How I Lost 7 Pounds in 14 Days (And You Can Too!)
As I get ready to enjoy my upcoming vacation I decided I wanted to drop some fat before I go pig out on my trip. 14 days ago I weighed in at about 192lbs. Today I weigh about 185lbs. Below I’ll outline the process I have followed including diet and workout habits. Let’s get started.
A short period of aggressive fat loss is often referred to as a “mini-cut”. The mini-cut has two main components, calorie deficit (how many more calories you burn than you consume) and resistance training adjustments. I’ll start with the deficit.
I began the mini-cut by deciding how much of a calorie deficit I wanted to use. Years of practice and tracking has taught me that my daily calorie burn with light activity (about 7000 steps) is reliably about 2700 calories. My aim was at least 2-3lbs of fat loss per week. This requires a calorie deficit of roughly 1000 or so calories per day. This can be achieved in only two ways: eating less or moving more. I manipulated both. I kept daily calories under 2000 and increased calories burned to over 3000 by making sure I kept a step count of between 10,000 and 15,000 steps. I did 0 traditional steady state or high intensity cardio. Some may wonder if I have been super hungry. Nope. By eating calorie dense healthy foods, prioritizing protein, and staying properly hydrated I don’t come anywhere near feeling starved. Beware that increased cardio DOES tend to increase hunger. Those who can power through it are welcome to go for it. Quick tip: If you like to have larger meals you can try intermittent fasting (I’ll cover this in a future post).
The second part of the mini-cut program is resistance training optimization. This is the part that so many people get wrong. The goal of the cut is to drop fat while maintaining lean body mass. By keeping your muscle (rather than breaking it down) you preserve your metabolism, but how do you do this? Simple. Heavy resistance training. For some reason conventional wisdom has steered most people in the OPPOSITE direction suggesting that you ramp up the cardio and if you lift weights then lift light and perform high reps. THIS IS WRONG!!! If you do this you will be sacrificing your muscle and lowering your metabolism to the point where you eventually stop losing weight, can’t raise your calories, and have to keep doing more and more of those activities in order to not GAIN weight. It is miserable at worst and unsustainable at best. I do heavy free weight lifts 3-4 times per week to maintain strength as I drop fat. There is no need to go all out though. You just need to provide a stimulus that encourages your body to keep your muscle. In this phase, calories are low and cannot support you beating up your body everyday.
That’s it. By doing these things you can achieve rapid fat loss in a short period of time. I do however have some caveats. I had taken time away from resistance training and was detrained. I was able to jump back in and quickly recover muscle and strength (I’ve gained some muscle so that did offset the weight on the scale). Those who are new at weight training can expect something similar, but those who are already employing a program can expect even greater overall weight loss if the mini-cut is done properly. The other point is that this does not work if you are already dieting and have low calorie intake. If your calories are already low, a mini-cut is not for you. If your calories are high or at a maintenance level then you can find success with this protocol. This type of aggressive fat loss is only meant to last about 2 weeks. After that, it is appropriate to go back to eating your maintenance calories for a short period (about a week), and if you want to continue cutting fat you can use a less aggressive calorie deficit and keep it rolling. If you feel so inclined then give this a shot and let me know how it goes. Until the next one.
-Chris