I’m not one for full on diets…
The idea of eating less food hurts my soul, after all I love food so eating less of it doesn’t seem even remotely appealing.
That being said I also compete in a sport where I need to weigh in under a certain weight before the competition otherwise it leads to being severely disadvantaged so every now and then I need to keep things in check to make sure I make weight.
The first things most people change when they try to lose weight is everything…
Cutting out carbs, cutting out any fatty foods and basically just eating chicken and green veggies.
Yeh this may get the job done but nobody feels strong doing this and it’s not an option for me when competing.
Instead as my weight needs to come down I start making small switches in the foods I eat to keep strength high and drop body fat.
Now the most important piece of this in the first place is knowing your numbers…
If you don’t know where your numbers are normally then you won’t be sure whether the changes you make will actually help.
So once you’ve got your numbers down here’s some simple switches I use to bring weight down before competitions…
Chicken Thigh for Chicken Breast
Everyone knows that chicken thigh tastes way better than breast..
Big thanks to the extra fats you get from the thighs but, when you need to drop those last few kilos switching to breast will save you 5g of fat per 100g.
When your trying to keep your protein high with fats lower thats well worth the difference in taste.
Rice For Potatoes
Cauliflower rice has seemed to get more and more popular as a rice substitute when trying to lose weight but the problem here is often your trading a normal carb meal for next to nothing
If you’re trying to keep your strength and muscle you want to work on small changes to your meals.
Now I also will simply scale back the amount of carbs I put in most meals and rice nearly always stays in my diet right up to weigh ins but the frequency drops off a little.
Sweet potatoes are a great switch from rice as they have less calories for the same volume of food.
1 cup of sweet potato contains 27g of carbs and 114 calories as opposed to the same cup of white rice containing 44g of carbs and 204 calories.
The biggest win here is you can keep your portion size up so you don’t have to eat snack sized meals and still get the results you want.
Full Cream To Skim Milk
If you drink as much coffee as I do… yes I’m aware I have a problem
Then the calories from the extra milk can add up quickly.
Now I know plenty of people just drink black coffee but for me it never sits well, the milk helps slow the caffeine absorption and gives a more sustained pick me up.
Skim milk has less than half the calories of normal milk and yes I know it doesn’t taste as good
But I’m not here to make everything taste good. I’m here to show you things that work practically to help you drop body fat without changing everything.
One Low Carb Meal Per Day
This ends up being a day before weigh in strategy for me but traditionally where I would have a larger carbohydrate meal at dinner I completely omit the carbohydrates in favour of veggies and protein only in this meal.
This tends to be the first strategy most people make except their mistake is doing it in nearly every meal. With this one meal change I can often drop 300-400 Calories in that singular meal alone which can be enough to spark a movement on the scales without anything else if you add some extra walking or light cardio.
Putting it all together
Now we know that creating a 500 Calorie deficit a day is enough to drop body fat effectively without suffering too much loss in muscle and strength.
Going significantly lower into a larger deficit also tends to have diminishing returns on fat loss after the first few weeks.
But let’s assume you were at a maintenance calories already and you made the following switches in a day
- Change 250mL of milk to skim milk from both your morning oats and coffee (-180 Cal)
- In your 2 midday meals, substitute 200g of chicken thigh for chicken breast in each (-120 Cal), plus change 1 cup of rice to 1 cup sweet potatoes in each meal (-180 Cal)
This would bring you to a 480 Calorie deficit without changing the size of your meals or resorting to salads or chicken and broccoli out of a tupperware container for the 15th meal straight.
Now think about it…
Would you rather lose weight while maintaining energy and performance?
Or
Feel like your dragging yourself around to get through the day hoping it gives you fast results?