Aidan:
Hello and welcome to the Ideal Nutrition Podcast. My name is Aidan Muir and I’m here with my co-host, Leah Higl. And this is episode 194, where we’re going to be going through ways to make fat loss easier. And one of the things that prompted me to kind of do this is I was looking at the stats of Leah’s podcast, the Plant Strong podcast, and it was pretty clear that this one got a lot more listens than a lot of her other ones. So I was like, we should do that on the Ideal Nutrition one.
Then I realised we’ve already done one kind of like this, but it was a few years ago. And I think it makes sense for us to do an updated version. although it’s the same kind of topic, it is different content. We’re going to go back and forth over a few different ways to make things easier. Do want to start Leah?
Leah:
Yeah, absolutely. So starting in one of the most obvious places and it’s more around choosing an appropriate size deficit. So ideally not being too aggressive in our approach is going to make things easier. I there could be arguments made that the larger the deficit, the quicker it is, the less time you actually have to spend there. But it’s always like, find getting this sweet spot between fast enough to motivate you to keep going, but also not so fast that your life is miserable.
So some general rules or things that you could aim for around what an appropriate size deficit could look like is either like a 10 to 20% reduction from maintenance or like 3-600 calories below maintenance is kind of a good general rule of thumb or aiming for about 0.5 to 1% drop of body weight per week. So a few different ways to look at it. I tend to look at the kind of 10, 20% reduction as a good tool just across the board because it gives you really good place to start, but everyone’s gonna be a little different as to what like a moderate or appropriate size deficit is.
Aidan:
And like from experience working with people, I think most people that is like the size deficit that they kind of like thrive in, terms of like they get great progress. It’s not too big of a challenge or anything like that. There’s definitely exceptions. Like there’s some people who I would go slow with just because they suffer more of the downsides associated with being a deficit. And there’s some people who would go quicker with, just cause they want to basically. And if they’re succeeding, it’s like, well, let’s go with it. But like most people in that range, like makes a lot of sense.
I’m going to talk about protein intake now. So in most cases, I recommend around two grams per kilogram of body weight. Obviously I’ll scale that based on a bunch of different factors, like how lean somebody is and everything like that. But there’s three main reasons for this. One is maintaining muscle mass. Cause also indirectly, if you’re maintaining muscle mass while in a certain size deficit, you actually end up losing more body fat because of that.
The second one is satiety. People will feel fuller if they’re chasing higher protein intakes. And then the third one, not a big factor, but the thermic effect of food, you’ll burn slightly more calories. think off the top of my head, like numbers like 15 to 30%, 30% sense higher, but 15 to 30% of the calories consumed during protein kind of get burned through the thermic effect of food. Whereas for dietary fat intake, it’s like zero to 3%. And for carb intake, it’s like five to 10, maybe 15% of it’s really high fibre. Not a big factor. And I personally wouldn’t change a plan based on that, but it’s just a nice bonus to check in there.
One little caveat that I’m going to add onto this, I don’t know if you experienced this, it might even be more common in the plant-based world, but there’s some people out there who aren’t really as obsessed with muscle mass as a few people I work with, who try really hard to get high protein into eggs because they think it’s good or they’ve been told, like, they’re not really that obsessed with it, but they’re just doing it because they’re like, is what I should do. And they might unintentionally be overshooting their calorie target because of that.
And they could have just gotten better results by just going a little bit lower and not being as concerned about that. Obviously we have ways around that like protein efficiency, like aiming for lower calorie protein sources, but I did want to touch on that because it’s like, it is a bit of a unique challenge that sometimes people don’t even really care about this that much, but because they’re chasing something so high, it makes it harder to stay in a deficit. So it’s a factor I’d put in there too.
Leah:
I actually see that all the time in the plant-based space, if we’re thinking just kind of a general weight loss client, but trying to get up to that two grams per kilo body weight and then kind of overshooting their calories to do so, because it’s quite difficult to do that on a plant-based diet or create so much like rigidity in the foods that they can choose that they don’t enjoy what they’re eating and therefore like compliance is really poor. So sometimes it does make sense to like scale it down a little bit in the context of what you’re doing.
The third one is just being aware of your fibre intake. again, working in the plant-based space, this is not usually something I have to tell my clients to do. It usually just happens. But trying to get at least 30 grams of fibre per day for most people is going to be obviously a great thing to do from a myriad of reasons. But from a fat loss, weight loss perspective, maintaining a deficit, it can just really help with satiety. So if we have a very, very low fibre intake, that can cause some issues with just feeling really hungry and fibre doesn’t have many calories. So it’s a good thing that we can include to bulk up like food volume and satiety of meals without adding excess calories.
Aidan:
Consistent meal timing is another one where I’m mildly conflicted in that I come from a quote on quote, like flexible dieting background. And I’m very well aware that you can lose body fat in so many different ways. But there’s a few reasons why I think consistent meal timing makes it easier. One is you get hungry at similar times. The second one is it makes it way easier to kind of troubleshoot your problems. For example, if you’re always like, I get really hungry at 3pm and that’s when I overeat. You can then adjust based on that. like, well, do I put more food before that? Like you can figure out so many ways to play around if you’re consistent. But if you’re inconsistent, you can’t really troubleshoot anything.
And then the third thing, this would be anecdotal, but it’s, I’m at such a high volume with this number now that I’m like, now this is a very clear trend. And I have a bit of an avatar in my head of people who have lost about 20 kilos prior to coming to see me. So I’ve had no influence on their journey. If I asked them what they eat in a day, in more, I’d say about nine out of 10 cases, they can literally just rattle it off being like my breakfast is this, my lunch is this, my dinner, these five things on rotation. And here are the snacks that I have.
And it’s almost like they have lunch at pretty much the same time every day. They have breakfast. They just have this like really consistent routine. And I’ve had no influence on that, but they’ve seen success with that. And it’s such a common theme that I’m like, it makes sense to kind of factor that in. Noting that because I have that kind of like flexible mindset, like if you happen to be like a shift worker or something like that, and you can’t have a consistent, like you can only play with the cards you dealt. you can’t, you can’t forward, like a lot of these things are just designed to make it easier. You can definitely achieve fat loss pretty efficiently without doing all of these things. But if you have the luxury of being able to make your meal timer consistent, I do think it makes it easier.
Leah:
Yeah, absolutely. And my clients that are not able to have consistent meal timing because of like shift work or other responsibilities, they are the ones that really struggle to pinpoint what, what they’re actually, what their specific barriers are and address them. Whereas like if you can actually have less variables that are constantly changing the easier it is to troubleshoot. So definitely a good one.
The next one is a little bit of an offshoot, guess, of fibre intake, but it’s specifically focusing on volume eating in general. So having a higher quantity of lower calorie foods that do have quite a bit of volume to them. So things like your fruits and veggies and going for maybe like your spud light potatoes over your regular potatoes and making those little changes so that you’re actually consuming like the same volume of food as you would at maintenance, but it’s just with a lower calorie count at the end of the day.
But caveat here of like, you can take this way too far and it creates some issues like gastrointestinal, even just getting used to like having so much volume. And then when you go back to maintenance, still needing that volume to actually maintain good satiety can be an issue. So it’s like, you don’t want to take it too far, but you definitely want to utilise it to your advantage.
Aidan:
I can’t remember if I spoke about this on the podcast, but you remember when I put in the staff chat, that guy who had this like monstrous bowl of oats and he’s like, here’s what I eat every night. do vaguely remember that. Yes. It starts with like a thing of diet jelly and then he puts some oats in, then he puts like a scoop of protein powder in, then he puts another thing of diet jelly. And it just turned into this like monstrous thing that looked like three kilos of food. And it was, it was still a thousand calories. It was like a large amount, but he was just like a bigger guy.
And that’s an extreme version of it, but the thing that was very fascinating to me about it is he got so much engagement on that, both positive and negative. And I was kind of like, if he made that like four kilos instead of three kilos, he would have got even more engagement.
Leah:
Yeah, the more crazy it is.
Aidan:
It’s like this self-fulfilling loop where it’s like, now that’s quote on quote good content for him, but the more extreme you go, the more you’re like, this isn’t helping people at this stage. This is making people’s lives worse.
Leah:
It’s taking a very good concept and turning it into something that is not helpful.
Aidan:
Yeah, but I do, I love volume eating when used in moderation. I think if people don’t utilise concepts of volume eating at all, they’re leaving such an easy win on the table. And I don’t know about you, but me personally, I can only think of two people in my entire career of working with people who I can look at them and be like, they’ve taken this too far. And those two people were people who were having about a kilo of vegetables per day.
One of them was somebody who was pretty obsessed with micronutrient intake and they were just trying to get more and more and more. So like it was partly stemming from that. I don’t want say orthorexic, partly stemming from that mindset. The other one was somebody who had just struggled with weight their entire life and had success with volume eating once and then kind of clung onto it just forever and it was just no longer working for them. But it’s only happened twice, which definitely means like, do I need to give this warning? I still think it’s worth being like, you can take this too far, but for most people it is beneficial.
Leah:
Yeah, I think the only time I’ve seen it taken way too far is specifically in the like eating disorder space. It’s like, okay, obviously it’s coming from, yeah, there’s more to deal with here than just our immediate goal.
Aidan:
Yeah, actually that is valid. have seen a people in the ED space, like not to that extreme, but yes.
Another one I’m big on is a larger percentage of minimally processed foods for a variety of reasons. It’s more like filling, it helps with overall energy and mood, which obviously is a bit of a factor in whether it’s easy to stick to a deficit. Just due to that having more of a micronutrient rich diet, it limits food options a little bit in terms of I still would subscribe to that you can eat anything you just can’t eat everything like you still have flexibility.
That’s why I it’s a larger percentage, but by kind of making it so that only a small-ish percentage, like up to about 20% of your diet could be coming from those more processed foods. It kind of forces you to do a few things, like for example, either more home cooked meals more regularly, which we know is a common theme as well, or going out of your way to make sure you’re getting minimally processed foods. So indirectly through a variety of ways, it does make it significantly easier to be in a deficit.
Leah:
The next one is not, I guess, directly nutrition related, but we can kind of come and tie it back, but sleep in general. So getting enough good quality sleep. And this can help for again, multitude of reasons. mean, appetite management being one, but also having good energy and good mood from good sleep can influence your eating behaviours and make compliance to a deficit a hell of a lot easier. So if there are things that you can do from a nutrition perspective to improve your sleep, that could be worth looking into.
So you might look at certain supplements like we have actually done an entire episode on nutrition for sleep. So I do recommend checking that out. But some of the supplements that we talk about there would be things like L-theanine, ashwagandha, concentrated tart cherry juice, or even looking at what you are eating prior to bed in terms of the quantity, the volume, the makeup of macronutrients like carbs and whatnot can actually influence the sleep time and sleep quality for some people. So that could be worth playing around with and looking into.
Aidan:
I’m going to call this one appropriate flexibility where I think going too far in either direction is a bit of a trap. So the first one we start with is quite obvious. If you’re super rigid, have no flexibility, that’s likely to lead to issues. A little line that I use with clients, because I typically encourage stick to the plan 80 to 90% of the time, there’s a big reason, there’s a lot of reasons why I do that. But one of the lines I use as to why I don’t think people should strive for 100% is, I’ve worked with a lot of people and I have never seen anybody stick to my plan 100% of the time for four weeks straight and then go on to get good results.
I’ve seen a few people stick to it 100% of the time, they just haven’t gone on to get good results. And there’s many, many reasons why, but that’s kind of a bit of a test being like, well, it just doesn’t seem to be a common success strategy. On the other hand, being too flexible makes things harder as well. I talked about that kind of avatar in my head of like these people who very consistently have the same meals, mostly minimally processed foods, so on and so forth. When I first learned about flexible dieting way back forums back in the day, I thought it was going to be like the answer to everything.
Like I thought if it fits your macros, I was like, this will make fat loss so much easier for so many people. And I remember this story of this bodybuilder who taught his mom about if it fits your macros and how you could basically get very similar fat loss results. Kind of no matter how you hit your macronutrient targets. And he told this story about how he gave her this calorie budget for fat loss, these macros to hit.
And he’s like, she had ice cream in the morning and took up about a thousand of her calories and then was absolutely starving later in the day and overshot her calorie intake. And that’s like an extreme example. But if somebody is like too flexible in that, that’s quite that’s too flexible, arguably, or they’re very go with the flow, and they don’t really plan stuff in advance. But then they keep running to problems as like, I don’t know what I’m having for lunch, I don’t have anything prepped and so on and so forth. Like, obviously, that makes it harder to be consistent with hitting certain targets.
Leah:
Yeah, I’m very pro having structure and routine, but also having the resilience and variability to like be able to adapt on the go. So it’s like that sweet spot and that sweet spot can differ person to person.
Aidan:
Very much so. And like another thing I’d add is like, sometimes you do still have to say no to stuff. Like, yeah, like I’m very big on like pro like flexibility, but sometimes there is some level of sacrifice that needs to be made to achieve pretty much any goal as well.
Leah:
Totally. And next one is to limit liquid calories. So not taking this in an extreme fashion where we’re like, I’m avoiding any kind of liquid calorie, but overdoing it can actually produce some issues with lack of satiety because liquids being kind of pre-digested tend to move through our gastrointestinal system quicker. They don’t stay in the stomach for as long, keeping us full. So we are likely to get hungrier sooner with a liquid calorie as opposed to a meal that we chew and then gets digested a little bit more slowly.
So something like a smoothie might be better off as like all the same ingredients in the same quantities as like an oat or yoghurt bowl. And that might actually produce longer lasting satiety than the smoothie itself. But also going to like, like not having too many of things like your juice, your sugar sweetened beverages. What I see a lot is people having like a ton of like milk containing coffees and teas throughout the day and that adding up to like 4-500 calories and not really being very satiating. So it’s like, okay, we could probably redistribute these calories in a better way for appetite management. So again, you don’t need to avoid all kinds of liquid calories. Just be mindful of how much you are using them.
Aidan:
100%. And even something I personally struggle with as a practitioner is if somebody is time pressed in the morning and would like to replace their breakfast with a liquid option, but they’re also struggling with fat loss partly because of appetite, because it goes in both directions where it’s like, this might help them be more consistent with taking certain nutrition boxes, but it’s also probably making things harder for them as well.
Leah:
Yeah. And I think my go-to solution for that, I feel like a lot of my clients are, a lot of my clients have ADHD and therefore don’t really like starting the day with a big breakfast or just don’t have the time for it. And I’ll go, all right, we will start off with a liquid breakfast just to get something in.
But maybe we just won’t put as many calories there as I would like a typical breakfast. So maybe we have like a two to three hundred calorie smoothie or a Rokeby smoothie or whatever the case may be. And then we feed more of those calories to later in the day to like proper food.
Aidan:
For sure. The next one for me is avoiding an excessively large eating window. And this is one of my lower priorities, but something that I think is worth contemplating. I’m just going to go a bit extreme here, but say 16, eight fasting. If we look at almost every single study, every single randomised control trial that has been done on that in the short term, everyone loses weight. Like almost everybody loses weight on that. And it’s because they indirectly just end up in a calorie deficit because it’s very hard to over consume calories in an eight hour eating window. I shouldn’t say it’s very hard. It’s just indirectly most people end up in a calorie deficit because sometimes people take that as a challenge and be like, I can do it.
I can get a calorie surplus in eight hours. So I’m not putting that out there into the world. But at the other end of the spectrum, I reckon if you showed me somebody with a 16 hour eating window, if you got me 100 people with a 16 hour eating window, I think you would be showing me almost 100 people who are in a calorie surplus. That’s my own thoughts. If you have this really large eating window, it’s easier to consume more food across the day. And it’s also a little bit harder to manage your appetite.
So how I think you should potentially do this is take some time off of eating either after you wake up or before you go to bed or both to have a slightly more what I’d call appropriate eating window where it’s like, I don’t know, like a 10 hour eating window or 11 or maybe, maybe even 12. I just wouldn’t go much beyond 12 noting that I’m very clear that this is my least important priority because if I’m working with somebody who’s like, I got up early to train, and I might want them eating before they train.
And then they’re also like, and I work split shifts where I finish at 8pm and I should probably have dinner after that because I haven’t eaten since before 3pm. I will, will quite on quote break my rule because it’s not really a rule. And I’ll be like, that’s fine. Let’s just get an appropriate total intake. That is way more important. But I just think as a general rule, it’s like if it’s easy for you to make a slightly smaller eating window and you currently have a large one, I would consider that.
Leah:
Yeah, absolutely. The next tip is to not stay in a deficit for too long. So the longer you are in a deficit, the more your hunger cues tend to be driven up, your desire to eat gets higher and maintaining compliance becomes harder the longer you’re there. So taking things like diet breaks can actually be a really good tool to just have a physical and psychological break from a calorie deficit, reset those hunger hormones and then continue on with your journey.
And we’ve done plenty of episodes on this. So definitely recommend going back and looking at some of our diet break episodes if it’s something you’re interested in. How you structure them. There is so many ways that you can do it. You can do it when you just feel like you need it. You can structure them in a more structured way where you’re like, okay, I’ll diet for X number of weeks and then take an X number of week diet break and do it that way. So many ways you can incorporate diet breaks, but just as a general rule of thumb. don’t diet for too long in a consecutive string of time.
My rule is I don’t often get my clients to diet for more than 12 weeks in a row without having some kind of break. Cause I usually find that for majority of people around that kind of three month mark, we start to really like, we’ve used all the other strategies for appetite management and it just comes time where you just need a break.
Aidan:
I’m going to skip one. So like for those listening, have like a list in front of us of stuff, but I’m going to skip one. I’m going to see one of yours, Leah. So I’m going to go to low calorie drinks and talk about how you could use that like stuff like diet soft drinks, herbal tea, kombucha, diet cordial, any of those kinds of options. Like I don’t really want to get into the artificial sweeteners kind of talk here. That’s like an episode for itself, but my two senses that they’re fine in normal amounts, but the other stuff for sure. And something that you shared, Leah, in our staff thing about ADHD like resources like the dopamine seeking kind of thing.
I’m like, yeah, that is so interesting. Cause it’s like, I, um, I, for example, sometimes would have like, you know, so about like how sometimes we would get hungry at like 3pm or whatever. I personally would like have a drink, whether it’s diet soft drink, or it doesn’t even matter. It’s like, could be kombucha, could be herbal tea, could be something that’s just different. And it just makes a world of difference to me. And I’m like, I get that.
Leah:
A hundred percent. It’s like, cause a lot of the time when you are dieting, obviously you’re going to experience real genuine hunger here and there, but sometimes it is just like, you just want some sensory stimulation and food is just nice. And especially around that kind of afternoon lull, I find what a lot of people are looking for is not necessarily like a lot of people get to that afternoon lull and an apple is just not going to cut it for them. They are looking for like a very specific kind of experience, something that is a bit more fun. And I think a diet soft drink is just like perfect for that situation. Maybe in combination with a small snack too, but I think there is so much that can be done through these kind of low calorie beverages.
Aidan:
Yeah, I write that through so many angles. Like we could talk about it from like appetite management as well, but like even just that little like sensory, like it’s just like a nice thing that if you didn’t have that nice thing, like what else would you be doing? You’d probably be having something else.
Leah:
Yeah. And specifically for my ADHD clients or neurodivergent clients, I’m like, just make it fun, like put it in your favourite cup, use your favourite straw, like make it a fun experience and it can stop you from unnecessarily snacking or grazing through parts of the day that you typically would.
Aidan:
Cool.
Leah:
So next one would be to not avoid all fun foods and just like not to get rid of everything you enjoy because you’re trying to quote on quote clean eat or only eat whole foods because this can have, whilst we want a diet that’s predominantly nutrient dense whole foods, we don’t want to take it so far that we’re cutting out any kind of joy because this just got this this restriction is just going to end up with you wanting those foods even more hyper fixating on them and then potentially like when you do you are around those foods you won’t be able to realistically consume them in moderation, you’ll probably way over do it and then there’ll be issues with compliance.
And going as far as potentially leading to this kind of restrict and binge cycle for some people. But even in a less severe circumstance, it can still prevent you from reaching your goal or really slow things down. So I do, in my meal plans, call my, I incorporate something called a fun or a dopamine snack, which is just a bit of an allowance for joy, for fun foods. And I think that is just a really good way to not get so hyper fixated on these foods that are maybe more calorie dense, easier to overeat and then like blow things out of proportion.
Aidan:
I’ll do one more just given time. So we’ll wrap up after this, but this one is adequate sized meals and not too many grazing type behaviours. This can seem counterintuitive because like a very common thing, common message a lot of people put out there is like small frequent meals when in a fat loss phase. And that did partly stem from people believing that that would speed up in metabolic rate. That’s not true. Doesn’t do that. And it might seem counterintuitive that like eating a little bit less frequently, but eating larger amounts when you do would help with appetite.
But you, if you wanted to test this, just try doing the opposite. Like try, try if you’re aiming as an example for 2000 calories, try eating every hour for like 12 hours or whatever. And you just get these tiny amounts. I am pretty confident you would end up feeling hungrier. And once you test the extreme opposite, you can kind of see how this works. Like up to if you actually want to do that, but like it does make a pretty big difference. Or you could just like, instead of testing the opposite, you could just try this.
Leah:
I think people are so drawn to like having the breakfast, morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea, dinner, supper. And if you’re having say 15, 1600 calories spread across six meals and snacks, that’s very low calorie meals, very low calorie snacks. So you can actually never get to the point of being comfortably satiated. And that can be on doing sometimes.
Aidan:
Incredible. Well, this has been episode 194 of the Ideal Nutrition podcast. We’re very close to a personal goal milestone of mine in terms of monthly downloads and something that would get us over the edge is more reviews. So if anybody is interested in helping me and Leah out with reviews, ideally only five stars, we would massively appreciate that. thank you.