Long term diet strategies to get lean and even shredded

 So you want to get lean or even “shredded”?

Well the basic rules of dieting are pretty much the same as described in this article I wrote:

Meal planning matters - all you need to know (with free meal plans)

Just to sum things up:

• Eat at a calorie deficit. Start with about -20% of your TDEE
• Use proper macronutrients distribution
• Calculate protein intake as 1g/lbs
• Calculate fat intake as 0.35g/lbs
• To lose fat calculate 1g/lbs of carbohydrates and TDEE ≈ Weight * 11kcal/lbs as a starting point
• You don’t have to exactly follow these numbers. For example if you want to follow a ketogenic diet or some other form of diet, just make sure you get an adequate amount of protein to preserve lean mass. And make sure that you are eating at a calorie deficit in order to lose fat. But just know that high carb diets will most likely give you better strength performance during a cut.
• Do strength training to keep the muscle mass you have.
• Lower calories when fat loss stalls but don’t cut too much at once. Use 100kcal increments.
• Increase activity if needed to create a larger calorie deficit.
• You can do moderate amounts of low impact cardio or HIIT. Walking is great and you can use that time to call your friends and family or listen to podcasts or audiobooks. HIIT can be taxing on your recovery so use it with caution.
• Don’t go below your BMR (Basal Metabolic Rate) for long periods of time. But this fully depends on your daily activity. If you are not very active expect to diet around your BMR level or even slightly below.
• You should do only a sustainable amount of resistance training and cardio. Don’t add training sessions more than required to keep the muscle and lose fat. 

There is really nothing special about getting from a lean state to shredded condition but it takes a lot more planning to be efficient. I’m not talking about stage lean physiques you see on the bodybuilding stage but about 6-8% bodyfat level which is fairly lean by any standard. Time it takes to get there is often underestimated and it usually takes 6-12weeks of dieting to go from a lean physique to a shredded look.

Sustainable strategies to keep losing fat over long periods of time

So you have gained 10-20lbs of fat in the last five years or so and expect to be shredded with that 12 week program you got? Keep dreaming! Fat loss takes time and usually longer than you want.

Dieting continuously for extended periods of time simply just sucks if the end goal is too far away. I love great tasting food so being in a calorie deficit is never fun for me! So before you start dieting for 3-6months in a row think about how you would feel if you followed a different approach. An approach that allowed you to eat more from time to time instead of just depriving yourself continuously. Here are some tips to make long diets manageable. 

Weekends off diet (not what you think)

Let's take a look at an approach where you cut for 5 days with a more aggressive deficit (25%) and eat at maintenance for 2 days (for the weekend) vs dieting 7 days straight with a moderately aggressive deficit of 20%. We will use an individual with 2200 TDEE as an example.

20% deficit for 7 days (1760kcal for 7 days)

Total fat loss = 2200 * 0.2 * 7 / 9 = 342g

Vs

25% deficit for 5 days and 2 days maintenance. (1650kcal for 5days + 2200kcal for 2days)

Total fat loss = 2200 * 0.25 * 5 / 9 = 305g

There is about 40g of difference in weekly fat loss. And if you do a 30% deficit for 5 days you would exceed the fat loss compared to 20% for 7 days. The one who is taking weekends off to maintain has two advantages. He will learn how to eat at maintenance level so after he has finished dieting it is easier to resume the maintenance diet and he will have better motivation at the beginning of each week. You could also do the maintenance days on your workout days if you want to improve your workouts and recovery. And when you feel like on one Sunday that you need a diet break, you can do a week or two of maintenance before cutting again.

Use diet breaks when needed

Diet break is a short period of time where you eat around your maintenance level. During this period the goal is to maintain your current weight and bodyfat level. Diet break can last for a week or few before you enter another fat loss phase. This way you will get introduced to maintaining your bodyfat so that you will have a better chance of keeping your current physique once you reach your weight or bodyfat goals.

Moderately aggressive calorie deficit of 20%

You can use a more aggressive deficit 25-30% when you are at higher bodyfat (above 15%) and in the beginning of your diet to make faster progress. But in the long run you don’t want to restrict calories too much. This will have a negative impact on your performance at the gym. We want to keep our strength levels up as high as possible during a cut so we don’t lose too much muscle mass in the process. Also you don’t want to lose fat too slow and make your cut last longer than needed. It is just unnecessary. 

Do a meal plan and follow it

Plan meals you enjoy and use modified recipes to lower the calorie intake. For example if you like pizza use cheese that has less fat and some low fat toppings. For burgers use low fat meat and sauces. Or just do a meal plan that takes into account the higher calorie meals and eat mainly lean protein and vegetables or salad on other meals.

Consume high satiety low calorie foods. Food volume has a meaning. Increase your carb intake from fruits and vegetables instead of pasta and rice. For example if you trade 25g of rice or pasta to vegetables you get to eat almost 500g of vegetables for the same amount of carbs/calories. Eat salads as sides with lots of greens and light salad dressing. This will help to keep you full even if you eat at a calorie deficit. 

Adjust fat and carb intake ratios if you want but keep the protein high

In the beginning I introduced starting point macros and calories for losing fat. But if you want to include cheat foods in your diet such as burgers and fries you might have to adjust your carb to fat ratio. The reason is that usually these types of foods include more fat and you might have to lower your carb intake in order to keep the calories at the same level. So for example you can increase the fat intake from 0.35g/lbs to 0.5g/lbs but then you will need to lower the amount of carbs from 1g/lbs to 0.65g/lbs in order to keep the total calories the same. Keep the protein at 1g/lbs minimum to preserve lean mass. Eat that salad and drink a glass of water as an appetizer and then eat that burger! Also enjoy some dessert as long as you take into account the calories. Use smaller portion sizes if needed.

Use refeed days (not cheat days)

Refeed days are a way to bring your energy levels and motivation up for a short period of time. On a refeed day you eat at a maintenance level emphasizing carbohydrates. If you do a refeed before your workout days you are likely to have better workouts. How often should you refeed? Once a week or every two weeks is a good schedule. Some suggest that you lower your protein intake to 0.8g/lbs and fat to minimum in order to maximize carbohydrate intake for refeed days. But if you like a simplified version just keep the protein and fats at the same level and increase carb intake until you hit your maintenance calories. If you follow the weekends off approach mentioned earlier you are basically doing two refeed days a week so an additional refeed day is not required.

Learn how to maintain your weight and bodyfat while dieting

This is an important aspect of any diet. What do you do when you reach your goals? Return to your old habits? Keep depriving yourself and feel miserable? 

You need to have an exit plan. Maybe you want to keep your lean physique for a while or maybe you just want to get some photos to your social media account and continue gaining again.

That's why it's good to learn how to eat around your maintenance level (TDEE) while dieting. This way you will learn how to plan your meals and what foods to include in your diet. Usually the maintenance diet involves using some strategies to control hunger such as eating your normal meals with filling sides such as salads and vegetables.

Adjust activity or calorie intake (But not both at the same time)

When you hit a sticking point you need to make some adjustments either in your diet or training. Some people like to increase their activity level while keeping the diet the same. Personally I just adjust the meal plan to meet the new requirements to keep losing fat. This is because usually I can't add more time for exercise in my weekly routine.

Do intermittent fasting (If you want)

Intermittent fasting has been a controversial topic for the last decade. Some people claim it is allround cure to even some diseases and the key to live a longer life. Due to the lack of clear evidence there seems to be no real health benefit of following such a diet and you can do well with just eating at a normal schedule.

The real benefit for fat loss comes from meal distribution. If you skip some of your meals you can eat more on other meals and still lose fat (and retain muscle mass). And some of us are not quite hungry in the morning. I’m one of those persons who got slight stomach aches when I was eating the standard breakfast and was extremely hungry at lunch time. So this approach has worked well for me in general.

For example let's say you need to cut with a 1600kcal diet and eat 5 meals a day. If you evenly distributed the meals this would be around 320kcal per meal. That is not much to chew on. But if you do 3 meals a day you will get to consume around 530kcal a meal. Some people use even the OMAD (One Meal A Day) approach but this is far from the optimal intake for muscle growth or preserving lean mass on a cut.

Avoid crash diets

Crash diets are a great way to lose fat fast but they are extremely difficult to maintain and after you end your diet you are likely to rebound unless you take countermeasures. For example Lyle McDonald’s Rapid Fat Loss is an extreme modified protein sparing fast diet which aims for maximum fat loss while still remaining as healthy (and sane) as possible. This would be the only crash diet I could recommend since it tries to sidestep most the flaws in other crash diets.

But because of the extreme calorie deficit of even 1000-1500kcal a day you will not feel great and such a diet will have a negative impact on your strength levels and overall performance. But if you want to lose fat fast to get your bodyfat to a healthy range this could be an option. If you are already below 20% bodyfat I would just use a normal calorie restrictive diet. You can find the book here if you are interested:

https://store.bodyrecomposition.com/rapid-fat-loss-handbook/

What to expect when you get “shredded”

I got this lean by doing two workouts a week and doing one hour walk once a week. So basically I did no cardio and just restricted calories as needed. I was cutting with calories close to my BMR with this activity level.

Life is not all peachy once you reach single digit bodyfat levels. There are some downsides of being below your normal bodyfat setpoint, which is the bodyfat range where your body works optimally. Also if you got there by restricting calories too much and doing excessive amounts of exercise you are not in a happy place. You will most likely have a hard time to maintain your physique since your body has now adapted to lower calorie intake and burns less calories through exercise. 

Now here is what to expect:

• You are more or less hungry even if you just ate. Yes. Our bodies don’t want to be excessively lean. Your survival is more important than that six pack. That's why when our bodyfat levels drop below a certain level our bodies know that you are in a danger zone and it sends out more hunger signals so that you start looking for food.
• Your maintenance calorie level is lower than where you started because you weigh less so you have to eat less to maintain your current bodyfat level. Also our bodies adapt to burn less energy through exercise and it becomes more efficient storing energy from the food we eat. Great for survival but not so great if you want to stay lean.
• You will most likely weigh less than you initially though unless you carry lots of muscle mass. For example LBM 21 (Lean Body Mass) is some muscle, 22-23 is good and 24-25 is somewhere close to maximum natural potential for most lifters. So let's say you are 180cm tall with a 22 LBMI. That means you carry 71.5kg of lean mass. Now if your bodyfat was around 7% you would weigh 77kg (that is 5.5kg fat and 71.5kg lean mass). So unless you are a competing bodybuilder expect to weigh less than your height in cm - 100 = shredded weight in kg. According to Martin Berkham stage lean natural bodybuilders weigh around: Height in centimeters – 100 = Body weight in kilo (“shredded”, i.e. 5-6% body fat) Source: https://leangains.com/maximum-muscular-potential-of-drug-free-athletes-updated-dec-31st/
• You will look smaller in clothes. Unless you carry a huge amount of muscle you will look like you never lifted when clothed. Most natural lifters don't look big when they are shredded. Bodyfat makes us look bigger and muscles are more full when you are fully fed.
• Your workouts will not be as good as they were at higher bodyfat. You just don’t have the same drive and energy. Work capacity is lower but maximal strength might be at a good level.
• Strength levels will be lower than at a normal bodyfat range. Some loss in performance will happen due to some muscle mass being lost and for the reason that you don’t have as much energy stored to your body that you can utilize. 

Hope this helps you on your way to get leaner!

Interested in Bodyweight Strength Training?

This one is for those who are interested in practical information in one small package.

Get Guide to Bodyweight Strength Training at Amazon.com

I did my best to gather all the information between these covers so that you can make the best progress possible. It is a textbook with some math. But you can skip the math part and read the best parts. I don't mind!