It's that time of the year again. If you
want to tighten your tummy for summer,
than this video's for you.
Hi. I'm Dr. Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. You're watching
Chris Masterjohn Lite, where the name of the game is
"Details? Shmeetails. Just tell me what works!"
And this is my fat-loss plan for you.
If you wanna lose weight and you wanna
lose weight reliably, then you need a
caloric deficit. It's plain and simple.
But when you wanna lose weight, what
you really mean is you wanna lose fat.
And if you wanna lose fat mass instead
of lean mass, there's really three things
that you need to keep in mind.
Number 1 is you don't want to
lose weight too rapidly. I think the
sweet spot is about a pound a week. It's
gonna vary from person to person.
I wouldn't get too wrapped up in losing
exactly that. If it's a 1/2 a pound a
week or it's a pound and 1/2 to 2 pounds
a week, I think that's okay. But no
more than 2 pounds a week. The 2nd
thing you want to keep in mind is that
you need an exercise program that
provides an anabolic stimulus to
convince your body that it's worth
keeping your muscle mass. Because muscle
mass is energetically expensive to
maintain, and if you are losing weight,
you're losing your energy stores and
you're not telling your body that muscle
mass is really important, it's gonna
say "hey if I just cut out this muscle
mass I don't need as much energy."
The 3rd thing is you got to eat enough
protein. If you don't eat enough protein,
then it doesn't matter if your body
thinks that there's a reason to
maintain the muscle mass. Your body's not
gonna have the resources needed to
maintain that muscle mass. When it comes
to carbs or fat, I don't really think it
matters in terms of weight loss or fat mass
loss. I think you wanna control
your calories, and you wanna target
your protein to about a gram of protein
per target body weight. Meaning what do
you wanna weigh at the end of your
weight loss. Whatever that is in pounds,
eat that many grams of protein. If you're
eating a more carb-heavy diet, you can
probably get away more easily with
restricting the protein below that. If
you're eating a lower carb diet, you're
gonna have to try to hit that protein
mark because carbohydrates can spare the
need for protein in ways that fat can't.
Now when you're doing this, I think what
you should generally do is ride out
your weight loss for three to four
months. I think most of the time after
the four-month mark, it's really time to
give your body a rest because weight
loss is stressful on the body. Speaking
of stress, you can imagine your stress as
a bucket. It doesn't matter if weight
loss is part of the stress, or pregnancy
is part of the stress, or working all the
time is part of the stress, or your
family is part of the stress; all your
stresses go into that bucket.
The fuller that bucket is, the less room
you have for other stressors. So if you've
got a lot going on, if you've got a lot of
mental, emotional, whatever it is, if your
stress bucket is getting full, take time
to manage your stress bucket to make
room for weight loss before you put
weight loss in that bucket. That's what I
did in 2015. At the beginning of 2016,
I lost 30 pounds in four months using this
technique. So let's dig right into it.
Some people will say that you should
calculate how many calories you should
be consuming. I think that's okay, but
honestly I think you can skip that part.
I think it's better to collect baseline
data about the amount of calories you
are consuming when you're not losing any
weight. And that's because you have to
guess about how active you really are.
You have to guess about how intense your
exercise really is. You have to guess
about how much you fidget and what your
baseline basal level of metabolism is.
It's too much guesswork for those
formulas to be accurate. So what we'll do
in the first week is just collect
baseline data. We want to know our body
weight from day to day, and we wanna
know how many calories we're eating
without trying to lose any weight. For
the body weight, you want the conditions
to be as similar as possible from day to
day to reduce unneeded variation. So
get up in the morning, go to the bathroom,
pee, take off all your clothes and weigh
yourself naked after you've peed and use
that as your body weight for the day.
Do that each morning for a week and verify
that you've remained weight stable. Also
find a way that works for you to track
your calories. I use My Fitness Pal, and
in the next video I'll show you how I do
that. But find something that works for
you and track your calories from day to
day. At the end of the week, you wanna
look at this data, you wanna verify you've
remained weight stable, but you also wanna
look at the variation up and down
each day. To be weight stable means to be
weight stable on average. Your body
weight may go up a pound, down a pound up
two pounds, down two pounds. You want a
sense of that variation so that you're not
tricked by that level of variation later
when you're actually trying to lose
weight. You wanna take your average
calorie consumption for that week, and
take that as the calories that you
assume make you weight stable. For the
2nd week continue weighing yourself
and continue tracking your calories. But
induce a 500 calorie per day deficit. Do
that consistently for a week. Don't worry
if your weight goes up or down from day
to day, just collect the data. At the end
of the 2nd week, you wanna look at
your weight at the end of the week. If
your weight goes up and down a lot,
then take the lowest value from the last
couple days of the week. Compare it to
your average weight for the first week
and see if you've lost weight. Ideally
you should have lost at least a half a
pound, and about a pound give or take.
You also want to look at, how do you feel?
You wanna feel better.
If you feel tired all the time,
or anxious, or you have trouble sleeping,
or you're irritable or you're hangry, you
want to take that into account.
If you've lost a good amount of weight
and you feel great, just keep doing what
you're doing and continue to track your
calories and your weight over the course
of 3 to 4 months. And only tweak the plan
if you start to plateau before that time
is up. On the other hand, if you're not
losing weight, increase the caloric
deficit from 500 to 700. Or, conversely if
you're losing weight, but you feel bad,
you're having trouble sleeping, you're
getting hangry, you're getting irritable,
etc. Then decrease the caloric deficit
from 500 calories to 300 calories. Repeat
that after the week and tweak as needed
until you find the sweet spot that
allows continued and sustained weight
loss, but also allows you to feel good.
During the course of your weight loss
remember to eat one gram of protein per
pound of target body weight. And remember
to keep up with your exercise program.
If you want to retain your lean muscle mass,
just do online research about body
building approaches to exercise. The
approaches that are gonna maximize
the building of muscle for someone in a
caloric excess, are the same exercises
that are going to help you keep on to
your muscle in a caloric deficit.
All right, I hope you found this useful.
Signing off, this is Chris Masterjohn of
chrismasterjohnphd.com. You've been
watching Chris Masterjohn Lite,
and I will see you in the next video.