Muscle for Life with Mike Matthews - How to Safely and Healthily Lose Weight Fast

Episode Date: July 4, 2018

You’re here because you want to lose weight fast, and that’s completely understandable. Whether you have a lot or a little fat to lose, the sooner it’s over, the better. You have to be careful what you wish for, though, because if you go about it incorrectly—like most people do—you may just wind up skinny fat. In other words, if you do what most people do—starve yourself and do a bunch of cardio—you’ll lose weight alright, but you’re probably not going to be happy with what you see in the mirror. The reason for this is most rapid weight loss protocols are essentially “crash diets” that burn just as much muscle as fat, which ruins your body composition. The goal, then, isn’t to lose weight as quickly as possible, but to lose fat and not muscle as quickly as possible. That’s how you get lean, toned, and defined, not skinny, flabby, and weak. And when that’s the goal, you have to do things very differently. The good news, though, is the better way is also easier than you probably think. That’s right, once you know what you’re doing, you can not only lose fat (and not muscle) rapidly, but you can do it without suffering. In fact, you can even enjoy the process. That’s what you’re going to learn in this podcast. You’re going to learn the 3 worst mistakes people make that stop fat loss in its tracks. You’re going to learn the simple rule for determining how fast you can lose weight without losing muscle. You’re going to learn the 5 steps you need to follow to lose fat and not muscle as quickly as possible. And then you’re going to get a proven diet and exercise plan that you can start today and see real results within your first week. Let’s get started. 6:40 - How to lose weight the wrong way 8:43 - Why is a very low calorie and low protein diet bad? 10:15 - Why is lots of cardio bad? 13:03 - Cardio and overtraining 14:40 - Why is high-reps, low-weight training bad? 15:41 - What’s the best way to lose fat? 17:21 - Use an aggressive but not reckless calorie deficit 24:04 - Eat a high protein and high carb diet 29:07 - Do a lot of heavy, compound weight lifting 32:26 - Keep your cardio to minimum 33:06 - Take supplements that are proven to accelerate fat loss 34:53 - How much weight can you lose in 30 days? 39:19 - Why is losing fat fast so hard? 46:36 - Can you lose weight quickly without going to the gym? 49:13 - The best way to diet to lose fat fast 20:10 - How to determine your macros 55:15 - How to create a meal plan 1:05:03 - How to adjust your numbers/plan based on how your body responds Want to get my best advice on how to gain muscle and strength and lose fat faster? Sign up for my free newsletter! Click here: https://www.muscleforlife.com/signup/

The reality is when you're doing everything right, when you're following all the advice that I'm going to give you in this podcast, a safe, healthy, and realistic goal for weight loss is to lose about 0.5 to 1% of your body weight per week. Hey, Mike Matthews here from Muscle for Life and Legion Athletics, and welcome to the Muscle for Life podcast. The topic of today's discussion is going to be weight loss, specifically how to safely and healthily lose weight quickly. Now, I'm assuming that you are here because you want to do just that. You want to lose weight fast. And I understand whether you have a lot or a little fat to lose, the sooner it is over, the better. You got to be careful what you wish for though, because if you go about it incorrectly, which by the way, most people do, you might just end up skinny fat, which is most definitely not

the goal. In other words, if you do what most people do, and if you're a woman, this is particularly true because this is what most women do. If you starve yourself and do a bunch of cardio, yes, you will definitely lose weight. The number on the scale will go down, but you are probably not going to be very happy with what you see in the mirror at the end of it. And the reason for this is what most rapid weight loss protocols call for is essentially crash dieting. And when you do this, depending on your genetics and lifestyle and diet and other factors, you can lose just as much muscle as fat, which ultimately ruins your body composition. And that is what most determines what you see in the mirror. Body weight is not nearly as important as many people think

body composition is key what is that weight comprised of and especially in terms of body fat versus muscle because having muscle in the right places on your body is what makes you look really good and muscle is very dense it is heavy per cubic inch you could say and that's why many women are very surprised to learn that to get the type of body that they want, and I would say the average woman wants to be lean, they want to have muscle definition, they want to look athletic and not big and bulky, and that requires gaining a lot more muscle and therefore weight than many women realize. In most cases, it means putting on anywhere from 10 to up to 20 pounds of muscle. And many women are taken aback by that, are

very surprised and afraid to hear that they have to gain 10 to 20 pounds to look the way they want to look. And of course, many women also want to have lower body fat levels than they currently have. And many women can successfully recomp. They can successfully gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. So ultimately their weight may go down, but simply the idea of gaining 10 to 15 to up to 20 pounds of anything that's going to stick on their body for the rest of their lives seems blasphemous. And bringing this back to weight loss, that's why, again, it's very important to pay attention to body composition over body weight. The goal is not to lose weight as quickly

as possible, but to lose fat and not muscle as quickly as possible, because that's how you get lean. That's how you get toned. That's how you get defined as opposed to skinny, flabby, and weak. And when that is the goal, when improving your body composition is the goal, you have to do things very differently than most people. You can't just follow a run-of-the-mill rapid weight loss regimen. And the good news is what you do need to do is actually far easier and far more enjoyable. You can improve your body composition without suffering. You can even enjoy the process. And that's what you're going to learn about in this podcast. You're going to learn the three worst mistakes that people make that stop fat loss in its tracks. You're going to learn the simple rule

for determining how quickly you can lose weight without losing muscle. You're going to learn the five steps you need to follow to lose fat and not muscle as quickly as possible. And then I'm going to give you a proven diet and exercise plan that you can start today and see real results with within your first week. And lastly, this episode is brought to you by me. Seriously though, I'm not big on promoting stuff that I don't personally use and believe in. So instead I'm going to just quickly tell you about something of mine, specifically my fitness book for men, bigger, leaner, stronger. Now this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you

want to know the biggest lies and myths that are keeping you from achieving the lean, muscular, strong, and healthy body that you truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male body, then you want to read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which you can find on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can get the audio book 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audio books.

I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend doing stuff like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog and so forth so much more valuable and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, then simply go to www.bitly.com slash free BLS. And that will take you to Audible. And then you just click the sign up today and save button, create your account and voila, you get to listen to bigger, leaner, stronger for free. All right, that's it for the salesmanship. Let's get to the show. All right, so let's start with how to lose weight quickly the wrong way. Don't do this,

by the way. So if you flip open any magazine book or blog article on how to lose weight quickly, here is more or less what you are probably going to be told. You're going to be told that you, one, should eat a very low calorie and low protein diet. Even if they don't explicitly describe them as very low calorie or very low protein diets, they are going to be, they're going to be very restrictive diets that focus mostly on low calorie foods, and they're not going to contain very much protein. Two, you're going to be told to do lots of cardio because of course you got to do tons of cardio if you want to lose fat. And three, if you're told to do any resistance training at all, it's going to be high rep,

low weight resistance training, which is somehow supposed to be superior to lower rep, higher weight resistance training, especially for the purposes of fat loss. And this will work, of course. If you do it, you will lose weight faster than Disney ruined the Star Wars franchise. What you won't do, however, is get the body you really want. Instead, you are much more likely to just wind up skinny fat, which of course is the type of physique where you're not quite overweight and you look normal in clothes, but underneath those clothes is a flabby, amorphous kind of physique that lacks muscle tone and muscle definition. Now, I'm not saying that this is shameful or that people should be ashamed of their skinny fat bodies, but I've worked with thousands of people, possibly even over 10,000

people by now, because I stay in touch with so many people via email and social media and coach them along the way, even though I'm not their official coach per se, and I don't even charge them money. I just answer their questions and point them in the right direction and so forth. And if there's one type of physique, one type of look that they, and especially women, dislike the most, it is the skinny fat look. Now, why is eating a very low calorie and very low protein diet bad? The reason why is when you are in a large calorie deficit, so when you're eating a lot fewer calories than you're burning, a lot less energy than you're burning, you will certainly lose fat,

but you are also going to lose quite a bit of muscle and your metabolism is going to slow down markedly. If you do this, hunger also tends to skyrocket after a few weeks, which primes you to binge back much of the weight that you lost once you are finally done dieting. And what this really comes down to is the fact that there is a point of diminishing returns with calorie restriction. You can reduce your calorie intake moderately, put yourself in a moderately aggressive calorie deficit and lose weight consistently, lose fat consistently without the excessive hunger cravings or muscle loss. But if you take it too far and you try to cut your calories too much, you try to get results too quickly. All of those things can really just spiral out of control.

quickly, all those things can really just spiral out of control. And they are made even worse when you also don't eat enough protein. Study after study after study has shown that people who follow a high protein diet lose less muscle, they experience less hunger, and they burn more calories when they restrict their food intake than people who follow a low or lower protein diet. So those are the two biggest dietary sins that people make. Let's now talk about exercise, right? So the second thing that you're often told to do if you want to lose weight fast is to do lots of cardio. And of course, this is because many people equate cardio with weight loss and they figure the more cardio they do, the more weight they'll lose. Now, cardio does help you burn more calories. And of course that means more fat loss. But if you do

too much cardio while you're dieting, you're asking for a world of hurt because you're going to lose muscle faster. You're going to want to eat more and you can develop symptoms that are related to overtraining, which makes it harder to not only do all of your workouts, but just live your life. So let's quickly discuss each of these points. The first point being cardio and muscle loss. Now, I don't want to get into the physiology here because it's pretty complex, but due to various cellular adaptations that occur when you do endurance training, it can actually directly interfere with strength and muscle building. So in other words, the more cardio that you do above a

rather low threshold, the harder it is going to be to gain muscle and strength. Furthermore, the longer your cardio sessions are, the more pronounced this interference effect, as it's called in scientific research, is. And this is why that it's not surprising to find that doing too much cardio when your calories are restricted for fat loss, which itself already reduces anabolic hormone levels and protein synthesis rates, is a very easy way to accelerate muscle loss. The second point is appetite, how cardio can affect your appetite. Now, you've probably heard that exercise doesn't help you lose weight, period, black and white, cut and dried. Exercise is a horrible weight loss strategy. There's actually some truth there. Research does show

that cardiovascular exercise alone guarantees little in the way of fat loss. In fact, studies show that many people wind up even fatter than when they began their cardio routines. Now, how could that be? Is it metabolic voodoo? Is it my carbs, my hormones? No, it's actually very simple. A number of studies have shown that for many people doing a lot of cardio causes them to be generally hungrier than usual, which of course makes it easier to accidentally eat too much, which of course prevents fat loss or even results in fat gain. And this is especially true if you're not following a meal plan or closely tracking your food intake, because it's way too easy to eat back the few hundred calories you burned in your cardio workout without even realizing it. A couple handfuls of nuts and a

piece of fruit or a protein bar is all it takes. The third point is cardio and over training. So as you will soon learn, you have to control your calories to lose a significant amount of fat. There's no way around that. Calories in versus calories out matters. It's not everything, but it matters. And unfortunately, one of the prices you have to pay for the slimmer waistline that you want is an impaired ability to recover from your training, in particular, your resistance training. When you are dieting to lose fat, studies show that your body simply can't bounce back as quickly as it normally can, as quickly as you're used to. So what happens then when you combine calorie restriction, used to. So what happens then when you combine calorie restriction, which impairs recovery with hours and hours of cardio each week? Sure, you're going to burn a lot of calories, but you will

eventually outpace your body's ability to recover from these workouts. And especially if you're also training your muscles, which you should be. And this can ultimately lead to various symptoms of overtraining like loss of strength and performance, fatigue, poor sleep, muscle and joint aches and pains, loss of libido and others. Research also shows that doing too much cardio while cutting can also accelerate muscle loss. And all of that is why I recommend that you do a lot less cardio while cutting than many fitness quote unquote gurus would recommend. And we'll be talking more about this in a minute. Okay. And finally, we have on our list of losing weight the wrong way, doing high rep, low weight resistance training, if you're going to do any at all. And this is often recommended as a way to increase calorie burning and really bring out muscle definition.

And the reality is, yeah, not so much. If you drop the weights, you increase the volume, the number of reps. It doesn't automatically produce more muscle separation, more muscle density or vascularity. And it doesn't really even burn that many more calories than higher weight, lower volume strength training workouts do. And that has been demonstrated in a number of studies. And my recommendation here is predictable if you're familiar with me and my work, and that is you should do the opposite of the high rep, low weight approach. You should focus most of your resistance training time on heavy compound weightlifting. And that's true when you're

cutting as well as maintaining and lean bulking. And we'll be talking about why in this podcast. So let's now get into the right way to do things. Let's talk about the best way to lose weight fast. Now, over the years, I've tried many different weight loss diets. I've tried many different training regimens. Some have worked better than others. And over time, I've been able to glean enough workable principles and insights and then organize them into an extremely effective and efficient weight loss regimen. to an extremely effective and efficient weight loss regimen. With this regimen, you can lose about a pound of fat per week or more if you are overweight or very overweight, maybe slightly less

if you are lean and you're just looking to get really lean. And you'll be able to do that while preserving or possibly even gaining muscle. And even better, and I would say more importantly, you are not going to struggle with hunger and craving say more importantly, you are not going to struggle with hunger and cravings. Your energy levels are not going to crater and your workout performance will be minimally impacted. You are not going to have the intense, powerful workouts that you are used to, especially as you get deeper into a cut, but you still will enjoy your training. And here's how you do that. There are five things that you need to do. One, you need to use an aggressive, but not a reckless calorie deficit of about 25%. Two, you need to eat a high protein and high carb diet. Yes,

you heard that right. High carb diet while losing weight fast, while losing fat fast and not muscle. Three, you need to do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting. Four, you need to keep your cardio to a minimum. And five, well, you don't need to do five, but I recommend that you consider doing five. And that is take supplements that are proven to accelerate fat loss. So let's dive into each of these, starting with number one, which is use an aggressive, but not reckless calorie deficit of about 25%. Now, I mentioned earlier that in order to lose body fat, you are going to need to regularly feed your body less energy than it burns. And when you do this, you have created what is known as a calorie deficit or an energy deficit. And this causes the body to slowly whittle down its fat stores to meet its

daily energy needs. The demands that you place on it every day through simply existing, you have your basal metabolic rate, right? So there's an amount of energy that it costs just to stay alive, even if you don't do anything. And then the energy needed for physical activities. Now, many mainstream weight loss gurus and magazines and diet books and so forth, they try to sidestep this scientific fact because it's boring. It's unsexy. Many people, most people are sick of hearing about calories and they just want something else. They figure there's got to be a better way. Haven't we moved beyond this relic of our dietary past? And that's why instead of educating you on how the human metabolism actually works, which

is not going to change ever, at least it's not going to change in our lifetimes. These experts, they make up stories about how a single boogeyman, a hormone like insulin or a food like a carbohydrate, how these are the things that are making you fat. And all you have to do is eliminate these things from your life and then the pounds will fall off and never come back. And yes, this type of highly restrictive dieting can absolutely result in weight loss, but not for the reasons that most people think. Most people, they mix up causation and correlation here because with these diets, it's not the elimination of starches, meats, or sugars, or the fasting or the meal timing that causes the weight loss. It is just this. Once you remove all of your favorite higher calorie foods, like

all the delicious things that are packed full of carbs and sugar, for example, and you replace them with lower calorie options, your calorie intake naturally plummets. This also often happens when people follow various types of fasting diets where you are eating fewer meals and it's harder to overeat. If you look at it from a 24-hour perspective, it's harder to overeat if you're eating two or three meals than five or six meals because of course you can only eat so much in a single setting before even the more gluttonous of us just want to put the fork down. And in some fasting diets, you don't eat any food for extended periods of time, which of course creates very large calorie deficits. Now,

these approaches can work. You can lose weight following very restrictive diets or following intermittent fasting style diets. And you can do it without paying attention to calories and without paying attention to protein, carbs, or fat. But these approaches usually fail in the end for a number of reasons. First, they are usually unsustainable. When you have a very large calorie deficit, it can lead to all the problems that are associated with starvation dieting, the stuff we discussed earlier, hunger, cravings, lethargy, muscle loss. And you can only do that for so long without the foods that you actually like to eat before you just lose the will to keep going. Second, these approaches are very easy to mess up because regardless of how restrictive your diet might be, if you eat too many calories,

you are going to stop losing weight. They can be the cleanest calories in the world. If there's too many, you are not going to lose weight. And research shows that this is exactly what happens to many people who follow these types of diets. Slowly, but surely they eat more and more of the foods they are quote unquote allowed to eat. And eventually the weight loss stalls. Now, all of that is why I recommend that you control your calorie intake. So you're going to have to pay attention to your calories and you maintain an aggressive, but not a reckless calorie deficit of about 25%. Now, what this means then is if you want to lose fat and not muscle as quickly as possible, then you should eat about 75% of your

total daily energy expenditure, which is exactly what it sounds like, the total amount of energy that you're burning every day. And of course, you are measuring the energy in calories in this case. And a calorie, if you're not familiar with the word, is the amount of energy that's required to heat one kilogram of water, one degree Celsius. It's also called a large calorie or a kilocalorie. But when we're talking diet, when we're talking food, talking weight loss, when I say calorie, or when anybody says calorie, what they're referring to is in fact the kilocalorie or the large calorie. Now I didn't pick this 25% number out of thin air either. A number of studies have borne out this approach, including one conducted by scientists at the University of Javaskula. In this study, the researchers divided high-level, or about 12% below their TDEE. And the second group ate about 750 fewer calories than they burned every day,

or about 24% below their TDEE. Both groups followed a high-protein diet and trained as they usually do. And after four weeks, the group eating the least number of calories lost four pounds of fat and little to no muscle. Whereas the group that maintained the smaller calorie deficit lost only a little bit of fat. So in other words, doubling the size of the calorie deficit from 300 calories to about 750 calories resulted in significantly more fat loss, but not muscle loss. And it's also worth noting that the group that followed the larger deficit, the group that was in the 750 calorie deficit, wasn't starving either. They still ate over 2000 calories a day. And this also jives with what I have experienced with my own body and the thousands and thousands

of people that I've worked with. If you know what you're doing, you can be fairly aggressive with your calorie deficit without sacrificing muscle. Now, if you're not sure how many calories that means for you, don't worry. You are going to learn this soon. Okay. The second point on our list here of how to do it right is to eat a high protein and high carb diet. Now, while the scientific search for the one true diet continues, and I suspect will continue for a very long time, there is one thing that we know for certain and that it is going to involve eating a lot of protein. The bottom line, study after study after study has confirmed that high protein dieting is superior in every way to low protein dieting. Specifically, studies have shown people who eat more protein lose fat faster, they gain more muscle, they burn more calories,

they experience less hunger, they have stronger bones, and they generally enjoy better moods as well. And all of that is even more important when you're restricting your calorie intake for fat loss because adequate protein intake plays a major role in preserving lean mass, which again is one of our primary goals when we're dieting. It is to lose fat and not muscle, preserve muscle. So how much protein should you be eating? Well, I have podcasts and articles that break all this down, but the long story short is that when you're cutting, you want to eat around one gram of protein per pound of body weight per day. If you do that, you will be fine. And if you are very overweight, so if you are 20% body fat or

above as a man, or if you're 35% or above as a woman, then you can set your protein intake to about 40% of your daily calories and you'll be fine. Now, chances are that's not news to you. Most people have at least heard that a high protein diet is best for weight loss and especially for fitness folk. But I also said you should eat a lot of carbs. I said you should eat a high carb diet. And that is surprising to many people because of course, what we've been hearing now for years is that carbs make us fat, that you literally just get fatter every time you eat carbs. Well, despite what many people are saying, despite what you've probably heard many times, studies show that when calorie and protein intake are equated, a low carb diet is not better for fat loss and is generally worse for muscle preservation. So in other words, when you restrict

your carbs while cutting, when you do it too aggressively, generally your carb intake is going to come down when you're cutting. But when you follow a low aggressively, generally your carb intake is going to come down when you're cutting. But when you follow a low carb diet, you not only fail to lose fat faster, you actually set yourself up to lose muscle faster. And there are several reasons for this, and you can read about them if you want. If you head over to legionathletics.com and search for low carb diet, you can find an article, an in-depth article I wrote on this. But the bottom line is low carb dieting makes sense for sedentary and overweight people because their bodies simply don't require very much energy.

Remember, carbs are primarily energetic. So for these people, low carb dieting to lose fat and low carb dieting just in general does make sense. If you're not moving your body much, if you're not burning much energy, you don't need to be providing it with a lot of energy. But for those of us who are lean or at least relatively lean and physically active, and especially those of us who are training our muscles regularly, carbs are our friend. Carbs help us gain muscle and strength faster carbs improve our mood and they reduce fatigue levels carbs allow us to push harder in our workouts and when you're in a calorie deficit and you're exercising regularly your body is more likely to store the carbs that you eat as

glycogen in your muscles than as body fat. Now, glycogen is a form of carbohydrate, of course. It's a form of stored energy that your body keeps mostly in the liver and muscles. And so just to reiterate that point, when you are restricting your calories for fat loss, research shows that your body is even less likely than usual to store carbs as fat as opposed to glycogen. And studies show that even when you're not restricting your calories, your body really does not convert much of the carbohydrate that you eat directly into body fat. Again, I don't want to go too far into the weeds here because the physiology is fairly complex, but the idea that carbohydrate is quickly and easily converted into body fat in your body under any

conditions outside of disease states is completely fake news. So that sets the stage for my recommendation for carbohydrate intake when you're cutting. And it is simply that you get about 30 to 50% of your daily calories from carbs, which typically works out to about one to two grams of carbs per pound of body weight per day. The reason why I recommend this is it is a sweet spot of sorts that allows you to maintain workout intensity and maintain lean mass, as well as fight off stress, fatigue, and hunger without negatively impacting fat loss. All right. So the next step in our formula is do a lot of heavy compound weightlifting. Now, there are many ways that you can train your muscles. And when the goal is gaining size and gaining strength, or if you're a

woman, maybe you think about it more in terms of muscle tone and muscle definition. If the goal is to do any of those things as quickly as possible, nothing beats heavy compound weightlifting. It's better than workout machines. It's better than pump classes, body weight exercises, yoga, Pilates, and everything else you can do to train your muscles. Now, what do I mean by that though? Heavy compound weightlifting? Well, let's take heavy first. By heavy, I mean that you should work primarily with weights that are in the range of about 75% to 85% of your one rep max, which for most people means training in the rep range of about six to 10, maybe 12 reps. And by compound, I mean that you should focus your efforts on exercises that train

several major muscle groups like the squat, deadlift, and bench press. And training this way, where you focus most of your time, most of your energy, most of your effort on heavy compound weightlifting, it doesn't just help you build more muscle. It actually can help you lose fat faster as well. Because although heavy strength training workouts may not leave you in the same sweaty, heart-pounding, breathless mess as the high rep, low weight workouts or cardio workouts can, it actually still burns quite a few calories, definitely enough to move the needle. And this is partly due to what's known as the afterburn effect, which is the rise in metabolic rate that occurs between sets and after your workouts as your body is recovering. And to give you an idea of how this works, let's talk about a study conducted by scientists at Ball State University that had two groups of women perform two different training protocols. One group did a high rep, low weight superset style of training with minimal rest between sets. And the other group

followed a periodized strength training routine with most of the reps done around 70 to 90% of their one rep max. After 12 weeks, both groups lost about 20 pounds, meaning that the workouts burned about the same number of calories, but the group that did the heavy strength training gained three times more muscle. They gained on average about seven pounds of muscle versus just two pounds of muscle in the first group. And the heavy strength training women lost over twice as much body fat. In another similar study worth mentioning, men who were training with heavy weights experienced In another similar study worth mentioning, men who were training with heavy weights experienced increased metabolic rates for three days on average after their workouts and burned hundreds more calories than the guys that trained with the lighter weights. Research also shows that

the big compound movements like the squat, bench press, and deadlift are the types of exercises that produce the greatest increase in metabolic rate. So the bottom line is if you want to preserve or even gain as much muscle and burn as much fat as possible when you cut, then you want to do a lot of heavy pushing, pulling, and squatting. All right. So the next point, the next thing that you need to do if you want to lose weight quickly and also safely and healthily is keep your cardio to a minimum. And you could keep it to the absolute minimum of zero. Actually, you don't have to do cardio to lose weight. Proper dieting alone is enough, but it would be wrong to say that cardio has no place in a weight loss plan because when used properly, it will help you lose fat faster without sacrificing any muscle to speak of. Now,

of course, we're going to get into some specific recommendations a little bit later in the podcast, but right now I just want to give you an overview of how to do this correctly. So let's move on to the fifth and final point that I brought up earlier, which is taking supplements that are proven to accelerate fat loss. So the first thing you need to know here is the supplement industry has a dirty little secret that they are keeping from you. And that is that most everything that you see here and read about fat loss supplements in particular is pure nonsense. If you want to learn why, head over to lesionathletics.com and search for fat burning pills and check out the article I wrote on this. But the reality is most of the ingredients in these supplements simply

do not work and some have even turned out to be toxic. And so if you are very skeptical of fat loss supplements, I understand you should be because remember that when you take supplements, you are taking your health into your own hands and there are a lot of very shady and unscrupulous supplement companies out there that have been caught spiking pre-workouts and fat loss supplements in particular with dangerous drugs. Now, there are, however, safe natural compounds that do effectively speed up fat loss. And when you combine these, when you combine the right fat loss supplements with proper dieting and exercise, you can dramatically speed up your weight loss. And in a little bit, I'm going to tell you what these supplements are, how they work,

and how to take them. All right, so before we get into the nitty-gritty details of how to set up your diet and exercise routine to lose weight as quickly as possible, let's touch on a few commonly asked questions that I'm sure you have wondered yourself if you are looking to lose weight quickly. So the first one is, how much weight can you really lose in 30 days? Now, most people think that they can lose weight a lot faster than they really can or should. And this isn't surprising, of course, considering how many supplements, books, and weight loss programs promise 10, 20, or even 30 pounds of weight loss in just 30 days. And what these people are not telling you, the people that sell these programs and sell these products and services, is that while some people who are very overweight can

lose up to 30 pounds in 30 days, most people simply cannot. And even the people that can have to suffer for it because the reality is when you're doing everything right, when you're following all the advice that I'm going to give you in this podcast, right, when you're following all the advice that I'm going to give you in this podcast, a safe, healthy, and realistic goal for weight loss is to lose about 0.5 to 1% of your body weight per week. And that works out to about one to two pounds of weight loss per week for most people or four to eight pounds per month. Now, if you resort to some more extreme measures like starvation dieting, for example, in order to lose weight even faster than that, you can run into all kinds of problems. We've already talked about them, muscle loss, fatigue,

overtraining, irritation, depression, and other things. And the reason the target rate of the weight loss ranges between one and two pounds is your starting body weight and body fat percentage has a major impact on how quickly you can and should lose weight. The simple explanation here is that the more fat that you have to lose, the faster you can safely and healthily lose it. So people who are very overweight. So what I mean by that is men who are over 25% body fat and women who are over 35% body fat, these people can often lose two to three pounds per week without losing any muscle, but people who are relatively lean and wanting to get even leaner or people who are already pretty lean and want to get really lean.

So let's say men around 10 to 12% body fat and women around 20 to 22% body fat, they may be able to lose just a half a pound or maybe up to one pound per week. So for example, I am about 195 pounds. I'm around 9% body fat. And if I were cutting, my goal would be to lose anywhere from a half a pound to one pound per week, maybe two pounds in the beginning. But if I were 300 pounds, then I would shoot for up to three pounds of weight loss per week, possibly even more. Hey, before we continue, if you like what I'm doing here on the podcast and elsewhere, and if you want to help me help more people get into the best shape of their lives, please do consider picking up one of my best-selling health and fitness

books. My most popular ones are Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, my flexible dieting cookbook, The Shredded Chef, and my 100% practical hands-on blueprint for personal transformation, The Little Black book of workout motivation. Now, these books have sold well over 1 million copies and have helped thousands of people build their best body ever. And you can find them anywhere online where you can buy books like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play, as well as in select Barnes and Noble stores. So again, that is Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for Men, Thinner, Leaner, Stronger for Women, The Shredded Chef, and The Little Black Book of Workout

Motivation. Oh, and one other thing is you can get any one of those audio books 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account. And that's a great way to make those pockets of downtime like commuting, meal prepping, and cleaning more interesting, entertaining, and productive. Now, if you want to take Audible up on that offer and get one of my audio books for free, just go to legionathletics.com slash Audible and sign up for your account. Another question I'm often asked from people who want to lose weight quickly is why is it so hard to do it? Why is it so hard to lose weight fast? So I've heard from many people who have restricted their calories and started doing exercise only to be disappointed by what

they saw on the scale, only to be disappointed by the slow creep downward at a snail's pace and then eventually the stall. So what's going on here? They usually think it's having to do with hormones or maybe they're eating too many carbs or maybe their body has gone into the dreaded starvation mode. And those are not the reasons. There are four primary reasons why so many people struggle to lose weight quickly. And the first one is many people make quote unquote little dietary mistakes that eventually add up to stalled weight loss. For example, here's how this might go down at breakfast. Somebody adds an extra two tablespoons of half and half to their coffee. That's an additional 40 calories and an extra tablespoon of peanut

butter to their oatmeal. That's a 100 calorie bump. And then eats an extra large banana instead of the medium one that they accounted for, which adds another 50 calories to the meal. And just in that meal alone, that person has accidentally eaten 200 calories more than they thought or planned or tracked. And after a few more mistakes like these at lunch and dinner, they have completely wiped out their entire calorie deficit for the day. Because remember, if you are in a 25% deficit, that's a 500 to 700 calorie deficit for most people. And if you are accidentally overeating by 200 to 300 calories per large meal per day, well, just do the math. Another reason why people struggle to lose weight quickly is

when you restrict your calories to lose fat, your body sets out to decrease energy expenditure and increase intake. In other words, your body wants to erase the calorie deficit, the energy deficit that you've created, and it wants to balance calorie intake with output. It wants to stop the weight loss because the reality is losing fat requires that you force your body to do something that you don't want to do. It requires mild and prolonged starvation. Really, that is what you are doing when you're losing fat. And in the spirit of self-preservation, your body has defense mechanisms, so to speak, that it can use to fight back. And these defense mechanisms can slow down fat loss, especially as you get leaner and leaner. And if you want to learn more about

this, head over to mostforlife.com and search for starvation mode and read the article that I wrote on that. The third reason that so many people find rapid weight loss so difficult is that water retention can obscure fat loss when all you are paying attention to is the scale. And it actually can obscure it in the mirror to some degree as well. And the story here is when you restrict your calories, your body produces more of a stress hormone called cortisol, which impacts it in a variety of ways, including an increase in fluid retention. And the end result here is that the fat that you lose can be hidden again, both on the scale and to some degree in the mirror by additional water that your body is holding onto. And this can be pretty dramatic.

You could lose four to five pounds of fat in a month and not see a single change on the scale due to increased water retention alone. And when cortisol levels come down, which can happen for a number of reasons, your body then flushes out the excess water and you can experience that whoosh of weight loss that people talk about in bodybuilding circles where you don't really see any change on the scale. You don't see that much of a change in the mirror despite sticking to your diet scrupulously. And then you maybe have a refeed meal, which you're not sure what that is, head over to Muscle for Life in search of a refeed, or you get some really good sleep or for no good reason whatsoever, all of a sudden you're peeing a lot overnight and you now weigh four pounds less or three pounds less. That's the weight loss whoosh again, as they call it in bodybuilding circles.

And it's also worth mentioning that women tend to deal with a lot more water retention and fluid retention than men do. And so can see wild fluctuations in weight loss. Weight loss for most women is rarely linear. You have peaks and valleys, and it's important that you're paying attention to the trend over time, how your average daily weight is changing over time. That matters a lot more than your actual weight on any given day. So the fourth and final reason why rapid weight loss is so elusive is that some people can gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. And this can also obscure fat loss if you are paying too much attention to the scale. When you are new to lifting weights, it is not only possible, but almost guaranteed that you're going to build some muscle while you're losing fat. Some people

actually can build muscle almost as quickly as they're losing fat. Some people actually can build muscle almost as quickly as they can lose fat. And when we're talking about weight, so just as quickly as they can lose a pound of fat, they can put on a pound of muscle. And that of course would result in no real change on the scale. Now this honeymoon phase, this newbie gains phase in most people lasts about six to eight months. And this is where you can effectively recomp as they call it, gain muscle and lose fat at the same time. But it's really probably the first month or two where the body's hyper responsive and where you could gain muscle as quickly as you can lose fat. And keep in mind, when I say gain muscle, I don't necessarily mean pure muscle tissue. Remember that water that's stored in your muscles and glycogen that's stored

in your muscles registers as lean mass in like, let's say a DEXA scan. So really what we're talking about is gaining muscle related weight, I guess you could say as quickly as you are losing fat. And again, in most people, that's possible for the first couple months of resistance training. But at that point, the muscle related weight gain will slow down. And so if you have somebody who's, let's say they're four or five, six months into a weight loss program, they're new to resistance training and the scale hasn't changed in a couple months. It's probably not due to the muscle related weight gain obscuring the fat loss. They're probably just not losing fat or losing very little fat. All right. The next question that I'm often asked is, can you lose weight quickly without going to

the gym? And the answer here is absolutely. If you are willing to eat very little food every day, you can create a large enough calorie deficit to lose weight quickly without doing any exercise. As you know now though, and as we've discussed, if you do this, yeah, you can lose weight, but you also are going to lose quite a bit of muscle. And this of course is detrimental to your body composition and is one of the easiest ways to wind up skinny fat. And this is one of the main reasons that you should exercise when you're dieting to lose fat. Yes, of course it does boost your energy expenditure, but it also helps you improve your body composition. And as you now know,

this is very, very important. And not all exercise is equal in this regard either. The best kind of exercise for preserving or even gaining muscle is resistance training and heavy compound weightlifting in particular. A good example of the effectiveness of this approach is a study that was conducted by scientists at West Virginia University, which split 20 men and women into two groups. One group did one hour of cardio four times per week, and the other group lifted weights three times per week. Both of these groups followed the same diet, which consisted of shakes that provided 800 calories, diet, which consisted of shakes that provided 800 calories, 80 grams of protein, 98 grams of carbohydrate, and 10 grams of fat per day. And after 12 weeks, both of the groups lost about the same amount of fat, but the cardio group, the first group, also lost nine pounds of lean body mass, whereas the group that lifted weights didn't lose any. And a number of other

studies have found the exact same thing. So the bottom line is if you want to lose fat quickly and not muscle, then you want to include resistance training in your weight loss regimen. And I know I'm being redundant here, but I think it warrants the redundancy. It warrants the repetition because it really is that important. If you are a busy person and you only have a few hours per week to exercise, I would much rather have you spend that training your muscles and doing cardio. I'd much rather have you do a few hours of weightlifting per week and no cardio than let's say one hour of weightlifting per week and two hours of cardio, or the worst option would be three hours of cardio per week and no weightlifting per week and two hours of cardio, or the worst option would be three hours of cardio

per week and no weightlifting. Okay, so those are the big rapid weight loss questions that I'm often asked and I wanted to address. Let's now get into the meat and potatoes. Let's start with diet. Let's start with the best way to diet for losing weight fast. And fortunately, this isn't complicated. This isn't expensive, and it's really not even all that difficult. It does require some planning though. It requires a bit of commitment. It requires some attention to detail, but the payoff is huge because it guarantees results in everyone, every single time. So there are four steps here to the best way to diet for losing weight fast. So the first step is you need to determine how many calories you should be eating every day. And the second step is you need to determine how much protein, carbohydrate, and fat you should be

eating every day. And then the third step is you need to create a meal plan based on these numbers. And then the fourth and final step is you need to adjust your calorie intake and your macronutrient intake. Macronutrients are nutrients that your body needs in large amounts to survive. And for our purposes here, the main ones are protein, carbs, and fats, right? So this fourth step is to adjust your food intake based on how your body is responding. So let's dive in starting with the first step here, which is determine how many calories you should be eating every day. Now I could give you some fancy mathematical formulas to use to determine

your basal metabolic rate, which is the amount of calories that your body burns at rest, and then how to add in the additional energy that you are burning through physical activity to get an estimate of your total daily energy expenditure, your TDEE. But I'd rather just send you to a calculator that I built that does all the math for you. So the easiest way for you to determine how many calories you should be eating every day is to head over to legionathletics.com and search for calories and look for an article I wrote called how many calories you should eat with a calculator and use the calculator in that article and you will get an accurate measurement of your TDEE. And then you want to eat about 75% of that number every day. That's that aggressive,

but not reckless calorie deficit of about 25%, right? So you're eating 25% fewer calories than you're burning every day. And so for example, here's how that works out for me. I am six foot one or two or somewhere in between there. I just turned 34 years old a week or so ago, and I weigh about 195 pounds. I'm about 9% body fat and exercise five to six hours per week. So if I use that calculator, I can determine that my TDEE is somewhere around 3000 calories. That's my average daily burn. And so to figure out my cutting calories, then I just have to figure out what is 75% of 3000, which gives me 2250. Therefore I'd want to eat about 2250 calories

per day to lose weight rapidly. All right. So once you have your calories, the next step is to determine how those calories should be broken down into the macronutrients, into protein, carbohydrate, and fat. So how many grams of protein, carbs, and fat should you be eating every day? And again, you've probably heard these things referred to as macros, which is short for macronutrient, which is a nutritional component of your diet that's required in relatively large amounts. And technically speaking, that's not just protein, carbs, and fat, but it also includes minerals such as calcium, zinc, iron, magnesium, and phosphorus, as well as water. But when most fitness people are talking about macros, they're really just referring to protein, carbs, and fats. Now, macros are important

because how your calories break down into protein, carbs, and fat heavily influences your workout performance, your body composition, and your overall health and wellbeing. You've probably heard that a calorie is not a calorie and that calories in versus calories out is not the whole picture. Or I mean, some people say it's actually completely flawed and it is scientifically debunked and that's not true. What is true though, is if you want to improve your body composition, if you want to maximize your health and your wellbeing, you do need to go beyond calories in calories out. You do need to understand macronutrients and how to break those

calories down into different foods. And again, it's very simple. Here's how you get it right. When you're wanting to lose weight quickly you want to set your protein intake to about 40 percent of your total daily calories you want to set your carbohydrate intake to about 40 percent of your total daily calories and you want to set your fat intake to about 20 percent of your total daily calories and to do this you could work the math all you really need to know practically speaking is that a gram of protein contains about four calories, a gram of carbohydrate contains about four calories, and a gram of fat contains about nine calories. So with those numbers, of course, you can take your total daily calorie intake and go, okay, so if I'm going to eat 2,000 calories

per day, let's say, I know in my case, it'd be a bit higher, but I'm just going to use 2,000 calories for simple math. So let's say that's what you determine. That's your aggressive, but not reckless calorie deficit is 2000 calories per day. And you go 40% of those calories are going to come from protein. Okay. So that's 800 calories from protein. A gram of protein contains about four calories. Great. So that is 200 grams of protein per day, carbs, 200 grams of carbs per day. It's the same math, which leaves about 400 calories per day for dietary fat. A gram of dietary fat contains about nine calories. So 400 divided by nine, you get about 45 grams of fat per day. Great. Macro's done. So you can do that math or you can simply use the calculator in the article that I referenced

earlier on legionathletics.com. Again, search for calories and you will find it. It is called how many calories you should eat with a calculator. If you use that calculator, it will also do your macros for you. Simple. All right, moving on to the next step here, which is create a meal plan based on these numbers. a meal plan based on these numbers. And this is a crucial step because the absolute easiest way to lose weight quickly is following a meal plan. And you don't have to, you don't have to count or

track or plan calories or macros to lose weight. But if you don't, you're going to find it's much easier to accidentally overeat. And that is the number one reason why most people mysteriously cannot lose weight. A meal plan makes it much harder to mess up. And there are many ways to create meal plans and to plan your meals. But the one that I found most effective works like this. You create a single day of eating that meets your calorie and macro targets, and you follow that plan every single day. And yes, that means eating the same foods at the same times every day, but that's actually not hard to do when you are eating foods you like, because you don't get sick of foods you like as quickly as you get

sick of foods you don't like. And also when you do get tired of eating something in your plan, whether it's just a simple snack or a more involved meal, like a breakfast or a dinner, you can simply swap it for something else that has the same amount of calories and macros. So what you do is you take the calories and macros of that meal and you simply plug in different foods. You come up with something completely different to eat that sounds good to you. And then you eat that every day until you get sick of that or something else, at which point you can swap again, rinse, repeat until you've reached your goal. And this way you can have as much or little variety as you'd like. And a little tip is reducing variety generally makes for an

easier dieting experience. And this also allows you to tightly regulate your food intake, which is key as you know. And it's not a difficult or time-consuming process either. It takes maybe 10 to 15 minutes. And it breaks down like this. First, you have to create your spreadsheet. So open up Excel or Google Sheets. If you want a template that you can use, head over to muscleforlife.com and search for how to lose weight fast. And you will find an article that this podcast is based on. And if you scroll down to the midpoint of this article, you will see a link to a Google sheet template that you can use. But regardless, you take your spreadsheet and you format it like this. You create columns for meal times, the meal and workout names, and calories, protein, fat, and carbs. Then you want to add a row at the bottom of the spreadsheet and label it as totals

and another row beneath that labeled as targets. You're going to use that totals row to show the total calories, protein, carbs, and fat in your meal plan and the targets row for showing your target calories, protein, carbs, and fat. So you can see how closely you are on target. And for the targets row, it's very simple. You just enter your daily targets that you calculated. So how many calories should you be eating every day? And how should those calories break down into grams of protein, fat, and carbs. To set up the totals column, you of course just create a formula that adds up the total calories, protein, carbs, and fat for all of the meals that you are going to be entering in the rows above. And again, if you're not

familiar with Excel or if you're having trouble visualizing this, head over to muscleforlife.com, search for how to lose weight fast, and you will find screenshots and a link to a template that makes it really easy. So the next step here is deciding how many meals you want to eat per day and when you want to eat them. Generally speaking, when you eat your food doesn't matter. So long as you are managing your energy and macronutrient balances properly, and so long as you are getting the majority of your calories from nutritious foods, meal timing and meal frequency, when you eat and how often you eat, aren't going to help or hinder your results. That said, if you want to make your cut as productive and enjoyable as

possible, I do recommend you follow a few simple guidelines. I recommend that you eat protein before and after your strength training workouts, because research shows that it can help you retain and gain muscle and strength faster. I recommend that you eat carbs in your post-workout meal because it can help you recover faster from your workouts. And I recommend that you eat three to five servings of protein per day because research shows that this is probably better for maintaining and gaining muscle than fewer servings. So with those points in mind, here's what I recommend for your meal timing. And here's what's worked well for the thousands of people I've worked with and the thousands of people who have followed my

Bigger Leaner Stronger and Thinner Leaner Stronger programs. I recommend that you eat three to five meals per day with at least 20 to 40 grams of protein per meal. I recommend that you eat one of these meals one to two hours before your workout and another one of these meals one to two hours after your workout. And I recommend that you include 30 to 50 grams of carbs in your pre and post-workout meals. The pre-workout carbs, by the way, are just for having a better workout. You're going to have more energy in your workout if you eat a fair amount of carbs before than if you don't. So for example, let's say you work out first thing in the morning. Here's how your plan might look. So at 6 a.m., you have your pre-workout meal. You head to the gym. By 7 a.m., you are working out. By 8.30 a.m., you are eating your

post-workout meal. Then at 12, you have your lunch. At 4 p.m., you have a snack. And at 7 p.m., you have a dinner and you are done eating. And here's how it might look if you were working out in the evening. So let's say 8 a.m., you have breakfast. 12 p.m., you have lunch. 4 p.m., you have a pre-workout snack. At 6 p.m., you are in the gym lifting weights. And then at 8 p.m., you have breakfast. 12 p.m., you have lunch. 4 p.m., you have a pre-workout snack. At 6 p.m., you are in the gym lifting weights. And then at 8 p.m., you're having your post-workout meal, which is also your dinner. Okay, so once you have your schedule worked out, the next step is, of course, creating meals to eat at those times. It's time to take those placeholders and turn them into actual meals with specific foods. And the first thing that you should

know here is the importance, especially when cutting, of mostly eating unprocessed nutritious foods like lean proteins, fruits, and vegetables. For example, my go-tos when I'm cutting are foods like chicken, turkey, lean red meat, lean seafood like tilapia, shrimp, and tuna, vegetables and fruits, especially fibrous ones, low-fat dairy like cottage cheese and Greek yogurt or skier, oils such as olive or coconut oil, nuts of all kinds, and grains like rice, oats, and quinoa. And the reason why I recommend that you get the majority of your daily calories from foods like these is relatively unprocessed nutritious foods are very filling and contain significantly fewer calories and more nutrition than the more

processed sugar-laden junk foods that many people like to eat. By eating a lot of nutritious foods, you're going to enjoy more fullness on fewer calories, you're going to better stave off hunger and cravings, and you're going to avoid various nutritional deficiencies that are simply bad for your health and well-being. Now, I should say though, that eating nothing but quote unquote clean foods like these every day can definitely get boring and it's not necessary. You don't have to avoid any and all foods that might be deemed unclean. So feel free to include little treats in your meal plan. And to be specific, I will say that you can allot up to 20% of your daily calories, your total daily calories to whatever you want.

It can be sugary. It can be processed. It can be quote unquote unhealthy. You don't have to get 20% of your daily calories from junk, so to speak. But if you really need it to stick to your diet and stay on track, you can use up to 20% of your daily calories. stick to your diet and stay on track, you can use up to 20% of your daily calories. So for me, I'm not a junk food person, not really even a sugar person, but I do really like dark chocolate. Not a great junk food, I know, because there's actually some health benefits to it. But I usually eat about 150 calories per day of dark chocolate, even when I'm cutting,

just because I like it. Now, to create your meals, what you want to first do is open up a food database website like Calorie King or MyFitnessPal or even the USDA food search tool. And from there, the general idea is piecing together your meals food by food and entering their calories, protein, carbs, and fat as you go. So what I like to do is I start by entering foods that I know I'm going to want to include in my plan. And then I do the following. I put about 20 to 40 grams of protein in my pre and post-workout meals, figure out what that's going to be, enter it. I then put 30 to 50 grams of carbs in my pre and post-workout meals. Again, work out what those foods are going to be, put them in the plan. I then add 20 to 40 grams of protein in each of my remaining meals, because I know that I'm

going to have to eat protein with each meal. And this usually gets me to about within 10% of my daily protein target. So my protein then at this point is more or less taken care of. I then add in a few servings of both fruits and vegetables, because again, I know I'm going to be eating these things every day. It's just a matter of working out what I'm going to eat and when I'm going to eat it. And of course, this usually comes down to my lunch and my afternoon snack and my dinner. That's where I'm eating all my fruits and vegetables usually. And then I add in my discretionary treats, my discretionary calories. Again, I'm kind of boring in this regard, but if you are going to be caring more about this,

just save it for this midpoint in your meal planning. Don't jump right in with the junk food in the beginning. Build your base first of your meal plan before you start adding in the treats. And then I add in additional healthy fats as needed to hit my daily fat target. This is usually nuts because I like them and because they are very nutritious and a great source of monounsaturated fat. And then I finish with carb-rich foods like grains, legumes, and the like to make sure that I'm eating enough carbs. And last, then I just tweak my meals and I tweak my food portions until I'm within about 50 calories of my daily target. And that's it. There's your

meal plan done. And then we have the final step here on the dietary side of things, which is adjusting your food intake based on how your body responds. Now, the litmus test of any type of diet or exercise routine is twofold first does it work for you and two is it sustainable these are the two key questions you have to ask yourself and the first point is obvious no matter how good theoretically or even scientifically a diet or exercise program is or sounds, no matter how famous its creator is or how many books it is sold, if it doesn't work for you, if it doesn't deliver the type of results that you're looking for, you need to move on. You need to find something else because in the end, the best diet is one that meets certain parameters. There are certain non-negotiable factors like

energy balance and macronutrient balance and so forth. But outside of that, the best diet is the one that is going to work for you. And the second point here, sustainability is less obvious, but it is equally important because if a program can get results, but it can't be sustained over the long term, whether due to complexity, difficulty, or anything else, it too should be abandoned because while you can lose a lot of weight with a crash or starvation diet, what happens next? As you know, many people just gain all the weight or even more back they also suffer along the way and the same thing goes for very grueling exercise routines sure these types of workout programs can supercharge your fat loss and muscle gain but they can also burn you out and that's why we want to go

for the sweet spot we want consistent encouraging results without any of the pain or misery that most people go through when trying to get fit. Now, as you know, as far as weight loss goes, the sweet spot is losing about one half to 1% of your body weight per week, or about one half to two pounds per week for most people. You know, as we covered earlier, if you have a lot of weight and a lot of fat to lose, you should shoot for the upper end of that body weight percentage range. And if you're at a normal body fat percentage and you're looking to get lean, you should be somewhere in the middle, somewhere around one pound of weight loss per week. And if you are looking to get really lean, then you want to be at the lowest end of that range at the 0.5% of your body weight per week, which generally is around a half pound a week

for most people. So long as things are progressing according to those guidelines, then you want to just keep going. Don't fix it if it ain't broken and all that. If however, you're not losing enough weight or you are losing it too quickly, then you should look into it because you may need to make some adjustments. And if you're not losing enough weight, there are a number of reasons why this could be. And I don't want to go into all of them here in this podcast because it's already a very long podcast and we still have more things to cover. So if you want to learn more about that, just head over to muscleforlife.com and search for not losing weight and check out the article I wrote on that.

Because while most people would say that, oh, it's just, you're eating too much. You're not moving enough. Yeah, that may be technically correct, but it's not always true and it doesn't necessarily help you solve the problem. So make sure to read that article. Now, if you're losing weight too quickly, what you want to do is double check your calorie intake and expenditure because no matter how lean you are when you start cutting, you can expect rapid weight loss in the first week or two because your body is going to shed water. It is going to shed glycogen because your carb intake probably is going to come down from where it's currently at.

But after that, your weight should stabilize and things should slow down. If they don't though, if you are continuing to lose weight significantly faster than what we have just discussed, then chances are you are eating less or you're burning more energy than you realize, and you should adjust this. You know, a common newbie mistake here is overestimating calorie intake due to eyeballing foods in portions and being paranoid instead of weighing them. You know, some people also assume that they're burning fewer calories than they actually are. I mean, many people assume they're burning more, but some people get the other way around. And this is usually due to a very physically active job. I've worked with a

lot of people who simply did not realize how many calories they burn at work because they walk around a lot or they're even lifting things at work and so forth. And that's it on the dietary side of things. That's all you need to know as far as your diet is concerned to lose weight quickly and to lose it safely and healthily. And I know that we have covered a lot. So if you want to go back and re-listen to everything we just discussed and take notes, do that now, because next we're going to dive into the exercise side of things, the best exercise plan for losing weight fast. Hey there, it is Mike again. I hope you enjoyed this episode and found it interesting and helpful.

And if you did, and don't mind doing me a favor and want to help me make this the most popular health and fitness podcast on the internet, then please leave a quick review of it on iTunes or wherever you're listening from. This not only convinces people that they should check the show out, it also increases its search visibility and thus helps more people find their way to me and learn how to build their best bodies ever too. And of course, if you want to be notified when the next episode goes live, then just subscribe to the podcast and you won't miss out on any of the new goodies. Lastly, if you didn't like something about the show, then definitely shoot me an email

at mike at muscleforlife.com and share your thoughts on how you think it could be better. I read everything myself and I'm always looking for constructive feedback. So please do reach out. All right, that's it. Thanks again for listening to this episode. And I hope to hear from you soon. Oh, and before you leave, let me quickly tell you about one other product of mine that I think you might like. Specifically, my fitness book for men, Bigger, Leaner, Stronger. Now, this book has sold over 350,000 copies in the last several years and helped thousands and thousands of guys build their best bodies ever, which is why it currently has over 3,100 reviews on Amazon with a four and a half star average. So if you want to know the biggest lies and myths that are keeping you from achieving the lean, muscular, strong, and healthy body that you

truly desire, and if you want to learn the simple science of building the ultimate male body, then you want to read Bigger, Leaner, Stronger, which you can find on all major online retailers like Amazon, Audible, iTunes, Kobo, and Google Play. Now, speaking of Audible, I should also mention that you can get the audio book 100% free when you sign up for an Audible account, which I highly recommend that you do if you're not currently listening to audio books. I love them myself because they let me make the time that I spend doing stuff like commuting, prepping food, walking my dog, and so forth so much more valuable and productive. So if you want to take Audible up on this offer and get my book for free, then simply www.bitly.com slash free BLS. And that will take you to Audible.

And then you just click the sign up today and save button, create your account and voila, you get to listen to Bigger, Leaner, Stronger for free.