Not a Diet Book

One nutritionist for a large functional training organization made a sweeping statement to tens of thousands of members, saying: ‘The key to fat loss is to manage your insulin.’ This is like saying the key to saving money is to manage what items you buy, rather than addressing the total amount being spent vs saved.

Just because a million people say something stupid, that doesn’t mean it’s not still stupid.

One of the biggest issues I find across the entire industry is this notion of ‘association being causation’, when the correct way of thinking is to always know that ‘association is NOT causation’. There is a common mentality of connecting dots without logic and often without evidence. For instance, if I observe the M25 motorway in the UK and I see every car crash that takes place, I would note that in fatal car crashes that occur there is often an ambulance on the scene. I could then come to the conclusion that if an ambulance turns up to the scene of an incident, then it is likely to result in a fatal outcome, whereas if no ambulance arrives, it is likely that the incident is less serious. But does this mean that it is because the ambulance is present that the outcome is worse? No, of course not; ambulances are called due to the severity of the incident and can’t be drawn in as a factor in fatalities.

It’s not always idiots who dispute CICO, though. There are some brilliant minds in the nutrition industry who have accomplished stellar work within the fields of hydration and sports performance, but when it comes to fat loss, they let anecdotal beliefs shroud what the data actually says.

Often people sit in their own camp of what’s worked for them, whether that’s fasting protocols, low-carb or ketogenic diets – and these diets do work for some, but they’re not inherently superior to any other protocol outside of a very few medical conditions, such as some forms of epilepsy; however, at this moment in time I haven’t seen anything solid in research yet to conclude that.

Unfortunately, when people come across new evidence confirming their existing belief they will trust it. However, if it doesn’t agree with their existing belief or understanding, they’ll disregard it. People can then cherry-pick the parts of studies that back their own beliefs and dismiss the rest. This is known as the confirmation bias.

People are prone to believe what they want to believe. This is why when I write about certain topics, I will often search for data to prove me wrong rather than right to ensure I have understood both sides of the debate. If you listen to the arguments from low-carb or keto zealots, much of their information is not factual but anecdotal. They say, ‘My clients did this,’ or, ‘I found that this happened when I did that.’ I’m not saying that their clients didn’t lose fat or accomplish great things, but they’re allowing their pre-existing ‘carbs are bad’ belief to feed their bias. Any new evidence that comes up to oppose this is disregarded and wiped off the table.

I’m not stating that removing some carbohydrates is bad; I’m not saying it doesn’t work. It often does (through creating a deficit). A lot of the misinformation isn’t malice. But people – and I mean friends, family and colleagues, not just experts – have all been feeding their confirmation bias and now they’re trying to feed yours (pardon the pun).

Confirmation bias in action: carbs, protein and insulin

From a pragmatic, personal point of view, I’d like to inform you that insulin is not ‘bad’, nor does it need to be ‘managed’ (except in Type I and some Type II diabetics). We secrete small amounts of insulin all the time; if we didn’t, we’d be in a lot of trouble. We will talk about diabetes later in the book, but for now, when a Type I diabetic increases their protein intake, we can see stabilizations in their blood-sugar levels. This, in turn, means that there is a less frequent requirement for the Type I diabetic to eat foods to raise their blood sugar, therefore making it easier to create or adhere to a calorie deficit. The benefits can be attributed to the fact that protein can help in stabilizing blood sugar. However, if I was to waft that past a low-carb zealot, they’d be the first to point out that the carbohydrates were to blame, which is simply too reductive.

Another thing that you should note and bring up in an argument is this: I used to believe that too many carbohydrates would mean that the glucose (sugar) in the blood would then be stored as body fat, because it made complete sense hypothetically. But here’s what really happens: the pathway for converting dietary carbohydrate into fat, or de novo lipogenesis (DNL), is present in humans, whereas the capacity to convert fats into carbohydrate does not exist. Now, this process actually rarely occurs. Should you consume the maintenance or deficit calories it is incredibly unlikely that any carbohydrates will be converted into fat. Not only that, but even in a surplus due to the inefficiency of converting carbohydrates into fat, usually it’s the fats from the diet that are stored instead as adipose tissue (body fat).

Even in overfeeding studies trying to identify any benefits from manipulating high carb or high fat, there seems to be no real quantifiable difference, and all roads seem to lead to the fact that we should be promoting higher amounts of protein rather than lower amounts of carbs:

According to research: ‘There appears to be no meaningful difference between overfeeding on a high-carbohydrate or high-fat diet.’ The study goes on: ‘Dietary protein appears to have a protective effect against fat gain during times of energy surplus, especially when combined with resistance training. Therefore, the evidence suggests that dietary protein may be the key macronutrient in terms of promoting positive changes in body composition.’2

Other factors that feed the confirmation bias:

Water weight: when we look at a diet that includes carbohydrates, we need to think about water weight. Carbohydrates are stored for use in muscle tissue (this is known as glycogen) and for every 1 g of carbohydrate that enters a cell, 3–5 g of water usually accompany it. So if you eat 100 g of carbohydrates (400 kcals worth) you could gain 0.3–0.5 kg of water just stored alongside carbohydrates in muscle tissue. On the flip side, we need to consider that most of the weight loss occurring with low-carb diets, especially in the early stages, is water and not fat.

Eradication: when you say to someone with very little nutritional knowledge to eat ‘no carbs’ they’ll tend to know what it means: no bread, pasta, cake, biscuits, alcohol, fizzy drinks, etc. This in itself causes a calorie deficit most of the time. Telling someone to create a deficit tends to be quite nuanced, though, and doesn’t always lead to a reduction in calories.

Another important thing to do is to stay away from Netflix documentaries – Netflix is there to entertain, not educate. It’s almost as if I need to tell you that Stranger Things and Breaking Bad are also fiction.

To conclude, everyone in the world will seek to confirm their own beliefs and disregard any that go against them. Be pragmatic with every decision you make, and when asking someone to prove the point behind a thesis or theory, listen out for anecdote – chances are they’ve been feeding their own confirmation bias with someone else’s. It’s human nature.

Calorie calculators

Starting points are important, and for a long time as a PT I would ask clients to track their food for a few weeks. I’d then review their intake and make changes. It was a very long-winded process, partly because it’s not hugely motivating for a client to ask them to put effort in and not see any short-term returns. In recent years, I have implemented the use of a calorie calculator as a starting point for determining calories.†

There are several different formulas to try to determine how many calories someone needs per day. I use one called the Harris-Benedict, to which I’ve made some small adjustments. The questionnaire tries to determine your weight, height and age; with that you can get a rough idea of your sedentary expenditure. You’re then asked how active you are, and this number is multiplied by a corresponding amount. For instance, ‘lightly active’ would be the calculated amount x 1.2.

There are some holes you can pick in the accuracy of this approach, but personally, from day one, I think it’s imperative to have a tangible goal to aim for. Most people go, ‘Wow, my calories look really high.’ But comparing them to their excessive indulging at the weekend, they’re actually not. Even with a moderate amount of calories, say, 2,000 a day for a female, that’s 14,000 a week, and should you want to ‘save’ some calories in order to have a few drinks and a takeaway over the weekend, then you’re left with a fraction of the original figure to play with on weekdays, if you are to stick to the overall target.

Tracking your calories weekly or daily is your prerogative, like balancing your books between payslips with an agenda to save money. As long as you do it, I am not too bothered about how it’s micromanaged.

If your calories given from the calculator are too low, you’ll: (deficit)

 feel very hungry all the time

 be irritable, moody, have brain fog

 experience poor performance, poor recovery, soreness

If your calories are too high, you’ll notice: (surplus)

 a strange love for your diet

 good moods, good performance

 slow weight gain

If your calories are neither, not a lot will happen. This is known as maintenance.

I have said to my clients over the years that the only person who truly knows how those calories will work is the person implementing them. It is for the dieter to find out. Most athletes and fitness professionals roughly know their caloric intake for maintenance and fat loss. They know their ‘sweet spot’ through playing with their calorie intake almost on a trial-and-error basis. You need to learn how to do the same – and I am going to help you.

Protein, as we discussed earlier, is a big player in fat loss and muscle growth too, so my calculator gives a protein goal and a calorie goal. Should you want fat loss, I set a deficit of 15 per cent, which is considered conservative by others in the industry. Should a surplus be required, where someone is looking to optimize muscle growth or weight gain, it’s +15 per cent, and maintenance is sticking closely to the proposed figure.

You’ll see later in the book about protein targets, but I set mine at 1.5 g per kilogram. This is conservative too, but a lot of my clientele are new to protein targets and I don’t want to throw them in at the deep end too early (or hot water that they’ll jump out of).

Macro and calorie calculators are not gospel.

They are, however, a starting point – an essential one – and although their efficacy, early doors, may not be where you’d like it to be, you’re the only one in the world who can really dial in what your numbers are. It’s worth noting, especially for any of you ladies with Polycystic Ovary Syndrome (PCOS), which you’ll come to understand a bit more about later in the book, that your targets may differ a lot from the original calculations.

MyFitnessPal (MFP)

This is the app I use to track and log calories. However, I don’t get my clients to determine their calories this way. Firstly, MFP asks you how much fat you’d like to lose a week: I don’t know anyone who doesn’t select the highest option possible, which is 2lb (0.9 kg). A hypothesized 7,000 calorie deficit a week is needed to accomplish that, so people are often left with 1,200 calories, as the app isn’t allowed to go any lower, and a lot of people will not sustain their diet on such a large deficit.

Also, MFP gives you the option to ‘eat back’ calories from exercise, which I don’t think should be the case. In essence, this means that there is an amount of ticking calories that increase as you are active throughout the day – as if to say, well, as you moved a lot, you can have more calories; if you’re sedentary, you’re not allocated the extra calories.

Firstly, you’re not a dog who gets rewarded for exercising, and secondly, if you use my calculator, your exercise is already included for each day’s calories. Should you miss the gym, I’m sure you’ll still be in a deficit, just a smaller one – nothing to cry about.

Why a ‘Calorie Fucking Deficit’ is more than just a deficit

Self-esteem, confidence and sex drives are plummeting. Social media is driving inadequacies up, people are feeling worse about themselves than ever, mental-health disorders are skyrocketing and we can no longer look at an energy deficit purely as just a mathematical equation of energy in vs energy out.

I’ve often said that having fat isn’t being fat; being fat is when your composition steals from you each day, whether it’s self-esteem, confidence or even the ability to tell someone you’re interested in asking them out without being judged on how overweight you currently are.

So this isn’t just a calorie deficit. It’s not just about having less fat. This is about feeling completely different and becoming a new person – maybe someone you used to be or someone you have spent your entire life wanting to be. It’s about making clear the only concept people need after a history of frustration and unsustainable dieting. It’s about how the principle has been intentionally kept out of reach for the people who need it.

This isn’t new science. It’s been known for a long time. People have needed this information desperately, and instead they got sold a recipe book touting how to cook from scratch or the idealism of intuitive eating, as if that was the real hidden key to sustainable and adherable fat loss. You can’t bunch together a handful of recipes and call it a solution to fat loss.

If you want a cookbook, fine. But if you want to understand the principles of fat loss for life, that’s not going to help you very much. You might make a killer three-egg omelette, but you may also have Type II diabetes creeping around the corner.

Losing fat successfully isn’t just about reducing the amount of body fat we have; it isn’t just about storing less energy in adipose tissue; and it goes beyond improving health markers. When ‘fitness people’ are in debates they’ll often hand pick certain improvements in health markers, which can sometimes be subjective. BMI, lipids, cholesterol or body-fat percentages are all commonly spoken about and debated in literature and now on social media, by experts and amateurs alike – delivering complex content and confusion to the consumer.

But fat loss, to me, goes way beyond that and much further than a six-pack.‡ It is:

 not worrying about what I order when eating out

 running with my top off because there’s less wobble going on with each stride

 wearing something I wouldn’t usually

 feeling good about myself

 starting a new sport

 waking up and being proud of my reflection

 spending more time naked

 lying in bed in the evening knowing I gave everything to every task I set myself for the day

 turning the lights on to have sex, not off

So my question to you: do you want to have less fat?

Good, but it’s not just being less fat. You can tell yourself that, but it’s bullshit. It’s more than that. It’s the fact that you wear black, the fact that when you stand up at work you pull your top down to cover your stomach. It’s how not only your confidence is at an all-time low, but it’s having a knock-on effect on other areas of your life – whether it’s standing up in a meeting to express your opinions, going on holiday and worrying about the plane seat, or even what you order at dinner in front of your friends and a constant fear of being judged. It’s about worrying about your health. We as human beings hugely underestimate the chances of bad things happening to our health or that of our loved ones.

This goes deeper than just weighing less. This goes further than having fewer cells with energy in them around our bodies.

Fat loss is about liberation, freedom, eradication of guilt, being more confident and not just looking better, but feeling better for every second of every fucking day. That’s more than just having less fat, I can assure you.

Weight

Weight and fat are often used interchangeably. It’s an issue I get pretty pissed off about, and I’ve moaned to clients about it over the years a lot.

James, I’ve lost inches, but I weigh the same as I did before.

Weight is your relationship to the ground with gravity, that’s it.

The amount of fat you have is different and although over time there would be positive correlations between weight and fat loss, it’s not to be taken as a metric to lose sleep about. Why? Because there are a lot of fluctuations in our weight which are not related to our fat mass.

To be crass, a long piss or a big shit could easily be enough weight in the bowel or bladder for you to step on the scales and pull your hair out. My personal record is about 0.6kg from a poo – I simply stand on the scale before, then again after. I’ve done the same when I really need a wee and I’ve racked up a similar weight. Imagine, if you will, you were to pee in a pint glass: if you fill it up, that’s 0.56kg of water weight.

Ladies will fluctuate throughout their menstrual cycle, and you’ll find out in the Female Fat Loss chapter that my female clients weigh Week 1 of their cycle vs Week 1 of their following cycle.

When people use the scale – or the ‘sad step’ – we have to be mindful of these non-fat-related fluctuations. If you’re curious, fine, take a look. But there are a large number of you who, every time you decide to step on to the scale, then step off feeling demotivated, depressed and that your diet isn’t working. And it’s often because of these non-fat-related fluctuations. Sweat, hydration, muscle glycogen, time of day, bowel movements, fibre, salt intake and even how much you’ve had to speak (dehydration) – not to mention diuretics like coffee impacting on your net hydration – are all huge factors in weight. Considering 1lb (0.45kg) is enough for someone to be applauded or shamed at a slimming club, it’s worth noting that although we should keep an eye on weight, it’s a poor metric for short-term micromanaged ‘success’. Month on month, it’d be pleasant to see linear progressions on net reduction of weight, but at some point that’s going to stop and you’re going to have to give it everything you have to lose half a pound.

So weigh yourself if you want to, because what gets measured gets improved, but please keep your emotions out of this. Your self-worth cannot be quantified by your relationship to gravity.

Some people will say to you that ‘muscle weighs more than fat’. This isn’t true. A kilogram of fat weighs the same as a kilogram of anything else, including muscle. Muscle occupies a smaller space than fat, though. So it’s possible that in some people there will be huge changes to their shape and composition without their weight moving a huge amount over time. And that in itself is another factor to be wary of: the gravity we attach to our weight, pardon the pun.

At this point I should mention that without demotivating you, muscle growth occurs very slowly – much slower than you’d expect. So for men, play the long game; for women … any insinuation that you’ll get bulky from lifting some weights is not only daft and unwarranted, it’s statistically nearly impossible. Not only that, but muscle that could take years to build starts to degrade after only a few weeks of not training, so appreciate any that you do grow – after all, it will be short-lived if you don’t maintain it.

Measuring body fat

If you want to know exactly how much fat you have on your body it’s possible to find out – that is, if you’re willing to be dissected. That’s right: unless we can literally dissect you, there’s no way of knowing exactly how much adipose tissue (body fat) you have at this moment in time. What we do have at our disposal are methods for getting good estimations of our fat mass.

The most common methodology for this is known as ‘bioelectrical impedance’. Now, I’m sorry to break it to you, but this involves standing on plates placed onto scales and holding on to metal handles, so that electricity can pass through you to give off readings of all sorts, including fat-free mass, lean body mass and bone density, apparently.

Unfortunately, this is the least accurate of the mainstream methods to estimate how much fat you have; it’s easily influenced by hydration statuses and, in my opinion, is a gimmick for gyms. Think of it this way: should your reading say you have more fat than you thought you had, you’re going to think twice about cancelling that gym membership. On the flip side, should your body-fat percentage come out even lower than you expected – well, then you’d best keep your gym membership because it’s paying off.

There are other means of measuring, such as a ‘bodpod’, which works by using ‘air-displacement plethysmography’, of course. Then we have DEXA, which stands for ‘dual energy X-ray absorptiometry’. This was originally for testing bone density, and it’s like a big X-ray that scans you lying down. Again, I often see these being used to determine how big someone is and to promote a macronutrient goal for that composition. Gimmicky again. (I never realized how long my femurs are until I had a DEXA, but although the experience was interesting, I don’t think I’d ever really recommend one to a client, as I never got more than two sheets of A4 paper from it.)

Callipers are frequently used to quite literally pinch fat by creating skin folds. Although intrusive, they’re actually measuring the distance between two parts of skin that are influenced by fat mass. Things like bloating, food in the gut and a few other variables can be reduced with this method. Eating a meal or drinking a protein shake would influence almost all measurements, but would not influence the callipers to a tangible amount as the fat between the skin folds wouldn’t alter in that period of time.

Now, don’t be fooled by plastic callipers that a PT at your local boot camp uses to pinch one area of skin and one area only. When calliper testing is done properly the locations on the body include arm, waist, subscapular (on the back) and on the legs in several places. The callipers themselves need to be calibrated and they’re not cheap. Your boot-camp PT who got some plastic callipers off Amazon for £3 isn’t going to give you an accurate reading, I can assure you.

When the measurements have been taken from the skin folds they’re noted on a spreadsheet. The practitioner then needs to go back and do the measurements all over again in the same order, and should there be a sufficient discrepancy it will be done a third time. It’s worth noting that you must go around the body before coming back to the initial measurement, due to skin elasticity changes.

Many variables, such as time of day and even time of week, must be maintained, and there are even variables between the people doing it, so you need the same person – in my experience it can take up to forty-five minutes for the test to be done properly. Even when using the same room to carry out the test, if the person is hotter or even slightly sweaty, it makes it harder to hold the skin to measure.

Although the percentage churned out from the reading may not be 100 per cent accurate, fluctuations in weight up and down usually are. So for instance, if you’re 17 per cent, but the reading says 19 per cent, and you go on to lose 1 per cent in the coming weeks, although you’ll read 18 per cent (but really be 16 per cent), at least you can roughly gauge the correct amount of fat that you have lost.

Now, someone has to pay for this, whether that’s the trainer’s free time or the participant’s rate for the session. Plus, I can’t help but feel that if you’ve just paid a large sum of money for a block of personal-training sessions and you don’t see a change in the measurements, we could see some economy with the truth occurring. In truth, the reading says no change, the practitioner then proclaims, ‘Well done. Albeit small, you lost … 1 per cent. That’s great. Shall we go ahead with the next block of PT?’