With all the conflicting fat loss advice from the "experts," it's hard to know what's right. You may be making these fat loss mistakes without even knowing it!
When you hear the words “weight loss” or “fat loss,” what are the first images that come to mind?
If you're like many women out there who don’t have a formal education in exercise physiology or nutrition, then you may imagine eating nothing but leafy greens and steamed unseasoned chicken. That image alone is enough to cause someone to reexamine her goals of leaning out and losing fat.
Everywhere you look there are “experts” who are claiming that their methods for fat loss are superior to everyone else’s. It’s easy (they say). All you have to do is eliminate this macronutrient or add that supplement and you will miraculously become lean in a couple of days! Are you ready for the whole story of these fad diets and fat-loss methods?
They cause you to drop water weight over the course of a week or two while you are deprived of some certain type of “bad food” while wanting to ambush anyone who walks by with a plate of “forbidden food!” Don’t fall for fancy marketing. These methods are not sustainable and they often lead to weight gain after your willpower fades.
So what’s a reasonable approach to female fat loss? How can a woman lean out without wanting to gnaw off a limb or spend a lifetime on a treadmill? Here are some of the most common misconceptions about fat loss and what you can do to avoid the common pitfalls associated with female weight loss programs.
1. The Unintentional Starvation Diet
The biggest lie about female fat loss is that you have to starve yourself in order to lose fat. It is said that the biggest lies are the ones closest to the truth, and that is the case when it comes to fat loss.
The truth about fat loss is that you need to be in a slight calorie deficit in order to lose body fat. If you want to lose a pound of fat in one week, you need to cut 500 calories a day. That’s it! No more and no less. To put things in perspective, you can drop 500 calories a day by eliminating sugary drinks from your daily diet and replacing them with water.
There's no need to cut calories drastically and starve yourself to the point that your metabolism shuts off altogether. When you drastically cut calories, your body responds by clinging to any fat that you do have to save its energy stores because it senses that you are in a time of famine. When this happens, your body starts breaking down tissue that costs the most calories to maintain, aka muscle. Any weight loss from extreme calorie reduction is most likely muscle and water. This creates the “skinny fat” look instead of a more desirable lean appearance.
There are a number of formulas out there to estimate how many calories your need each day. One easy way is to take your body weight in kilograms (pounds divided by 2.2) and multiply by 38. This will give you a great place to start, and you can adjust from there every two weeks or so by subtracting 200-500 calories.
For example, a 130-pound (60 kg) woman will require around 2200 calories a day to start, and adjustments can be made when fat loss stops. This is the correct and sustainable way to lose fat and ensure that you are keeping as much muscle as possible while in a slight calorie deficit.
When you make adjustments, remember that less is more when it comes to the number of calories you cut each time. Your diet should still provide you the energy necessary to train intensely with weights and during your cardio sessions. If it doesn’t, reexamine how many calories you are consuming each day or pick a day each week when you spike the number of calories you consume via a cheat meal. The point here is that you should not be starving while trying to lose fat!
2. Marathon Treadmill Sessions
The second biggest lie about female fat loss is that you must spend hours on the treadmill to burn fat. This can actually be detrimental to your fat loss goals, especially if you are already overworked and overstressed from life outside the gym.
Reducing the amount of stress in your life is a huge part of learning because it lowers the production of the stress hormone Cortisol. Elevated during times of stress, Cortisol causes your body to store extra body fat. When you pile on additional stress from spending an hour and a half performing cardio, you are providing your body with an extended period of elevated Cortisol that you don’t need.
3. Lifting for Spot Reduction
The third largest lie about female fat loss is known as spot reduction. Many believe that in order to flatten out the stomach and trim up the upper arms, you just do endless crunches and triceps kickbacks with a 3lb dumbbell. This is just plain wrong.
Fat loss is not site-specific which means that you cannot reduce the amount of fat on your abs by doing more crunches! In addition, when you are burning fat, your body does not select a specific site to utilize its fat stores but draws from all over the body. Don’t make the mistake of training for spot reduction at the cost of neglecting other areas of your body! Train the whole body and you will like the results you see a lot more than if you were to spend all your time at the gym doing nothing but cardio and abs!
Learning from These Mistakes
Fat loss is made out to be more complicated than it really is. It takes a reasonable diet that is maintained consistently, good weight training and cardio routines, proper recovery and stress management, and time.
I know that we live in a day and age where we can get almost everything we want immediately, but the human body requires time for change to become noticeable. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t see results right away, and don’t make any drastic changes to your diet.
Trust the process and give your body time to adapt to any new changes to diet or exercise.
If you have any questions about debunking these myths, go ahead and ask in the comments.