Foolproof Fat Loss Formula in 4 Steps

Dropping some unwanted body fat is all about "eating less and moving more". 

 We should all know this by now. 

But HOW much less should you actually be eating is the real question you should be asking yourself. 

If you're someone who doesn't know much about how food actually works and what calories are, well don't feel too bad, a lot of people don't.  
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Even fitness gurus in the industry aren't really sure how the science of calories work. 

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If you need some boning up on the subject of calories and macronutrients (carbs, fats, proteins), check out THIS ARTICLE on learning the fundamentals of calories and macros. 

For the rest of you who've done your homework and know your background info, let's take a look at what an effective fat loss process should look like if you want to maximize your fat loss with minimizing the loss of lean muscle mass in the process. 

An initial question about fat loss might be "is it possible to diet down to a certain weight just by eating the maintenance calories for that specific goal weight?"

For instance, if you weighed 190 pounds, but you wanted to weigh 175 pounds, could you just eat maintenance calories for the 175 lbs. and eventually your weight would settle at 175?

Shortly, the answer is YES.  You very well could. 

The only problem with cutting your calories so drastically from a maintenance of 190  to a maintenance of 175 (or more if you're looking at losing more than 15 pounds) is that you'd lose way too much weight at the begining of the dieting process and lose more muscle mass than necessary.  

You ultimately wouldn't feel too great by making such a drastic decrease in energy consumption and your fat loss progress would stall out towards the end of the process. 
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So if you're someone who is 10 to 20 lbs. away from your current goal weight, you'd benefit more some implimenting a 4 step process instead of an all out 1 step move that invovles a  drastic decrease in calories. 
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ALL YOU NEED IS THESE 4 STEPS

The 4 step process would look something like this, where each step can be represented as 1 whole month for a unit of time.

Month 1: Slightly decrease your current calories to a value halfway between your current wieght and goal weight.  Example: If you're current calories are 3000 and your goal weight maintenance calories are 2200, move your current calories to about 2600 calories per day. 

Month 2: Decrease your current Month 1 calories to your goal weight maintenance calories. Again, using the previous example, reduce your calories from 2600 to 2200.  

Month 3: Continue to decrease your calories, this time to 250-500 calories BELOW your goal weight maintenance calories.  Building on the current example, if you reduce your goal weight maintenance calories of 2200 by 400, you'll now be currently at 1800 calories.  

Month 4: This can be known as "the diet after the diet." Once you've met your goal weight, you can slowly raise your calories back up to the calories you had in month 2.  So for the example, you'd slowly build your calories over the course of the month from 1800 calories to 2200.  

This 4 step approach will allow you to lose body fat at a slow and controlled pace while sparing the loss of muscle mass through the duration of the dieting phase.  The weight loss will never be too fast, or too slow, but just right.  

It also allows you to adjust your new bodyweight once you've achieved your goal through the use of slowly increasing calories with the reverse dieting technique.  

If you're looking to lose more than 20 pounds, it is best to split the process up into multiple dieting phases with intermittent maintenance phases to prevent burnout.  

What this means is impliment the 4 step process, take a short break and build your maintenance back up, then start the 4 step process again.  

This type of dieting process is known as taking a "science based" approach to improving your physique.  
In an industry filled with gurus who preach "magical health foods" and instant gratification scams, science based training and nutrition methods often take a backseat. 

They're not sexy.

They're not glamorous.
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But they work. 

To quote the brilliant Mike Israetel, "Science can make things complex if you want exotic outcomes. If you want basic yet effective outcomes, science can help make things amazingly simple."