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When someone decides to lose weight, quite often they will start by buying a new pair
of runners and preparing themselves to do more cardio as their frst step, however,
what many people dont realize is that the contribution of exercise to weight loss is
signifcantly less than diet.
Studies indicate a far greater weight loss achieved through modifcation of diet
(through a caloric defcit) compared to exercise, with small additional beneft from
combining exercise with diet modifcation. This doesnt mean you should disregard
exercise as there are signifcant health benefts from exercise as well as helping to
retain lean body mass whilst in a caloric defcit, however dont go overboard doing 2
hours of fasted cardio a day, it isnt necessary and is more likely detrimental to your
health. The key to weightloss is to be smart and effcient and 2 hours of cardio a day
certainly isnt effcient.
1. Relying too heavily on
exercise compared to diet.
1
Our advice: Start off by getting your diet right, if you
need help with your diet, you can send us an email to
info@macroft.com and we will send you in the right
direction. Lift weights and use cardio as a tool to help
you push through plateaus in weightloss but dont rely
solely on cardio for weightloss. Be effcient by using
more HIIT (High Intensity Interval Training) as opposed
to LISS (Low Intensity Steady State) cardio as HIIT will
allow you to burn more energy in less time compared to
LISS as HIIT is higher intensity.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
Anyone who wants to lose weight generally looks for quick results and quite often this
means extreme caloric restriction. Although this will provide quick weight loss, there
are two undesirable outcomes of a prolonged extreme calorie defcit; a signifcant
loss of lean body mass (muscle mass) and a signifcant reduction in metabolic rate
caused by metabolic adaptation whereby your body will adapt to a low caloric intake
and become more effcient at functioning on low calories.
If you have been dieting on a low amount
of calories ie. 1200 calories a day, after
the initial weight loss you will likely reach a
plateau, in which you would have to decrease
your calorie intake even further to continue
losing weight which is NOT a healthy practice.
Not to mention how diffcult it is to maintain
such a low amount of calories and function
normally, whilst also dealing with the stress
that this would cause.
2. Starting your diet with
a very low caloric intake.
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Our advice: Find out roughly what your calorie and macronutrient intake should be
to maintain your weight with an online macro calculator (ours is coming very soon!)
and use this as a guideline to start your weight loss. Use a moderate caloric defcit
(300-500 calories less than your maintenance amount) and make small adjustments
as you progress, no extremes!
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
3. Restricting food choices.
One of the frst things many people will do when they decide to diet for weight loss is
completely cut out any foods that they perceive to be unhealthy, which quite often
includes all of the foods we enjoy eating. This immediately sets you up to fail. When
youve been on such a strict diet without any deviation from the plan, the moment
you fall and eat those foods youve been craving, it all of a sudden turns into an all
out, all you can eat binge. Why? Because you feel like youve failed yourself and
undone all the hard work so you might as well make the most of it, right?
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Our advice: Be fexible with your food choices, eat in moderation, and eat the
foods you love to eat but eat them in moderation. Just because you ate one cookie,
doesnt mean you have to eat the whole bag and if you do slip up, the sooner you
get back on track the better off you will be in the long term. Be a strict dieter not a
restricted dieter.
Restricting your food choices makes dietary
adherence very diffcult and is commonly
associated with eating disorders like
orthorexia, characterized by an extreme
or excessive preoccupation with avoiding
foods perceived to be unhealthful. A holistic
approach needs to be taken with health
which includes healthy relationships with
food, not just a healthy physical being, but
mental too.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
4. Expecting perfection.
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Our advice: Do not expect perfection in weight loss and do not be rigid with your
diet efforts. Small consistent efforts over a long time will be far better than short
term extremes when it comes to weight loss. If something isnt working for you then
there obviously needs to be changes made somewhere. Dont simply give up.
If you go into a diet expecting there to be
no setbacks along the way you are going to
be very disapointed when you fnd out that
weight loss isnt so simple. No one is perfect,
you will make mistakes and you will have
setbacks, you will reach plateaus in weight
loss but these can be overcome.
Many dieters try to be far too absolute when
dieting and when these people are on a diet
then they are ON A DIET and there is absolutely no leniency whatsoever. These kinds
of people are known as rigid dieters and they usually adopt an extreme right or wrong
mentality where they either expect 100% perfection while they are on their diet, or
they completely disregard food choices and exercise when they arent dieting. This
is commonly seen in yo-yo dieters, who go from extreme dieting, back to the habits
that made them overweight in the frst place, making them put the weight back on
quicker than before.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
5. Not using diet breaks.
Diets create a signifcant amount of mental stress especially the longer you diet. For
someone with a large amount of weight to lose, say 40lbs, going by the recommended
1-2lbs/week for fat loss, it could take 20-40 weeks of dieting to lose that amount
of weight. Nearly a year of dieting, seems pretty daunting doesnt it? Now imagine if
you stuck to a rigid diet plan for 40 weeks with no breaks at all, its fair to say your
psychological health wouldnt be great and the chance that you would actually be
able to maintain the diet without having some serious binges along the way is pretty
low. For this reason you need to incorporate diet breaks to assist in the long term
maintenance of the diet.
What is a diet break?
A diet break involves taking 1-2 weeks off from your diet and increasing your food
intake to maintenance levels. Its also a chance to be less strict if you are tracking
your intake. Diet breaks assist in limiting the decline in metabolic rate caused by
prolonged dieting as well as restoration of hormone levels that contribute to fat loss.
You may experience weight gain during a diet break however it will be due to the
replenishment of muscle glycogen from increased carbohydrate intake which in turn
will cause water retention also. It is highly unlikely that you will gain any fat, as you
will be eating at your maintenance amount.
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Our advice: Take a 1-2 week diet break for every 10-12 weeks of dieting. Return
your calories to maintenance amounts during this period and give yourself a bit of
freedom if you are tracking your caloric intake.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
6. Inappropriate use of
free meals.
The problem with free meals is that many people, especially those that have extreme
restrictions on food choices and are very strict with their calorie intake, use them
as a means of eating as much food as they can in a single meal to the point where
they not only feel sick physically but psychologically sick from the belief that they
have failed their diet and themselves. Free meals need to be a chance to get away
from the diet but not to the point where you eat yourself into a coma or feel bad for
breaking your diet.
The frst mistake of free meals is referring to them as
cheat meals, which is very common practise. The negative
connotations of the word cheat create a negative
mindset when dieting so its a good idea to refer to cheat
meals as free meals, or reward meals instead. The idea
of a free meal is to help psychologically. After dieting for
extended periods of time it becomes increasingly diffcult
to adhere to a strict diet and so free meals provide a
very brief break from the diet. Free meals assist with
dietary adherence and make the diet far more tolerable,
meaning you can produce continual weight loss results
in the long term instead of brief repeated weight loss
efforts that end in failure.
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Our advice: Use your free meal to eat a non-diet meal that allows you to eat some
of the things you wouldnt usually include while dieting but dont eat 5 times the
amount you would normally eat. Its a good idea to eat your free meal at a restaurant
as you are unlikely to order three main meals and four desserts and it gives the meal
more a rewarding feeling for your dieting efforts as opposed to a guilty binge in the
privacy of your home.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
7. Believing specifc foods exist
that will make you burn fat.
All foods are made up of macronutrients (protein, fat and carbohydrate). The body
cannot differentiate between foods any further than the macronutrients that make
up those foods. The balance of energy input vs. energy output is the greatest
determining factor for fat loss and the foods that make up this energy input make
no difference to fat loss. You cant eat an unlimited amount of broccoli and expect to
lose weight, it goes against basic human thermodynamics. Eat less energy than your
body burns and you will lose weight, simple. There is no such thing as a fat burning
food, there is only food.
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Our advice: Forget about fat burning foods and focus on the overall daily energy
intake and macronutrient composition of your diet. Eat a higher amount of protein
to help with fullness while dieting and make use of the higher thermic effect that
protein provides.
It is worthy to note that the different
macronutrients each have a different
thermic response or Thermic Effect of
Food (TEF). What this means is that
each macronutrient requires different
amounts of energy to be broken down
and utilized by the body. The thermic
effect of protein is ~20-35% meaning
roughly 20-35% of the calories that you
consume from proteins, will be used
in the process of breaking down the
macronutrient to be utilized by the body, whereas the TEF for carbohydrates is roughly
5-15% and 0-5% for fats. This means that eating a higher percentage of protein while
dieting is going to be benefcial for weight loss. Protein is generally more flling also,
so a higher percentage of protein will likely help to curb hunger slightly while dieting.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
8. Not tracking food intake
accurately or not tracking at all.
There is no doubt that tracking calorie
and macronutrient intake is the most
effcient way to measure how much food
you are eating and determine how much
you need to eat to lose weight. Obviously
it isnt imperative to track calories and
macros to lose weight, however by not
doing so, you will not know how much
you are eating from day to day and if
you reach a plateau you wont know
what or how much to change in order to
maintain your weight loss.
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Our advice: Be strict with your calorie tracking but not obsessed, if something
comes up and you cant track something, dont stress, just move on. Find the
macronutrient composition that is best suited to you and your goals and if you arent
tracking calories or macros, we strongly encourage you to start.
With that said, the accuracy of tracking your intake is also vital to ensure you get
the results you are looking for. A few untracked items can quickly add up to 500+
calories meaning you may no longer be in a caloric defcit and you simply wont lose
weight. Unless you are experienced enough to know what you are doing, you need
to track your intake perfectly, at least until you become more experienced and can
make educated decisions about your food intake whilst dieting. Lets not forget we
are trying to be more fexible, so we dont want to become obsessed.
You also need a macronutrient composition that is suited to your needs and you
need to ensure that you are getting relatively close to the daily targets set for these
macronutrients, otherwise if things arent going the way you want, you wont really
know what you need to change to help you reach your weight loss goals.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
9. Failing to use trial
and error.
So youve used an online calculator to calculate your calorie and macronutrient
requirements for weight loss. You start tracking for a month and yet there are still no
changes. You simply cant fgure out what you are doing wrong. Contrary to what you
may think, this is a good thing. You now have a baseline from which you can adjust
your calories and macros based on what you were eating. Trial and error can also
apply to your level of exercise. If you hit a plateau in weight loss but you dont want
to reduce your calories, you can play around with your level of exercise by changing
frequency, intensity or duration until you begin losing weight again.
Too many people will try something for a brief period, and if they fail to get results
immediately, they will simply drop what they are doing and try and fnd something
new instead of using trial and error to fnd what will work for them!
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Our advice: So you arent losing weight eating
the amount of calories that was recomended to
you by the online calculator? Reduce your calories
SLOWLY until you begin to see a reduction in your
bodyweight, then you will know for sure that you are
in a calorie defcit required to lose weight. Reassess
your calorie intake every two weeks according to
your weight loss progress, if your weight loss has
come to a halt you may need to reduce your calories slightly (by 50-100 calories at a
time) and/or also add in a small amount of cardio or increase your overall exercise
level, but remember to make slight changes only that are maintainable in the long
term, not extreme changes that arent practical.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS
10. Impatience.
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Many people who start their weight loss journey forget to realise that slow progress
is still progress. It can be diffcult to accept slow progress when the mainstream
media is full of diets and weight loss supplements that promise quick and rapid
weight loss. At the very best you will be looking at a maximum of 1.5-3lbs of true fat
loss per week and maybe more for more overweight individuals, anything more than
that and you will be eating into your muscle mass, which is not a good thing.
So many people are in such a rush to lose
weight at any cost that they are potentially
doing more damage to their physical and
mental health than the beneft they are
getting from any weight loss they do achieve.
Rapid weight loss has the potential to cause
long-term damage, and it is far more diffcult
to maintain than slow, gradual weight loss.
The most successful weight loss comes about through small lifestyle changes that
are sustainable in the long term, even if they dont generate results as rapidly. An
all-or-nothing mentality is not conducive to success in weight loss. Is it better to lose
1 pound per week vs. gaining 1 pound per week because you gave up and its too
hard or Im not getting the results I think I should be getting.
Our advice: Be patient. Dont expect to lose 3lbs a week until you reach your weight
loss goal. Focus on the long term and making changes to your lifestyle that are
conducive to weight loss in the long term instead of focusing on big short term
changes that may not provide lasting weight loss results.
MACRO FIT
THE FLEXIBLE DIETING EXPERTS