The Ultimate Fat Loss Nutrition Guide

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When it comes to losing fat, nutrition plays a central role, and having the right nutrition plan is crucial.

In this post, we’ll walk you through exactly what you need to know in order to create the optimal fat loss nutrition plan. If you’re looking for a no nonsense guide on how to melt off those extra pounds of fat, this is the article for you.

First, we’ll show you how to pick the right number of calories as well as the right balance of macronutrients, and then walk you through an example diet!

Deciding Your Caloric Intake

If you want to design your own diet for fat loss, you first need to figure out how many calories you want your diet to be. 

To lose fat you’ll need to take in fewer calories than you burn each day, so you’ll be in a caloric deficit. Your TDEE will tell you how many calories you burn each day. We go into more detail on what makes up your TDEE in our Basics of Nutrition article, but you can use this TDEE calculator to get a solid estimate. 

Once you get your estimate, write it down! This is the first step in building your fat loss diet.

Next, you’ll then need to decide how many calories below your TDEE you want to consume to lose weight, or how much of a caloric deficit you want to maintain. You could choose anything from a conservative to an aggressive caloric deficit. 

A conservative deficit will mean slower fat loss, but minimal muscle loss as well. A moderate to aggressive deficit will mean faster fat loss, but also a greater risk of muscle loss. We’ve illustrated that in the figure below.

If you’re unsure about what deficit is best for you, here are some more details on each type of caloric deficit.

Conservative Caloric Deficit

You should go with a conservative caloric deficit if you are trying to lose weight slowly and maintain as much muscle as possible while burning fat. 

A conservative caloric deficit cut can also be more appropriate for someone who is new to dieting and wants to ease into the process. It also may be a more appropriate goal if you are already relatively lean (roughly 10% body fat or less) because at lower body fat percentages your risk of losing muscle during a cut is greater.

A conservative deficit means eating 100-300 calories below your TDEE, or roughly 10-15% below your TDEE. You can expect to lose about half a pound of weight each week, or about 2 pounds per month. 

Moderate Caloric Deficit

A moderate caloric deficit is appropriate for someone trying to lose a significant amount of fat each week, while still maintaining the majority of your muscle mass. 

This is a relatively safe choice for someone with greater body fat percentages (roughly 12%-25% body fat). Research shows this style of cutting can be successful because if you have 12-25% body fat, your body has more fat that it can use to burn as fuel instead of lean muscle.

A moderate deficit means eating 300-500 calories below your TDEE, or roughly 15-25% below your TDEE. While in a moderate deficit, you can expect to lose about a pound of weight each week, or about 4 pounds per month. 

Aggressive Caloric Deficit

An aggressive deficit is usually only appropriate for those with a body fat percentage of 25% or higher. Research shows that if you are under this range, losing weight quickly risks losing substantial muscle along with fat.

An aggressive deficit diet also makes it much harder to stick with the nutrition plan. While an aggressive deficit may allow you to lose fat faster, it will likely be more difficult to stick to due to hunger. Because it is more difficult to maintain and it risks muscle loss, an aggressive deficit is generally not recommended unless you have a body fat percentage well above 25%. 

A moderate deficit means eating fewer than 500 calories below your TDEE, or above 25% below your TDEE. The amount of weight you would lose with an aggressive deficit will vary by how far below your TDEE you stay each day. A caloric deficit of 750 calories per day will translate to roughly losing 1.5 pounds per week. Dieting at a 1000 calorie deficit can help you lose about 2 pounds per week. 

Deciding Your Macronutrient Intake

Once you’ve chosen how many calories you want your fat loss diet to be, you then have to figure out what macronutrients your diet will consist of. 

Our Basics of Nutrition article goes into the concept of macronutrients on a more granular level, but essentially that means you want to construct a diet with the optimal amount of protein, fat, and carbohydrates or fat loss.

We explain macronutrients in greater detail in our Basics of Nutrition article, but here’s the idea: while all food is broken down into calories for energy, different foods are made up of different types of calories, or macronutrients. The three macronutrients are protein, fat, and carbohydrates, and each macronutrient has a different effect on your body. 

In essence, while calories will decide if you gain or lose weight, macronutrients will decide what kind of weight you gain or lose (muscle or fat).

So, if you want to design a nutrition plan to burn as much fat as possible, you need the right balance of macronutrients. You’ll want to stick to the following guidelines while in a caloric deficit in order to lose fat:

• Multiply your bodyweight by 1-1.2. That is how many grams of protein you want to take in each day to lose fat.
• Multiply the total calories you plan to take in each day by 0.15-0.25. That is how many grams of fat you want to take in each day to lose fat. 
• The rest of your calories can go to carbohydrates, which will help fuel your workouts and aid the muscle retention and fat loss process.

We’ve illustrated these guidelines in the figure below!

Take a moment to figure out what your optimal macronutrient intake is for fat loss and write it down! If you stick to these guidelines on a daily basis, you will set your body up to burn as much fat as possible.

If you want more information on each macronutrient, we’ve broken down each one into more detail as it concerns fat loss. 

Protein Intake for Fat Loss

Research shows protein helps your body to retain muscle, so even on a fat loss diet protein is extremely important.

While in a caloric deficit, your body will burn some of its own materials for energy since you aren’t getting enough from food. Extra protein in your diet helps your body to retain muscle, which will ensure your body is burning only fat as you lose weight.

Studies have shown that while aiming for optimal fat loss, you should consume 1-1.2 grams of protein per lb of body weight.

Protein can also be helpful for keeping hunger at bay, since protein fills you up more effectively compared to other macronutrients. 

Fat Intake for Fat Loss

Fat is important in any nutrition plan, as it is necessary for keeping hormonal balance in your body. Research shows that fat helps you to keep an appropriate amount of testosterone circulating in your body, which will help retain muscle as you lose weight.

Research suggests that for optimal fat loss, you should get a minimum of 15% of your daily calories from fat to ensure you remain healthy and hormonally balanced.

With that said, fat is the most calorically dense macronutrient, so while trying to cut calories it can be very useful to keep fat intake close to that minimum.

Carbohydrate Intake for Fat Loss

When eating for fat loss, carbohydrates still play an important role in your diet (contrary to many current “fad diets”).

When dieting for fat loss, you should aim to consume as close to 2.7g – 4.5g of carbohydrates per lb of body weight daily. With fewer calories in your diet it is very common to go under this recommendation, though. 

Carbohydrates are your body’s preferred source of fuel, and remain a crucial ingredient of what your body needs for optimal athletic performance. Resistance training helps your body retain muscle while losing fat, so you’ll want to provide your body with fuel if you include that in your fat loss plan.

An Example Fat Loss Diet

With the above information, you should be able to construct your own fat loss diet! To be safe, though, we’ll walk through an example of constructing a fat loss diet here.

Step 1: Calculate Caloric Intake

This example diet will be for someone that is 5 feet and 9 inches, 30 years old and 160 pounds. The goal of the nutrition plan is fat loss. 

Entering this information into a TDEE Calculator, gives an estimated TDEE of roughly 2000 calories. Since they want to lose fat, we’ll aim for 500 fewer calories than this for a moderate deficit. This means they’re aiming to consume 1500 calories a day. 

Step 2: Calculate Protein Intake

Now he’ll figure out the macronutrients in his 1500 calorie diet. First he’ll need to find out how much protein is needed:

Assuming he wants 1-1.2 grams of protein per lb of body weight, he’ll multiply his weight by 1.1 (the middle of this range). That ends up being about 175g of protein per day. 

There are 4 calories per gram of protein, so by multiplying 175 by 4, we also find out that 700 calories of the 1500 calories in the diet will be dedicated to protein daily.

Step 3: Calculate Fat Intake

Next, we’ll figure out how much fat is needed:

He’ll need 15-25% of his calories from fat. To leave as much room as possible for carbohydrates and minimize calories, he’ll aim for 15%. 

15% of his 1500 calorie diet would mean 225 calories from fat

There are 9 calories in each gram of fat. If we divide 225 by 9, he’ll find that he should aim to consume roughly 25g of fat daily.

Step 4: Calculate Carbohydrate Intake

Now that we know we need 175g or 700 calories of protein per day, and 25g or 225 calories of fat every day, we can dedicate the remaining calories to carbohydrates.

This leaves 575 calories worth of carbohydrates in our 1500 calorie diet, or about 136g of carbohydrates daily if you consider that each gram of carbohydrates is 4 calories.

While this is well below the recommended level of 2.7g-4.5g of carbohydrates per lb of bodyweight for optimal athletic performance, it is still enough to provide energy, maintain nutritional health, and leaves enough room for the protein and fat we know we need. 

With that, we have a complete nutritional plan for a 5 foot 9, 160lb 30 year old aiming to lose 1 pound of fat a week while preserving muscle!

The total macros and calories are:

• 175g of protein (700 calories)
• 25g of fat (225 calories)
• 136g of carbs (575 calories)
• 1500 calories in total

This caloric deficit and macronutrient balance will ensure this man will lose fat, retain muscle, fuel his workouts, and maintain his hormonal health!

Putting Your Nutritional Plan Into Action

Once you know your daily caloric and macronutrient intake for optimal fat loss, it’s time to put your plan into action.

It’s free to track your calories and your macronutrients on myfitnesspal.com. Their tracker allows you to track foods and tally your way up to your ideal caloric and macronutrient goal each day.

It can be a real burden to track your every meal and try to hit your caloric and macronutrient goal each day, so many people turn to meal prep when they focus on losing fat.

Meal prepping is taking 1-2 days per week to prepare all of your meals in bulk. You can save time in the kitchen, and you don’t have to record your food every time you eat. Just figure one or two ideal daily meal plans, build your grocery list based on your plan, and then buy, prepare, and store your food for the week. From here, you can just pop your pre-prepared meals in the microwave come meal time without having to worry about tracking! 

For the inexperienced meal preppers, here is a great video of Remington James demonstrating a simple, effective, and delicious weekly meal plan! 

Conclusion

That wraps up our fat loss nutrition article! In this article, we covered:

• To lose fat, you have to maintain a negative energy balance or take in fewer calories than you burn, also known as a caloric deficit. 
• There are 3 types of caloric deficits:
  • A more conservative deficit, or staying in a caloric deficit of 100-300 calories, will mean slower fat loss and a lower risk of losing muscle.
  • A moderate deficit, or staying in a caloric deficit of 300-500 calories, will mean faster fat loss with some risk of losing muscle.
  • A more aggressive deficit, or staying in a caloric deficit of greater than 500 calories, will mean even faster weight loss while greatly increasing the risk of losing muscle.
• Once you ensure a negative energy balance, eating the right amounts of each macronutrient is also critical to optimal fat loss. 
  • Eating 1.0g-1.2g of protein per lb of body weight will give your body the materials it needs to retain muscle while burning fat. 
  • Getting at least 15% of your calories from fats will help maintain a healthy hormonal balance for bodily functions.
  • Getting the rest of your calories from carbs will help you perform at your best during your workouts.
• Meal prepping makes sticking to your nutrition plan much easier, and can save you a ton of time in the kitchen each week. 

All together, these factors will create an optimal nutritional environment for fat loss, and prime you to reach your fat loss goals.

For the next step in your fat loss journey, be sure to visit our Fat Loss Journey page!

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I Ever Have To Adjust My Caloric Deficit?

While maintaining a caloric deficit, you may find that your weight “stalls” and you stop losing weight. This is because as your total mass decreases, so does your TDEE.  

Your TDEE is based in part on your body’s weight, so naturally if your body’s weight decreases, so will your TDEE. When this happens, it means that you have to adjust your calorie deficit.

So, if you find your weight loss stalling, try to cut about 100-200 calories from your diet on a weekly or bi-weekly basis until you see progress. This will help you to continue to lose fat in your stomach, face, and everywhere else!

References and Useful Research

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