Weight loss/Weight gain- The Scientific Way

​What’s up homies, hope everyone has had a great week. Its back-to-school season and to be honest it’s made me a little emotional. Seeing everyone’s back to school photos is just a reminder of how precious time is. That’s the great thing about social media though, you get to watch your friends’ children grow up and do great things in life. The bad thing is you have that moment of “6th grade? I feel like they were just in 1st last year.”
 
Genuinely though, I hope you and your kids have the best school year ever, wishing nothing but success for you all through the year. Let’s get back to last weeks Blog. We went over the phrase “you can’t outwork a bad diet.” We also covered that while this phrase is false, for the majority of the population its wise words to train by. So, lets cover some tips and guidelines for those who simply don’t have enough time in the day or don’t want to kill themselves every day.

My golden girl Blake, my hell raiser Charli and the rebellious preteen Logan on their first day of school

​So, the absolute biggest rule of weight loss/weight gain is calories in vs calories out. Fast version, if you want to lose weight you need to burn more calories per day than you consume, and vice versa on gaining weight. 
 
They are 2 completely different things; ill cover weight gain next week- because the quality of the calorie (macros) really matters.
 
Weight loss is easy, in the sense of its all mathematics. Theoretically if you follow the math your goal will be reached in whatever number of days you’d like. The real issue is its really, really hard to account for every calorie and most people don’t want to do it, I know I don’t.
 
The equation is 3000 X y (number of pounds wanting to be lost) / x (the amount of days you’d like to lose the weight)
 
I’m going to type it out just in case I used the wrong symbols. I graduated over 15 years ago so I may not be as sharp as I used to me
 
3000 multiplied by the number of pounds wanting to be lost. Then Divide it by the number of days you’re giving yourself to lose the weight.
 
The 3000 is the number of calories in a pound. To lose/gain a pound its going to cost you 3000 calories. We multiply that by the number of pounds youd like to lose to get the total amount of calorie deficit needed to reach your desired weight loss- it works the same to gain weight. 
 
So here’s an example if I’m a 160 lb woman (I know my mom wished this) and I have a goal of weighing 140 in 1 month Then 20 lbs. lost is going to cost me -60,000 calories, if I want this off in 1 month then I need to be in a calorie deficit of 2,000 calories EVER DAY. Not just on the week days, not just on most days, every single day for 30 days I need to be burning 2,000 calories more than I’m burning. I’m going to be honest guys, that is a very unrealistic goal, unless you just got that DAWG in you. Realistically, a goal like this, I would give a 3-month time frame, an easy 670 calorie deficit per day. It’s easier to maintain and play with if you slack here and there.
 
So, we understand the science/math behind losing weight. Now let’s get into details, the how to do it portion. 
 
The good news is your body burns a whole lot of calories just breathing, its called our Base Metabolic rate- BMR for short. If you laid in bed all day and didn’t move at all, you would still burn calories just breathing. It costs more than just money to live, it also costs calories!
 
So we have to figure out our BMR so we can add it to the calories we burn during exercise. Its hard to explain so I put it into a cute little photo below.

​Once you figure out your BMR- actually I have to pause and say, I know this is super old school but it’s how I was taught and it’s still what I use to this day- you have the calories you burn just existing.
 
I always add 300 calories to the BMR to account for walking, driving and just everyday life.
 
So, let’s use the example of the 160lb woman that my mom wishes I was. Let’s say she’s 5’6 and 30 years old. Her BMR is 1,462, lets add 300 calories for a sedentary life and her total calories needed to break-even/survive is 1762 per day.
 
Now we have our blueprint for success. 
 
To reach her goal of losing 20lbs in 3 months, she must eat 1762 calories per day. No less and try not to eat more- I’ll do a whole blog soon about why we can’t just starve ourselves. In the meantime, just google gluconeogenesis.
 
On top of eating those calories she must exercise and burn 670 calories per day, no less. The average hour workout is about 400-500 calories, so at a normal pace you’re looking at an hour and a half of work. Now high intensity, balls to the wall workouts burn around 600-1000 calories per hour. So, if you’re on a time crunch I’d suggest being like Rick Ross and stay Husslin Husslin. 
 
Another suggestion would be running in the morning and knocking out some calories followed by an afternoon hour workout at an average pace. I live by 100 calories per mile.
 
There’s a ton of ways to achieve this but the end result must stay the same, for 90 days she must burn 670 calories and eat 1762 calories.
 
This is healthy science backed weight loss that will not cause her to balloon back up and put the weight back on once she slows down. Caloric needs are met, the body isn’t starving and hard work was done, she earned a cool “chill spot”- its what I call a comfortable weight.
 
I’m being genuine when I say, this is the blueprint to reach your weight loss goals and keep it off. It’s not a fad, its not “my thoughts,” its SCIENCE.
 
And as my grad school Professors liked to say:
 
“You can’t argue with science.”