How Much Should I Eat To Lose Fat?
Losing or gaining weight comes down to the basic calorie equation. As much as your favorite influencers want you to believe that it's carbs, sugar or fats that lead to fat gain, in truth, it is just the fact that you’re eating more calories than you burn over time. So to lose fat, you just have to eat lesser calories than you expend. No this doesn’t mean you have to slash your calories in half.
Let’s start with a basic conversion. 1 kg approximately equates to 2.2 pounds. Based on research, a pound of fat generally equates to 3500 calories. This means that if you want to lose 1 pound (0.45kg) of fat in a week, you’ll need to be in a deficit of 3500 calories. Assuming you want to lose around 1 pound of fat a week, you can arrange this deficit over the week in any way you like. You can split the 3500 calorie deficit as a 500 calories deficit daily for the 7 days of a week. Or you could play around with it having few high-calorie days and few lower calorie days, for example, you could have 5 days of the week with a 700 calorie deficit and 2 days with no deficit.
I wouldn’t recommend people going for a more aggressive deficit. But if you are someone who is very overweight, you could get away with a 1000 calorie deficit daily but in my opinion its better for most people to stay around a 500 calorie deficit. Going aggressive does more harm than good and over the long run, a successful fat loss transformation is one that reaches the goal and is able to stay there instead of someone who reaches there quicker and then loses control when the diet is over. Another advantage of having a smaller deficit is that you could still build strength and muscle if you are not at an advanced stage of training even though you are eating lesser. Yes, recomping (gaining muscle while losing fat) is possible. Again, this depends on how aggressive your deficit is. For example, you have a much better chance of gaining strength and muscle eating at an average 200-300 calorie deficit per day than at a 700 calorie deficit daily. You have to keep these tradeoffs in mind and select a sweet spot.
Also, read this if you don’t know how much fat loss you should be aiming for on a weekly basis.
TDEE And Macros
Now that you know about the deficit, you must be wondering about how many calories you actually burn in a day? This is your Total Daily Energy Expenditure. Keep in mind that there is no way you can be 100% accurate with this number. There will be days you will move and expend more energy and there will be days you’ll be less active. What you can do is have an idea of approximately how much you burn and base off your deficit on that.
You can simply google a TDEE calculator and fill in details to get your maintenance calories. These are the calories where you won't gain or lose weight. Once you get your maintenance calories, eat at this maintenance number for the next 2 weeks and see if your weight stays the same. If you don’t want to wait, you could subtract 500 from this number and adjust your calories going forward based on the results. If you’re new to this, be prepared to make adjustments as there will always be some trial and error involved.
For example, let's take the following cases;
Case A
The calculator gives a TDEE of 2500 calories.
You eat 2000 calories daily.
You end up losing 1 pound a week on average.
This means the number predicted by that calculator is correct and you can stick to it.
Case B
The calculator gives a TDEE of 2500 calories.
You eat 2000 calories daily.
You end up losing 2 pounds a week on average.
This means the number predicted by that calculator is NOT correct as you supposedly created a deficit of 500 calories and should’ve lost 1 pound a week on average. Thus, you can increase your calories to where you lose around 1 pound a week and judge your TDEE from there onwards.
This process has to be done continuously for the first few weeks simply because of the weight fluctuations you will have initially. After a few weeks, you will have a better idea of what your maintenance calories actually are and this is why you have to be patient while calibrating your calories. Also when you make a change, stick to it for at least 2 weeks before adjusting it again. Patience is key. Don’t be that person who drops 100 calories, and then three days later drops 100 more because the scale wasn’t moving fast enough.
Once you figure out how many calories you will be eating to lose fat, the next step is to split these calories into the following macronutrients;
Protein- 1 gram = 4 calories approx.
Carbs- 1 gram = 4 calories approx.
Fats- 1 gram = 9 calories approx.
For this example, let’s assume a person decides to eat 2000 calories daily.
We start out with calculating the amount of protein you should consume. Though the recommended daily amount for protein is very low for a sedentary person, if you are someone who is going to be active and will do some form of resistance training (which you should be doing), you would be better off eating a little more protein. While on one hand, we have the daily recommended intake for protein which is pretty low, on the other hand, you have bodybuilding conventions, some of which even ask you to consume more than over a gram of protein per pound of your bodyweight. Finding a middle ground between these extremes, you should aim to eat at least 0.8grams of protein per pound of bodyweight. There have been several pieces of research conducted to back this claim. I personally have even seen results eating lesser than 0.8 grams of protein per pound of my body weight so I think you should definitely try out what works best for you. If you are someone who wishes to eat more protein, you can make the necessary adjustments.
Continuing with our example, let us assume this person weighs 80kgs. For a person weighing 80kgs (175pounds approx.), the amount of protein needed would be 175pounds x 0.8g = 140grams.
Knowing that a gram of protein has approximately 4 calories, this would be equal to 140g x 4 = 560 calories of protein.
Fat and carbs can be based on your personal preference but keep in mind that both are important for proper health and performance and I would recommend having a moderate amount of both of them.
You could eat around 25%-30% of your calories from fats. Let's say this same person eats 30% of his calories from fats every day.
2000 calories x 30% = 600 calories. Knowing that a gram of fat has approx. 9 calories, this comes to 600/9 = 67grams of fat per day.
Now, we had 560 calories of protein and 600 calories of fats which leaves us with; 2000-560-600 = 840 calories for carbs.
Knowing that 1 gram of carbs has approx. 4 calories, we have 840/4 = 210g of carbs per day.
This gives us our final macros of 210g carbs, 140g protein, and 67g fat.
Now keep in mind that these are your targets. You don’t have to be perfect with them every single day but you should try to be as close as possible.
You can split these macros anyway you want over the day, in 2 or 3 meals or however you like. You can consider meal timing and eat carbs and protein around workouts if you want to. These small details won't matter as much as the big picture of consistently hitting your macros.
I definitely recommend you to spend some time with this information and do the necessary calculations to figure out your numbers. It might seem to be a bit too overwhelming at first but is actually very easy once you get a hang of it.
I've created a simple calculator online which can do these calculations for you based off an activity multiplier and some simple formulas. It assumes that you have some form of physical activity on a daily basis. All you have to do is enter your weight and select the amount of deficit you want to create. Keep in mind that these numbers are just a starting point and that you can make changes over time to suit your personal needs.
You can access the calculator here until the link expires.
Conclusion
The one thing forming the base of every diet structure is a caloric deficit. To lose a pound of fat, you should aim to create approximately a 3500 calorie deficit per week. This deficit can be split through the week however you like. Use a TDEE calculator to approximate your maintenance calories which can help you decide how many calories to eat every day. Once decided, you can split these calories to calculate your macronutrient intake with protein being at least 0.8g per pound of bodyweight. Carbohydrates and fats are essential for general health and performance and thus should be included in your meal plan. These numbers are just targets and don’t obsess with hitting them perfectly every single day. Make sure to track your progress and make changes accordingly.
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