What's going on guys, welcome back to the Chees and Clarity Health and Fitness Podcast. I'm your host Brennan DeCruz, accredited in Nutritionist and Online Physique Coach. And as always, this show is about cutting through the noise, the dogma, and the oversimplified narratives in this industry so you can better understand what actually drives long-term physique change. Before we get into today's episode, I want to ask you for one quick favor. If you've gotten any value from any of the 200+ episodes I've put out over the years, please take 30 seconds to follow the show on Spotify or Apple Podcasts. We review preferably five stars and share this episode on your inscribed stories and tag me @BrennanDeCruz_. And if you're someone who knows you need help structuring your nutrition, your training, your cardio, and lifestyle, so you can lose fat, maintain muscle, and finally get the results that actually last, that's exactly what I help my clients do. You can reach out to me directly through my email, which is at
[email protected] or click the co-hoaching link in the show notes to submit an inquiry. Now, today's episode is going to kick off a brand new series. I've been wanting to put together for quite some time, and that's a comprehensive fat law series. Over the course of the next several episodes, which could be up to 8-10 episodes, to be honest with you guys, I'm going to be breaking down every major component of the fat loss process. From the nutritional strategy you need to lose fat and maintain muscle, to add up train, and program cardio and adepsy, to managing your hunger. To the dietary and lifestyle mistakes I see derailing dieters, all the way through to the exit strategy that allows you to maintain the progress you've worked so hard for. This is part one of that series, and we're starting where every fat loss phase needs to start, which is with the nutrition component. Specifically, I want to walk you through how I structured the nutrition side of a fat loss phase to help my clients lose body fat, preserve their lean muscle mass, improve their body composition, and achieve results that actually last beyond the diet itself. Because here's the reality. Fat loss isn't just about eating less and watching the scale drop. If your goals have built a lean, strong, defined physique, your approach has to go far beyond just creating calorie deficit. It has to be more strategic, more structured, and more sustainable than what most dieters default to, and that's what I'm going to walk you through today. Throughout this episode, I'm going to share both the research that informs my approach and my practice and the real world coaching experience I've accumulated over 16 plus years in this industry, working with over 1,200 clients helped them lose fat, build muscle, and reach their leanest physique today. So whether you've been spinning your wheels with fat loss in the past, you struggle to maintain your results once the diet has ended, where you're simply ready to take a smarter, more strategic approach to your next fat loss phase, this episode is going to give you the framework. Let's get into it. Before we get into the how, we need to get very clear on the goal. Because if you don't understand the true goal of fat loss phase, you're going to approach it in the wrong way, and when your approach is wrong, the outcome you get is going to be subpar. The goal of the fat loss phase is not just to lose weight. It is improve your body composition, which means dropping body fat while maintaining as much of your metabolically active lean tissue as possible, and in some cases, even gaining a small amount of lean muscle mass during the diet itself. This is a critical distinction, because if your goal is to build a lean strong muscular physique, you need to stop thinking in terms of just lowering the number on the scale. We are not chasing a lighter body weight, we're pursuing a leaner, stronger, more defined physique. But here's where most people go wrong. They become obsessed with seeing the scale go down. The scale becomes the only metric they care about, the only feedback they pay attention to, and the only thing they use to determine whether or not they're actually making progress. And in that process of chasing that number, they lose more than just body fat. They lose metabolically active muscle tissue, and as a result, they don't achieve the very look that they were trying to achieve in the first place. What ends up happening is that they hit their goal weight, but they don't look the way they expected. They don't look leaner in the way they envisioned. They don't look more defined, and they certainly don't look more muscular. They just look like a smaller, stronger version of where they started. And if the starting point was poor, the end point isn't any better. This is something I see all the time, especially with the female lifestyle clients that come to me. Many of them have done dozens of diets in the past years, and they've never actually been happy with how they look at the end of those phases. And it's not because they didn't lose enough weight. It's because they didn't have enough muscle on their frame to achieve the tone, shapely physique. They were after once they hit that weak goal. This is why I constantly remind my clients of this throughout a fat loss phase. We are not chasing weight loss. We are chasing fat loss while preserving muscle mass. Because those are two very different outcomes. I'm not a body weight coach. I'm a body composition coach. And the work we did together is about results that actually translate to a better looking physique, not just a lower, smaller number on the scale. Now, let's talk about what's actually happening physiologically during a fat loss phase, because understanding the mechanism is what allows us to make the right decisions throughout the process. When you're in a calorie deficit, you are in a state of negative energy balance. This means your body has to make up for the difference between the energy you're consuming and the energy you're expending, and that energy has to come from somewhere. It can come from your fat mass, or it can actually come from your lean mass. And our job during a fat loss phase is to make sure the vast majority of that energy is coming from fat and not muscle. This matters because muscle is incredibly valuable tissue. It's metabolically active, meaning it burns approximately three times more calories at rest than fat tissue does. It supports your resting metabolic rate. If the primary safe for glucose disposal in your body, accounting for more than 80% of our carbohydrates get used and stored, which means more muscle equals better insulin sensitivity, better blood sugar regulation, and better hormonal health overall. Muscle improves nutrient partitioning so the food you eat is more likely to be used to build and repair muscle tissue rather than being stored as fat. And it plays a massive role in regulating your appetite both during and after the diet. Muscle is also what actually gives your physique a shape. Muscle is what creates the lean defined athletic look that most people are after when they say that they want to get in shape. And so reason why you can have two people at the same exact body weight, where one looks lean and toned, and the other looks soft and undefined. The difference is in their level of muscle mass. So the last thing we wanted you during a fallow phase is lose lean muscle mass. Because when you lose muscle during a diet, several things happen that work against you. Your metabolic rate drops more than it would from the deficit alone, which means you're now burning fewer calories per day and the diet gets progressively harder. Your hunger signals ramp up due to a phenomenon called hyperphasia, which is a significant increase in hunger and a drive to eat that comes from losing lean mass. Your ability to maintain your results once the diet ends goes way down. And the physique you're left with at the end of the process doesn't look the way that you wanted it to. This is why crash dieting, long aggressive deficits and poor training setups almost always backfire long term. People go way too hard out the gate. They lose a significant amount of muscle in the process and then end up rebounding harder than they would have if they had taken a more strategic approach in the first place. So when I take client through a fat loss phase, our objectives are very clear. We want to maximize fat loss. We want to minimize muscle loss and we want to maintain or improve training performance. And ultimately, we want to build a physique that actually looks better, not just later. And that requires a completely different mindset than what most dieters bring to the table. It requires understanding that this is not about doing as much as possible as fast as possible. It's about doing the right things at the right time consistently over time. The goal isn't just to get lighter. The goal is to get lean in a way that preserves your muscle, supports your health and sets you up to maintain your results long after the diet is over. Now that we've established the goal of fat loss phase, the next step is understanding how to actually structure nutrition to support that goal. Because at the end of the day, fat loss is driven by one fundamental principle. You need to be in a calorie deficit, which means your body needs to be expanding more energy than you're taking it. Now there are two primary levers we can pull to create that deficit. We can decrease our calorie intake through nutrition or we can increase our calorie expenditure through training, cardio and daily movement. And while both of these matter as an accredited nutritionist, I always start with nutrition first. Because for the vast majority of people out there, you are not going to out-trained a poor diet, nor are you going to out-cardio excess calorie consumption. Yes, training plays a critical role in the fat loss process and we'll dive into that in part two of the series. And it is true that cardio movement helps and we'll cover that in part three. But trying to create a 4 to 500 calorie deficit purely through exercise every single day is not realistic for most people. It's time-consuming, it's really difficult to sustain. And meanwhile, you can eat 500 calories in a few minutes, but it could take you multiple hours to burn that off through exercise. So from a coaching perspective, nutrition is the most efficient and controllable level we have. And it's the first one I pull when setting up a fat loss phase for a client. I dial in their diet first. And once I've assessed how they're responding to the dietary adjustments alone, we can layer in training, cardio and step components more strategically. Now here's where I see one of the biggest mistakes in how people approach fat loss nutrition. Most people create a calorie deficit, but they do so in a way that also creates a nutrient deficit. And that's a major problem. Because what most people do when they decide to diet is that they take their current diet and just eat less of it. They eat smaller portions of the same foods they were eating before, assuming that the only variable that matters is calorie restriction. And for many people, the foods they were eating to begin with were already low in protein, low in fiber, low in micronutrients and low in satiety. They're often heavily processed calorie dense and not filling or satiating. So what ends up happening is now is that they're now eating fewer calories, but they're also eating smaller portions of foods that weren't supporting their goals in the first phase. They're getting fewer vitamins, fewer minerals, less fiber and less protein. And they're hungry because the foods they were eating weren't satiating to begin with. And the smaller portions of these unsatisfying food doesn't make the diet easier, it actually makes it harder. This is why so many diners end up with poor adherence, low energy and per training performance worse recovery and eventually fall off the planning entirely so they didn't complete the fat loss phase in and of itself. The issue isn't that they didn't have enough willpower. The issue is that the framework they were operating in was set up to fail from the start. So when I structure a fat loss nutrition plan for a client, my goal is very clear. And once you create a calorie, that's it without compromising.
nutrient intake because the goal isn't just to lose weight. It's to lose that, maintain muscle, improve metabolic health, perform well in the gym and stay consistent throughout the entire process. And to do that, the diet has to be built intentionally, not just reduced. Here's how I'll explain this to my clients in a simple framework that helps them understand what each piece of their nutrition is actually doing for them. Your calorie intake determines what you weigh, so it will be the major influencer of scale weight fluctuations. Your macro nutrient breakdown determines what your body composition looks like, meaning the ratio of fat and acetylene mass on your frame. And your micronutrient intake determines how you feel, how you function, and how you perform throughout the process. If you neglect any one of these three layers, your results will suffer. If your calories are off, your body weight won't move in the direction you want. If your macros are off, you might lose weight, but you won't be losing the right kind of weight. And if your macros are off, you might be hitting your numbers on paper, but you'll feel terrible doing so. Your energy will suffer, your performance will suffer, your recovery will suffer, your hormone health will suffer, and your adherence will eventually suffer too. So instead of just giving someone a calorie target and saying, "Hit this number," which is what so many lazy coaches in this industry default to, "I build a structured nutrition plan that meets their energy needs, supports their macronutrient targets, ensures micronutrient's efficiency, manages their hunger and satiety, and creates a system they can actually adhere to, because adherence is the bottleneck for most clients. The perfect numbers on paper don't matter if you don't know how to hit them or if you can't hit them. The way I do this is by focusing on nutrient density and satiety per calorie, which means, I prioritize foods that give you the most nutritional value and the most fullness for the calories you're consuming. We're talking about lean protein sources, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, high fiber carbohydrates sources, and minimally processed foods. Because these foods keep you fuller for longer, they provide essential vitamins and minerals, they support training performance, they support digestion, they help reduce inflammation, and they make the entire diet process far more sustainable. So instead of feeling like your conste restricting and whitenessing your way through every single meal, you feel like you're actually feeling your body properly within a structured deficit. And that distinction matters because anyone can create a calorie deficit, but not everyone can sustain one. The difference between short-term weight loss and long-term fat loss success comes down to whether the framework you're operating in is something you can actually execute on for the duration of the diet. And the dieters who fall off plan are almost the ones who built their plan without any consideration for how the food made them feel, how full it kept them, and how well it supported the rest of their lifestyle. That's exactly what we're going to spend the rest of this episode building out. I start with the most important macronutrient during a fat loss phase, which is protein. If there's one macronutrient that needs to be prioritized during a fat loss phase, it's protein. Protein is the single biggest dietary lever you can pull, to influence how successful your diet is going to be, and it's the macronutrient that most directly determines whether it will be, you lose this fat mass, or is it coming from lean mass. Here's why this matters so much. When you're in a calorie deficit, your body is in a catabolic state, meaning it's breaking things down. And if you're not consuming enough protein and your body breaks down, what your body breaks down is not just going to be body fat. It's also going to be muscle tissue too, which is the exact opposite of what we're trying to accomplish during this phase. But when protein intake is high, and resistant training is properly programmed and performed at an intense effort, we can prevent that. The combination of high protein plus hard training sends a robust, anabolic signal to the body to preserve lean muscle mass, even while we're in a deficit. And in some cases, we can even build a small amount of muscle while losing fat. That's body recomposition, and it's only possible when protein and training are both dialed in. Now, I want to talk about the three primary reasons why protein becomes so important during a fat loss phase, because understanding these mechanisms is what allows you to execute this properly, rather than just trying to hit an arbitrary protein number. The first reason is muscle retention and growth. Protein provides amino acids, which are the building blocks your body needs to maintain and build muscle tissue. And the more muscle you preserve during a fat loss phase, the better your physique is going to look at the end of the diet. Because as we covered earlier, muscles look give your body shape. It's what creates that lean defined athletic look. People are actually after when they say that they want to get in shape. But muscle retention isn't just about aesthetics. It's also about metabolic preservation. Muscle is metabolically active tissue burning approximately three times more calories at rest than fat does. And the more lean muscle mass that you maintain through a diet, the better you preserve the resting metabolic rate, your insensitive heat, your nutrient partitioning, and your overall metabolic health throughout the process. The second reason protein matters during a fat loss phase is that it has the highest thermic effect of feeding of any mac or nutrient. The thermic effect of feeding refers to the cowards your body burns, digesting, assorbing, and processing the food you eat. Corbideids have a thermic effect of around five to 10 percent. That's between zero to three percent, but protein sits up at 20 to 30 percent, which means for every hundred calories of protein you consume, your body burns 20 to 30 calories just processing it. So you're netting out closer to 70 to 80 calories from the protein you eat, which means that higher protein diets actually increase your total daily energy expenditure simply because of how much energy your body uses to absorb and digest the protein itself. The third reason, and arguably the most underrated, is that protein is the most satiating mac or nutrient we can eat. Protein keeps you fuller for longer than carbs and fats, and during a fat loss phase, managing hunger is one of the biggest factors that determines whether you succeed or fail. There's a concept called the protein leverage hypothesis, which posits that our bodies are hardwired to keep eating until we've consumed the protein. So, if your diet is low in protein and you're filling your calories with processed carbs and fats, your hunger drive state is elevated, and you're more likely to overeat trying to satisfy a protein need that's not being met. But when protein intake is high, that's a tidy signal kicks in earlier, hunger drops and your overall calorie intake becomes much easier to control. We have a really compelling study from Y-Wall on colleagues that demonstrates this perfectly. In this study, they took a group of participants and increased their protein intake from 15% of total calories to 30% of total calories. And what they found was that by simply increasing protein intake, it led to a spontaneous energy reduction of 441 calories per day over a 12-week period, which led to significant fat loss even though they weren't in a fat loss study. These participants were not trying to eat less, at least intentionally. They weren't being told to restrict their intake. They just naturally ate fewer calories because the higher protein diet kept them more seashid. That's a 441 calorie, spontaneous deficit just from increasing protein alone, which is why I tell clients that protein is a single most important dietary level during a fat loss phase, and this is the kind of data that backs it up. Now let's talk about how much protein you actually need. For most people in the general population, a range of 1.2 or 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is sufficient to maximize muscle protein synthesis. This range is well established in the literature, and is the baseline I work with for most clients. But during a fat loss phase, especially for leaner clients, for more advanced trainees and clients who really struggle with hunger, I'll often push protein intake higher than that because the benefits compound the leaner you get and the more aggressive the deficit is. We have a great study from the show Dr. Eric Helms has shows us he compared resistant trained athletes consuming either 1.6 grams per kilogram per day or 2.8 grams per kilogram per day during a fat loss phase. And the higher protein group die group reported lower stress, less fatigue and greater diet satisfaction compared to the moderate protein group. So not only does higher protein intake help with satiety, muscle retention and energy expenditure, but it can help make the dieting process easier from a compliance and consistency standpoint. And in fat loss phase, all these things matter as they can translate directly into better outcomes. This is also reinforced when you look at the dietary habits of the most successful natural bodybuilders. Dr. Andrew Schupell has done some really excellent observational research on the nutritional strategies of elite natural competitors. And what he has found is that the bodybuilders who got the leanest and maintain the most muscle throughout their contests were consuming around 3.2 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight per day, which is well above the 1.6 to 2.2 grams per day baseline. And these are the people who are arguably the best in the world at the exact thing that we're trying to accomplish during a fat loss phase, which is losing fat while maintaining muscle. So the body of evidence consistently points in one direction. Higher protein intake during a fat loss phase support better muscle retention, better appetite regulation, better adherence and better physique outcomes overall. Now, I want to cover a few studies that I really think drive home the point of why prior to using protein and a high protein intake at that isn't just a small variable that we can overlook. It's one of the most important nutritional variables that determines what your physique looks like at the end of the diet. The first is studied by Metler and colleagues from 2010. In this study, they put resistant trained athletes into an aggressive 40% calorie deficit and split them up into two groups. One group consumed a normal protein intake that accounted for 15% of energy intake. While the other consumed 2.3 grams per kilogram per day. Both groups lost fat, but the difference in body composition outcomes was massive. The normal protein group lost 40% of their body weight from fat mass and a whopping 53% from lean mass. So more than half of the weight they lost came from the loss of lean muscle tissue. On the other hand, the high protein group lost 80% of their body weight from fat mass and only 20% from lean mass. So despite being in the same dose, if following the same, following a high protein diet, help preserve 33% more lean mass, which means for every pound loss, they lost 33% more of that weight from fat mass than the normal protein group. The second study I want to highlight is even more striking. Long-lending colleagues in 2016 took men and put them into a calorie deficit with a structured training program where they trained 60s per week. But they split them into a high protein diet group that consumed 2.4 grams per kilogram per day and a low protein group that consumed 1.2 grams per kilogram per day. Both groups lost roughly the same amount of body weight, but the actual lean mass of fat mass ratio was far different, which is what influenced how these individuals looked by the end. The high protein diet group lost 4.8 kilograms of fat mass, which is over 10.5 pounds, and gained 1.2 kilograms of lean mass, which is over 2.6 pounds during the deficit. So they recompt meaning they built muscle while losing fat. the lower protein group on the other hand maintain their
but loss less fat mass as a loss 3.5 kilograms of fat, which comes out to 7.7 pounds. These two groups follow the same training program or in the same deficit, so the only significant difference was their protein intake. And the difference between losing muscle and gaining muscle and a fat loss phase really came down to their protein intake. The third study that I want to cover is from Don Laman's lab and it shows how additive these effects become when you combine high protein with resistant training. This study took women between the ages of 40 to 56 and put them into different weight loss conditions. One group was a diet only group who were given a standard diet base on the food guide you've parented. So this was higher carb, lower protein, and then the second group was another diet only group, but they were put on a higher protein diet at 1.6 grams per kilogram per diet. The final group was a diet plus exercise group who were put on high protein diet combined with resistance and aerobic training. Each group lost body weight, however, the differences in lean mass retention were staggering. The standard diet group lost 35% of their total weight from lean mass. Those in the second group who were put on the high protein diet cut their lean mass level down to 22% of total weight loss. And the participants who were in the high protein plus training group reduced their lean mass loss to roughly just losing 4%. There is a compounding effect following a high protein diet combined with a properly programmed progressive resistant training program during a fat loss phase, which can be the difference between losing 1/3 to 1/2 of your weight from muscle versus losing almost exclusively fatness. This is why I tell clients that besides maintaining a cowardice of prioritizing protein and resistant training are non-negotiables during a fat loss phase. Now, beyond just total protein intake, I also play close attention to protein distribution across meals because that's another lever that affects how successfully you are and losing fat, maintaining muscle, and managing your appetite. Unlike carbs and fat, your body doesn't have a meaningful storage form of protein. We can store carbs as glycogen and muscle liver tissue. We can store dietary fat almost endlessly as body fat. But protein doesn't have a storage equivalent beyond a very small amino acid pool, which means we can't completely make up for being low in protein at 1 meal by overeating it at the next, because protein metabolism is mainly regulated meal by meal. When you consume a meal containing a losing rich protein source, you stimulate muscle protein synthesis, which is the process your body uses to build and repair a muscle tissue. This MPS response will usually stay elevated for a few hours before returning back to baseline. So it's in our best interest to have a bull as a protein at least a few times a day to stay in a state of positive protein balance. So when I build that fat loss nutrition plan for a client, I'm not just making sure that they hit a daily protein target. I'm searching their meals to deliver a fairly even distribution of protein across the day, generally in three-to-six feedings, with each meal containing 30 plus grams of high-quality protein from a complete source. That's how we maximize muscle protein synthesis and minimize the catabolic effects of being in a deficit, as well as create a daily eating pattern where they'll have enough protein in at each meal to feel satiated. One last thing I want to hit on is the idea that you only need 1.6 to 2.2 grams of protein to maximize MPS. Although there is data that finds that to be the case, such as the 2018 Wharton Meta Niles, as for too many people have taken that data and made it out to be the ceiling for protein. But we have other research such as a more recent meta-regression by Martin Reffelow and colleagues that finds greater protein and greater benefits the higher protein it takes and far higher at that. A lot of fitness content is centered around what is the bare minimum you need to see some level of progress. But I mainly work with high performers and they're not satisfied with the bare minimum, as they're looking to achieve a next level physique, which requires pulling more levers and dialing in more details and nuances further. So if you want exceptional results, you cannot do what the average gym goer does and expect to get the outcomes you're looking for. Here's the reality of where most people sit. The average person in the US is under-consuming protein relative to what's required to build and maintain a high quality physique. The average adult male in this country sits around 28% body fat. The average adult female sits around 40% body fat. We have 73% of US adults overweight or obese. 91% or 91% are considered over fat. And 93.2% have some level metabolic dysfunction. These are the population averages. This is what normal looks like. And I don't know about you, but I'll pass on being normal. If your goal is to build a lean defined athletic physique, you can't operate at population averages. You have to hold yourself to higher standard. And one of the most simple and fundamental ways you could start to separate yourself from the average is by getting your protein intake right. It's the foundation that allows everything else to work. Resistant training only produces optimal muscle adaptations when protein is sufficient. Fat loss only produces an aesthetically improved physique when muscles preserve, which happens when protein intake is high. At herensudev sits only become sustainable when satiety is supported, which protein dries more than any other mac or nutrient. So protein isn't just one lever among many during a fat loss phase. It's a single most important dietary lever where you could pull. And getting your right is non-negotiable if you want results that actually last. Now that we've covered protein, which is the most important mac or nutrient during a fat loss phase, the next dietary variable I want to address is one of the most overlooked, but most impactful tools you have during a deficit. And that's fiber. If protein is the king of fat loss nutrition, fibers to queen that supports a successful fat loss process. And yet, most ciders don't even think about fiber. They may focus on calories or even macros. But fiber gets completely ignored. Even though it plays a master role in appetite regulation, metabolic health, digestive function, and long-term dietary adherence. When you're in a calorie deficit, one of the biggest challenges you're going to face is hunger, which is a topic I covered in depth in my most recent fat loss facts episode. If hunger isn't managed properly, adherence breaks down. People may be able to whitenilk all their way through a managed hunger for a few weeks, but eventually it catches up with them, and they usually fall off plan as a result. This is why fiber becomes one of the most valuable tools you can use during a fat loss phase because fiber helps regulate appetite through several mechanisms. The first mechanism by which fiber regulates appetite is through gastric empty. Fiber slows the rate at which food leisure stomach, which keeps you fuller for longer after each meal, and also extends the period of time before hunger returns. So you're not constantly thinking about your next meal immediately after you finish the last one. The second mechanism by which fiber regulates appetite is through food volume. Fiber adds both your meals without adding many calories, which means you can eat a larger amount of food without significantly increasing your calorie intake. And this matters during a fat loss phase because fiber, our food volume, plays a massive role in satiety. Your stomach has structure receptors that signal fullness based on how much physical food is in your gut, not just how many calories you eat. So when you build meals around lower energy density, higher volume foods, you're literally filling your stomach with foods while staying within your calorie budget. This allows you to feel like you're eating a substantial meal, even when you're in a deficit. The third mechanism by which fiber regulates appetite is through it, it's effects on blood sugar regulation. Fiber helps stabilize blood glucose levels by slowing the absorption of carbohydrates, which leads to more stable energy levels throughout the day, fewer crashes and fewer cravings, which is huge during a fat loss phase because the energy roller coaster that comes with from poorly-constructed meals is one of the biggest drivers of off-plan eating. So when fiber intake is high, hunger is lower, energy is more stable. Cravings drop and adherence becomes significantly easier. But when fiber is low, the opposite happens. You're hunger between meals, your energy level fluctuates, your cravings ramp up, and the diet feels harder than it needs to be. Now, beyond just appetite regulation, fiber plays a major role in metabolic health, which is something I prioritize heavily with my clients because we're not just trying to lose fat. We're trying to improve overall health and metabolic function in the process. Fiber improves insulin sensitivity, which mean your body uses carbohydrates more efficiently and is less likely to store the excess as body fat. Fiber helps regulate blood glucose levels over time, which supports stable energy and reduces the risk of metabolic dysfunction. And fiber supports healthier blood lipid partophiles by lowering your LDL cholesterol and triglycerides. Not to mention a feature got microbiome, which influences everything from digestion, to inflammation, to nutrient absorption, to even your immune function. So when we're talking about a fat loss phase, fiber is in a satiety tool to metabolic tool. And given that 93.2% of US adults have some level of metabolic dysfunction, dialing in fiber intake isn't just about losing fat more easily. It's been improving the underlying physiology that supports long-term health. When we look at the research, the data on fiber for fat loss outcomes is consistent and compelling. In a 2001 review, researchers found that for every 14 grams of fiber consumed, add aluminum calorie intake decreased by approximately 10%. And the important part of that finding is that persistence weren't being told to eat less. They weren't restricting consciously. They were just simply consuming more fiber, feeling fuller as a result and naturally eating fewer calories. That's a passive 10% reduction in intake just from increasing fiber, which is a significant lever we can use during a fat loss phase. Then we have a 2019 analysis of the pound's loss study, which is one of the most important pieces of evidence we have on fiber and weight loss. In this analysis, researchers looked at adult finding calories-stricted diets and found that fiber intake was the number one dietary factor associated with successful weight loss and dietary adherence. So really what they found was participants who hit higher fiber intakes were the ones who lost the most weight and were the most consistent with their diets over time. That's striking finding because it tells us the fiber is into supportive during fat loss. It's predictive. The dieters who get their fiber right are the ones who succeed. And the dieters who don't are the ones who struggle with adherence and end up plateauing or falling off. Now despite the multifaceted benefits of fiber, it's severely lacking in most people's diets when we look at the actual data. In the US, the average person is consuming somewhere between 15 to 16 grams per day, which is approximately half of the recommended intake. And that's why fiber is now classified as a nutrient of concern in modern Western diets, meaning the population is so consistently under-consuming it that public health bodies have flagged it as a problem. This is another area where high performers separate themselves from the average person. The same way being normal with body fat percentage means being overweight, being normal with fiber intake means being deficient. And if you're trying to build an exceptional physique, you can't operate at deficient levels of one of the most important variables for adherence and metabolic health. When I'm building out a fat loss nutrition plan [BLANK_AUDIO]
A client, fiber is non-negotiable. But the way I implemented isn't by directly telling someone to just eat more fiber. I build it directly into the structure of their daily eating. The first thing I do is include at least one high volume meal per day and this usually comes in the form of what I call a big-ass salad. The goal of this meal is to deliver a massive amount of food volume, fiber, micronutrients and satiety for relatively small amount of calories. A well-constructed salad with leafy greens, vegetables, a lean protein source and a measured amount of healthy fats can easily come in at under 500 calories while delivering 10 to 15 grams of fiber and it's an enormous amount of food on your plate. That kind of meal teaches the body that eats, full while staying well within your dieting calorie budget. Salads also have the added benefit of slowing down your eating rate because there's so much to chew through. And slower eating rates have independently been shown to increase the tight-hit meals. The second thing I do is make sure that most meals contain a fiber-rich whole food source, things like fruits, vegetables, potatoes, oats and whole grains. Potatoes specifically are worth highlighting because they're the most-satiating food on the satiety index and oats are another standout because they contain beta-glucans, a soluble fiber that has been shown to be one of the most satiating of any food that we have data on. So I'm not just adding fiber for the sake of fiber. I'm using fiber-specific food sources or fiber-rich specific food sources that have been shown directly to drive satiety more than other options. The third thing I do is prioritize low energy density foods more broadly. These are foods that allow you to eat more total calories, more total food for fewer calories. Most fiber-rich whole food sources naturally fall into this category because they're high water content and volume compared to their calorie content, which is part of why they work so well for satiety. What I've found over the years of working with clients is that when you combine high protein with adequate fiber and high volume foods, you create a diet that's far easier to adhere to than most fighters end up running. This is important because fat loss isn't about just creating a calorie deficit for a day or week. It's about sustaining that deficit long enough to lose a significant amount of body fat, and the biggest barrier to that for most people is hunger. By being intentional and calculated with how I build my clients fat loss phase plans, I'm able to help them manage hunger, manage cravings, and manage energy in a way that makes the entire diet feel more sustainable. Which translates to better consistency, better outcomes, and a far higher likelihood that they actually successfully complete the phase rather than falling off it within a few weeks. Now that we've covered protein and fiber, the next macronutrient I want to address is carbohydrates. This is an area where I see a lot of dieters go wrong, especially women, because carbs have been so demonized in main-treat diet culture for so long that most people now treat them as something to fear, restrict, or eliminate during a fat loss phase, rather than as a tool that supports the process. I want to refer in how we look at carbs entirely. Carbs are not the enemy of fat loss, carbs are a performance lever. When you're in a fat loss phase, your training performance is one of the most important variables to determine whether you preserve muscle mass through your diet or lose it, which means how you handle your carb intake directly affects how you look at the end of the diet. When you train hard, your body primarily relies on carbohydrates as a fuel source. Resisting training, which is the most important type of exercise during a fat loss phase, is a glycolytic activity. Meaning, it runs on glucose and stored muscle glycogen. So when carb intake is low, several things start to break down. The first thing that suffers is training performance, which is a problem during a fat loss phase, because the entire reason we resist and train through a deficit is to preserve muscle mass. The second thing that suffers is your overall energy output and physical activity levels throughout the day. When carbs are too low, you don't just feel tired during your training sessions. You feel tired in general. Your daily movement drops. Your meat drops. Your step counts tend to drop without even realizing it. Your total daily energy expenditure decreases as a result, which means you've now created a situation where you're trying to lose fat by restricting calories, but your calorie or energy output is also dropping, so the math of fat loss stops working for you and starts working against you. The third thing that suffers is hormonal function. Chronic low carbohydrate intake combined with a deficit can suppress thyroid hormone production, particularly the conversion of T4 to T3, which is the active hormone that drives metabolic rate. It's the same thing occurs in studies that put participants on ketogenic diets even when they're eating at maintenance. In these studies, T3 levels can drop by up to 50% even when eating at maintenance, and this shows how low carbohydrate availability can impact hormonal function. So instead of fearing carbs, we're arbitrarily cutting them out because of what you've heard, I want you to start thinking about carbs as a fuel source you're using strategically to support training, recovery, energy, and hormonal health throughout the diet. One of the ways I work this in with clients is about being intentional with carbohydrate placement around training. Specifically, I want carbs concentrated in the meals immediately before and after the training session because that's where they had the highest performance and recovery benefit. When you eat carbs in the meal, preceding your training session, you're able to train at a higher intensity, sustain that intensity for longer, and produce better quality of work across your sets. When you eat carbs in the meal following your training session, you're delivering the substrate at the time when the body is most efficient at replenishing glycogen and partitioning new, partition nutrients towards muscle recovery rather than fat storage. insulin sensitivity is also heightened post-training, which means that carbs eaten in this window are biased towards muscle recovery rather than being stored as body fat. So even though total carbohydrate intake across the day matters most for fat loss outcomes, the time of those carbohydrates, around training is a practical and powerful lever I pull with clients to maximize training quality, recovery, and muscle retention throughout the diet. For most clients I work with, especially those training hard four to five days per week, I buy as carbs higher than fats during a fat loss phase. Not because fats don't matter, which we'll get to next, but because the performance and recovery benefits of that equid carbohydrate intake outweigh the marginal benefit of pushing fats higher. Carbs fuel the work that produces the muscle preservation and muscle preservation also determine what your physique outcome looks like at the end of the diet. For clients who are less active who don't train as hard or who have personal preferences towards higher fat eating, the ratio will shift. But protein is always set first, fiber is always built in, and then carbs and fats are distributed in whatever ratio supports the client's training, lifestyle, and adherence best. What I won't do is arbitrarily restrict or eliminate carbs because of some cultural narrative that says that they're bad for fat loss. The data doesn't support that, the mechanisms don't support that, and my real world coaching experience and client results certainly don't support that. Carbs are what make or not what are making people fat. Access calories are what making people fat. Carbs use strategically within an appropriate calorie target or the most powerful lovers that we have during a fat loss phase to preserve muscle, support performance, and execute the diet well. Now that we've covered protein fiber and carbohydrates, the last mac and uchin I want to address is dietary fat. And this is another area where a lot of people go raw. But it's actually in the opposite direction of where people go wrong with carbs. Where most people under eat carbs during a fat loss phase out of fear, a lot of people overeat fats during a fat loss phase because high-fat eating has been popularized as a great approach to dieting. The reality is more nuanced than that. Dietary fat is essential. It serves several important functions of the body and we need an adequate intake during a fat loss phase. But going too high on fat creates trade offs that work against your goals. And mostiders who push fats high during it cut end up underfeeling the variables that actually drive the results like training. Dietary fat plays several important roles that we need to support during a fat loss phase. The first role is fat soluble vitamin absorption. Fat soluble vitamins like ADNK all require dietary fats to absorb and utilize property. So if your fat intake is too low, you can be eating diet that's rich in vitamin-containing foods and still under absorbing those nutrients. The second role is brain function. Your brain can compose largely a fat and dietary fat provides the building blocks for cell membranes, nerve transmitter production and overall cognitive support. The third role is satiety. Fat slows gastric emptying and contributes to meal satisfaction in a way that protein and carbs alone don't fully replicate. However, the satiety effects of fats have often been overblown by many and the most recent research finds that dietary fat is elicatine macronutrient. So if that is essential and supports all these functions, why don't I default to a high fat diet with my clients during a fat loss phase? Because there are real trade offs to pushing fat intake too high in the deficit and most
iders who go that route end up sacrificing many things that drive the results. The first trade off is that higher fat intakes displace carbohydrates. Within a fixed calorie budget, every gram of fat you add has to come from somewhere. When it's protein is set, the remaining calories get split between carbs and fats. Pushing fats too high and what will end up happening is you're unnecessarily pulling carbohydrates lower, which compromises shrink performance, energy output and hormone function as we covered. So whatever benefit you might get from higher fat eating is offset by the performance and muscle preservation costs that you're paying on the carb side. The second trade off is that fat is the most calorie dense macronutrient at nine calories per gram compared to four calories per gram for both protein and carbs. And it's the macronutrient that tends to be most unintentionally over consumed yet under reported from a tracking standpoint. This can make or break your fat loss progress as small portion errors with fat sources have a much larger calorie impact effect than equivalent errors with carbs or protein. Whether it's a tablespoon of olive oil, estimated wrong using tablespoons instead of grams to measure serving a peanut butter or a handful of nuts you've added and if you really added up, you've added 100 to 200 calories to a meal without even realizing it. Higher fat loss phase where the deficit may only be between 350 to 500 calories per day to begin with, those kinds of estimation errors can completely erase your deficit. So while our higher fat intake can seem more appealing in the moment, they're often harder to track accurately, which becomes a real problem for adherence and outcomes. The third trade off is that fat is significantly less aging per gram than carbs or and it provides far less food volume and fiber per calorie. If we compare a serving of nuts to a serving of potatoes for the same calorie cost, potatoes give you several times the food volume on the plate, far higher fiber content and the kind of satiety that actually helps you sustain a deficit. The nuts give you a small hand food of food, very little fiber to speak of and significantly less fullness for the same amount of calories. Even the Fed is often marketed as a C-Shick knockout.
nutrient when you actually compare to fiber-rich carbohydrate sources on a per calorie basis. Diarytary fat loses on both food volume and satiety effect. During a fat loss phase where hunger management is the difference between adherence and falling off, that's not a trade-off you want to make. The fourth trade-off is that protein has a much higher thermic effect of feeding than fat does. So calorie per calorie and even calorie per calorie with carbide rates, but especially with protein, increasing protein gives you more satiety and a better metabolic advantage through the thermic effect of feeding than fat does. After going to push one macronutrient higher-faceted satiety reasons during a fat loss phase, protein is always the better choice. When I structure a fat loss phase plan, I set protein first as it's my top priority. I build fiber in through strategic food selection and meal structure, and then I look to you at the remaining energy budget and split it between carbs and fats by seeing carbs higher through most clients given the performance and recovery benefits they provide. Fat is set at a level that's adequate to support hormonal function, vitamin absorption, and meal satisfaction, but not so high that the compromised carbohydrate availability or create unnecessary calorie tracking variability. Before I go into the habits and systems that drive that loss execution, I want to briefly acknowledge two additional dietary variables that I work with clients on, and that's nutrient timing and food quality. Both of these absolutely matter during a fat loss phase, and we've already touched on them on the highest leverage applications of each on this episode. But both of these topics have so much depth and nuance to cover that they would actually need their own episodes. If you would like me to cover nutrient timing and/or food quality in further detail in a future episode of the show, please let me know in the comments of this episode, and I'll make that happen. Now we spent the majority and the bulk of this episode covering the nutritional strategy that I use as my clients up for a successful fat loss phase. This includes protein, fiber, carbs, and fats. The food selection principles that drive satiety adherents have been tied into this, and that's all part of the framework. The framework only works if you actually execute a day-to-day week to week and month to month. That's where mostiders fall short. The reality is that most people don't feel fat loss because they don't know what to do. They feel because they don't have the systems in habits and place to consistently apply what they do know. Knowledge is in the bottleneck. Execution is the bottleneck. Execution is where habits matter more than motivation because motivation is a finite resource that runs out, and the habits and systems you build around your nutrition determine whether you stay consistent when motivation isn't there. This is a major part of my coaching approach goes far beyond just providing clients with calorie and macro targets. I focus heavily on building the habits and systems around the diet that make execution easier, more consistent, and more sustainable. Because if I just hand someone a number to hit and send them on their way, they may know what to do, whether or not they're going to have the structure in place to do it consistently. There are three habits in particular that I prioritize with every client during a fat loss phase. These are, tracking their nutrition, following a structured meal plan, and meal prepping in advance. Each one removes friction from the execution side of the diet, and together they create a system that allows clients to focus on consistency rather than constantly making decisions about what to eat, how much to eat, and whether they're staying on track. The first habit I prioritize with clients is tracking their nutrition. This is one of the most powerful tools that you have during a fat loss phase because what gets managed and gets measured gets managed. Most people dramatically underestimate how much they're actually eating and not by a small margin. We have research showing that even trained nutrition professionals significantly underreport their cow or intake when they're not actively tracking. In a study by Champagne and colleagues, researchers compared the cow or ate tracking accuracy of female dietitians versus female non-dietitians. After providing both groups of nutrition education on food tracking and portion sizes, they'd each group go through a week of cow or eat tracking. What they found was that even trained dietitians underreported their cow or intake by 223 calories per day while the non-dietitians underreported by 429 calories per day. Think about what that means in the context of a fat loss phase. If a smaller female client is operating on a 350 to 400 calorie daily deficit, an estimation error of 223 calories let alone 429 calories per day is enough to partially or completely erase their deficit. And the 223 calories was from a professional nutrition professional. Now the average person who doesn't have the nutrition training is going to be off by even more than that, which is exactly why so many diaries who feel like you're doing everything right still see no progress on the skill or in the mirror. Track your removes the guesswork from the equation. When you weigh and measure your food and log it accurately into an app like my finispeil or chronometer, you're working with real data instead of ass estimates. And when you have a real data, we can make accurate decisions about whether the deficit is appropriate, whether the adjustments need to be made, and whether the client's actual intake is matching the reported intake. But tracking isn't just about accuracy, it also creates awareness, accountability and helps educate us. Awareness because most clients don't realize what their habits actually look like until they start logging. Accountability because logging your food makes it harder to mindlessly eat throughout the day. And education because teaching or tracking teaches clients about the calorie content of different foods, the macronutrient composition of their meals, and the cumulative impact of small choices like having coffee with cream. And then the requirements, losses and snacks, bites, looks and tastes that they previously didn't account for. For my clients, tracking also gives me as a coach that that I need to actually do my job well. When a client logs their nutrition consistently, I can see what they're eating. I can identify bottlenecks in their plan, spot patterns that are working and not working, and make precise adjustments based on what's actually happening in their day to day rather than guessing or relying on what they tell me they're doing. So tracking is a non-negotiable for the clients I work with through a fat loss phase. It's a foundation that everything else gets built on top of and creates a really solid foundation to work from. The second habit I prioritize with clients is using a structured meal plan. And this is where my approach differs from a lot of coaches in the sender tree who just hand clients a macronutrient target and expect them to figure out the rest on their own. What I do and set is build out what I call a flexible meal plan or a meal template for you every client. I provide them with one or two meal plans that show that exactly how to set up a full day of eating that hits their dietary targets using satiating nutrient dense food sources. Then I provide them with appropriate food source swaps so they have structured flexibility within the plan. For most clients, especially the busy working professionals that I work with, such as corporate executives, business owners, and parents, building the meal plan takes a significant burden off their plane. They don't have to spend mental energy figuring out what's he, they can just open the plan and follow it in execute. The reason I do this is because meal plans solve several execution problems at once. The first problem they solve is decision fatigue. When you're trying to lose that, the last thing you want to spend mental energy on three to six times a day is figuring out what to eat, how much to eat, and whether it fits your macros. That in mental energy could be better spent in your work, your training, your family, your relationships, and everything else that matters to you. A meal plan removes these decisions because they've already been made for you. The second problem they solve is macro touches. Without a plan, a lot of clients and a lot of diners end up working backwards from their macronutrient targets, trying to fit foods into their day to land on a calorie macro or calorie and protein numbers. That's exhausting, it's inefficient, and it usually ends with people eating suboptimal food choices to make their numbers work. With the structured meal plan, the macros are already accounted for, you just execute the plan. The third problem they solve is the integration of war nuance components and nutrition that often get overlooked when a client is just given a calorie macro target. Things like protein distribution across a day, periwork out nutrition, fiber intake, micronutrient sufficiency, fruit and vegetable variety and quantity, and meal frequency for anxiety. The client doesn't have to think about them, they just have to follow the plan and variables get handled automatically. If I were to skip the meal plan and instead tell a client to hit their protein number, hit their fiber target, distribute their protein across X number of meals per day, get these micro nutrients and stay within their calorie budget, they would be overwhelmed. They'd have to manage too many variables at once on how they're everything else that they have going on in life. I build a meal plan that handles all these variables for them, and it makes a diet executable rather than overwhelming. There's also research that supports the effectiveness of meal planning for fat loss outcomes. A 2017 study that looked over 40,000 individuals found that meal planning was associated with healthier dietary patterns, less obesity and better overall body weight management compared to those who did meal plan. So meal plans aren't just a coaching preference of mine, they're an evident supported tool for improving dietary adherence and outcomes. The third habit I prioritize with clients is meal prepping in advance. With tracking is the awareness lever and meal planning is the structure lever, meal prepping is the execution lever and it's what turns the plan into action. The simple practice of preparing measured portions of meals ahead of time, dramatically increases the likelihood that you actually execute on your plan throughout the week. Because the biggest barriers consistency aren't well-power or motivation. They're friction and convenience. When the food you're supposed to eat is already prepared, portion and waiting for you in the fridge, eating on plan becomes a path of least resistance. When the food you're supposed to eat doesn't exist yet, or your dash or grabbing some convenient becomes a path of least resistance. Meal prepping shifts the friction and moves the work to a single dedicated session once or twice per week rather, and spreading it across every single meal that you eat. The benefits compound across several dimensions. Meal prepping helps you hit your calorie macrateria accurately because portions are already measured at the time of prep rather than estimated in the moment. It reduces decision fatigue because food decisions are made in batches and when you're fresh and motivated rather than waiting till the end of a long day when you're tired and your real power is depleted. It reduces the likelihood of offplan eating because you have a prepping meal waiting for you and you're far less likely to deviate. It saves time and money because cooking in bulk is significantly more efficient than cooking individual meals throughout the course of the week. What I have my clients do is dedicate one to two days per week to bulk preparation. Usually a Sunday or either a Wednesday or Thursday, midweek essentially. They prep their proteins in bulk, their carbs sources in bulk and their vegetables in bulk. Then they portion everything out in containers to match the meal plan I built for them. This gives them three to four days of prep food ready to grab and go, which removes the daily decision making and execution burden that reveals so many dieters. The clients who consistently meal prep are the clients who consistently execute and the clients who consistently execute are the clients who get the best results from fast
at loss phases. It's a direct outcome of that relationship. The RISAR parties these three habits with every client during a fallow phase is because they work together as a system. Tracking creates awareness and accuracy, the meal plan creates instruction, reduces decision infotainment, and meal prep reduces friction and ensures execution. Each one supports the other, and together they create an environment where adherence is a default rather than something a client has to fight for every single day. But here's the truth. At adherence to the bottleneck for most people during a fallow phase, it's not knowledge, it's not effort, and it's not even hunger management most of the time. It's a day to day consistency of doing the right things over and over again for the duration of the diet. And the dieters who succeed are the ones who build systems that make consistency easier. Not the ones who rely on willpower and motivation. This is why I tell every client I take through a fallow phase that the work isn't just about hitting your macros. It's about building the habits, the systems and routines that allow you to hit your macros effectively and effortlessly. Because once those systems are in place, the diet sucks feeling like an uphill battle and starts feeling like something you get to do just to get to your goal. And the bonus is that these habits don't disappear when the fallow phase ends. The clients who learn how to track accurately, follow the structured plan, and meal prep and advance from a fallow phase carry those skills with them for the rest of their fitness journey, which is exactly the point. Fallow's is a phase, but the habits you build during that phase serve you long after the diet is over. And that's how clients go from losing fat once to actually maintaining a lean physique for once, for life. So as it closed out, part one of this fallow series, big takeaway that I want you to get away from this, is a successful fat loss phase isn't about eating as little as possible, training as much as possible, chasing the scale down as fast as you can. It's about building your right nutritional framework, the right habits and the right systems, so that you can lose fat, maintain your muscle and improve your body composition, and actually sustain the results you've worked so hard for. If your approach is to just slash your calories, white knuckle your way through the diet and hope the scale goes down as quickly as possible, you might lose some weight. But you're not going to build a leaner, stronger, more defined physique you're after. And you're not going to maintain the results once it items, which is why I take a more strategic, structured, and physique focus approach with the clients I work with. Now, in part two of this series, I'm going to shift into the training side of fat loss and break down high program, resistance training during deficit, tell my clients lose fat without losing muscle. Now, if you're listening to this and you know you need help with your own fat loss phase, if you want to lose fat without sacrificing muscle, if you struggle to maintain the results in the past, or you're simply ready to take a smarter, more strategic, and more sustainable approach to building a lean physique that you want, that's exactly what I help my clients do. You can reach out to me directly through my email, which is
[email protected], or click the closing link in the show notes to submit an inquiry. As always, if you found this episode helpful, please take 30 seconds to support the show. Follow the podcast on Spotify or Apple podcasts, leave a five-star review, and share this episode on your stories and tag me @Brend2Cruis_on_Instagram, so I can repost it and say thank you. That's how we continue to grow this show, reach more listeners, and create a positive ripple effect by bridging the gap between research and real-world application in this industry. As always, thank you so much for tuning in to another episode of the Cheezing Clarity Health Infinite's podcast. Until next time, guys, keep Cheezing Clarity. Peace.
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