest. Based on your lifestyle this number can go up or down. The more it goes up the easier is to lose weight. But how can you improve that number? The best way is to increase your muscle mass.

Your muscles work like an engine in a car, the bigger the engine the more fuel it consumes. So, if you have more muscles you consume more calories at any given point, even at rest.

That’s where the benefits of weight training really kicks in. Training with weights will help you burning more calories during your workouts and build more muscles at the same time. Also building muscles burns more calories during recovery, yes when you sleep!

The right diet

Nope, I didn’t forget that. The diet still plays a big role. Having less to eat will leave a big hole in your stomach to fill. But at the same time when you want to lose weight, you want to lose fat and not muscles and being in a calories deficit can sometimes bring some unwelcome side effects with it.

The good news is that there are some ways to minimize the loss of muscle mass.

Eat plenty of protein and your body is much less likely to use muscles to provide energy. Proteins are also much harder to digest and they will keep you fuller for longer and associated with the right training proteins will help you to build more muscles and look toned, feeling lighter and slim down.

Bottom line

We now know that to lose one kilogram per week you need to maintain a calories deficit of 1100 calories per day. Half of those calories will be lost with food and the other half with training and changes to your lifestyle. Focus your training to some sort of resistance type and keep your diet full of proteins.

Personal training

If you want support with your fitness plan, we offer a flexible 1 to 1 personal training service. This can be suitable for whether you’re beginner or an expert lifter, where we can also offer some nutritional advice to help you obtain your goals. We begin with an initial interview and carry out weekly check-in meetings to make sure you have ongoing support during your fitness journey.

Contact Us

Feel free to contact us for advice and to obtain a lockdown fitness plan. Simply complete the online contact form, or you can alternatively call or text 07508531855 for more urgent enquiries and we will be happy to help you in any way we can.