Oct 26, 2018 | Exercise
Introduction
It’s well-documented in exercise sciences that doing a lot of cardio can interfere with muscle and strength adaptations. This is often referred to as the “interference effect.”
The first study that found an interference between cardio and strength training adaptations dates all the way back to the 1980’s. This study found that when the participants did only 5 days of strength training, they gained more strength than when they added 6 cardio sessions to their weekly routine. Since this landmark study, several studies have supported the finding that doing a lot of cardio can interfere with muscle and strength gain.
But, as you can imagine, the interference effect is not the same with every type of cardio you do. By programming your cardio intelligently, you can still incorporate cardiovascular training into your fitness plan without significantly affecting muscle and strength gain.
Since most people do some combination of cardio and strength training, in this article we will look into how you can minimize the interference effect of cardio on muscle and strength gains.
But first, I’d like to look into how exactly cardio interferes with strength training.
How Cardio Affects Strength Adaptations
Cardiovascular exercise refers to any type of exercise that keeps your heart rate elevated for a continuous length of time and provides mainly endurance adaptations. On the other hand, strength training is a form of exercise that involves your muscles working against resistance to promote improvements in muscular strength, size, and power.
If we compare the two forms of training, we see that they directly oppose each other and provide divergent adaptations.
Long-Term Adaptations
The body can’t adapt optimally in two opposite directions. Simple example: You can’t be the best marathon runner and strength athlete at the same time. If you try to optimize both cardio and strength training adaptations, you’ll likely end up somewhere in the middle.
A study by the Pennsylvania State University portrays this quite nicely. When trained males only performed 4 strength training sessions in a week, they gained more muscle and strength than when they did 4 strength and 4 cardio sessions in a week. The opposite held true as well. When the trained males only focused on endurance training, endurance performance improved more than when they also had a lot of strength training.
So in line with the “Specificity” training principle, if you want to become better at something, you keep your training specific to that goal. If the goal is optimizing muscle/strength gain, do primarily strength training. If the goal is optimizing endurance, do primarily endurance training.
Short-Term Interference
Next to the long-term divergent adaptations, doing cardio can also have a short-term negative effect on strength training by influencing recovery.
There is only a limited amount of training you can recover from. Doing a lot of cardio will affect the amount and quality of strength training you can handle. This is because cardio training generates fatigue just like strength training does.
If doing strenuous cardio reduces the amount of quality strength training you can handle, it makes sense that your potential to gain muscle and strength also decreases.
A 2009 study provides a good example. When the participants performed strenuous sprint training, their lower body strength performance was suppressed for the next 2-3 days. This likely was because sprinting is physically demanding and requires recovery, just like you need to recover from a leg day.
So to sum up, excessive cardio can interfere with strength training in 2 main ways:
- The aerobic adaptations “compete” with strength adaptations
- The fatigue from cardio inhibits you from maximizing strength training performance.
But as I’ve mentioned at the beginning of this article, the interference effects we discussed above do not have to occur if you somewhat limit your cardio and program intelligently. In the next paragraph, we’ll look into how you can prevent cardio from interfering with muscle and strength gains.
Minimize The Interference Effect
The studies that show an interference effect between cardio and strength training have a few things in common. The commonalities are primarily related to the type, duration, frequency, and timing of the cardio. These are the four factors we need to take into account.
I will go over each factor one by one and eventually we’ll reach a conclusion on how to structure your cardio to minimize the interference effect.
Cardio Type: Low-Impact > High-Impact
A 2012 meta-analysis investigated the effects of cardio on muscle and strength adaptations. One interesting finding in this study is that running for cardio resulted in an interference effect, but cycling did not. This likely is because running is high-impact and has a high eccentric component, which causes greater muscle damage and requires more time to fully recover from. Cycling, on the other hand, is low-impact and requires less recovery time.
If we think back to the ways cardio can interfere with strength training, you’ll remember that excessive fatigue was an important reason. To minimize the fatiguing effects of cardio (and, therefore, its interference with strength performance) it makes sense to opt for a low-impact cardio modality. A few examples are listed below.
- Cycling
- Swimming
- Row machine
- Elliptical
Cardio Duration: Keep It Short
As you can see in the graph below, the longer your cardio, the more cardio tends to interfere with muscle and strength gain.
This graph comes from the previously mentioned 2012 meta-analysis on cardio and strength training. Limiting your cardio sessions to only 20-30 minutes will have a minimum interference effect.
But as you can imagine, if you only do 20-30 minutes of cardio, the number of calories you can burn is limited.
This is why it could be beneficial to perform high-intensity cardio (HIIT). Next to the fact that HIIT allows you to burn significant calories in a short time frame, HIIT cardio also stresses the same energy systems as traditional strength training. So theoretically, HIIT should interfere less with muscular adaptations compared to moderate-intensity cardio.
What we should keep in mind here though is that HIIT can be fatiguing. Performing HIIT almost every day will take a toll on your recovery, so it should be limited to only a few times per week.
Also, an exception to this rule is low-intensity cardio like walking. When you walk, the intensity is too low to produce significant aerobic adaptations. The fatigue you accumulate from walking is also minimal. So if you want to go for 30+ minute walks as your cardio, that’s fine and most likely won’t interfere with strength training.
Cardio Frequency: Limit Cardio To Max 3x Per Week
Most studies showing an interference effect involve the participants doing 4 or more cardio sessions in a week. If we look at research where participants perform cardio less frequently, we see a minimal interference effect. A good example is a 2009 study. When the researchers made the participants perform two 30-min cycling sessions in a week, no interference with muscle and strength gain was found.
This makes sense for two reasons. For one, just a few cardio sessions per week likely won’t fatigue you much for strength training. Also, if we think back to the specificity principle, for maximizing muscle and strength gain you should mostly train like a strength athlete. So at least making sure you’re not doing more cardio than strength training is key for minimizing the interference effect.
Considering the current evidence, a practical rule of thumb is to limit your cardio to a maximum of 3 sessions per week if you want to maximize muscular adaptations.
Cardio Timing: Separate Cardio & Strength Training
Doing cardio before strength training impairs strength performance by fatiguing you. Doing cardio after strength training tends to impair post-workout muscle protein synthesis (MPS). MPS is the process through which muscles recover and grow. So if your schedule allows for it, you could benefit from completely separating your cardio and strength training sessions.
A recent experimental study supports this by showing that muscle growth increases if cardio and strength training is performed on separate days. Having at least 6 hours of rest between your strength training and cardio sessions is a good rule of thumb.
With that said, I understand that most people don’t have the time to go the gym on separate occasions for their cardio and strength training. So we need to find a way in order to perform cardio and lift weights in the same session while minimizing the interference effect.
There’s good evidence indicating the interference effect is local. Lower body dominant cardio (e.g. running, cycling) only interferes with lower body muscle growth. So one potentially effective way to program your cardio is by having lower-body dominant cardio if it’s done after upper body training and upper body-dominant cardio after lower body training.
This way, you can likely minimize the interference effect while still doing cardio and lifting weights in the same session. When it comes to upper body dominant cardio, think about forms of cardio like rowing, battle ropes, the ergometer etc.
Conclusion: How To Structure Cardio
If we take all factors discussed above into account, we eventually reach a simple conclusion. You can be pretty sure that your cardio won’t interfere with muscle and strength gain if you can tick most of the boxes shown below:
- You use a low-impact form of cardio (e.g. cycling, swimming)
- Your cardio sessions do not exceed 30 min per session (unless it’s walking)
- You limit your cardio to no more than 3 sessions per week
- You separate your cardio and strength training by at least 6 hours (or do lower body cardio after upper body training and vice versa)
An Example:
A simple way I structure my own cardio when I am in a fat loss phase and want to increase energy expenditure is by using 2-3 HIIT cycling sessions per week, usually timed after my upper body training. This HIIT session only lasts around 15 min, so it’s time-efficient. A huge benefit I’ve found from HIIT cycling is that there’s very little “pounding” on the lower body and the recovery requirements are relatively low.
If you’d like to experiment with HIIT cycling yourself as your form of cardio, you can receive my free HIIT workout if you sign up to my weekly mailing list below.
Oct 16, 2018 | Nutrition
Eating at a calorie deficit takes its toll after a while. You feel hungry all the time, crave high-calorie foods and fat loss slows down. When this happens, most people turn to cheat days or cheat meals. But this can actually offset a lot of the progress you’ve made.
In this article, I’ll explain why you should turn to a diet break when you feel fatigued from dieting and how this can help prevent fat loss plateaus.
What Happens As You Get Leaner
When you’re in a calorie deficit, you’re technically underfeeding your body. You give it less energy than it requires so it will have to start using body fat as “fuel.” The human body is adaptive, so if you constantly underfeed it, it’s going to adapt by burning fewer calories and making you more hungry to increase the desire to eat. In nutritional sciences, this is known as ”metabolic adaptation”.
Your metabolism basically starts ”slowing down”, so your body can maintain its current shape while you’re consuming fewer calories. From a survival point of view, this makes sense. Your body adapts to the scarcity of food, so it’s able to survive with a lower daily caloric intake.
But when your goal is to lose as much fat as possible, this isn’t favorable. To lose fat, you need to consume fewer calories than your body burns. So if you are in a deficit and your body starts burning fewer calories, you’ll be losing less fat.
This is the main reason why it becomes harder to burn fat as you get deeper into your fat loss phase. A study by Columbia University found that daily energy expenditure can drop anywhere from 8% to 28% after 5-8 weeks of dieting.
So in an extreme case, an average-sized male who burns 2500 calories a day, could be burning just 1800 (2500*0.72) calories a day after a few months of calorie restriction. Now, I must note, such great drops in daily energy expenditure are not common. But it’s clear that metabolic adaptations can have a noticeable effect on how your fat loss phase develops.
How A Diet Break Can Help
If you want to keep losing fat smoothly without “starving” yourself, you need to make sure your daily energy expenditure doesn’t drastically drop over time. Because if it does, you will have to further lower your caloric intake and/or do more cardio to keep seeing good fat loss progress as you advance.
So we know that if you’re in a calorie deficit and are losing fat, your body will start burning fewer calories over time. For most people, this is inevitable since you also need less energy to maintain and move around a lighter body. But we can likely slow down the metabolic adaptations from dieting by occasionally taking a diet break.
We can distinguish a diet break into two types:
- Refeed days
- Week(s) off from a calorie deficit
Refeed Days
Research indicates that the adaptations your body goes through in a calorie deficit are partially regulated by the hormone leptin. The longer you’re in a calorie deficit, the more your leptin levels drop. This in return causes you to feel more hungry throughout the day, burn fewer calories and basically makes you feel depleted.
Research shows that overeating on carbs (like during a refeed) significantly increases leptin levels and, thus, may help slow down some of the metabolic adaptations that typically occur in a fat loss phase.
But keep in mind, just one day of eating more carbs won’t magically ramp up your metabolism. All it likely does is slow down the adaptations your body already is going through.
The benefits of a refeed are mostly psychological.
A refeed provides a controlled break from eating at a calorie deficit. When it comes to fat loss success, dietary adherence (being able to stick to your diet) is by far the most important factor. So, to make your diet more sustainable, having strategic refeed days in which you can enjoy more food helps.
At the start of your fat loss phase, a good way to use refeeds is by autoregulating them. When you notice your workouts start suffering due to low energy levels and/or you have a social event coming up, have a refeed day.
As you’re deeper into your fat loss phase, you can implement refeed days more frequently (1-3x a week, scale upwards the leaner you are) since you tend to have increased hunger and energy levels take a hit.
During a refeed day, you eat close to your average maintenance level (number of calories you typically burn per day). There’s no need to complicate this day. Consume enough protein, hit your calorie targets, and have more foods you enjoy.
Week(s) Off From a Calorie Deficit
I like to keep my fat loss phases short and effective. The longer you stay in a calorie deficit, the more your metabolism slows down and the more susceptible you are to losing muscle. But if you have a good amount of body fat to lose, it’s nearly impossible to get lean within a few months.
After months of restricting calories, the metabolic adaptations you’ve gone through add up and you may need to diet more aggressively (decrease calorie intake further and perhaps add cardio) to achieve fat loss.
When this happens (usually after 8-12 weeks), it’s best to take a 1-2 week diet break before intensifying your diet. A diet break of 1-2 weeks gives your body the opportunity to reverse the metabolic adaptations its gone through.
Again, the human body cares about survival. A constant stream of calories for 1-2 weeks is more indicative of food availability than just 1-2 refeed days. So it makes sense that an extended diet break is more effective for reversing metabolic adaptations than a refeed day.
A diet break should be kept simple, it is nothing more than an extended refeed day:
The goal with this diet break is to help you increase your daily energy expenditure near its former levels and provide an extended psychological break from eating at a caloric deficit.
Because of the possible reversal of metabolic adaptations during a diet break, you’ll generally notice that you can return back to your regular caloric deficit after a diet break and lose fat effectively again. This way, you can prevent the endless drops in caloric intake over time while trying to lose fat.
Weight Gain & Diet Breaks
After spending a considerable amount of time in a calorie deficit, some people are hesitant about eating more. Oftentimes this has to do with the fear of regaining some of the lost weight. But I want to remind you that to look and feel better, we should care about fat loss, not weight loss.
Once you start eating more food in general during a diet break, it’s possible you gain some weight. However, if you eat around maintenance calories, the gained weight is not fat and temporary. One contributor to slight weight gain during a diet break is your muscle glycogen levels being refilled.
Muscle glycogen is the primary fuel source during high-intensity exercise. Having periods in which you eat more carbs will help refill muscle glycogen stores. This, in turn, may help you train harder. So it’s a good thing.
Another possible contributor to slight weight gain during a diet break is that you’re gaining back some lost muscle. So unless you are gaining excessive weight (more than 1% of your total BW in a week), I wouldn’t worry about the temporary fluctuations in weight during a diet break. Slight weight gain is to be expected.
Final Words
That’s it regarding diet breaks! If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave them below, I’ll get back to you as soon as possible.
Also, if you’re planning on doing a fat loss phase soon, I recommend you check out my “Fat Loss Checklist”. It covers the key points you need to consider before starting your fat loss phase. You will receive the checklist when you join my mailing list by filling in the form below!
Sep 13, 2018 | Announcement, Exercise, Nutrition
As many of you know, I’ve been running a successful online coaching program for a while now. Today I want to share the progress of one of my clients, Scott from New York.
Scott is 35 years old and has a full-time job. Around mid-April, Scott decided that he wanted to lean down for the summer. So we ended the lean bulk phase he was pursuing at that time and decided to get into a fat loss phase.
The progress pictures you see here in this post (including the thumbnail) are the result of a 15-week fat loss phase in which Scott lost 14 lbs while at least maintaining his strength on all of his lifts. The before pictures are from April 15th, 2018. The after pictures are from the 21st of July in 2018.
Below I’ll briefly go over the training and nutrition approach I’ve designed for Scott to achieve these results. After this, Scott will chime in on his fat loss journey by answering a few questions I’ve asked him to answer for you guys.
Training
Scott performed a 4x per week Upper/Lower split with only two 30-min walks per week (so minimal cardio). Scott’s main goal is physique development. Essentially, being lean and muscular. In order to lean down and at least maintain muscle, resistance training needed to be prioritized.
Now, there’s not much wrong with doing more cardiovascular exercise, but it’s generally not that important for fat loss or muscle growth if you have your resistance training and nutrition dialed in.
The Upper/Lower split Scott uses contains primarily heavy compound lifts to promote progressive overload.
Nutrition
To lose fat, you need a caloric deficit. An easy way to ensure you are in a caloric deficit is by controlling your calories through calorie counting. Scott already was familiar with how to count calories and actually likes having more control over his nutrition. So calorie counting suits him quite well.
Scott had a lot of flexibility with his nutrition. I did not give him a strict meal plan, but a set of simple nutrition guidelines he needed to adhere to. The guidelines regarded his:
- Caloric intake (~25% calorie deficit)
- Macronutrient distribution (a minimum protein target + balanced carb/fat intake)
- Micronutrient density of the diet (minimum servings of fruits/veggies per 1000 kcals consumed + food variety)
As long as Scott stayed within his nutrition guidelines, he would tick all the nutrition boxes necessary to lose fat and perform well. This allowed Scott to be flexible with his nutrition and integrate it with his lifestyle. But he’ll tell you more about this. Below, you can read about Scott’s thoughts on how the fat loss phase went and his experience with my coaching service.
Scott’s Input
Q: What did you like most about the way we have set up your fat loss phase?
Answer from Scott: It was never static. If there was ever anything that posed a challenge or simply wasn’t enjoyable, we covered it during our consults and a minor adjustment here or there was all that was needed to correct the situation.
Q: What are the next steps in your fitness journey?
Answer from Scott: The beauty of this program is that it doesn’t feel like a “fitness journey” even though it is. My training and diet feel like a part of my daily routine that I’ve grown so used to that I don’t think of my lifestyle as inconvenient. I’m continuing to make progress and improve subconsciously.
Q: How does this online coaching service compare to others you have tried?
Answer from Scott: I’ve had two other online coaches and comparing those experiences to what Mounir offers is night and day. I’ve never seen any online trainers (or in-person trainers for that matter) offer the kind of 1-on-1 attention that Mounir offers 24/7. On top of that, the evidence-based and scientific approach that Mounir uses is truly a game changer to what’s historically been a confusing and unclear endeavor- fitness.
Q: Who would you recommend this online coaching service to?
Answer from Scott: I won’t give the cliché answer and say something like “anyone who is willing to put in the work!”..I think this service is best for someone who is willing to understand the science behind proper training and nutrition, and isn’t looking to be handed a workout or diet plan to blindly follow. You need to be willing to learn how to count calories, estimate food portions, and keep a daily tally of what you’re putting in your body. While it seems like a lot of work at first, it gets easier and becomes second nature.
Q: Can you give some final words of advice for those starting a fat loss phase now?
Answer from Scott: Patience. While these were my results over a 3.5 month period, I’ve been working out for much longer than that. It took some time, but once I stopped expecting results to magically show up one day, things started to fall into place. Patience is key, and before you know it the results will be here. Ok, now that sounded cliché 🙂
Final Words + Online Coaching Service
I want to thank Scott for allowing me to share his results and journey with you guys. I hope you got some motivation and helpful information out of this case study.
If you currently are struggling with your fitness and would like my help to achieve better results, I suggest you apply for my online coaching service. If you fill in the form below, I’ll send you all the details about my coaching service and how we can get started.
Apply To iWannaBurnFat Online Coaching
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Sep 5, 2018 | Exercise, Nutrition
Introduction
Some people have clear fat loss goals whereas others want to focus on gaining mass. But there are also people that are stuck in the middle. If you feel like you currently carry too much body fat but at the same time still look skinny, let me introduce you to a concept known as being “skinny fat.”
Being skinny-fat refers to a physique that doesn’t look overweight, but lacks muscle mass and has fat stored in all the wrong places. Perhaps the best way to describe it is that you look “soft” while having a healthy body weight.
If you currently have this type of physique and would like to do something about it, this article is for you. In this article, I will give you a simple 3-step “skinny fat solution” that you can put into practice. But first, let’s look into what causes this skinny fat look.
Why You Are Skinny Fat
In essence, the skinny fat look is the result of a lack of muscular development and having a body fat percentage that’s slightly higher than desired. Having too much fat and not enough muscle is generally caused by the following two factors:
- You are (or were) eating too many calories
- You are not prioritizing resistance training
By eating too many calories, you are slowly accumulating fat, which makes you look “softer.” And because you are not resistance training, minimal muscle growth occurs so you remain to look skinny.
Also Possible: Dieting Too Aggressively
Another possibility is that in a fat loss phase someone is dieting down too quickly, prioritizing cardiovascular exercise as their form of training, and not eating enough protein.
We know that severe calorie restriction with a low protein intake results in muscle loss. There’s also research showing that cardiovascular training is not an effective form of training for muscle preservation.
So what potentially can happen is that you lose muscle in your efforts to lose fat. Combine this with the fact that you almost always leave some fat stored in the stubborn areas like your lower belly, hips etc, this can leave you looking skinny fat.
Your Simple Skinny Fat Solution
Now that we know what causes the skinny fat look, let’s look into the 3-step skinny fat solution. The 3 steps are actually quite simple:
- Maintain a caloric deficit and consume enough protein
- Prioritize resistance training
- Be patient and track your progress
Below I’ll discuss how to approach each step in more detail.
Step 1: Be In A Slight Deficit With Enough Protein
In most cases, having your focus on leaning down first when you are skinny fat is a good idea. What we are trying to accomplish is body recomposition (less fat, more muscle). If you are in a slight caloric deficit for fat loss, you can still gain muscle. But if you are in a caloric surplus (a.k.a. “bulking”) to prioritize muscle gain, by definition you cannot lose fat.
So the quickest way to break the cycle of being skinny fat is by focusing on losing the excess fat you have while consistently training with weights to stimulate muscle growth. You can always have lean bulk phases later on in your fitness journey to focus solely on optimizing muscle growth.
To lose fat, it should be clear by now that you need a caloric deficit. When you consume fewer calories than your body requires, your body mobilizes excess fat tissue for energy. But if you are a novice trainee who wants to also gain muscle while trying to lose fat, it’s important you don’t excessively restrict your caloric intake. Muscle growth is a high energy-demanding process. So moderate calorie restriction is desired.
Having a caloric deficit of 10-15% is what I’d recommend for most people. At this deficit, you can still lose fat at a good pace without overly restricting yourself. If you want to calculate your individual caloric targets, multiply your average maintenance level by 0.9-0.85. Use this calculator (click here) if you want an estimate of your average maintenance level.
To support muscle growth while in a caloric deficit, you obviously also need sufficient protein. Current evidence indicates that a good protein target for most people is around 1.6-2.2g/kg of total body weight.
Step 2: Prioritize Resistance Training
As we discussed earlier, a lack of muscular development is the main cause of the skinny fat look. So an essential part of the skinny fat solution is to start properly lifting weights.
There is good research showing that when novice-to-moderate lifters in a slight calorie deficit train with weights, they can gain muscle effectively. But this obviously requires some effort.
The way muscle grows is by continuously presenting more overload. If you impose greater demands on your muscles over time, they have to adapt (by gaining in size and strength) so that it can more efficiently handle the training stressors in the future. This refers to the principle of “Progressive Overload.”
So to gain muscle in a caloric deficit, you need to train in a way that promotes progressive overload. This requires at least three resistance training sessions with mostly major compound movements. For more detailed information on how to train for progressive overload, I’m referring you to my free “Novice Example Routine” (click here to download). This covers everything you need to know on how to start progressing as a novice trainee.
Now, as you saw earlier, doing tons of cardio is not desired when trying to get rid of the skinny fat look. You can still perform multiple cardio sessions in a week and gain good amounts of muscle, but it’s important to emphasize that your main form of training should be resistance exercise.
Step 3: Be Patient & Track Progress
This is arguably the most important factor. As natural trainees, we need to face the reality that muscle growth does not come quickly. So to prevent yourself from getting discouraged while working on your physique, consider that making noticeable progress takes time.
As a novice trainee, gaining 10-15 lbs. of muscle on your frame will help tremendously with getting rid of the skinny fat look. But depending on how consistently you train, this may take 5-10 months to achieve. So don’t expect change overnight. Like most things in life, you are going to have to put in the work first.
Now, to gauge whether you are on the right track throughout your fitness journey, I recommend you track your progress. After all, if you track your fitness progression, you can manage it.
I personally recommend three progress-tracking tools:
- Daily body weight measurements (so you can establish weekly averages, day-to-day fluctuations mean little)
- A training log
- Weekly progress pictures
These tools should be used in conjunction. Here are some examples of how tracking progress can help:
Scenario 1: If your weekly average body weight is not dropping and after a couple of months you don’t see any fat loss progress in your progress pictures, your caloric deficit is probably too small. Therefore, you may need to further lower caloric intake and/or increase energy expenditure for fat loss.
Scenario 2: If your strength is decreasing (you can analyze this in your training log) and your weekly average weight is dropping rapidly, you likely need to slow down the rate of weight loss by increasing caloric intake. This will likely help your training.
The point here is that tracking progress basically gives you control over your fitness journey. You can step in and change the approach whenever needed.
Final Words
I hope you enjoyed reading this article on my skinny fat solution. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to leave a comment below!
Also, if you’d like to receive weekly science-based fitness tips, make sure you subscribe to my mailing list. You can subscribe by filling in the form below.
Aug 23, 2018 | Nutrition
Introduction
There’s much confusion around how much protein you should consume when trying to lose fat. Old school bodybuilders believe they should eat protein every few hours, whereas others fear the potential negative health effects of high-protein dieting.
In this article, we will talk all about the evidence regarding protein for fat loss. Does eating more protein actually help when you are in a caloric deficit? And are there any health concerns when it comes to high-protein dieting? Sit back and put your reading glasses on to learn more!
About Protein
Before we delve into the science behind protein and fat loss, let’s get a clear idea of what protein actually is. We know it helps with building muscle, but there is more to protein than many people think.
Protein is a structural nutrient, meaning that protein is mainly used for building up bodily tissues. As examples, your hair, skin, and eyes all contain protein. But the tissue in which protein probably has the most prominent role is in muscle.
Your muscles are made of the molecule, protein. In this case, also known as “muscle proteins.” These proteins are made up of something that probably sounds familiar: amino acids. Protein is made up of 21 amino acids, of which 9 are essential.
The reason the 9 amino acids you see left above are “essential” is that your body cannot synthesize these amino acids on its own. You need to obtain essential amino acids from your everyday protein sources like beef, fish, and lentils.
This immediately explains why protein is an essential macronutrient for survival. Protein provides the amino acids that your body can’t produce for important physiological processes like muscle function and health maintenance of other tissues.
How Protein Affects Fat Loss
Now that we better understand what protein does, we can dive a bit deeper into protein and fat loss. In the scientific literature, we consistently see that those who maintain a high-protein diet tend to lose more fat and maintain more muscle. A 2017 review paper points out that this is because of three specific effects of protein:
- Enhanced satiety
- Higher energy cost of digestion
- Promotes muscle retention
Let’s take a closer look at each of these effects.
Protein & Satiety
Protein is commonly known as the most satiating macronutrient. Multiple research reviews show protein is more filling than carbohydrates and fats. So increasing protein intake tends to aid fat loss by making you feel more satisfied while staying in a caloric deficit.
A classic example of this is a 2005 study by the University of Washington. When the participants increased their protein intake from 15 to 30% of daily caloric intake, they perceived a sustained decrease in hunger and their spontaneous food intake dropped. This eventually helped them lose more fat.
Higher Thermic Effect
When you eat a 400 calorie-meal, not all 400 calories are directly used to fuel your activities. A small portion of the energy you’ve consumed is directly used for the digestion of nutrients. This is known as the “thermic effect of food.”
The macronutrients protein, carbs, and fat all have a different thermic effect per 100 calories consumed.
- Protein: 20-30 calories
- Carbs: 5-10 calories
- Fats: 0-3 calories
You require more energy to digest protein since it is a complex nutrient. Because of this, eating more protein slightly enhances your daily energy expenditure. This is also part of the reason why it’s hard to gain fat on a high-protein diet.
Muscle Preservation
Having a successful fat loss phase doesn’t just involve weight loss. What most people are looking to do is lose fat while at least maintaining the muscle they currently have. Protein plays an important role here since it affects the composition of the weight you lose when in a deficit.
Having a high-protein diet has repeatedly been shown to increase muscle retention while in a caloric deficit. This makes sense. Muscle protein breakdown increases when you are in a deficit, so your body likely is also in need of more protein.
A good example of this is a 2010 study. In this study, a protein intake of 2.3g/kg (of total body weight) resulted in significantly more muscle preservation than a protein intake of 1g/kg in resistance-trained men.
All in all, current evidence supports that if you have a low-to-moderate protein intake, it’s beneficial to consume more protein for fat loss and muscle preservation.
How Much Protein Do You Need?
The RDA (recommended daily allowance) of protein in the United States currently is a daily protein intake of 0.8g/kg body weight (0.36g/lb). This recommendation applies to the “average Joe”, who doesn’t lift weights and is mostly sedentary. But for those that train consistently and are looking to maximize their gains, higher protein intakes are needed.
A 2017 meta-analysis compiled the data from 49 studies on protein intake and muscle growth to provide evidence-based protein intake recommendations. The researchers found that a good protein range for muscle growth is around .1.6g-2.2g/kg of body weight (0.7g/lb).
For an 80kg male, this is around 130-175g of protein per day. If you are obese or overweight, use your lean body mass instead of total body weight to calculate the right protein amounts for you.
A protein intake of 1.6-2.2g/kg is also a good range for feeling more satisfied. But I want to emphasize that there’s nothing wrong with starting at 1.2-1.5g/kg if you are not used to high-protein dieting yet. Research shows that an increase in protein intake as small as 5% helps with losing fat. So if a protein intake of 1.6-2.2g/kg sounds intimidating, have a small increase instead that’s realistic for you and gradually build up your protein intake.
Is A High-Protein Diet Safe?
Now that you know why protein is beneficial for fat loss and how much you need to achieve the benefits, we’re going to look into the health effects of a high-protein diet.
Because low-protein diets are used for treating some existing health conditions, like kidney disease, many think a high-protein diet is also harmful to healthy individuals. But the evidence against this assumption has been increasing in the past decade.
Several review papers show no long-term negative effect of high-protein diets on renal function or overall health. In a 2016 study, researchers made bodybuilders maintain a very high-protein intake of 2.5-3.3g/kg of total BW for 12 months. There was no negative effect in any health marker. This is in line with recent experimental research.
So for overall healthy individuals, there’s no need to fear a high-protein intake. If you stay reasonable with your protein consumption and have an overall nutritious diet, protein won’t do harm.
Practical Takeaways + Fat Loss Checklist
- Protein is a structural nutrient. Protein involved in maintaining proper muscle function and the health of other bodily tissues.
- A high-protein diet is generally favorable for fat loss because protein is very satiating, has a high energy cost of digestion, and promotes muscle retention.
- A protein intake of 1.6-2.2g/kg of body weight is effective for most people. If you are not used to high-protein dieting, first make a small increase in your protein intake. From there on gradually build up your protein intake.
- High-protein diets are safe for overall healthy individuals. A multitude of research reviews shows no negative health effect after years of high-protein dieting.
I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this article and can apply a few of the discussed concepts in your nutrition. If you want more detailed information on how to set-up a complete fat loss phase, check out my fat loss checklist. It goes into detail on how to approach a fat loss phase effectively. Subscribe to my mailing list by leaving your email below and I’ll send it to you!