If you’re someone who’s trying to lose fat or body recomp, then you’ve most likely heard of a calorie deficit.
There are a lot of benefits of being in a calorie deficit if you’re looking to slim down and lose fat.
However, before starting a calorie deficit, it’s important to understand what a calorie deficit is. As well as it’s role in fat loss.
Additionally, it’s essential to understand how to create a calorie deficit that’s healthy and sustainable.
In this post, I want to share everything there is to know about being in a calorie deficit. So that you can achieve your dream physique.
In this post you’ll find:
What is a calorie deficit
A calorie deficit means that you’re consuming less calories than your body burns in a day.
This means that your body has less calories available than it needs to maintain your weight.
With slightly fewer calories than your basic metabolic needs, your body will turn to burning fat for the little additional energy it needs.
This is why a calorie deficit is essential for fat loss.
How to be in a calorie deficit
The two main ways that people achieve a calorie deficit are:
- 1) Consuming less calories
- Or 2) Increasing exercise
Consuming less calories:
If you plan to achieve a calorie deficit by consuming fewer calories, then there are so many ways to go about this.
You’re main focus should be on eating high volume, low calorie foods.
Doing this will allow you to eat the most amount of food and keep yourself full, while still consuming fewer calories.
Foods like lean meats, vegetables, fish, eggs, yogurt, fruit, squash, potatoes, and so on are great foods to help you stay in a calorie deficit.
Increasing exercise:
On the other hand, if you plan to be in a calorie deficit by exercising more, then you’ll want to start a consistent exercise routine.
In order for you to see the results from your new fitness routine, you’ll need to learn how to stay motivated and consistent in your routine. This will give your results time to show.
Weightlifting is one of the best exercises to help you stay in a calorie deficit.
Rather than burning more calories during your workout, weightlifting will continue to boost your metabolism over time.
As you can imagine, having a higher metabolism comes in handy when you’re trying to lose fat.
Boosting your metabolism will require you to eat more to maintain your weight. As well as allow you to eat more and still lose weight.
That’s one of the reasons why weightlifting gets better the more you do it.
A combination of the two:
The best way to be in a calorie deficit is to combine consuming fewer calories with exercising more.
Combining the two rather than solely focusing on one will allow you to be less extreme with both of them.
You can cut a few calories here, burn a few more calories there, and before you know it you’ll be in your goal deficit.
The importance of a calorie deficit for fat loss
A calorie deficit is the key to slimming down and losing fat.
When you’re not in a calorie deficit, your body has an abundance of calories in order to sustain everyday functions.
As well as provide your body with all of the energy it needs.
Because you’re eating enough calories, you’re body has enough energy ready and available for it to use throughout the day.
This means it doesn’t need to tap into any stored energy sources, because it already has everything it needs.
However, when you decrease your calorie intake ever so slightly, your body no longer has all the available energy it needs.
So what does it do now? It goes into your stored energy sources. And, your stored energy just happens to be the fat on your body.
As a result, a calorie deficit causes your body to turn from burning the sugars in your blood, to now burning the fat on your body.
What happens if your calorie deficit is too extreme
Now, a calorie deficit seems great and all, however there are a few things to be cautious of when being in a deficit.
Think about it, a calorie deficit means you’re intentionally preventing your body from having all the energy it needs.
But because your body needs energy to thrive and survive, you need to be careful how you go about this.
The biggest caution you’ll want to take is to not make your calorie deficit too extreme.
Meaning you shouldn’t keep your calorie intake too low.
If you cut your calories too low and take away too much of your body’s energy, you risk causing your body unnecessary harm.
You risk losing valuable nutrients that your body needs:
The first issues with this could be that you end up not eating enough food and not giving your body enough nutrients.
When this happens, you’ll most likely become extremely irritable, have low energy, struggle with sleeping, increase your risk of injuries in the gym, and so on.
And long term, you risk becoming malnourished.
Your body could start breaking down muscle:
Another thing that happens when you don’t eat enough is that your body starts to break down your muscle.
When you cut your calories too low, your body will start to look for more than just your fat to break down for energy.
The next thing it will go to is your muscle!
As you can imagine, this is extremely counter productive for anyone trying to gain muscle or body recomp.
The best deficit for a calorie deficit
Depending on your own body’s needs and your activity levels, the correct deficit for everyone will vary.
However, generally for most people the sweet spot is to be in a deficit of 250 to 500 calories per day.
Since each pound of fat is made up of 3,500 calories, this puts you in position to lose about .5 to 1 pound per week.
Which is exactly the healthy, recommended speed of fat loss.
The best tips for a successful calorie deficit
Here are some of the best tips for a successful calorie deficit and making fat loss a breeze!
Understand how a calorie deficit impacts your metabolism
It’s important to know that the longer you’re in a calorie deficit, the more your metabolism will decrease.
The reason for this is because your body will start to adjust to your new calorie intake.
If you’re body knows that you’ll be giving it less calories everyday, then it will start to burn less calories everyday.
However, there are a couple things you can do to combat this.
First, you might need to increase your deficit (consume fewer calories) very slightly throughout your journey.
That’s why it’s good to start out in a smaller deficit, so that you never end up increasing your deficit too much.
Second, you might need to increase the amount of exercise you’re doing.
Doing more cardio will allow you to burn more calories and create a bigger deficit without eating less.
How weightlifting is a game changer for your metabolism
Finally, probably the best option that I encourage everyone to try, you could incorporate weightlifting into your gym routine.
Weightlifting will keep your metabolism from decreasing and instead increase your metabolism as your journey goes on.
This will allow you to continue to eat more and still lose fat.
Don’t let a slowed metabolism discourage you, it will come back
Changes in metabolism are normal and happen to everyone throughout life.
Your metabolism changes based on how much you eat, what you eat, your activity levels, your muscle percentage, and so on.
Because of this, it’s important to not let the fear of your metabolism decreasing discourage you from starting a calorie deficit.
You can get your old metabolism back!
After you come out of a calorie deficit, it’s extremely easy to get your old metabolism back, or an even better one than before.
When I say easy, I mean easy for your body if you’re doing the right things.
Adopting a healthy lifestyle and gradually increasing your calorie intake with nutrient dense whole foods will get your metabolism back to normal in no time.
In fact, if you stay consistent in your healthy life style, you’ll likely boost your metabolism to even higher than it was before.
Focus on slow and steady results
Anything that’s worthwhile requires a lot of time, effort, and energy.
That’s why it’s so important to learn how to stay patient with your fitness results.
In order for your body to transform, you need to be consistent for a long time.
As a result, while you’re in your calorie deficit, you’ll want to focus on slow and steady, long term results.
Otherwise, you risk trying to rush through the process, which would be extremely counter productive.
Rushing through a fat loss journey could cause you to create a deficit that’s too extreme for yourself.
Doing this could cause issues for your body that will only drag out your entire journey.
Three things that can happen when you try and rush a fat loss journey:
First, you could deprive yourself of essential nutrients and become malnourished.
Second, you’re far more likely to gain back any weight you lost during your deficit once you go back to eating normally.
And third, since this is so unsustainable, you risk running out of willpower very quickly. Resulting in you quitting your journey altogether.
As I’m sure you can imagine, none of these outcomes get you closer to the results you want.
Instead, it’s much more important to make small changes that will give you the results you want in the long term.
Rather than trying to make huge, unsustainable changes to try and reach your goals as quickly as possible.
Takeaways
A calorie deficit is extremely helpful if you’re looking to slim down and lose fat.
However, there’s a lot to understand about being in a calorie deficit before actually starting one.
Focusing on choosing high volume, lower calorie foods, increasing your activity, and making slow, long term changes are some of the key tips to creating a successful calorie deficit.
Doing this will help ensure that you create a calorie deficit that’s healthy and sustainable for yourself.
Then, before you know it, you will have healthily achieved your dream physique!
More of my posts on health and fitness:
How to gain muscle and lose stubborn fat