7 Science-based ways for athletes to lose weight without losing muscle.
I’m often asked what the best and quickest strategy to weight loss is, and while I don’t believe there is one single strategy that suits everyone, I do believe there are a few mistakes athletes make that either don’t give them sustainable results, cause weight plateau even when they still have more fat to lose, or worse leave them experiencing muscle loss.
As athletes, you expect your body to perform at high volume whilst retaining a reasonable level of body fat so that you can continue to compete (even at a friendly level) for years to come.
This blog will highlight some strategies that are proven to give athletes sustainable fat loss whilst giving them the power and energy they need to continue to train at high volume without feeling run down.
Let’s start with the most common mistake….
Stop restricting foods
Time and time again, research has shown that an unreasonable and extreme drop in calories and restrictions to food groups leads to over consumption. Why? Because eating is quite literally the most natural part of human survival. Take food away, and all we can do is think about how much food we want. The second food is reintroduced, we go into overdrive and overeat past what our bodies need.
What we can learn from conscientious objectors…
Take the men in the Minnesota experiment in the 1940’s for example. This experiment was originally meant to help scientists better understand how to help victims of famine after the war, but the results gave us so much more than that. It is now a crucial piece of research that has ultimately given us a broader understanding of calorie restrictions and weight loss.
36 men entered a 3 phased calorie controlled diet. The first phase was a maintenance diet where the men ate an average of 3,000 calories a day, the second phase was a semi starvation diet where their calories where dropped by half down to 1,500 calories per day, and the last phase was a refeed, where they were allowed to increase food intake again.
Over the course of the 24 week semi starvation phase, they lost 20% strength, 30% body fat, and many if not all the men experienced depression with one man actually being committed to an asylum after threatening to harm himself.
Needless to say, the “diet” was not sustainable and ended up leading to over consumption,.
As soon as they were allowed to increase food intake, they were out of control, skyrocketing both their calorie intake and their body fat in the end.
Take a look at these results.
*Image source Precision Nutrition: Brown line is fat free mass; orange line is body fat; red line is basal metabolic rate (BMR); dotted line is energy intake.
Entering extremely low calories totally backfired, they ended up carrying more body fat than they had at the start of the experiment because of the restrictions.
2. Include a reverse or a period of refeed
You often hear people saying “I’ve been in a calorie deficit for months and I’m still unable to lose that last bit of fat”. Decreasing food intake for long periods can often trigger a phenomenon known as adaptive thermogenesis which I often talk about in my blogs and social media posts.
This happens when you cut calories (or enter a surplus, it can happen in both directions) and your body adapts to the “new normal” and no longer responds to the calorie restrictions.
In other words, your metabolism starts to slow down, you expend less energy so you no longer expend more energy than you intake, even if you are factually eating very little.
This can easily be fixed by entering periods of refeeds so that you can ramp up your metabolism.
3. Adjust macro splits as you cut
One of the most common mistakes I see athletes make is to drop calories whilst keeping the macro split the same. An athlete eating at maintenance calories vs an athlete eating for specific body composition and performance goals, should look different.
Let’s look at this example here.
Sample macronutrient split during maintenance
In the above chart, this particular athlete might eat at a typical balanced macro split, but as they begin to drop calories, it may start to look more like this…
Sample fat loss macro split
The reason why this is extremely important is because keeping the same macro split during a calorie deficit could leave an athlete without enough muscle glycogen, and regardless of the sport you do, carbs should be prioritised when it comes to performance.
4. Take intra-training carbs
This has been dubbed a “game changer” for so many athletes I have worked with. Understanding your nutritional needs as an athlete can literally make or break your performance and body goals. An athlete who is cutting weight for an event or for overall improved body composition may experience muscle fatigue.
To combat this, introducing a liquid form of carbs in and around training can make a huge difference in how they move, recover, and ultimately how their bodies carry fat.
If you’re wondering exactly what kind of carbs you should have during your training sessions I’ve got you covered. Here are some great sources I recommend:
Dextrose
Maltodextrin
Trehalose
Vitargo
Hydrothermally modified corn starch
5. Focus on your recovery meal
Often, people are the under the impression that the most important meal is the one before training, because they assume you need to fuel up well before a training session. While yes, the pre workout meal is important, it’s not half as important as the post workout meal.
Your recovery meal also known as your post workout meal should be the main focus in terms of both calorie load and carb load.
In other words, if you want to recover well from a big training session so that you can wake up and feel fresh with limited DOM’s and hit your next session with the same level of intensity, your biggest meal should be the recovery meal.
So what should this recovery meal contain?
Fast releasing carbs, especially if your training session was heavy, long or intense. If you have a big sweet tooth, now is the time to eat those super carby treats (ideally low in fats since fats slow down carbohydrate absorption).
Cereals, oatmeals and granola bars are all great energy sources to help you refill that glycogen tank
Side note, if you still not convinced that eating carbs can help you achieve greater fat loss, I link to a few resources below.
6. Spread your protein intake evenly
Along with cycling your carbohydrate at the right time for increased performance and fat loss, you also have protein timing to consider. Making sure you eat adequate protein through out the day will help your body recover better.
The process of protein turnover is a short process and since our bodies don’t store a lot of it, it’s important that we have a constant supply of protein through out any given 24 hour period, especially when it comes to athletes that are training at high volumes.
Where possible, choose lean proteins and true sources of protein like fish, chicken and tofu etc as opposed to things like peanut butter, which contain protein but not enough to be counted as a main source of protein.
For athletes following a plant based diet check out this blog here.
7. Get more sleep
Sleep is so underrated and almost directly related to weight loss and weight gain.
According to recent research 33% of us get adequate sleep (defined as an average of 7 hours per night), those that didn’t were at higher risk of obesity. *It should be noted that too much sleep also resulted in higher than average body fat however.
Too little sleep has been linked to a slow insulin response resulting in increased body fat.
Here is what we know about the effects of broken sleep:
Lowered glucose tolerance
Insufficient thyroid stimulating hormone
Increased evening and nocturnal cortisol levels
Lowered leptin (a hormone that directly affects our appetite)
Our food choices might also be somewhat less than ideal when we are dealing with stress with poor food choices and poor sleep seem to be tightly interlinked.
On a more pragmatic look at things, poor sleep can also be linked to poor cognitive functions and coordination. So if your goal is to perform better at your sport then a good nights’ rest has to be a priority.
Conclusion
So dear athlete, in my state of over caffeinated pre kids holiday mode, I shall leave you with this: be reasonable when you set goals. Don’t enter unrealistic deficits that will only cause you to daydream about donuts and milkshakes. Introduce periods of refeeds, take more rest days and eat your protein.
That’s all from me this week, have a good one folks!
X
Resources
Leah M. Kalm, Richard D. Semba, They Starved So That Others Be Better Fed: Remembering Ancel Keys and the Minnesota Experiment, The Journal of Nutrition, Volume 135, Issue 6, June 2005, Pages 1347–1352, https://doi.org/10.1093/jn/135.6.1347
Voronoa RD, et al. Overweight and obese patients in a primary care population report less sleep than patients with a normal body mass index. Arch Intern Med 2005;165:25-30.
Arent, Shawn M., Harry P. Cintineo, Bridget A. McFadden, Alexa J. Chandler, and Michelle A. Arent. 2020. "Nutrient Timing: A Garage Door of Opportunity?" Nutrients 12, no. 7: 1948. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12071948
Lane SC, Areta JL, Bird SR, Coffey VG, Burke LM, Desbrow B, Karagounis LG, Hawley JA. Caffeine ingestion and cycling power output in a low or normal muscle glycogen state. Med Sci Sports Exerc. 2013 Aug;45(8):1577-84. doi: 10.1249/MSS.0b013e31828af183. PMID: 23439421.
