If you’re a skinny-fat dude trying to lose fat, do THIS to avoid metabolic damage (and muscle loss).

Do you want to damage your metabolism?

Didn’t think so.

Metabolic damage sounds more terrifying than going to your friend's friend's party alone without a phone.

Unfortunately, if you’re dieting and trying to lose fat, then you’re flirting with metabolic damage. Don’t pee your pants. There’s one ONE simple thing you can do to minimize your chance of damaging your metabolism.

Curious?

Thought so.

Here goes nothing:

Don't crash diet.

Starving yourself isn’t the solution to your body composition woes. You need to eat less, but not too much less.

Wanna know why?

Keep reading.

Fat loss begins and ends with energy balance.

You can see the underbelly of the Energy Balance Equation on the other side of this. Below is a quick recap.

The Energy Balance Equation has three variables: (1) energy feed, (2) energy need, and (3) stored energetic material.

When your [energy feed] exceeds your [energy need], you accumulate stored energetic material. When your [energy need] exceed your [energy feed], you lose stored energetic material.

Body fat is stored energetic material, which means fat loss is a byproduct of an energy deficit. Your [energy output] must exceed your [energy input]. There are a few ways to make this happen. One of the easiest ways is to consume less energy.

The general rule of thumb: one pound of fat contains 3500 calories worth of excess energetic material. This means you need to create a 3500 calorie deficit to lose one pound of fat.

Say your average daily metabolic rate is around 2000 calories. You want to lose fat quickly. From a numerical standpoint, starvation seems like a great way to skew the Energy Balance Equation in your favor.

Let's forget about the impracticality of starving yourself and look solely at the numbers. Seems you'll lose one pound of fat every two days or so.

• Sunday (-2000) (-2000)
• Monday (-2000) (-4000)
• Tuesday (-2000) (-6000)
• Wednesday (-2000) (-8000)
• Thursday (-2000) (-10000)
• Friday (-2000) (-12000)
• Saturday (-2000) (-14000)

Unfortunately, this isn’t how things go down in physiology town. The numbers won't unfold this favorably. The Energy Balance Equation isn't as simple and straightforward as it appears.

Two primary reasons:

First, body fat isn't your only form of stored energy.

Muscle mass is also stored energetic material. Your body can use muscle mass instead of body fat to compensate for lost calories. In other words, in the example above, you wouldn't necessarily subtract 2000 calories from your body fat bank account.

Bummer.

Second, your metabolism is an adaptive entity. 

Your [energy need] is somewhat symbiotic with your [energy feed]. In other words, when you feed less calories, your body can adapt to need less calories.

Say wha?

Understanding the adaptive nature of your metabolism is a messy endeavor, especially if you have a 2D understanding of energy balance. You’ll have a much smoother ride if you parallel

• body with energy
• brain with money

because how your body handles energy is like how you handle money (assuming you aren’t MC Hammer).

Ready?

You have expenses. Bills that need paid. You need to beat your heart, squeeze your lungs, blah blah blah. If you can’t pay these bills, you die. Your body takes your expenses seriously.

Luckily, you have income. You eat food, which pays your bills. And if you ever make more money than what you need to pay your bills, you put the extra in savings.

When you create a disparity between feed/income and need/expenses, you’re forcing your body to use its savings (stored energetic materials) to pay the bills. This keeps you alive, but there’s a catch: Your savings are finite. And if you run out of savings, you die.

Your body doesn’t want to die.

Sacrificing your savings is a fine short-term band-aid, but it’s not a viable long-term solution. If you keep using your savings to compensate for inadequate income, you will die.

So what would you do if your expenses consistently eclipsed your income? If you were regularly pulling from your savings, and you had no way of increasing your income?

Eventually, you’d HAVE to find ways to shrink the gap between your income and your expenses, to slow the rate of withdrawal and prolong survival.

Cancel the premium cable package. Set the thermostat at a higher temperature during the summer. I don’t know what this Brazzars subscription is, but that needs to go, too.

When you eat less to skew the Energy Balance Equation towards fat loss, your body can adapt and bridge the gap between input and output. Because your body cares about survival, not six-pack abs, boulder shoulders, and looking taut in tighty whities.

This is why your muscle mass is apt to get zapped instead of body fat during a calorie deficit.

Body fat is your default payment option, in the event of an energy deficit. But breaking down muscle mass INSTEAD of body fat makes sense for a few reasons, considering the survival implications of energy balance.

First, muscle is metabolically costly (more so than body fat). Bigger muscles make for a higher resting metabolic rate; bigger muscles require more energy. If your muscles shrink, your body won’t need as much energy — a rather convenient outcome when there isn’t much food around.

Second, using muscle for energy spares body fat and prolongs death. If your body fat account reaches zero, you die. If your muscle mass account reaches zero, you die. There’s $100 in each account. How are you gonna delegate your withdrawals?

Murdering your muscle mass is one way your body can deal with a calorie deficit without having to lose fat. 

Your body can also decrease your [energy need] in more sinister ways. For instance, one component of [energy need] is non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT).

NEAT is the amount of you energy you use in any given day doing mundane physical tasks. Things like picking your nose, tapping your foot, and fondling your family jewels as you watch Game of Thrones.

These activities require energy, even though they aren’t forms of deliberate exercise. And when you decrease your [energy feed], your body can nonconsciously reduce the extent with which you perform these “micro” NEAT movements, which will reduce your [energy need].

But wait, there's more!

Beyond murdering your metabolism and melting your muscle mass, your body can also heighten your hunger pangs and cravings, as well as shut off your satiety mechanism.

The laundry list of things your body can do in response to a calorie deficit is long(er).

And over my head, to be honest. You don't need to know every which way you body can sabotage your fat loss ambitions, all you need to know is this: When you eat less in an attempt to lose fat, your body can trend towards needing less energy and wanting more energy. This “metabolic damage,” in a nutshell.

Think about it. You're eating less. Your body adapts to need less, which means you have to eat lesser than less to trigger fat loss. At the same time, you're constantly hungry and never satisfied with your meals. You can't sustain eating lesser than less. You stop dieting. You eat more… a lot more. Because even though you have a reduced metabolic output, you're hungrier than normal. And, thanks to your broken satiety mechanism, you can plow tons of food into your piehole.

This should come as no surprise: Crash dieters tend to regain all of the weight they lose… and then some.

I doubt you want to regain the weight you lose (and then some), which is why you should stay away from crash dieting and starvation strategies.

Because the theory that I stand behind (despite having astonishingly little evidence for): the degree to which your body adapts, to “undo” the impact of an energy deficit depends a great deal on the severity of the energy deficit. Larger calorie deficits trigger more “negative” metabolic adaptations.

Losing your job and having zero income is much different than getting demoted and taking a small pay cut.

If you wanna lose fat, you need to eat less. But not too much less. The rule of thumb thrown around the internet, thanks to the Minnesota Starvation Experiment: Every pound of fat can contribute a MAXIMUM of 31 calories of energy per day.

Here’s what this means.

You’re 180 pounds with 20% body fat. You have 36 pounds of fat on you. With a 31 calorie per fat-pound contribution, your MAXIMUM daily deficit should be 1116 calories (31×36=1116).

But…

I recommend using an even more conservative deficit.

Because of the downsides associated with a severe calorie deficit, I recommend sticking with a conservative calorie deficit.

You can calculate your calorie ceiling for a conservative deficit by multiplying your weight (in pounds) by twelve.

If you weigh 180 pounds and you want to lose fat, then you should eat 2150ish calories per day, which is BWx12. (You should always try BWx12 before BWx11 or BWx10.)

In general, a conservative deficit will create a 500ish calorie deficit. This means, using a conservative deficit on a daily basis, you’d expect to lose around one pound of fat per week.

• Sunday: (-500)(-500)
• Monday: (-500)(-1000)
• Tuesday: (-500)(-1500)
• Wednesday: (-500)(-2000)
• Thursday: (-500)(-2500)
• Friday: (-500)(-3000)
• Saturday: (-500)(-3500)

Of course, the math isn’t this clean in real life, but you get the idea…

If you wanna live dangerously and experiment with the 31 calorie per fat-pound contribution, be my guest.

I’m not your mother. But don't forget: food is more than energy. Food is also nutrients. Think about the OG pirates. They died of scurvy, not starvation.

The further you drop your calorie intake, the less nutrients you’ll be giving your body. Nourished bodies function better than malnourished bodies. And nourished body have a higher chance of sustaining a calorie deficit.

Not to mention, protein biases your body towards burning body fat (instead of muscle mass). If you keep your food intake high(er), you’ll be able to eat more protein, which will help you preserve your muscle tissue, despite being in a calorie deficit.

You can minimize metabolic mayhem by using a conservative deficit.

Keyword: minimize. It's impossible to bypass metabolic adaptations when you eat less for fat loss. The good news? Most metabolic adaptations aren't permanent.

The term “metabolic damage” makes my stomach curdle. It's a nocebo. There is no “damage” occurring. Your metabolism is doing exactly what it’s supposed to be doing. You're much better off thinking of “metabolic damage” as “metabolic adaptations.”

Referring to metabolic adaptations as “metabolic damage,” is like referring to muscle growth as “muscle cancer.”

Even more, the word “damage” makes it appear as if your metabolism is permanently broken. It's not. Even if you trigger gnarly “negative” metabolic adaptations, things can bounce back once you start eating more.

Regardless, you probably want to avoid severe metabolic adaptations… unless you're living in the wilderness and truly starving to death, in which case you should welcome these adaptations more than Salad Fingers welcomes rusty spoons. With them, you'll saunter towards death. Without them, you'll sprint towards death.

Useful to think about:

Your body doesn't know you're purposefully restricting your food intake. Your body doesn't know there's a fridge full of food you're choosing to ignore. Your body thinks food is nonexistent.

You aren't starving to death. You want to lose fat in a controlled and calculated manner, to minimize the biological downsides associated with chronic calorie deficits, which is why you should stay away from crash dieting and starvation strategies.

They are counterproductive, thanks to the nonlinear relationship between depth of deficit and (positive) impact of deficit.

If a 500 calorie deficit has an impact of one, a 1000 calorie deficit won’t have an impact of two. This isn’t to say crash dieting won’t work. Your body’s defensive systems aren’t perfect. You will lose fat if you continue to eat fewer and fewer calories. But your results probably won’t be on par with your expectations…

which will be the least of your worries.

 

May the Gains be with you,
Ant

 

ps
Metabolic adaptations don't happen overnight. Your body can handle short-term calorie deprivation. If you go one day without eating ANYTHING, you aren't gonna tank your resting metabolic rate.

pps
There's probably something to be said about yo-yo dieting and its connection to metabolic damage, but I'm exhausted.