Director of training and instructor @cyclehousela, Neuroscience specialist @allergan and personal trainer. Snapchat & Instagram: @AHines83. @ucdavis 🏈 alum.
Sleep matters more than most people realize.
When your sleep is bad, ghrelin, your hunger hormone, increases. Cravings get worse, energy drops, and fat loss becomes harder.
Prioritize your 7 to 9 hours.
If you are not strength training, you’re making fat loss harder than it needs to be. Lift weights, keep your muscle, and improve your body composition.
Use your slight caloric deficit, protein intake, and strength training as the cornerstones of your fat loss journey. I love my cardio, but I use it as the vehicle to help accelerate results.
Don’t focus solely on the scale while tracking your journey.
A body fat test, how your clothes fit and before/after photos are all great ways to monitor your progress.
The ultimate goal is to increase lean muscle tissue and reduce body fat, don’t lose sight of that.
Resistance training while in a caloric deficit is important because it’s the biggest signal for your body to keep muscle and burn fat.
I love cardio but we must tell our bodies that maintaining/increasing muscle tissue is a top priority.
If you want a bigger natural deficit without sacrificing calories, eat more protein.
Protein’s thermic effect of food (TEF) is 20%. If you consume 100 calories of protein, it’s like consuming 80 calories bc your body burns 20 calories digesting it.
Consistency is always the key but don’t strive for perfection in your diet. Perfection is too restrictive and isn’t sustainable in the long run. Consistency leads to better long term results.
Do what you’re supposed to do 80-85% of the time.
My fat loss cheat sheet:
1. Caloric deficit of 500 cals daily
2. 1g/day protein per pound of bodyweight
3. Strength training 3-4x per week
4. Sleep 7-9 hours
5. Cardio/low intensity steady state
6. Drink 120oz of water
7. Manage stress levels
How do you know if you’re in a caloric deficit?
Calculating your basal metabolic rate (BMR) is a great start.
Your BMR makes up about 70% of your total daily energy expenditure (TDEE).
Once you know your TDEE, shoot for a deficit of 500 cal/day.
Reasons why sleep is so important:
1. Helps you stay within your caloric limit & reduces food cravings
2. Improves your performance in the gym, helping you burn more calories
3. Helps your muscles to recover, thus fueling lean muscle tissue
4. Reduces your cortisol levels
Reasons to make protein 30-35% of your diet:
1. Increases muscle mass, helps reduce body fat
2. Improves bone health
3. Healthier skin, nails and hair
4. Keeps you satiated, thus eating less calories
5. High thermic effect, body burns more digesting
The best diet is the diet that is sustainable for the long term. The ultimate goal is to have a healthier relationship with, and a deeper knowledge of, the food that we put into our bodies.
When starting a fat loss journey, people typically wait until Monday and start too extreme.
When you’re ready to make a change, don’t wait, do it now.
Make small, moderate changes that will increase your chances of forming lifelong, healthy habits.
Have a rough estimate of calorie consumption vs energy expenditure.
Quality of the cals is important.
500 cals of cookies will have a different metabolic response compared to 500 cals of broccoli.
Eating that much broccoli is hard bc of the fiber & nutrient density. 🥦>🍪
Ways to increase your total daily energy expenditure:
⁃Increase your intentional exercise
⁃Increase non-exercise activity
⁃Increase protein intake
⁃Increase your REM sleep
⁃Increase your water intake
Why eat a high protein diet?
1. makes it easier to reduce body fat.
2. reduces both visceral and subcutaneous fat.
3. increases energy expenditure by way of its thermic effect, which helps prevent excess fat gain.
Go find a way to consume 50g of protein at breakfast.