WILKINSONTRAINING

Your Fat
Loss Guide

Everything you need to know about fat loss - backed by science and explained by a coach with 400+ success stories.

How Fat Loss Works:

To understand fat loss, we first want to understand some basics:

• Bodyfat is just stored energy.
• Calories are just a measurement of energy, just like miles are a measurement of distance or grams are a measurement of mass.
• The body needs calories/energy for everything: movement, keeping your heart beating, brain functioning, digesting food... everything. This total daily calorie spend is called our total daily energy expenditure.

Now knowing these things, it's important to know that a calorie deficit is what will make us lose body fat.

There are many ways to obtain a calorie deficit. This is why keto, intermittent fasting, tracking calories in a deficit or just doing tons of cardio can all help you lose fat.

But the requirement is that you must be in a deficit.

One thing worth noting: fat loss and weight loss are not the same thing. The scale measures everything - fat, muscle, water, food in your stomach, and more. The scale is just our way of tracking fat loss, but it's flawed because it doesn't isolate to show just fat loss.

So, the most accurate way to track with the scale is by weighing in at the same time daily and tracking the trends.

Ways the Scale May Be Misleading You

• You're giving up before seeing progress. You could be doing everything perfectly, but constipated for 3 days and as a result quit because we don't see any progress yet.
• You're too zoomed in. The scale staying the same for a few days doesn't mean much. You might have trended down 4 lbs over the past 2 weeks, but are hung up on the fact that the number was the same 3 days in a row. Focus on the long-term changes.
• You're not understanding fluctuations. Sodium, alcohol, medications, irregular bowel movements, eating earlier/later than typical, stress, and DOMs are all common causes of fluctuations. For example, a pack of beef jerky containing 1,500mg sodium will make you hold 3 lbs of water. You didn't gain 3 lbs of fat - your body simply needs to maintain a balance between the electrolyte sodium and water.
• You may not be using it properly. If weighing in less than 3x/week, we're not using the scale properly. Fluctuations of 1-3 lbs on a day-to-day basis are very normal. If we're weighing in less than 3x/week we're guessing, not tracking trends. The more data we have the better.
• Your timing isn't right. We'll naturally gain 2-5 lbs throughout the day as we eat and go about our day. So if we're weighing in at different times we'll be misled.

Why You Might Not Be Losing Fat

If you've been trying to lose fat but the results aren't showing up, one or more of these is almost certainly why.

How to Know If You're Actually Losing Fat

Because the scale can be misleading, it's important to track multiple signals at once. Here are the most reliable ones.

How Much Fat Can You Realistically Expect to Lose?

Generally speaking, losing up to 1% of your total bodyweight per week is a healthy, sustainable rate of loss. This is considered the gold standard for preserving muscle while losing fat.

So for example, if you weigh 200 lbs, losing up to 2 lbs per week sits within that guideline. If you weigh 150 lbs, that's up to 1.5 lbs per week.

It's also worth noting that this doesn't account for the water weight/temporary weight we inevitably lose when reducing calories and eating less food mass.

How to Guarantee Faster Fat Loss

• 1
  Track Your Calories

  As the saying goes: if you want to manage it measure it. Tracking (especially when accurately) helps you to ensure that you're actually losing body fat. Fat loss is a big important goal, and we should treat it that way. For example, if saving money for your wedding date, you'd want to make sure that you have enough money to pay for the big day, so you'd keep a budget or have a plan. The same should be applied here. This doesn't mean you have to track for the rest of your life, but to accomplish your goals and develop nutrition structure tracking is very wise.
• 2
  Monitor Progress

  Fat loss is a matter of inputs and outputs. The inputs are the numbers going in, but progress measurements help us to ensure we're seeing our desired outputs (results). For example, you could be tracking and hitting your calorie goal and not making any progress because your calorie goal could be set incorrectly, you could be tracking inaccurately etc. Using progress measurements helps you to ensure your approach is correct.
• 3
  Don't Skip Tracking Days

  Imagine if I were keeping a budget, and I tracked my expenses every day except the weekend. I couldn't possibly know (we aren't as good at guessing as we think) how many calories I spent on the weekend. "If you want to manage it, measure it" applies to all 7 days of the week; and ignorance appears to be bliss. This doesn't mean you can't enjoy yourself of course, you should be able to eat out, have desserts etc. You just want to make sure you're keeping track so a couple unaccounted for days don't blow up your week of progress.
• 4
  Hit Your Protein Target

  Generally, 0.7-1g/lb of bodyweight is a good protein target, though this can vary depending on a few factors. Hitting your protein goal will not only help you stay full, but it helps with calorie burn (by way of the thermic effect). It also helps you preserve, and ideally build new muscle so as you lose fat you obtain a defined look rather than a "skinny fat" look.
• 5
  Prioritize Sleep

  Poor sleep is linked to poor food decisions, and hormonal irregularity. It's hard to stick to your nutritional targets when you're starving, and feeling stressed out. Sleep is massively important for keeping hunger at bay (and it plays a role in pretty much everything else in fitness). If you struggle with falling or staying asleep message me on Instagram and I'll gladly share some tips. Who knows, maybe I'll make a sleep guide soon! :)
• 6
  Adjust When You Plateau

  Your metabolism (energy expenditure) slows down overtime. This is because your body adjusts its calorie spend when it realizes it doesn't have enough coming in. Just like if you lost your job, you would maybe skip vacation and not eat out for a little while, the body spends less calories on non-essential functions. Plus fat tissue in itself requires calories.
• 7
  Stay Consistent

  Fitness is a life-long marathon, so does it matter how fast you can sprint for a short period of time? Imagine if you sprinted the first mile of a marathon, and then collapsed. Would that be worth it? Of course not. Without consistent action, our efforts won't show over the long-term. You'll have bad days, and so will I, but getting back up and persevering is what separates temporary failure from long-term defeat.

How to Prevent Weight Regain

As the saying goes, we don't have a weight gain problem, we have a weight re-gain problem. Keeping body fat off is much harder than losing it. Statistically 80-95% of people who lose weight gain it back - here are 3 tips that will help you ensure you're part of the few who lose fat and keep it off:

• 1
  Follow a Sustainable Approach in the First Place

  Your approach needs to be sustainable. It doesn't matter how good your willpower is, nobody can sprint a marathon. If you're going to build a house, build it on firm foundation. You may be able to erect a house of cards faster than a well built house, but the house of cards will fall. Why build something that won't last? The key is building a manageable lifestyle, not following a diet you can't sustain. If I lose fat by cutting out everything I love, I will re-gain the fat when I re-introduce everything I love. Flexibility is required for sustainability.
• 2
  Reverse Metabolic Adaptation After the Cut

  As I mentioned earlier, your metabolism adapts to calorie restriction. If you're in a deficit, you're quite literally underfeeding yourself, and your body isn't going to let you starve without putting up a fight. In the same way where we would spend less money if we lost our job, the body spends less calories by adjusting BMR, NEAT & thyroid hormone secretions. We also secrete more ghrelin (hunger hormone) less leptin (fullness hormone), and adjust many other hormones (insulin, cortisol, testosterone, growth hormone) in effort to re-gain the weight and prevent starvation.
  
  The solution is a well executed reverse diet. This process is effectively how we communicate to our physiology that we aren't in fact starving and are once again bringing in enough calories. The reverse diet is like the metaphorical equivalent of getting a new job with an income once again after being without an income for a while - it provides the body with relief. The reverse is a complex process, and a big reason why many people re-gain weight is because they don't follow this process, or they don't follow it correctly.
• 3
  Hire a Coach to Take Out the Guesswork

  Everything in this guide gives you the knowledge. But knowledge and implementation are two very different things. Most people know what to do - they just struggle with the how, the consistency, and the adjustments along the way. A good coach removes the guesswork entirely, builds the plan around your specific situation, adjusts it as you progress, and keeps you accountable every step of the way. That's exactly what I do for my clients - and it's why my results are so consistent and have been proven highly effective hundreds of times.

  Learn about 1-on-1 coaching with me →

WILKINSONTRAINING