How to sustainably lose fat while maintaining muscle | Peter Attia and Derek MPMD

what's your advice to somebody who's trying to lose weight um but in a sustainable way so not like in some ways when bodybuilders are doing it it's not really sustainable because they're really starving themselves down to a competition and the way that they're eating during that period of time is you know it's it's so catabolic um that that they're destroying their endocrine system along the way but it's shortlived and they're going to refeed when they're done and and so while we can talk about all of the different things that they they might stack and do all simultaneously um you know what's your view on the sustainable way to lose 10 pounds and keep it off in terms of deficit I think your perception of what bodybuilders do as far as aggression towards their diet is on hinged on their final outcome and how steep it is to get there cumulatively but the way they arrive there no one is is more mindful of preserving tissue than bodybuilders so in other words they're not they're not creating huge deficits at any one point in time eventually they are at the point that they absolutely need to but they're more careful than any human I know oh yeah I would believe that so if you were to try and take away from a bodybuilder how would I apply this when they're stepping on stage at literally dice to the socks 5% body fat it's not that you're getting there it's that you're stopping at like the eight we out from competition Mark of a bodybuilder maybe not eight maybe like 10 or 12 but the process they took to get even there was very staggered calculated they would not red and by the way 10 to 12 weeks out what's their body fat relative to that five they're going to step on stage like it depends at what level and how on track they are but some of them are starting at like you know 12% body fat so perhaps that's not you know everyone has different goals of what they consider good so maybe this is like my skewed Fitness perception saying 10 we out bodybuilder is what you should shoot for but just in general the process they take to get from their Peak body fat percentage to Stage Lan no one is more mindful of titrating accordingly the macronutrient and micronutrient input to sustain training volume too because they need to actually make sure their training doesn't deteriorate because if it does they're going to lose tissue so yeah taking from that you see them at least hitting 1 G per pound body weight in protein like without fail and they will hold that until the stage unless there is some like maybe on the week of they're already at their target body fat and then at that point they're trying to do tactics to make their stomach as you know not full of anything as possible so what they do on the last week doesn't really count up up until a week out up until a week out they would still be taking one gram of protein per pound of body weight typically and to your point at this point you can't be doing that with steaks cuz there's way too caloric so you are on the chicken breast protein powders depending on the person though and I guess it depends on again the quality of your meat because it's like I've seen the macros on your Venison and it's basically protein yeah so um basically the staggered approach you want to take is that you don't really want to lose more than I think typically it's like 1% of your body weight per week is a general rule of thumb which is I guess could be depending how obese you are could be a little bit aggressive but even let's just say a pound a week maybe is like maybe a more reasonable Target but in general if you are and this is kind of a perhaps a more applicable cookie cutter recommendation one gram per pound of body weight which I think everyone would essentially agree with in a deficit to sustain um tissue lean tissue muscle mass then from there you want to be whatever your maintenance calories is which is you know it might take a little bit of finagling to figure out what this is when you've never done it before but there are calculators online that roughly ballpark give you what will be plus minus 300 calories or something of what it takes to stably hold your body weight for um like if you ate that diet it wouldn't go up or down what I do typically is I take that number and I say use your exact diet for a week with this calorie amount like this is your diet model and this is your totally calorie goal for the day eat exactly this every day and then see what the average is at the end of the week cuz just going by daily fluctuations could be wildly different you might jump up or down based on water based on food volume based on if you took a dump or Not by the way when did bodybuilders come off creatine they don't they'll take creatine to the stage yeah they used to think you should come off because it's bloating but and I'm sure Lane would tell you the same but most of the water weight is in the muscle yeah like it it is helpful for cosmetic appearance and for sustaining training uh performance got it so it's anti-catabolic interestingly enough it's one of the only natural compounds that may inhibit myostat in to so it has that upside um and it's like all the things it does from a neurological standpoint perhaps fertility it's even used for depression now in women at like 10 plus grams or something which is crazy so a lot of use cases are coming out but overall we all know it works for muscle um for performance in the gym as well as volumizing the muscle would would you say creatine is hands down the best over the supplement for performance for sure yeah can't think of anything off the top of my head that would be superior depending on your sport though CU if you're yes if if weight is everything if you're a cyclist or a runner you Pro you the negative the downside of the extra five lounds of lean masses perhaps yeah prob not but um so yeah um making sure you're getting your you know you have some sort of number you're going to adhere to and you know how to measure every day which basically is just reading every nutritional label you have and becoming intimately aware of what you're ingesting if you put something in your mouth you count it regardless if it's a sauce regardless if it's a drink regardless of it's a lick like you you count that and do do most bodybuilders use like an app to do this or can they just keep track in their head after a while after a while they are so in tune with it you can look at a piece of meat know how much it's going to shrink after cooking know how much how many ounces it is how much that equates to in protein uh calories like everyone at a high level eventually you become it becomes so ingrained that you don't even need to track it because you can literally look at it maybe you'll keep the calorie count and the protein count but you know what you're looking at and can just write it down quick you don't have to go look up and cross reference you know on my fitness pal what is a chicken breast 1 o cooked equal so you're can at least look forward to even though it's cumbersome and arduous at the start eventually it becomes so habitual you'll just know it so you have a Target calorie amount and you eat that every day for a week and you see if your weight goes up or down and if it goes up you know you're eating a bit too much if it goes down you know you're in a deficit and you decide from there is the weight loss too fast if you lost three pounds in a week perhaps it's too fast and you want to kind of like tight trate it back up a little bit but ultimately you can kind of shoot for once you know your maintenance some amount of calories where you're dropping you know 300 I feel like is a good deficit to start at because ideally and this is kind of the whole General approach without getting way too boring for everyone is you want to keep your protein where it needs to be which is a gram per pound you want to have enough carbs to fuel performance which depending on what sport you're doing can vary but without getting too complicated a good split a lot of people follow is 40% protein 40% carbs 20% fat and this is kind of like a ratio that allows you to sustain uh hormone production and have some amount of fat that supports it um carbs for some level of gym performance and then protein for hopefully hitting your goals and it'll depend on the person and modulate accordingly but that's just a general framework people can start with and you can so that's a pretty lowfat diet is yeah you would the fat and the protein would typically stay around neutral and you would typically lower the carbs accordingly depending on how intensive your exercise regimen and sport is but in general I feel like like a minimum amount of fat that would be like no lower than that is kind of what I'm saying so yeah and and what are some of the concessions a person has to make to get that low in fat like I don't I think I'm probably literally the last time I tracked my macros I was almost exactly one3 1/3 one3 between the three h um in general when I didn't and I didn't feel like I was like eating a ton of fat right it was just typically when you are eating meat you will achieve the majority of that through the fat content of your meats and it will depend how lean of the cuts you are getting how many eggs you were eating at the time but I'm just thinking like you know the the olive oil on the salad and stuff like that yeah but I guess that's like you know they're they're just cutting that out yeah like olive oil and a salad is uh one of the first things I would be looking at as you probably just added what 200 to 300 calories to a big salad for sure if not more so unless you're Brian Johnson or willing to get like 25% of your calories from oil um probably not a bodybuilding conducive uh macro allotment cuz it's like it's not even though fat is satiating it's nine calories per gram so where where do bodybuilders get the majority of their fiber typically it will be through veggies if they're having them and those are going to be proportionately lower calories I suppose but often times fiber is not um I know some of them use like supplements too like celium husk but I'm not to say that I don't want to get into like a fiber debate necessarily cuz I don't even know like what the actual answer is there but in general bodybuilders aren't really paying right they're not optimizing for health if we believe fiber is healthy they're and I'm not saying neglect it like I think that it is important but I don't think that I I'm certainly not saying remove your fiber in order to achieve your deficit I'm I'm just saying that you can proportionately get to your goals almost certainly by modulating carb intake essentially exclusively typically and that's going to be in the form of starchy carbs then yeah and like you can modulate the type of foods you're eating too to accommodate the satiety is ultimately the takeaway like from me cuz when it comes to actually describing the nutritional literature I hate it as much as you dude it's not like something I like to talk about oh how much fiber should you keep in like I I don't know man like a decent amount like some but enough that you can go to the washroom property and it's you know some healthy amount but ultimately what I've seen in the bodybuilding space is modulating carbs up and down accordingly based on needs in the gym and protein stays at an amount that is anti-catabolic or conducive to muscle protein synthesis in a surplus fat is some amount that at least support steroid hormone production as much as you can tolerate and then carbs is like the most performance-enhancing macro in terms of actually driving your performance outcomes in the gym volumizing the muscle having glycogen topped out it's Etc and from there I I would typically recommend a 300 deficit and literally milk that as many and up in that week prior to show how many calories is a bodybuilder typically down to if they're stage ready and they're natural and like sub 200 lb like they might be down to you know below 2,000 calories potentially if they're a top ifbb professional Mr Olympia a competitor who weighs 260 you know they could be at 2500 2600 it kind of depends on the person which is interesting for many people listening that sounds like a lot of calories still but you're saying given how big they are and that they're still training pretty hard that's but it's a pretty big deficit it also depends how much they're willing to lean into cardio cuz some guys will actually prefer to just diet themsel into the body fat and not do any cardio because they just don't like it wouldn't Rec recomend that though because one thing I have learned over the years is from a nutrient partitioning standpoint actually moving when you're eating is going to produce a better body composition typically than trying to just diet the whole deficit so what we see even in like the ifbb with these TP bodybuilders who are trying to not get fat as they eat exorbitant amounts of food and they're on insulin and HGH and huge amounts of anabolics they are doing things like going for walks after they eat their meal which is more potent than metformin at controlling blood glucose like they're actually making sure they are moving around and actually shuttling nutrients as much as they can even outside of the gym some are lazy and don't do that but the ones that are trying to make the most use of maximizing the calories I see so the the mobilization doesn't require that you you know you're clearly not going to oxidize everything you ate like if they just ate 800 calories they're not going to burn 800 calories on a walk of any duration but just getting out there and walking you're saying leads to better fuel partitioning seemingly yeah interesting and I think that is and you can correct me if I'm wrong I mean I've certainly anecdotally noticed the Improvement in blood sugar yeah yeah like it's uh even for stabilization of like energy levels too like making sure you're not hanging out on a couch with your Spike blood glucose seems to be pretty impactful not just for mental performance but also for uh you know partitioning and actually optimizing body composition too so and that's an enhanced ranks I guys eating exorbitant amounts but anyways back to the layman in general you're in a 300 deficit you kind of milk that for all you can and by that I mean the biggest problem and I guess one of the biggest takeaways from this whole discussion could be that the people who aggressively cut way too fast will end up losing more weight off the bat but they will end up in a state of adaption faster whereby you are basically going to not only EXP spend less calories at rest via the depression of like non-exercise activity thermogenesis which is like fidgets and moving with just like your everyday activities you will actually start to subconsciously do that Less in addition you are pushing yourself to a state of nutrient deprivation much sooner than was necessary to achieve a fat loss outcome so rather than trying to lose you know 6 lb and two 2 weeks why don't I go with you know like 1 to two lbs at most and actually milk what I can out of that little tiny calorie increment before I decide okay do I need to then add some more cardio to my regimen or do I want to decrease food by another 100 calories or do I want to add you know metabolic enhancing pharmacology you can actually make the call at that point because you've exhausted the actual increment and you know you're not unnecessarily depressing hormone production and also putting yourself into a hole of what is essentially a malnourished State cuz if you push too hard and you go from let's just say you're eating 2,800 calories a day and you instantly drop to 1,800 you will lose a ton of weight off the rip and it you'll think oh this is great and then very soon you will get to a point where it's like holy hell I am starving this is not sustainable what am I doing what do I do next I plateaued now where do I go from here it becomes easy to dig yourself into a hole if you're not careful about this like titration down essentially so I typically recommend trying to milk what you can until weight loss has averaged out at neutral for at minimum a few days but typically a week and then from there because as a natural you are very susceptible to Major aberration and hormone suppression if you are going to deprive the hell out of nutrients and especially if you're doing huge amounts of cardio concurrently because you think that's what you need to be doing also don't put yourself in a hole on the energy expenditure [Music] side

Channel: Peter Attia MD

Views: 177,966

Keywords: Peter Attia MD, Dr. Peter Attia, Early Medical, The Drive Podcast, The Drive, Longevity, Zone 2, fat loss, muscle gain

Id: Bd3ikvBbRrg

Length: 16min 42sec (1002 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 27 2024