Create Your Ideal Calorie Deficit

Download your FREE Calculate Your Ideal Calories Guide to take the guess work out of weight loss. 

Last week in my Candid About Keto post I explained the different mechanisms at play in weight loss success with the keto diet and I told you I would create a mini series on how to create those effects without tying yourself to the dangers of keto. 

So here is weight loss mechanism number one, and it is the number one mechanism at play in any weight loss success story: create a calorie deficit!

Taking out all the complications and intricacies of bio-individuality, periodized training, nutrient density, macro counting, and the like (we could go down a huge rabbit hole here), weight loss at its core is about one thing, and that is energy balance. If you eat less than you burn, you will lose weight. 

And while going keto accomplishes this by all but eliminating an entire macronutrient (carbohydrates), there is a healthier, more sustainable way of tackling this strategy.

Control your portions. 

• I can't tell you how many clients I've had over the years who were eating all the "right" foods but weren't losing weight. Then, upon closer examination, we realized their portions were all out of whack.
• Rule of thumb: Your protein should be around the size of your palm, your carbs should be a cupped handful's worth, your veggies should be around the size of your fist, and your fat should be thumb-sized (double these numbers for men).
• Did you know?

  • The average restaurant meal in America is 1200 calories (4 times larger than it was in the 1950's)

Eat fewer processed foods.

• This brings us into net calories. There is the number of calories you see on a label and then there are the number of calories your body actually absorbs. Think about it this way: the more a food is already processed, the less work your body has to do to digest it, making for a higher net calorie. 

Eat out less often.

• Restaurants have the magical ability of making even seemingly healthy meals absolute calorie bombs (hello 1400 calorie salads!). Most restaurants use way more butter, oil, and salt than you ever would cooking for yourself, to make their dishes more crave-worthy. They also go bananas on portion sizes

Use a smaller plate.

• I know it sounds like a silly trick, but believe me... it WORKS. In fact, I challenge you at your next meal to fill a small plate with an amount of food that feels satisfactory to you. Then, before eating it, transfer that food to a bigger plate. Take note of the sudden desire to fill that now obvious white space of the big plate. 

Aim for nutrient dense foods.

• If we're going to create a calorie deficit without leaving you starving, we need you filling your plate with more nutrient-dense, but less calorie-dense food items. Check out the chart below to see how much more you can eat when gunning for high nutrition in your food choices. 
  
  • Note: Plant based items will almost always win this game.

Get more exercise.

• If we are trying to lose weight by creating a calorie deficit, we can't overlook the role of movement in our plan. While it's true that you can't out-train bad nutrition, you can give yourself a significant calorie deficit boost with consistent workouts. 
  • As a very broad rule of thumb, think 500-600 calories per one hour of steady state cardio. 

How big a deficit should you create?

Here's the one caveat to this post. You CAN overdo it with the calorie deficit. If your calorie deficit is too big, your body basically thinks there is a shortage of food, it sees that you are burning WAY more than you are consuming, and in order to protect itself, it will slow your metabolism way down and start conserving fat. 

Now I know in saying this, I probably have some of you out there freaking out and stressing out wondering what the happy medium is. Don't worry, I've created the Calculate Your Ideal Calories Guide to help you figure out exactly how many calories you should be consuming and burning for sustainable weight loss, weight maintenance, or weight gain.

Download your FREE Calculate Your Ideal Calories Guide now so you can get off all the crazy diets and make your weight loss journey as simple and straight forward as possible.