Practical Strategies for Weight Loss and Gain
If you haven’t already, make sure to read through the basics of good nutrition before this blog first. Here, we’ll explore in depth strategies to tailor your diet for specific goals like losing fat or gaining muscle. Both require thoughtful planning and consistent effort, with a healthy foundation grounded in quality nutritional habits, so make sure you’ve read through the basics of good nutrition first.
Weight Loss: Losing Fat Effectively
Achieving sustainable weight loss requires a clear, phased approach that prioritises health and muscle preservation. Here’s how:
Step 1: Setting Up Healthy Habits
Building sustainable habits is the foundation for long term success. Start with these principles:
Set realistic goals: Aim to lose 0.5 - 1% of your body weight per week.
Track progress: Use weekly weight averages (rather than natural daily fluctuations), measurements, and performance assessments.
Prioritise protein: Consume 1.6 - 2.2 g of protein per kilogram of body weight daily to preserve muscle and stay satiated.
Focus on quality nutrition: Base your meals around vegetables, fruits, whole grains, and lean proteins. Follow the 80/20 rule: 80% whole, nutrient-dense foods, and 20% for flexibility.
Strength train regularly: Resistance training is essential for maintaining muscle and strength.
Avoid extreme deficits: Keeping your calorie reductions moderate prevent muscle loss, fatigue, and burnout.
Time meals strategically: Eat balanced meals around training and include protein rich snacks to manage hunger and support recovery.
Step 2: Weight Loss Phase
The weight loss phase is a focused effort to lose fat while maintaining health and muscle:
Duration: Limit this phase to 8 - 12 weeks to avoid excessive fatigue.
Progress tracking: Aim for 0.5 - 1% bodyweight loss per week while maintaining energy levels and adherence.
Adjust as Needed: If progress slows or health suffers, make gradual adjustments to ensure sustainability.
Fatigue will accumulate during this phase, so it’s important once your weight loss phase is over to transition to a ‘reverse dieting’ phase.
Step 3: Reverse Dieting Phase
A reverse dieting phase helps you prevent rebound weight gain by following a process to adjust your caloric intake to match your new weight. It facilitates the recovery and healing you need from accumulating diet fatigue from your weight loss phase, while minimising fat gain. This is the phase we see most people miss out on and unfortunately gain their weight back to where they started (or more). To do a reverse diet, follow these steps:
Initial adjustment: Increase your caloric intake by approximately 15% and monitor your weight for 2 weeks.
Caloric adjustments:
If you’re still losing weight after 2 weeks, add another 15% and monitor for another 2 weeks.
If you’re gaining weight after 2 weeks, reduce caloric intake by 10% and monitor for another 2 weeks.
If your weight is stable after 2 weeks, increase by 10% to help restore your metabolic adaptations and aid with recovery from the fatigue accumulated by the weight loss phase.
Maintenance: Once your weight is stable for 4 weeks with the same calories and you’re no longer hungry, have cravings, and no longer have low energy, you’re now at maintenance where you can re-assess goals. From here you can stay at maintenance, do another weight loss phase, or focus on strength and performance as examples.
For a more detailed look on reverse dieting, check out this video from Dr. Michael Israetel:
Weight Gain: Building Muscle and Strength
Building muscle and gaining weight in a healthy way requires a phased approach that prioritises muscle growth while minimising fat gain. Here’s how:
Step 1: Building Healthy Habits
Much like preparing for a weight loss phase, you should prepare for a weight gain phase by creating sustainable practices that support consistent progress over time:
Set realistic goals: Aim to gain approximately 0.25 - 0.5% of your body weight per week. This pace helps maximise muscle gain while minimising fat.
Track progress regularly: Use a combination of weekly weight averages, body measurements, and performance metrics (e.g., strength and endurance) to assess progress.
Prioritise protein intake: Consume 1.6 - 2.2 g of protein per kilogram of body weight daily to optimise muscle protein synthesis and recovery.
Focus on quality nutrition: Base your meals around nutrient rich foods like lean proteins, whole grains, vegetables, fruits, nuts, seeds, and healthy fats. These support overall health and sustained energy.
Include liquid calories if needed: For those struggling to eat enough, shakes made with protein powder, nut butter, and fruits can help boost calorie intake without feeling overly full.
Strength train effectively: Engage in resistance training 3 - 6 times per week, focusing on progressive overload as a principle to stimulate muscle growth.
Manage recovery: Ensure 7 - 9 hours of quality sleep per night and allow adequate recovery between sessions to support muscle repair.
Step 2: Muscle Gain Phase
Incemental adjustments to your caloric intake is important to avoid excessive fat gain in your msucle building phase. Follow these principles:
Start with a small surplus: Begin by adding 10 - 15% more calories to your daily maintenance intake. This modest surplus minimises unnecessary fat gain while promoting muscle growth.
Adjust based on progress:
If weight gain is too fast (>0.5% per week), reduce your surplus slightly to slow the rate and limit fat gain.
If weight gain is too slow (<0.25% per week), increase your surplus incrementally by 5 - 10%.
Monitor energy and fatigue levels: As you progressively overload in your resistance training to stimulate muscle growth, fatigue as well as normal wear and tear of your muscles and tendons will accumulate. Monitor these and adjust your training and rest accordingly. Read Optimising Recover For maximum Results for more on this.
Step 3: Recovery and Reassessment Phase
Once your muscle gain phase is complete, shift your focus to recovery and use this time as an opportunity to re-assess goals:
Deload training: Reduce training volume and intensity for 1 - 2 weeks to recover from accumulated fatigue. Focus on lighter loads and reduced frequency.
Reassess calorie needs and plan your next phase: Decide whether to maintain, transition to a weight loss phase, or pursue new performance or muscle building goals.
If you’ve reached your desired muscle mass and body composition, transition to maintenance calories.
If further muscle gain is desired, continue with a small surplus and reevaluate progress every 4 - 6 weeks.
Muscle gain requires a patient and methodical approach. By managing your caloric surplus and monitoring progress closely, you can maximise muscle growth while keeping fat gain under control. Following these strategies ensures that your efforts lead to sustainable and rewarding results.
The Bottom Line
Whether your goal is weight loss or muscle gain, success comes from getting the healthy fundamentals first, then following a structured process to monitor progress and adjust accordingly. By taking these steps one at a time and emphasising consistency and health, you’ll set yourself up for long term success. Nutrition is a journey and you’ll learn how you like to do things as you build more experience for yourself, so take your time and don’t hesitate to seek professional support when needed.
Author: Laurent Pang
ONI Personal Training | Massage Therapy | Nutrition Coaching | Movement Coaching