Why You Can’t Lose Fat And How To Fix It
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If you’ve jumped into this video it’s probably because you have a goal to lose some fat in the new year, but the problem with most fat loss plans and diets is that they usually fail. Somewhere between 80–95% of people who start on a fat loss journey will gain their weight back in the first year, often with some extra pounds added beyond where they started from. So in today’s video I’m going to teach you how to break this trend for yourself, lose the fat, and keep it off.
But first, if you’re looking for a clear plan for the next 8-weeks, I’ve built a completely free Fatherhood Strength assessment that will ask you a few specific questions and provide you a customized 8-week plan. The key here is that you can’t do everything and you certainly shouldn’t change a bunch of stuff all at once - it’ll never stick, you need to focus in, and address the lowest hanging fruit with the highest ROI, and that’s what the assessment helps you do. So if that sounds helpful the free assessment is in the description below.
Ok so there are going to be 3 parts to this video, each addressing different but equally important parts of this journey of getting the weight off and also making it stick.
Before I outline those 3 arenas that we’ll address, let me take a minute to give you a quick outline of how weight loss actually occurs.
Fat loss exclusively happens ONLY when you are in an energy deficit, which means when the amount of calories you’re taking in is less than the amount of calories you’re burning. Now, there’s a lot of nuance in fat loss, but the nuance doesn’t change the equation itself. It only shows up in how you influence both sides of the equation—for instance, how you intake calories and how you expend them.
So right out of the gate, you need to know, that although a hormonal problem can change how many calories you burn, it doesn’t change the equation of calories in calories out. If you’re not losing weight, you’re simply taking in too many calories for how many you’re burning. It’s pure math.
Now you can INFLUENCE the math by doing things like optimizing hormones, improving the way you train, the foods you eat, and your daily activity, so that you’re burning more calories, but it doesn’t change the simplicity of the math side of things. OUT has to be greater than IN.
Now, there are 4 main ways you burn calories:
Resting Energy Expenditure. This is the amount of calories your body burns by just sitting there—to keep your heart beating, lungs working, brain functioning, and so on.
Exercise Activity Thermogenesis. This is the amount of calories you burn from exercising.
Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis (NEAT). This is any activity that isn’t formal exercise: standing up, sitting down, walking to the bathroom, doing chores, bouncing your leg while you work, and so on.
Thermic Effect of Food. This is the small amount of calories your body burns just by digesting your food.
So if you add up all your expenditure and it comes out to 2,500 calories, but you’re eating 2,700 calories, you’re in a surplus of 200 calories per day. If you maintained a 200-calorie surplus beyond your burning each day for a year, you’d gain roughly 20 lbs per year.
To put that into context, let’s say you ate perfectly clean and your caloric intake was exactly where it needed to be to cut a couple hundred calories per day, leading to 20 lbs of fat LOSS per year, but then you decided to drink 1 Starbucks latte each day, or add a little extra cooking oil to the pan, or drink 1 IPA per day (180–240 calories each), or maybe you’re a sweet tooth and it’s 4 Oreos after dinner. You’ve now made it so you won’t lose ANY weight at all. That easily, all your hard work, gone.
Also, it’s important to note that your deficit doesn’t stay the same as time goes on.
Let’s say you ate 2,000 calories per day, and burned 2,500. Now you’re in a 500-calorie-per-day deficit and will burn about 1 lb per week, (which is a great goal for most busy dads. If you cut too much it will impact your energy levels, mood, ability to sustain the cut, and overall quality of life.)
But there’s something called metabolic adaptation that occurs. The amount of calories you burn will decrease over time as you lose weight. Here’s why:
The amount of calories you burn through resting energy expenditure will go down because your body is getting smaller.
The amount of calories you burn through exercise expenditure will go down because you’re getting more fit, which means your body is becoming more efficient.
The amount of calories you burn through NEAT will go down because your body tends to become less hyperactive and more economical when energy is scarce.
And you won’t burn as many calories through the thermic effect of food because you’re not eating as much.
So the 500-calorie deficit you started out with won’t remain a 500-calorie deficit after a few weeks or months of fat loss, because when you decrease the number of calories you’re eating, you’re indirectly decreasing the number of calories you’re burning.
That’s the backdrop. With that in mind, now let’s walk through the three arenas that we’re going to break down today.
OK, so the 3 arenas we’re going to do a breakdown on today are:
The fundamentals
The advanced tweaks
The habit and mindset factors
Part 1 – The Fundamentals
Starting out in the fundamentals section, there are 3 key factors we need to ensure are in place:
Caloric Deficit – which we already talked about.
Weight Training – which is recommended to happen 3–5x per week, using heavier weight and lower rep ranges to preserve muscle mass or build new muscle effectively during this process.
Enough Protein – aiming for 0.7–1 gram per lb of bodyweight, or 1 gram per pound of your ideal goal weight of protein.
Additionally, quality of food is important. Food quality changes where your body sends incoming energy: big insulin spikes from lots of refined carbs and sugar tell your body, “Clear this out of the blood now,” pushing more of that fuel into fat storage and temporarily turning down fat-burning. Over time, a chronically junky, low-nutrient diet can also blunt thyroid function and lower key sex hormones like testosterone, which together act like the “RPM dial” on your metabolism. By contrast, nutrient-dense whole foods with adequate protein promote a more stable blood sugar that supports healthier thyroid and sex hormones, so you burn more energy at rest and rely more on stored fat between meals.
One of the other mistakes I see people make is dieting to aggressively.
The best things you can do is to diet more slowly so that it barely feels like you’re dieting at all.
General Idea / Aim:
Lose 0.5–1% of your bodyweight per week.
If you weigh 200 lbs × 0.5 to 1% = aim to lose 1 to 2 lbs per week.
If you want to cut 20 lbs, it should take you 10–20 weeks to get there.
By going slower, you’ll feel more relaxed about it, less deprived, and less likely to DESIRE to hop off the fat loss train.
This also limits your body from having any alarm bells going off that tell it that it’s being starved and pushing it into a process of down-regulating metabolism.
If you diet too aggressively, resting metabolic rate can drop 5–15% more than expected after big, aggressive weight loss.
This was seen in many studies, but one that was most interesting was in Biggest Loser follow-ups: contestants who lost massive weight saw large, persistent drops in resting metabolic rate, even 6 years later—hundreds of calories per day lower than predicted for their body size.
Now let’s talk about how to find your starting point.
HOW TO FIND MAINTENANCE CALORIES
Multiply your weight (in lbs) by 14–18.
If you are more active, you may be closer to bodyweight × 18 (or higher).
If you are less active, be closer to bodyweight × 14 (or lower).
If you aren’t sure, bodyweight × 16 is usually reasonably accurate.
From there, you create a modest deficit. Like I said, that’s probably around 500 calories per day in deficit.
Alongside that, you need to find an endpoint that’s realistic for you.
Most men have a realistic maintenance body fat percentage that is between 10% and 20% body fat.
If you’re starting at 40% it might even be harder, at least initially, for you to get to and sustain 20% than it is for someone who’s at 15% to get to and sustain 8–10%, but not always. You just need to be realistic with where you’re at and what’s an appropriate spot for you to get to.
Generally, under 8–10% is going to have a negative impact on mood, sex drive, hormones, sleep, recovery, and more. Not to mention you’re probably just going to be thinking about food non-stop.
For example, I tend to be genetically leaner than the average, and if I go below 8% I feel these negative impacts. For some people that might occur at or below 10%.
The best way to get a reading of your starting bodyfat % is to get a dexa scan. You can do this in many cities across the country through a company called dexaFIT and there are others like them. If you don’t have a Dexa Scan nearby or affordable, try a bioelectrical impedance analysis or BIA scale. These are scales that are relatively close at estimating bodyfat based on a weak electrical signal measuring resistance through the body. Don’t have one of these scales or access to one? I’ve actually found that ChatGPT can provide a very accurate estimate of bodyfat % based on a picture in the mirror. Just make sure you have good lighting, and that legs, arms, and midsection are all visible and if you do this regularly to check progress, keep all the time of day, lighting, and background variables the same.
Now, practically, how do you keep an eye on this fat loss journey?
You should be weighing yourself daily all throughout the fat loss plan and looking at the trends each week, and not worrying about the slight ups and downs each day. The graph should look more like a declining stock on the stock market. Water intake, carbs, sleep, training, and more can affect weight from day to day, mostly due to hydration and inflammation, so the weekly trend is what to watch.
Regular weighing has been associated with better long-term weight maintenance according to the research.
Also, busy dads don’t need crazy macro tracking. My favorite approach for busy dads is to track protein intake, aiming for that 1 g/lb of ideal bodyweight, and to track total calories. Don’t worry about fat and carbs as much unless your energy levels are down and you want to see if you’re getting enough carbs in to sustain your activity levels and exercise.
That’s the fundamental layer. Once this is in place, then the advanced tweaks can make a HUGE difference.
Part 2 – The Advanced Tweaks
So my recommendation for both health and fat loss is to find sustainably, locally raised and grown food as much as possible. Produce from local farmers markets, buying meat and getting dairy from local farms, same with eggs, etc.
The best strategy for food choices for busy fathers that I’ve found, especially for the combination of fat loss, strength gains, energy, and overall health, is to focus on locally raised meats and eggs, wild-caught fish, raw dairy, fruit and some sourdough bread (bonus points if it’s fresh-milled because you get way more nutrients from the bread), some select veggies, and honey and grass-fed butter.
Some people can eat this way for several weeks or months and lose fat without even tracking calories if they are getting enough protein, because your reduced cravings and being more satisfied will naturally normalize your intake and you’ll more rarely overeat.
Another key “advanced” strategy is what happens after the diet.
Have a smart post-diet plan.
As motivation decreases after they’re done dieting, many men either abruptly go back to eating what they used to eat, OR they taper back too slowly.
I recommend simply increasing calories between 200–400 calories per day right away, until you’re back to your estimated maintenance calories based on the formula I gave you previously, seeing if your weight normalizes over the first 4–7 days, and going from there. If you gain a pound quickly, you know you added back too much and need to taper off just slightly to find maintenance calorie intake. If you keep losing a little, you know you didn’t add back in enough.
Then you should track your calories at maintenance for 2–4 more weeks to ensure you get a “FEEL” for what maintenance looks like for you at the new calorie level.
Some people just add some stuff back in, and assume they’re fine, and then step on the scale after a couple weeks and realize they’ve gained a chunk of weight back.
You need time to figure out what your new normal looks and feels like. Like practically how much of your favorite breakfast foods and your normal work lunch are needed to keep you level on caloric intake.
Then, after you’ve finished this process, you should continue tracking weight daily so you can keep an eye on whether or not you’re maintaining well. Again, you’re looking at your weekly scale trend, just to ensure you’re not gaining weight back only to be surprised and frustrated later. It’s always better to catch a stray pound or two then it is to try on a pair of slacks you haven’t worn in a few weeks and realize they don’t fit anymore.
Another advanced tweak is to add in fasting.
I fast at least 2×/week for 24 hours, also known as OMAD (one meal a day). The good news about this is that on those days I can usually get at least half of my protein target in for those days inside just my dinner meal, and recent research shows you ARE going to utilize ALL of that protein, so you don’t need to worry about it being spread out over other meals. If you don’t hit your full protein targets on that day, that’s not something to be overly concerned with as long as you’re not doing OMAD more than 2×/week.
You can also do a bi-weekly, or every-other-week, 48–72 hour fast as an alternative.
Fasting is incredibly beneficial for your health in many different ways, and research has shown that the fat lost during a 3-day fast will stay off, as long as you go back to the caloric intake level you had pre-fast and don’t go overboard when you break your fast.
Another helpful advanced tweak is to establish guardrails around your eating window.
Create kitchen hours. After 7pm the kitchen is closed, no more food is allowed to come out or be eaten by anyone in the family. This is a helpful rule to keep everyone accountable to the habit of cutting off eating 2+ hours before bed so that you can improve digestion, limit excess calorie intake, and improve your sleep.
And finally, you can manipulate your movement in a smart way.
Increase your movement floor. Don’t add more higher-intensity workout sessions, but increase your low-intensity movement. Take calls on a walk, go on walks with the family, stand at your desk, do a set of pushups and squats throughout the day between every couple of meetings, or something along those lines.
These tweaks aren’t required to lose fat, but once the fundamentals are in place, they can accelerate results and make maintenance easier.
Part 3 – The Habit and Mindset Factors
Now let’s talk about the piece that holds all of this together: your habits and your mindset.
Leverage habits to make the diet FEEL as sustainable as possible.
Everyone loses motivation at some point, myself included, and this is where habits and automatic thinking are so, so key.
The first thing you can do is habit stack your less desirable activity with one you love. An example of this is to save your favorite podcasts or YouTube videos and only allow yourself to watch or listen to them when you’re working out, on a walk, or meal prepping on Sundays.
If you hate cardio, save something meaningful for your cardio time—it’ll help you start the activity but will also make it less painful to complete by distracting you with something you enjoy.
Also, align your everyday environment with your goals. If you always snack on chips at 5pm when your wife is making dinner, put them on the top shelf of the pantry that requires a stool to get to, or simply don’t buy them.
One of the biggest complaints I get from dads is how they always have these foods around that are “for their kids” that are tempting and often derail them… well here’s my charge to you in that case: Don’t give your kids crap food.
If you make mac and cheese for your kids because they’re picky eaters, you let them eat chips and garbage all the time, you feed them dino nuggets for dinner, etc., you’re first of all feeding your kids poison.
Secondly, you’re negatively impacting their development.
Thirdly, you’re training their brain to desire and expect this food moving forward and setting them up for failure later in life when they too are unhealthy and overweight and want to get fit.
And most of all, you’re just avoiding that hard work of parenting that’s required to slowly condition your kids to enjoy or at least endure healthier food options.
Changing your family’s eating habits is similar to sleep training kids, if you’ve ever done that—it’s a short-term pain for a long-term gain. You’re the LEADER and HEAD of the household. Take ownership and lead your family into healthy choices. It will help all of them steward the body God gave them, and aid your process and habits a ton as well.
You can also use tools to support your mindset and habits.
Use an old school alarm clock or, like I do, the vibrate alarm feature on my Garmin watch, to help you get up in the morning without getting sucked into scrolling your phone in bed and wasting time that you should be doing your Daily 15 routine and your workouts. (Curious what the daily 15 is, I wrote a short book about it, check out the link in the description below)
You can also put your phone to bed when your kids go to bed, meaning it goes on airplane mode and gets plugged in when the kids go to bed so that you’re not tempted to scroll at night and stay up too late, which keeps you from getting good sleep and makes it harder to get up early enough and missing workouts.
Create as much automation as possible. If you find a breakfast that you like, make sure you always have the food on hand you need and know exactly how much to cook so you don’t have to track anything or overthink it. If you can prevent the fuss, that will help a ton with sustainability.
All of these mindset and habit factors are what make the fundamentals and advanced tweaks actually stick in a real household, with a real job, a real wife, and real kids.
