Natural weight loss at home with diet, nutrition, fitness, and training tips from theory to practice

Cutting calories to lose weight – fat, carbs, or protein?

This article outlines an effective strategy for cutting calories to lose weight by taking macro nutrients such as protein, carbohydrates, and fats into consideration.

A simple formula to lose weight is: Consume less and expend more. What this means is that to lose weight you must move or exercise more and eat less food. Both these things are measured in the amount of calories; calories you eat and calories you expend through daily activities.

But have you ever asked yourself exactly what kind of calories you should not eat or eat less of?

Food consists of 3 major (or macro) nutrients: fat, carbohydrates (or carbs), and protein.

Each gram of fat consists roughly of 9 calories, while a gram of carbs or protein contains 4. So logically, if you want to aggressively cut calories, the first things that you should drop are foods that contain bad fats, because each gram of fat you cut will reduce your daily calorie intake by 9 calories. I say "bad fats" because there are also foods that contain "good fats" which can actually help speed up your metabolism so that you lose weight faster.

Carbs are next up on the list. You must see carbs as "immediate fuel" for your brains and body. There are two types of carbs: simple and complex. Simple carbs are things like sugar, candy, and fructose (sugar in fruits), etc. Examples of complex carbs include rice, legumes (lentils and split peas), potatoes, etc.

Complex carbs take longer for your body to breakdown and for your blood to take up, so will give you a more sustained release of energy compared to simple carbs. This in turn will prevent your blood sugar level from rising and dropping quickly, which reduces the release of insulin. Insulin, in simple terms, is released by your body whenever there is too much sugar in your blood. It removes the sugar from your blood and then stores it as fat.

So if you’re going to cut calories from carbohydrates, logic dictates that you should reduce the amount of simple carbs you eat or combine them with other foods so that you prevent insulin spikes from taking place.

Protein is last on the list. Many types of protein such as chicken, red meat, pork, etc. tend to also contain fats (fats take very long to break down in your body, which is why you feel full longer after a meal that contains lots of fat), so will get taken up slowly by your body (no insulin spikes). The function of protein is to spare your own muscle tissue while you’re losing weight and to help build it up when breakdown has occurred (such as when you weight train). You should almost never cut calories from protein, unless there is a medical reason to do so.

Whenever I’ve tried to lose weight, I’ve always successfully implemented the following strategy when it comes to cutting calories: First out are the fatty foods and high calorie items such as French fries, pizza, and fried chicken.

Once you’ve cleaned your diet from many of the fats (by the way, you should not get the rid of all of the fat you eat), you can start adding vegetables, fruits, and legumes to your diet, thereby increasing the amount of fiber in your diet. Fiber helps in giving you that "full" feeling and also reduces insulin spikes. In the meantime, continue eating a good dose of protein.

Next up is to reduce the amount of carbs in your diet. Because fruits and vegetables provide essential vitamins, I don’t usually cut them out. Instead, I reduce my portions of complex carbs such as rice and potatoes, and I always look that I don’t go below the recommended daily calorie intake. After a couple of months of living on a cleaner diet, your body should adapt, not think that it’s starving, and just continue shedding pounds of fat like crazy.

Then there comes a point where your body will blatantly refuse to lose weight. Then it’s time to pull out the big guns and start running or do some other form of physical exercise that makes you work up a good sweat and gets the blood pumping through your body, and then slowly start increasing your calorie intake again. You’ll see that your body will happily shed more weight and that you won’t feel deprived or hungry.