Burning fat requires a caloric deficit. In simple terms this means you must consume less total calories that you expend/burn in a given period of time. Most diet/fitness commentators will speak in terms of calories per day, but this seems even too short of time frame for most people to keep on top of. I like to teach people to view their calorie needs on a weekly basis and try to create a deficit as measured from the stand point of their weekly calories instead of their daily calories.
This means you can have a day or two of being even or even slightly above your daily calorie total as long as you have more days below your calorie total need. This way you can bank on having a few days per week where you get to eat a little more than other days. You can more easily accommodate a social eating schedule in this pattern of higher calorie days and lower calories days vs a specific strict calorie total that is the same every day.
So, if you accept that a caloric deficit is what is required in order to reduce the amount of body fat you are carrying the first step is to get some sort of idea of how many calories your body needs to maintain your current weight. In most cases this number will be slightly above your Resting Metabolic Rate (RMR).
You can find many RMR calculators online with wildly different results, this is because these calculators are based on equations that have various assumptions built into them. They are good for producing an approximate average for ‘most’ people, but they are never 100% accurate for any one person. Add an even more erroneous ‘activity’ factor calculation and these calculators can have you believing that you need to eat hundreds of calories more than you really do.
Question: How do you find out what your RMR likely is?
Answer: Have it clinically tested!
RMR Test Via Indirect Calorimetry
This is me getting my RMR tested...We have to breathe into this machine for 10 mins
Brad and I went to get our RMR’s clinically tested and in todays podcast we’ll talk about the procedure, the results, and the inherent biases, and margin of error that are associated with even a clinical RMR test. It’s not perfect but it’s the closet estimate you’re going to get to your real RMR and depending where you live it’s not that expensive either.
John
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