The Smartest Way To Get Lean In 2021 (Shredding Science Explained)

So in this video, I ask five highly qualified nutrition experts about the most effective scientific strategies for losing body fat, no matter how you slice it. The relapse statistics are still pretty bad. I don't want you to be too hungry. I don't want you to get too full although none of these strategies are wrong, they're not necessarily necessary either, um, things that actually increase energy expenditure will eventually come out of that stubborn area that your body has to get out of somewhere eventually. So to get everyone on the same page, I first spoke with Dr. Eric Helms about the basics of fat loss.

Eric has published a ton of

science

-based articles in peer-reviewed journals including recommendations for physique athletes' protein intake during caloric restriction and even binge eating behavior. So he started by reminding me that on a physiological level, fat loss is very well understood and actually quite simple. Yes, fat loss comes from an energy deficit, so by consuming fewer calories than you need to maintain weight for a short period of time, you can technically see your body fat. The percentage goes down by eating in maintenance while you gain muscle and possibly you would even like if you had a really strong stimulus to gain weight, maybe lose or gain muscle, I should say, maybe lose fat in a small surplus, maybe, but energetically you need to be a source of energy. deficit and in our call Eric emphasized that it is not enough to simply lose weight, we want to lose as much of that fat weight as possible and as little of that muscle weight as possible and to help us achieve that, he presented five keys to maximizing fat loss. fat and at the same time prevent muscle loss and I will do them in order of importance so that one has an energy deficit.

The second thing is, how do we know that what we are going to lose is fat and the best way to do that is to stimulate the muscle so that it remains, so that it is a progressive resistance exercise, so that is the best tool that we have After that, the next most important thing is to make sure the size of the deficit is appropriate. A good rule of thumb is somewhere between 0.5 and 1.5 of your body weight, but I wouldn't use that higher end unless you have a fairly high level of body fat, after that you probably want to have a sufficient protein intake. .

A good rule of thumb is that I would say higher. less than 2 grams per kg and if you are someone with a high body fat content, the quick rule of thumb that usually puts you in the right range so that you don't consume too much based on your

lean

mass is to use your centimeters of height, which They generally increase quite a bit. good for most people and finally what I would mention is an appropriate volume of cardio so you don't want to get completely into your deficit and modality and timing are important here so not right before the workout and you don't want something that It has a lot of eccentric or high-impact components, so running a lot probably wouldn't be the primary option.

A decent rule of thumb is to make sure your cardio volume is no more than half your resistance training volume, which is something that came out of my ass, but it's a decent line in the sand and to make it a little more specific , Eric suggested doing no more than 30 minutes of low-intensity cardio per day and no more than one or two high-intensity interval sessions per week again, assuming that we are trying to prevent muscle loss as much as possible, So with the most important variables in place, I next ask Eric about the different types of foods we should eat.

There are some foods that are simply better than others when it comes to losing fat for many people. especially in the mainstream, they will become obsessed with the types of foods they eat, as if people seem to think these foods are better for losing fat and these foods are worse for losing fat. What is your position? It really comes down to hitting macros vs. There really are some foods that are inherently more fat burners than others. Both statements can be true in the right context, so it all comes down to macros; However, there is some data to suggest that highly processed foods have a lower teff, hence the thermic effect.

So energy production would be less, but it would all come down to your macros even more, so it always comes down to energy balance. It also comes down to whether you want to make your fat loss journey easier to follow and less likely. rebound or you just care about losing weight for a temporary period of time if it's the latter and you just don't care to push yourself then yes you could just trim the deficit, track your macros, not worry about it and have some semblance of variety to make sure you're covering your micronutrient base, but that's not most people's if you really think about it, so I would say that to improve satiety, preserve energy production, and overall control of hunger cues, you probably want to consuming mostly single ingredient foods and not eating a lot of hyperpalatable foods, but there is a balance that can be achieved in the sense that you don't want these foods to be off-limits, you need to have your adult card, that's how you like to say it, like If someone told you that you are I'm not allowed to have this anymore.

The natural rebellious teenager comes out, so you should feel like I'm making a conscious decision. I am part of these are not strict rules. This is not a black and white approach, but most of my meals. It's going to be fruits, vegetables,

lean

protein and a source of carbohydrates, and then if I feel like it, if I really want it and it would help me stick to my diet, I'll definitely have a snack or a treat and work on it. So after Eric laid out the basics of fat loss, I spoke to someone who is extremely specialized in making people completely shredded.

Cliff Wilson is one of the best natural bodybuilding trainers on the planet. His clients have won 125 professional cards, 87 professional titles and 13 world championships. natural bodybuilding and I wanted you to ask me what the difference is between losing weight on the beach and being ultra defined for a competition. I would classify beechling as slightly ripped abs versus, you know, just absolutely ripped, um, a lot of it gets you there. it's the same thing, it's just the degree to which you do it, you can be a little inconsistent and still lose weight, but you can't really be inconsistent and get completely destroyed because every competitor you meet when they start starts their diet for a show.

At one point you get lean and then you keep going, so I would say the duration of the diet is probably the most important factor along with the degree of diligence. Now I have to say that Cliff pointed out that he wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I might try to get this assessment, especially if your main goal is to improve your health and I agreed that being truly broken is not even a sustainable goal for most people, but I found it interesting that even in these extreme cases of health loss fat yes it is possible. Still, ultimately it comes down to the same fundamental principles that Eric Helms laid out, it just takes them a little further and longer, but one thing I was interested in was stubborn fat.

Is there any trick to losing that last bit of fat from the parts of your body that just doesn't seem to come off, I would say there are two things firstly, in general, the more developed a muscle group is, the leaner it will look because if you have a certain amount of fat in a particular area, like I have more fat on my shoulders. what some people do if I build more muscle in my shoulders that same amount of body fat will be distributed over a larger area so you will look leaner. It's one of the reasons why more muscular people tend to look leaner overall, but beyond that stubborn body fat.

It's going to be largely determined by genetics and gender and things like that, so I would say that if everything shows up first except the stubborn area, if you continue with the diet, eventually they'll shed that stubborn area that your body has to get it out. At some point, one thing I've noticed with this is that sometimes you can have someone, let's say it's a guy who just can't get his lower abs to show, like there's always a little bit of fat on his lower part. the back. They don't come off and we can continue dieting with them, but at a certain point it almost seems like they start to stretch a lot or I don't know if they are losing muscle, but it's like they are so exhausted. of energy, how do you deal with that difficult situation as a coach?

Typically what will happen is that once you start tapping into that stubborn body fat, you've usually gotten to the point of significant discomfort, people who have gotten to that level for the first time will probably get a little more tense than someone who's never gotten to that level because, at the risk of sounding like you know you're doing hyperbole, sometimes it's very traumatic trying to shed that stubborn body fat for the first time. You've probably seen this with competitors over the years or even yourself. The next time you try to do it again it's almost as if you are mentally and physically prepared for what you want. you're going to participate and then you can finish it a second and third time without it being as traumatic, whether mentally or physically, right, that's very well said, okay, great, so after talking to Cliff about some smart ways to stay Next, I wanted to talk to someone who is more focused on sustainable approaches to fat loss, so I called a sports nutritionist, so Lee on the line, who did his master's thesis on psychology of eating behavior.

She

explained

some of the biggest mental obstacles people face. and some of her best advice for women, well I think in general men and women tend to make a lot of the same mistakes, but I see a lot of things happening, maybe I see it more in women because I work primarily with women , but what? What I have seen is that they do not want to hear about a more moderate strategy that they can use for their plan. They want to hear eliminate all these food groups. You can't eat dairy. You have to do keto. Try intermittent fasting.

As you know, while none of these strategies are wrong, they are not necessarily necessary to see fat loss progress and I made this mistake for many years where I focused more on what I thought was the perfect plan. on paper, but I didn't consider my current lifestyle or my current preferences and what would really be feasible for me to execute consistently day after day, so what happened was very common, you get very excited at first and this is a psychological mistake very common. that people make when they rely too much on motivation at first, they underestimate how difficult a trip is really going to be and then one weekend, two weeks, three weeks, they abandon it and then move on to the next thing, and I think we call it the shiny object syndrome, so they're always looking for the next fad diet, the next cool thing that sounds interesting instead of, well, what adjustments can I make to my current lifestyle to guide me in the right direction over time? and throughout our conversations so he emphasized how important it is to create repeatable habits so that you don't have to rely so much on self-control for every food decision, so there's always this idea that if you want something you have to try harder or if you fail. your goal is because you didn't have enough self-control.

Research consistently shows that self-monitoring is very helpful in initial habit formation, but should not be used as an ongoing strategy for key, long-term behavior change. Characteristic of a habit, unlike self-control, does not require cognitive effort for the habit to take place, so if we go to your kitchen or your home environment, your work environment, wherever you spend a lot of time, does Are there things we can change to do? maybe the more calories you have, the more annoying it will be to access the most calorie dense foods, if I put them at the top of your pantry, in the back, your consumption will likely decrease substantially because you won't mind going that far. . effort we call this designing for laziness and I like to say that humans are lazy by default and how can we use that to our advantage another example um this and this is called an architectural intervention of choice let's say you're working at your desk there's a clear bowl of I don't know m ms or skittles or something like that and within arm's reach so it's visible, it's close, it's very easy to access, but if you said, put the candy in an opaque container or put a lid on it or move it more far away so I have toget up and walk around or just put it in a drawer out of sight, my intake will drop dramatically again without me really realizing what's happening and many of the points he made were supported by my Next Call with Dr.

Lane Norton, who also has competitive experience but has recently focused more of his published work on understanding why more than half of diets fail and what we can do to help people maintain weight once they've lost it. one diet that stands out is that the Mediterranean diet was the best or the low-carb diet was the best or the plant-based diet was the best because if you equate them in calories then all the diets do more or less the same thing and a lot of that is that diet compliance is pretty terrible across the board, no matter how you look at it, the relapse statistics are still pretty bad the more people get it back than don't get it back, but even though keeping the weight off is a challenge for many people, Lane has identified the five most common weight maintenance strategies. used by people who have been successful in long term weight loss, what we do see are these habits and behaviors and the first and most common is that these people practice some form of cognitive restriction, so it may be in the form of calorie counting.

It may be in the form of not eating after a certain time or not eating before a certain time, so there are time-restricted eating points, such as with weight watchers or carbohydrate or fat restriction. There are several ways to restrict your dietary intake. Another one that may be a little surprising to people is that people who lose weight don't gain it back. They tend to self-monitor fairly regularly, meaning they weigh themselves quite frequently. I don't want to become dogmatic on that point. I'm not saying you can't lose weight and keep it off if you don't weigh yourself regularly, but what happens?

What it does do is provide feedback, and I'm not talking about a day-to-day fluctuation because people get too involved in that, but if over the course of weeks and months you see that scale increasing, then you can correct that. and then a third point is not surprising, which is regular exercise, probably the main reason is that there is good evidence that exercise sensitizes you to satiety signals and then some smaller points that arise and people tend to use structured programs when they are successful at something. at the highest level, you know, it's like hiring a nutrition coach or a dietician, but even like people, people make fun of things like weight watchers or jenny craig or a nutrisystem or whatever, but those people on average they perform better because just winging it with no plan usually doesn't work very well and then something that I thought was interesting in a recent study they found that the strongest characteristic in this particular study that was associated with maintaining weight loss It was what is called low recency, basically, is the long term valued? data rather than short-term data, a very easy example of that would be well, I really want to eat this donut right now because I know it's going to make me feel good, but if that doesn't fit, you know what your daily calorie requirement is, okay?

I value feeling good right now more than wanting to reach my goal, so those with little experience would choose the long-term goal instead of the short-term feeling lane. I also

explained

that, although it will require some moderation, you should be able to do it. Maintain your weight loss by eating more calories than you were eating while losing weight, so that once you reach your ideal weight, you can begin to increase your calories to a higher intake and gradually, if you develop the habits and behaviors we have been describing, I should. I started to feel less and less restrictive over time.

I struggled with diet compliance when I first started bodybuilding until I switched to a more flexible diet approach and just the fact that I knew I could eat whatever I wanted as long as it fit my needs. Macros I had no problems with compliance after that, it feels easy. I still do it to this day. It hardly causes me any stress, but there are some people for them. Following macros is extremely stressful. You know, I've heard from some people. Who says you know? I tried macro tracking. I hated it. I went on a low carb diet and that's easy for me.

So what I would tell people is to find the method of restraint that feels least restrictive to you as an individual, but also don't do it. Assume that what is easy for you will also be easy for someone else because I made that mistake too and last but not least, I wanted a supplement expert to set the record straight on fat burners. Dr. Eric Trexler has published a large number of articles on a variety of different supplements, including caffeine, creatine, omega-3s and many more, and in our talk he described the different types of fat burners that are seen good in theory and if any of them are really worth using.

There are many types of supplements that are marketed for fat loss, so the supplements that are supposed to improve fat oxidation, things like carnitine and cla, things that actually increase energy expenditure, caffeine, capsaicin, ephedrine, yohimbine , things like that, you'll also see things that are marketed as sort of hunger reducers, so almost everything that's marketed as thermogenic also tends to affect hunger, but then there are other things like ginger and 5 htp and there are also things which are marketed as sort of nutrient blockers, so there are things that modify or block the absorption of fats or carbohydrates, so all the ones on paper sound great, but the problem is that they all have some type of default on things like caffeine, what are you worried about if I try to use this constantly, will I get used to it?

There are some on that list that just have quality control issues like yohimbine, some have side effects like yohimbine and ephedrine and of course there are some nutrient blockers that work really well and cause really bad GI upset and then, for most of them the problem is that there is simply a lack of really solid conclusive evidence and most of the ones that have been very well studied you will find that you can achieve what they do with much easier and more affordable methods, so let's put it all together now as if someone comes to you and it's like they want to lose fat.

What supplements do I take? Are there any that you would really recommend? My recommendations would be the same whether you are in a fat loss phase or not, so I would still say yes, there is. Some supplements that can help you during your fat loss phase simply do not cause fat loss properly, so things like whey protein creatine monohydrate if you are not getting enough protein through your foods because high protein diets They are fantastic for fat loss goals when We are on a weight loss diet, sometimes it is difficult, we restrict fats and it is difficult to incorporate essential fatty acids into the diet, so fish oil could be a very good option, there may be some vitamins or minerals that we need.

We're getting less when we start reducing our food intake, so that's another good reason why you might consider taking a multivitamin or even a vitamin D supplement as well and before we finish, I want to point out a few things that I think you'll find first. useful when it comes to your own fat loss plan. I've linked some amazing resources my guests have to offer below, whether it's a tracking app, an ebook, or some other content. I also have an ebook called The Ultimate Guide to Body Recomposition that outlines exactly how to set up your diet, whether your primary goal is to lose fat and build muscle or do both equally at the same time.

I encourage you to follow my guests on the respective platforms. You all posted some great

science

based content, so I'll have all of that linked below as well, so don't forget to leave the video a thumbs up if you enjoyed it, subscribe if you haven't already and I'll check it out. Y'all here on the next one.