What People Get Wrong About Calorie Deficits (Don’t Make These Mistakes)

What people get wrong about calorie deficits (Don’t make these mistakes)

Today we’re going to talk about the things people do wrong when trying to get into a calorie deficit to lose fat.

There’s a thought process out there that believes calories don’t matter when it comes to losing fat, and while they aren't entirely right their not wrong either. To have a successful weight loss plan, you need to do more than just restrict your calories.

I’ll rewind to the first time I lost weight. This is before I started training regularly and before my transformation between the ages of 45 to 47.

I was in construction, and this was my routine. I’d have breakfast before work; usually, it was Cheerios and milk, then I packed a lunch. Typically it was sandwiches. After work, I’d have dinner at home.

If you are interested in losing body fat and adding muscle, please email me at 1shark1bite@gmail.com for information on my personal training services.

If you would like a set of Torrobands for yourself, here is my affiliate link so you can receive 50% off on your purchase https://sale.torroband.com/?affId=555B3E5D

Check your testosterone levels from home. Just click this link http://trylgc.com/laurence and receive 20% off with code: LAURENCE20 I receive commissions on referrals to LetsGetChecked. I only recommend services I know and trust.

My Affiliate link to Lebert for their Equalizer bars and more; https://lebertfitness.com/?ref=FitAnd50 and use the discount code FITAND50 you will receive 20% off your purchase

Facebook; https://www.facebook.com/Fit-and-50-5...

My Amazon page link; https://www.amazon.com/shop/fitand50

So to lose weight, all I did was bring one less sandwich to work, and for dinner, I would draw an imaginary circle on my plate. I made sure my dinner fit into this circle without piling up my food.

So by reducing the amount of food I was eating, I put myself in a calorie deficit and lost weight. I ended up weighing less than I do now, but no six-pack because weight loss and fat loss are two different things.

One of the mistakes I made was I didn’t eat mindfully. Often I would be starving around 11 o’clock and would have to tough it out for the next hour until noon when I could eat again. My body was trying to tell me something

This meant one of two things, either I didn’t eat enough food the meal before, or I didn’t eat enough of the right type of food.

It’s normal to be a little bit hungry when losing fat, but you shouldn’t be starving. That’s too extreme. To avoid this, let’s first look at what’s the right type of food.

The more processed a food is, the less food volume and nutrition per calorie, which leaves you feeling hungry sooner than if you had eaten whole, unprocessed foods.

For example, a slice of white bread like what I would of been eating in my sandwiches is around 46 grams and 121 calories for one piece, where a potato that weighs 148 grams has only 110 calories with over 3 times the weight, it feels more substantial in your stomach and digests slower. Coincidentally potatoes rate the highest on the satiety index.

The next mistake I made was not correctly spreading out my food during the day. At dinner time, I sat down to eat because it was dinner, not because I was hungry.

So I could have eaten a little less at the meal before dinner and used these extra calories in the meal before lunch to keep me from feeling like I was starving an hour before lunchtime, and by dinner, I’d be ready to eat.

Something else I was doing wrong is I wasn’t training. Being in a calorie deficit can cause your metabolism to slow down and a loss of muscle mass. Making losing body fat even more challenging.

To counteract this, we need to be more active. Adding in not only cardio but also resistance training to ensure we are losing body fat and not valuable muscle mass.

Another way we can protect our muscle, whether we are training or not, is to eat more protein. Having protein at every meal helps us feel full longer, enabling us to get the most out of every calorie consumed.

One of the things I did right is I had a very rudimentary system of calorie tracking or portion control.

What I didn’t do is manage the macronutrients I was taking in. Making sure I was eating an appropriate amount of protein, fats and carbs to reach all of my nutritional needs.

Just reducing calories could leave you nutritionally deficient.

Many who are serious about tracking their calories to ensure they are in a deficit use an app like MyFitnessPal.

The amount of food we eat could be greater than the portion listed in the app or the box. This means weighing and measuring your food at home and learning how to correctly estimate your food quantities when you’re out.

Also, you need to track everything, Soft drinks, juices and alcohol can eat up a lot of calories fast without providing the nutrition or fullness signals like solid food would.