#3: The Weight Loss Mistery

What is the secret to weight loss?

How to lose those few extra pounds before summer seem to be one of the age old questions in the fitness industry.

Everyone rushes to the gym to try the new and shiny “15 minutes workout for shredded core” that regularly leaves people disappointed and lead to quit after few months of pointless efforts.

The secret might not be a secret at all, but you probably guessed it already at this point: nutrition.

What goes into our body shapes our appearance (and internal functionality) far more than our level of exercise. So let’s try to break down weight loss to understand how it operates.

The human body has a daily intake of calories needed to perform its basic functions, generally speaking 2,500 for man and 2,000 for women. Naturally this doesn’t take into account the level of exercise, which require additional calories based on the type of activities and its volume, frequency and intensity.

A Mr Olympia contender during the off-season might eat over 6 times a day and ingest a whopping 10,000Kcal just to be able to maintain that kind of muscle mass.

For different reasons, an Olympic swimmer or an endurance runner might require the same amount of calories to sustain prolonged and extremely taxing training sessions.

A ballerina, on the other hand, has to stay slim and flexible to perform at her best and just 500 more calorie might be enough to sustain her needs.

But none of these number are written in stone as they also depend on height, age and gender plus other external factors like the lifestyle we live outside the physical activities we perform.

An elderly woman on a sedentary job requires far less calories than a construction worker, a banker has a significantly less daily intake than a restaurant manager.

So what to do? How to adjust your diet to achieve your desired goal? Whether you need to lose weight or add some the answer is the same: it’s a thermogenic effect.

Leaving aside specific medical conditions that might affect to a certain extent the way we put on or lose weight it’s all about providing your body with what it needs.

Seems obvious because it is, if we eat more calories than our  body needs between basic survival and extra activities we put on weight, so in order to lose it we need to eat less.

However, there’s a caveat. Losing weight doesn’t necessarily translate into losing fat. To find that sweet spot where you lose weight, lower your BMI and retaining as much muscle mass as possible you might have to work on a body recomposition.

It’s a simple balance of your macros, where you don’t necessarily go on a bulking/cutting cycle but you still favour protein-rich foods to retain muscle mass and adjust carbohydrates and fats to manipulate your daily calories.

This approach is wildly popular and for a reason: there’s no need to alter your intake of food but rather adjust the ratio of nutrients coming from it.

It takes a few trial and error and it might be a slower approach (especially if you’re looking into gaining muscles) but once mastered it provides helpful tools to have a better grip on your diet and recognising the effects it has on your body.