The Greatest Article on Losing Body Fat Ever

“How do I lose body fat?”

This is hands down the most common question we hear from our clients and our entire audience. 

In most cases this question comes from a place of wanting to look better and feel better. Most people want to have more energy, live longer, and frankly… look better and improve their relationship with their body. Truth be told, losing body fat is often a big part of people achieving these goals in their life. 

However, when most people ask this question they are looking at it through a relatively superficial lens. This is not necessarily their fault, it’s just that most of us haven’t been fortunate enough to get a deep dive in this topic. 

At the end of this article you are going to know exactly what body fat is, how to understand it, and the most effective ways to lose it. 

What exactly is body fat?

Body fat refers to a type of tissue in your body. Just like we have muscle tissue, bone tissue, skin tissue, etc. We also have fat tissue (in scientific terms we call it adipose tissue).

This fat (adipose) tissue is found in a lot of different places in our body. We find it directly under our skin (subcutaneous fat), within our abdominal cavity (visceral fat), in supported roles around our organs (structural fat), and in various other places (such as breast tissue in women). 

Each of these fats play different roles and have different effects on our body and our overall health. 

Without going too deep down the rabbit hole let’s talk about the two most important types of fat: subcutaneous fat and visceral fat. 

Subcutaneous and Visceral Fat

Let’s begin with subcutaneous fat. This type of body fat is what we most commonly think of when we think about body fat. It is the type of fat found directly below your skin and sits between your skin and your muscles. This is the most visible type of fat and it functions primarily as a source of stored (extra) energy. It stores this energy in the form of triglycerides, which make up the vast majority of your subcutaneous fat cells. 

Visceral fat is found primarily within your abdominal cavity and often around some of your internal organs. This fat is much more biologically active than your subcutaneous fat. This visceral fat often produces inflammatory molecules and other molecules that are related to chronic diseases. For example, visceral fat can increase the risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. 

While both types of fat carry health risks, visceral fat has a much greater health risk than subcutaneous fat. 

Why it’s good

At first glance body fat sounds a bit scary, but the reality is, body fat is actually essential to not only our ability to survive but also thrive.  

Our body relies on body fat for a variety of important things:

• It functions as our primary energy reserve (even a lean person stores 30,000-60,000 extra calories in their subcutaneous fat).
• Helps protect our body from physical force
• Helps store necessarily vitamins
• Helps maintain body temperature
• Plays a critical role in our nervous system
• Is critical for maintaining hormonal health, especially in women

Body fat is so critical to our survival that there is actually a level of body fat that is considered “essential” by the medical community. 

When it’s bad

If body fat is considered so important and effectively essential, then why is it bad? 

Well it turns out that body fat has a Goldilocks zone. 

Too little is bad and too much is bad.  

When body fat levels exceed certain thresholds fat accumulation begins to shift from subcutaneous to more visceral fat and begins causing metabolic issues such as insulin resistance, hypertension, and a host of other potential issues. 

In the modern world most people fall into the category of carrying too much body fat.  Let’s dive into this concept of the Goldilocks zones for body fat.

Understanding Body Fat Percentages and Health

Men and women naturally carry different levels of body fat. This is a genetic difference determined primarily by differences in hormone production and by androgen receptor distribution. 

Not only do women tend to carry a slightly higher percentage of body fat than men, they also have higher levels of essential fat. Women must maintain body fat levels around 7-10% higher than men to maintain normal hormone production and even maintain a normal menstrual cycle.

Here are data showing body fat percentages by health category for both men and women.

Body Fat vs BMI

While knowing your true body fat can be helpful, estimating body fat often requires specialized equipment and you may not have access to body fat testing equipment. There is some good news though, you can get a rough approximation of your body fat by just knowing your height and weight. 

Your height and weight can help you figure out a number known as your Body Mass Index (BMI). This is a correlation between your height and weight and gives a rough estimate of your body fat and health category you fall in. 

While it is possible that you fall into the rare category of carrying massive amounts of muscle tissue for your height (like an NFL linebacker), for most people BMI is a good tool to get a rough idea of your current body fat.  If you feel like you carry an unusually high amount of muscle mass for your size, consider finding a body composition testing facility near you. 

You can easily convert your BMI to a body fat estimate with the following equations:

For men, the formula is (1.20 x BMI) + (0.23 x Age) – 16.2.

For women, the formula is (1.20 x BMI) + (0.23 x Age) – 5.4.

Why You have Your Current Body Fat Amount

Your current body fat amount is driven by two main factors: lifestyle and genetics. 

There is some genetic component to exactly how much body fat an individual carries. However, genetics only explain about 20-35% of how much body fat we carry. The rest is determined by our lifestyle. 

The primary lifestyle factor that influences our body fat amount is our long term energy balance. Effectively, over the course of weeks, months, and years, are we consuming more calories or less calories than we are expending. 

If we are consuming more than we expend our body fat amount will be higher. 

If we are consuming less than we expend our body fat amount will be lower. 

How To Lower Your Body Fat Percentage

Before we dive into exactly how you can lower your body fat, let’s do a quick screen to see if you even SHOULD lower your body fat. 

If you are a female and your body fat is near 13-15% you probably should not be focused on losing more body fat. If you are a male and your body fat is close to 5-6% you should not be focused on losing more body fat. 

Additionally, if you are experiencing health issues associated with low energy intake (amenorrhea, low testosterone, hair loss), you should not focus on losing additional body fat. 

With that under our belt, if you are able to focus on fat loss let’s dive into the most effective ways to lose body fat… the truth may actually surprise you with our simple it can actually be.

Long Term Energy Balance

Fundamentally, losing body fat comes down to one simple idea: you need to be expending more calories per day that you are consuming. 

That’s it. 

That is the core underlying principle of it. 

In fact, every study ever conducted on human fat loss has shown that this is how we lose body fat. 

This means that it ultimately comes down to slightly reducing our calorie intake and increasing our energy.  Let’s dive into each of these two topics. 

Reducing Calorie Intake

It seems intuitive that you will have to lower calorie intake to lose weight, but what might not be intuitive is that you don’t have to make extreme changes. In fact, just small changes in your calorie intake can pay huge dividends. 

To start, we suggest you use this free calculator to help you estimate your calorie intake if you need to lose weight. 

Once you have those calorie numbers there are a few core principles you can adopt with your food choices that will naturally help you lower calories 

The first principle is to prioritize your protein intake. Diets that are higher in protein help people consume fewer calories. In fact, increasing your protein intake to ~0.7 grams per pound can help you reduce your calorie intake by 300-500 kcals per day without much additional effort. 

The second principle is to prioritize low energy density, high-volume foods. Foods have a different amount of calories per unit of food, which is referred to as a food’s energy density (also often called calorie density). 

Foods have varying degrees of calorie density, with some foods such as broccoli having incredibly low energy density, while other foods such as oils, butter, and nuts having incredibly high energy density.Foods that have lower energy density almost always contain a higher total volume (total mass and size) than foods with high energy density. For example, fruits, vegetables, and tubers (like potatoes) often contain high water and fiber content that give the food a lot of volume/mass but not a lot of calories.

Conversely, foods like nuts contain very little water and fiber and also contain a lot of fat calories. To put this in perspective, you could eat 129 blueberries or 3 Brazil nuts and they would contain almost the exact same amount of calories.  Besides containing fewer calories, consuming higher volume foods helps you control hunger.

It turns out that your stomach uses the physical sensation of fullness (more so than calorie content) to help determine hunger and satiety. Our stomach has stretch receptors that sense how physically full the stomach is. When these are activated by the stomach being full they send signals to the brain telling us to stop eating.

This means that simple food swaps to incorporate higher volume foods can help you manage hunger better. This often doesn’t require massive life changes either. For example, here are simple food swaps you can make that can drastically change your food volume:

• Fruits: choose an apple over a banana
• Starch: choose potatoes over rice
• Protein: choose chicken over ground beef

The third principle is to eat less processed foods. Processed foods are often engineered to make us consume more calories. They are tastier, contain more calories per bite than other foods, and are designed to make us continue eating past when we are full. In fact, people who consume diets with little to no processed foods consume almost 500 kcals per day less than people who consume diets high in processed foods. 

Activity Vs Exercise

This is one area that is MASSIVELY misunderstood when it comes to weight loss. 

In fact, it is so misunderstood that you should essentially throw out everything you know before you go to the next paragraph. 

There is no specific form of exercise that is the secret to losing body fat. In fact, the goal of exercise is not actually to lose body weight. The goal of exercise is to ask your body to adapt to that type of exercise. For example, lifting weights tells your body to build muscle while cardio tells your body to make your heart more effective and efficient.

Nothing about exercise tells your body to lose weight per se. Exercise can result in calorie expenditure… but that isn’t really the true goal of exercise… It is more of the cost of doing the exercise. 

Now this doesn’t mean that the calories we burn from exercise don’t help with fat loss, they definitely do,  but they are sort of the secondary function of exercise.

What really matters most is the total physical activity and calories you burn in a day, of which exercise is a small part. This means that the rest of your life matters just as much as the exact type of exercise you do. 

The best way to think about your total physical activity is to break it into two concepts: your activity and your exercise. 

Your activity is effectively all the non-exercise movement you do throughout the day. This includes walking, doing chores, taking the stairs, mowing the lawn, your physical hobbies, and other forms of movement. For most people this actually accounts for ~2-3x the calorie expenditure in a day that exercise does. 

Your exercise is the structured physical activity you do to elicit adaptations from your body and because you enjoy doing it. If you love weight lifting, do weight lifting. If you love running, run more. 

It is the combination of your total physical activity that matters more than the specific type of exercise you do. 

While exercise is relatively straightforward, tracking your physical activity can feel confusing. However, there is a simple way to do it. You can simply use your step count per day as a good proxy aiming for 8,000-10,000 steps per day is a great target for initiating body fat loss. 

Common Roadblocks and How to Overcome Them.

Losing body fat can be a bit of a bumpy journey at times. Some weeks you will make amazing progress and some weeks progress will be a little slow. 

Although faster and slower progress weeks are normal, having several weeks or months with no progress is not. Oftentimes, when several weeks pass with no progress it comes down to a few small things that are holding you back. 

The first is lack of dietary adherence. Sticking to a plan long term can be hard. Life gets busy, we get distracted, we have occasions to celebrate. Put succinctly, we are humans and sticking to a dietary plan gets tough. It turns out that no matter what diet you follow, adherence begins to drop pretty dramatically after about 90 days. Paying close attention and recalibrating your adherence every 90 days can be really helpful. 

The second common road block is underestimating our actual intake. Most of us are not great estimators of our food intake… in fact we often underestimate our calorie intake by 10-20%. This even includes professional nutritionists and registered dietitians. No seriously, one study found that dietitians underestimate by ~10-15% and one person in the study underreported by as much as 800 calories per d​​ay.

It can often be helpful to closely measure and weigh your food for a few days every few months just to ensure that you are accurately estimating. You don’t have to track forever, but doing this for a few days every so often can help recalibrate your estimating skills. 

The third common roadblock is not reaching daily physical activity goals. Modern life is designed for us to be sedentary. We wake up, drive to work, sit in an office, drive home, maybe go to the gym for an hour, then sit on the couch until we go to bed. Without making movement a priority in our life it is very easy for us to slip into habits of spending less than 30-60 minutes a day moving around.

Setting a clear activity target, usually as a step goal, and ensuring you hit that goal daily can be incredibly helpful. The goal doesn’t have to be super high, while 8,000-10,000 would be considered ideal for most people, even just 6,000 steps a day can be helpful. 

Macros Inc Can Accelerate Your Body Fat Loss 

As shown, when it comes to losing weight, it’s all about burning more calories than you eat each day. Making those small tweaks to your daily calorie intake, focusing on protein, choosing satisfying but low-calorie foods, and staying active are key strategies that can make a big difference. While you can definitely tackle these on your own, having a coach can really help turbocharge your progress, making it quicker and easier to achieve your weight loss goals. Sometimes, you just need that extra accountability and support to stay on track and navigate any obstacles along the way.

That’s where Macros Inc steps in. We’re all about making life easier for you. No extreme diets—just small achieveable changes with a plan that fits your life, and helps you lose weight the right way. We know how important nutrition is. Our personalized Nutrition Coaching is tailored to your preferences and goals, ensuring you fuel your body right while working towards your ideal weight. With expert guidance and support from your dedicated coach, staying on track is easier than ever.

Life can get hectic, we get it. That’s why our Fitness Coaching is realistic, flexible, and sustainable. We customize workout plans to fit your goals, fitness level, and schedule that will help your body adapt and change. Matched with a dedicated coach who understands your challenges, we’ll give you the expert advice and encouragement you need to crush your goals, no matter how busy things get.

Looking to maximize your weight loss goals? Combine and save with our Fitness + Nutrition Coaching package, the ultimate support for reaching your weight loss goals and mastering your new healthy lifestyle. We’re here to guide you every step of the way.

Not sure if coaching is right for you? Try our 14-day free trial and experience firsthand how we can help you achieve your goals. Alternatively, why not book a discovery call with one of our team and learn more about what coaching with Macros Inc can do for you? Let’s work together to maximize your efforts for faster results and a happier, healthier you.