Rapid Fat Loss vs. a Long, Slow Cut (Who Aggressive Dieting is For) | Ep 479
When does a fast, aggressive cut (rapid fat loss) beat a long, slow one?
The answer depends on your body fat, your training, your timeline, your history with dieting, and whether you are perimenopausal or over 40.
This episode revisits rapid fat loss and the case for a strict, short diet when the slow-and-sustainable default doesn't work as well for you (or simply because you want to use it). Make sure to download my FREE Rapid Fat Loss guide to follow along with the episode.
We examine the research on how to lose fat quickly without losing muscle, including studies on rate of loss, protein during a steep deficit, and protein needs for people lifting weights.
Learn what a structured protein-sparing protocol with built-in refeeds actually involves, why strength training and protein are so important for preserving your muscle (and thus losing fat), where metabolic adaptation fits in, and the clear line between a smart aggressive cut and a crash diet.
This episode is designed for adults over 40 who lift, track their food, and want to know whether they are the exception to the "slow" fat loss rule.
Download the free Rapid Fat Loss Guide with my step-by-step 14-day protocol. This is an aggressive dieting plan for serious lifters only who know how to build muscle and track their food. It includes everything you need to know to lose, on average, 3-5 lbs (or more) of pure fat in just 2 weeks:
https://witsandweights.com/free
Timestamps:
0:00 - Slow fat loss and the adherence problem
4:57 - The case for moderate fat loss
8:05 - When going slow stops working
10:46 - What a structured aggressive cut looks like
12:38 - Protein and carbs as muscle insurance
15:47 - Scheduled refeeds and how they work
18:05 - Strength training during a cut
19:16 - Water loss, fat loss, and using it as a tool
20:30 - Step-by-step rapid fat loss guide
21:54 - Preserving muscle on a steep deficit
26:12 - Refeeds, diet breaks, and metabolic adaptation
28:33 - Who an aggressive cut is for (and NOT for)
32:25 - Considerations in perimenopause and over 40
34:12 - Bonus: Deficit to make your fat loss easier
Mentioned:
Eat More Lift Heavy - the 26-week coached program where adults over 40 build the nutrition and training skills to preserve muscle, lose fat, and manage their physique for life, where we can guide you through any fat loss phase (rapid or not) and make sure the results LAST
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Slow fat loss and the adherence problem
Philip Pape 0:00
When it comes to fat loss, we often talk about going slow, being patient, using a small calorie deficit, and playing the long game. And for most people, most of the time, that is the right call. But for some of you, the long game is what is holding you back because you get about six weeks in, maybe you get bored, maybe you start to drift off track, and then you quit. And so it becomes an adherence issue. Today I'm making the case that for some, a shorter, stricter, more aggressive cut, aka rapid fat loss, can sometimes beat dragging out a moderate deficit for several months. Who it actually works for, what the research says about sparing your muscle when you are dieting hard, and the line between a smart, aggressive cut and a crash diet, which are not the same thing. Welcome to Wits and Weights, the show that puts a popular piece of fitness advice under the microscope, finds the hidden reason it doesn't work, and gives you the deceptively simple fix that does. I'm your host, certified nutrition coach Philip Pape, and today we are revisiting rapid fat loss. If you've been around this show for a while, or really around any evidence-based corner of the fitness world over the past few years, you've probably absorbed the key message for successful fat loss, and that is slow and steady, use a moderate or small deficit so that you don't lose too much muscle and you can stick with it, lose maybe a half pound to a pound a week. You know, it depends on your size and your metabolism. Be patient. You want to build the habits, you want to play the long game. And I've said that versions of that myself, right? The long game is sometimes the fastest game because for many, if not most people in most situations, that's the right call. Now, recently we did do an episode about mini cuts and mini books where I push you more on the aggressive side to say that some people benefit a little bit from short duration fat loss phases that are a little more aggressive. And today we're gonna go even further than that. We're gonna get a little uncomfortable and poke at our own orthodoxy. And in reality, I've I've talked a lot about nonlinear approaches and the fact that everyone responds to different things, both physically and psychologically. And so that's why that's why it's good to have a spectrum. So the slow or moderate approach, it rests on an assumption, and that is that the hardest part of dieting is sustaining it, right? When we say sustainability, that's what we mean. Adherence. Can you stick with it to be successful? And so then the move here is well, let's make it a little gentler, let's make it a little longer. And for certain types of people in certain situations, that assumption doesn't always hold up. And for those people, going longer sometimes kills the diet or it causes you to bounce back and forth and never really quite get what you want out of it. Now, to be really clear up front, because I think this gets highly weaponized online on social media. I'm not here to sell you on crash dieting. I'm not saying that this is at all something a beginner should do. I'm not telling you, hey, eat 800 calories a day, even though that that number could be the number for you at a very short duration based on your current maintenance calories. But I'm not just gonna make a blanket statement. What I am gonna do is take a protocol that actually exists, that has structure, that has evidence behind it, show you who it fits and who it doesn't, especially for those of you who, hey, maybe you're perimenopausal, post-menopausal, and you have recovery issues. Maybe you're on the older side. We really wanna understand what you've been doing in your lifestyle to this point and what you're doing right now to see if it works. It's all about context. And then I want you to stick around to the end because I'm going to give you a simple rule at the end for how to set your rate of loss on any cut. It's a very simple way that I use with clients and our members and eat more lift heavy, where you can get a little creative about how you approach the beginning of the diet and then as you get into it. So we'll talk about that at the end. You could use that on your next fat loss phase. But for today's episode, here's what we're going to cover. The first thing is why slow is usually the default, but then when it stops working for a subset of you out there. What an actual structured aggressive cut or rapid fat loss phase looks like, because you've probably heard of lots of folks out there, like Lyle McDonald, for example, and different protocols. I'm just gonna keep it simple and straightforward. I'm gonna give you a version that has the protein sparing aspect to it and built-in refeeds, not a let me starve you to death version, because there's a difference. Also, what does the research say about losing fat quickly, but not losing muscle? And then I think the maybe the part that matters the most here is when is an aggressive cut a bad idea and how to tell if you are the exception to that rule. So I know it sounds like a lot, but it's all gonna come together. I want to start with why slow and sustainable is kind of the default and not create
The case for moderate fat loss
Philip Pape 4:57
any straw men here, right? The case for moderate fat loss is a really, really strong one that I strongly advocate for a lot of folks. And when I start with a person who's never quite done this before, that's generally the approach we take. It, however, the duration itself can still be its own challenge in terms of a variable, even when you are going slowly. So when you lose weight slowly, when you have a smaller deficit, we know that it's much more easy to hold on to most, if not all, of your muscle. It's easier. It doesn't mean it's going to happen. Conversely, going aggressive doesn't mean you're going to lose muscle, right? I want to be clear about that. There is a classic study by Garth in 2011 that gets cited a lot where they took elite athletes and they split them into a slow fat loss group, losing about seven-tenths of a percent of body weight a week. So that's 0.7%. And then a fast group losing 1.4% per week. And it was the same total weight loss. Both groups are lifting weights, both eating, you know, enough protein. The slow group increased their lean mass by about 2%. The fast group basically flat on that without gaining any lean mass. So the slower the fat loss, these the you know, assumption is or the conclusion is that it's more sparing of your muscle. And you might even gain a little bit if you're newer to this. And that's not super uncommon when we look at body recomp scenarios. Beyond that, slower dieting seems to protect your metabolic rate a bit better. And it's just a function of the aggressiveness. It's not like a magical thing. In other words, the math all works out whatever way you look at it, because what you're trading off by going slower is just slower fat loss, right? So if we look at, for example, this 2020 meta-analysis by Ashtari Larkey, they pooled a bunch of the research together and found that when you match total weight loss, the gradual dieters, the those who take it slowly, held on to about 97 calories a day more of their resting metabolic rate than people who went very fast, right? So 97 calories. And it's not that big of a difference, maybe, and you know, it depends on how big of a difference the aggressiveness was here, but we tend to see a difference. And it kind of makes sense, but again, you're trading off faster fat loss, right? Then there's the behavior part of this, which is probably the most important, almost bar none, the most important from everything I've seen. And that is that a moderate deficit is easier for people to deal with with their real life, right? You can go out to dinner, you can practice the skills of eating well, portioning your food, hitting your protein, navigating like the planning for restaurants, restaurant menus, going to parties, social events, all that stuff that you need, those skills that you need forever, those skills that are honestly the bread and butter of what we tend to help people with in our programs as well, because that's what pays off. That's what allows you to get that independence and know how to sustain and live at maintenance and have that long game, right? And that is the good argument for this. And then when you want to do a fat loss phase, it's just a matter of scaling some of those things, you know, bringing down the carbs a bit, maybe shifting the nutrition
When going slow stops working
Philip Pape 8:05
density of the foods. So, why am I doing this episode? Well, we've covered rapid fat loss a couple of times in the past, and it comes up a lot, and there's a lot of assumptions and misconceptions about it. If we think of slow and sustainable, it assumes that the binding constraint, right, the thing most likely to fall down in this chain of variables, let's say, is your ability to keep going, your adherence. So then the fix is we need to make it easier, make it gentler, make it longer. And for a lot of people, that works really well. But for some of you, that's not the constraint. For some of you, patience, engagement, interest is the constraint. You start really strong, things start to move, you're very excited and motivated. And then usually around week six, I will say, about a month and a half in, the novelty is off, the progress slows down, and you start to get frustrated, you start to drift, your tracking gets sloppy. I see this all the time. People are like, oh, I'm sorry, I actually haven't tracked for the last two weeks. Okay, what are you doing, man? Or woman, what are you doing? The weekend bleeds into the week, especially if you're doing the same calories every day. So it gets kind of boring. And eventually you're not really dieting, you're kind of uh thinking about dieting, and maybe you're tracking, maybe not, and you're kind of trying to, but you're not quite doing it, and you're sort of at maintenance now, right? So for that person, the long moderate deficit maybe not is not the best choice. Also, there's a corner case of folks, like, for example, some women I've I've had as clients, maybe they have thyroid issues, maybe they don't, but they're over-responsive when they go on a diet where their metabolism drops pretty quickly, and then they're like, they have to keep up with it by trying to cut calories again. And it's this frustrating thing of, oh my gosh, I can never actually lose weight. And it's not that you can't, it's just you have to go more aggressively. Sometimes you have to go way more aggressively, but for a short duration. And this actually aligns with some of the research Dr. Bill Campbell has done lately, like very recently down in South Florida, putting women on a very, very aggressive deficit with a lot of movement. Now, his protocol is extreme, but it's extreme for a purpose. It's kind of to prove out whether, you know, a woman who has the menopausal symptoms more severe than other women can actually lose weight. And of course they can, right? Like if you just starve yourself, you're gonna lose weight, but that's not the necessarily the way we want to do it. But it gives us a lot of clues as to what might work. So the just go slow can can be a problem for a subset of people. And again, staying engaged is very important here. So ironically, sustainability for some means going faster and then getting out. So getting in, getting out, and doing that multiple times over the year or over several
What a structured aggressive cut looks like
Philip Pape 10:46
years. So now let's talk about the aggressive cut. Okay. If if longer is a problem, then the alternative is shorter and more aggressive. So again, we've got a couple of variables we can play with. The duration, how aggressive, like how big of a calorie deficit, which means how how little are we gonna eat technically? And then the the variety within that. So, like, do you shift the calories around and all of that? Okay. And we're actually gonna hit on these. So I don't mean wing it and starve. I don't mean doptavia, optavia or whatever it's called, 800 calories a day of packaged foods that they ship, like none of that nonsense. I mean an actual structured protocol because structure is the point. Planning ahead is the point. Being in control is the point. We've talked on this show about how two groups of people who have refeeds. So, in other words, they are dieting and then let's say on the weekend they eat more, the people that treat it as a cheap meal will actually be less successful than the people who are completely on top of planning it out. Like they plan it as simply a higher day that's a refeed. It's not a cheat day, it's not a, you know, let's let's just have fun and eat whatever. And we see that. So there is a psychology behind this. And this idea has been around in the evidence-based world for a long time. Lyle McDonald wrote about it a version of rapid fat loss years ago. A lot of people reference him. A lot of my clients are into his stuff. He's great, he's very grumpy, grouchy guy. You know, you gotta love him. And a lot of what he says holds up and are great models for how to do this. We've also done our own rapid fat loss challenges and episodes. And I have a guide based on when Dr. Bill Campbell was on here and a settler did an experiment based on one of his protocols. So I'm gonna walk you through that today, but it doesn't matter whose protocol you use, the principles are what matter in terms of doing a smart aggressive cut
Protein and carbs as muscle insurance
Philip Pape 12:38
versus like a crash diet. Okay, so let's go through those. Let's go through those. Principle one is you're gonna have to go into a very aggressive deficit, yes, which means you're just gonna eat a lot fewer calories, but you are gonna anchor it to a really high amount of protein. Okay, protein and fibrous foods is the second piece of that, but it's really about the protein sparing your muscle and then eating in a way that minimizes the hunger, but you can't get rid of the hunger at this level. You're going to have hunger, okay? The version that I like is you go into about a 45% deficit. So you take your maintenance calories, that's the amount of calories you actually burn, which you need to know that. So you have to be tracking ahead of time and be kind of at maintenance for a while before you do this. And then I recommend the tool MacroFactor. It's my favorite app. Use code Wits and Weights, all one word, get a two-week free trial, try it out. Okay. You need your maintenance calories and then you go 55% of that. So a 45% deficit. So it's about half. I mean, it you could you could say roughly half, but it's a little more than that. So if you burn 2,500 calories, you're gonna be around 1,375 on your deficit days. And that's very aggressive. Now, a lot of you are starting way lower than that. You're starting at 1800 calories, and now you're gonna go down to something like 950, right? Or maybe even lower than that. And that's why you could be at seven or eight hundred calories for an individual, but that that's the point is it's gonna be extremely short. Here's what keeps it from being a crash diet. You're gonna set your protein really high. You're gonna set it to at least a gram per pound of body weight, but it could go higher, 1.2, 1.3, 1.5. It could be pretty much exclusively protein, things like white fish and shrimp and chicken breast, right? And vegetables. And I know it almost sounds like paleo or something like that, but that's the point. It's very, very short. You're gonna keep those amino acids flooding in, you're gonna keep strength training, and that is going to hold on to the muscle because that's what we want to do. We want to lose fat and not muscle. Principle two. So principle one is the protein. Principle two is we're gonna keep the carbs in, but we're going to use it as refeeds for the most part, depending on how many carbs you have to play with during the week. You might have some carbs during the week, but you're gonna be eating mostly fibrous vegetables and including a little bit of fruit is what I would recommend. So when we look at starvation diets or crash diets, oftentimes they just cut carbs, right? Things like keto, you know. And that can be counter-counterproductive. We know carbs are muscle sparing, they give you a little bit of energy, but they are gonna be highly limited. Let's just admit it, because you're taking up most of the diet with protein. When you run out of carbs, your body's gonna start pulling from other sources. So it's gonna try to pull from fat, maybe a little bit from protein, converting to glucose, and from a it's not going to rebuild muscle. In other words, muscle protein breakdown outpaces muscle protein synthesis. So it's not that it's like eating your muscles if you are lacking in protein and carbs. It's just that your body will not have what it needs to rebuild the muscle. So we do keep carbs in the picture. They end up moderate to low, just like the fat ends up being pretty low. Protein is taking up the vast majority of
Scheduled refeeds and how they work
Philip Pape 15:47
a calorie budget. And then the principle three we're gonna get to now with refeeds, that's where you're gonna really take advantage of carbs. So principle number three is schedule built-in refeeds. And the way I run it, you go four days in a deficit, then one day in a refeed, four days in a deficit, one in a refeed, four more days in a deficit, and you're done. So that's 14 days that include two refeeds. Now, there are different protocols. Again, Lau McDonald has his protocol. You can look it up. There's lots of different ways to do that. Some people get creative and mix it around. It's fine, right? Some people stretch it out a little bit and they might do four days, two days, or they might do a typical like seven-day period of five days, two days. That's that's also pretty common. So on the refeed days, what do you do? Well, you bump your calories back up to maintenance almost entirely with carbs. And, you know, I like carbs like fruit and starches, you know, rice and things like that that are pretty easy to just jack up carbs and consume them because you actually might, even though you're probably hungry and you're looking forward to the food, you also don't want to stuff yourself and get distended and feel like really terrible. So you tend to go uh and pick, you know, the right types of carbs that kind of balance a sweet spot between satiety and ease of consumption. And so your refeed days are up at your maintenance calories. So if you were burning 2,500 calories and you're dieting on, what did we say, 13 something, now you're going back to 2,500 on those days. Now, there are some camps that say, look, if you don't feel like you need all that amount, you know, go part way there, go two-thirds or 80% of the way there. You're gonna have to experiment with yourself to see if that gets you all the benefits or not. For some people, it's like not enough. And then they feel like they've never quite had a relief. For others, that's actually beautiful because then it actually gives them a little bit more of a deficit as part of the process, right? The goal here is top off your muscle glycogen. It kind of really gives you a little boost for the next training day, but mainly it gives you a psychological breather, a day that you can look forward to, but in a planned way, not in a cheat way. Um, and that helps you get through the two weeks. Two weeks doesn't sound like a lot on a podcast, but when you're actually in this thing, this is a challenging thing to do. And by the way, you could stretch this out to three weeks in different ways. You can have a slightly less aggressive deficit, you can have two extra refeed
Strength training during a cut
Philip Pape 18:05
days in there. You know, there's different ways to do this. The fourth principle is the training, the strength training, right? And we've talked about this in the past. When you go into fat loss, a lot of people want to train a different way. You want to do like lighter, more reps, add a bunch of cardio, et cetera. No, you're not gonna have much energy. So the best way to burn fat to hold on your muscle is a high stimulus, keeping the intensity or the weight on the bar or on the dumbbells or machines high. So, whatever you're already doing, probably just keep doing that because we're only talking about two weeks. We're not trying to hit PRs necessarily. So rep range, auto-regulated type programming tends to work well here. But for most of you, you're probably already doing something like that. And you might might lose a touch of strength because of the low energy, but you know, you hit it hard, get close to failure like you normally would, even if it's a few reps less less. Keep the weight up there, keep the load up there. Don't deload, don't bring it down. In fact, that's the worst time to combine with the delo. I always tell people when they're gonna deload in their normal course of their lifestyle, that's actually a good time not to be dying in. That's actually a good time to eat more, not the opposite. But anyway, heavy lifting, high protein, keep that muscle and burn the fat. That's the engine that's going
Water loss, fat loss, and using it as a tool
Philip Pape 19:16
on here. So, two caveats here so that I don't oversell this to people. The first one is that when you run this, and your scales, your scale is probably gonna drop a lot in the first few days. It may or may not. Like people respond differently, but if it does, most of that it's gonna be water and stored carbs that are leaving your body. The real fat loss over, say, the two-week protocol we're talking about here is more like at most three to five pounds. Now, that is excellent for a mere 14 days. That really is. And that's why you can string together, say, three of these in a year, and now you've got nine to 15 pounds of fat loss within that year just for six total cumulative weeks of diet, and that's not bad at all. That's kind of what we're going for. The second thing is this is a tool. This is not a lifestyle. It makes your overall life more sustainable for some people to be able to only have the two weeks of aggressive dieting, but the dieting itself is a very defined, structured block with a start and finish, and then you come back out to maintenance deliberately, you don't extend it. One of the biggest mistakes people make is hey, Philip, I'm feeling okay. I just got you know, some fat off. Should I keep going? I'm like, probably not. Probably not. Can you extend it by one week?
Step-by-step rapid fat loss guide
Philip Pape 20:30
Maybe. You've got to look at your biofeedback, your performance, all of that stuff. You know, maybe, but don't push it too hard or you're gonna start losing muscle, it's gonna start messing with your hormones, all that other stuff. So I just gave you the principles, I just gave you the broad numbers. If you want it spelled out, like exactly what do I eat on each day, how do I do the math, and all that. I do have a guide, my rapid fat loss guide. I've had it for a while. I'll put the link in my show notes. If you go to witsandweeights.com slash free, you can see all of my guides, including rapid fat loss. But I will put the link in the show notes to the rapid fat loss guide. This is one of the more detailed guides I have. It's Google Doc that actually walks you through everything and it step by step. It does the calorie math, it gives you the protein, it gives you the structure, the four four one one-off structure, tells you even how to set it up in macrofactor. There's lookup tables, you can find your body weight, maintenance calories. There's a whole bunch of really good stuff in there. Again, I'm saying that rapid fat loss is not for everyone, but it's it's good to look at it and see what it would take for you to do it. And if you are one of the people that is a good fit for this, we're going now to talk about who that is so that you could just be educated and make the right choice. Okay. So again, go to wit'saways.com slash free if you want to find the rapid fat loss guide or click the link in the show notes. So the protocol is very structured, but does it does rapid fat loss work as you would expect?
Preserving muscle on a steep deficit
Philip Pape 21:54
Can you actually hold on to your muscle? Because you probably heard, you know, oh, if I go more than 500 calorie deficit, I'm gonna start. Losing my muscle. No, there's a dose response factor and there's also a high training stimulus factor. I will say generally, what I've found is if people are really consistent at training hard with the proper effort, okay, just like we talked about, I think it was our last episode about what actually builds muscle. If you are doing that with enough volume and effort, you have a lot of leeway on dieting if you keep the duration short. Even if you are a 45, 50-year-old woman with declining progesterone and estrogen, all the fear-mongering out there about menopause, you can't lose weight anymore, and this and that. If you do this, you can have very good results. And this may be what you need as either a jump start or a little bit of you know boost to get it done if you do it right. There are two things it depends on the protein and the lifting. So it really comes down to that. And that can be challenging though. The lifting, not so much if you once you get into it, like you just keep doing it. But hitting that amount of protein when it's mostly just that protein, you've got to be very dialed in. Like you can't be eating ribeye and 80% ground beef for the most part during this phase. You could eat scallops and seafood. Seafood's great, like whitefish, you know, chicken breasts, things like that, some forms of pork, maybe. But the the reason the protein's so important, we've known this from studies. There's one back in 2016 by Longlin, where they took young men, they put them on a 40% calorie deficit, which is aggressive by any standard. They did it for four weeks. They did hard resistance training and intervals. And then they split them by protein. So one group had moderate protein intake, one had about up to 2.4 grams per kilogram. So the high protein group on the 40% deficit gained two and a half pounds of lean mass and lost 11 pounds of fat. So they actually body recomped on a huge deficit. The lower protein group just held on to their muscle and they lost less fat. So it's the same deficit, different body composition outcome. The only difference was the protein and the fact that they train hard. And I will say we're gonna do an upper another another episode soon digging into that whole protein phenomenon about how magic can occur when you increase your protein in terms of fat loss, even when you're in a deficit, or I should say, even when you're in a surplus, and then all of a sudden you start to lose fat. And it's like, this doesn't make sense, does it, based on calories and calories out? It does, but it's kind of a secondary effect that occurs on the energy outside of the equation. So anyway, protein is very important. And the muscle loss that everyone is worried about, it's not really about the size of the deficit. It's whether you are lifting hard, keeping the protein high, and keeping the duration short. And there's a whole body of work from Eric Helms that goes back to 2014, so a decade, where he basically, to just to paraphrase, the leaner you are and the more aggressive the deficit, the more protein you need. So in practice, for a lifter, that's where we get to the gram per pound of body weight. Now, the minimum you really need in general is like 0.6.7. It's not nearly that much. But when you're in an aggressive deficit, that's where we need to create a higher floor. So the floor I use in the protocol is just one, but I've definitely seen people be more successful jacking that up. Okay, jacking that up. It helps with satiety and all the other things as well. And it really does move the needle on body composition for some people in a in a surprising way. Now, remember earlier I mentioned the difference between those two groups with the aggressive versus not aggressive, and they were their metabolism dropped faster in the more aggressive group. Well, in that study, the problem is the rapid groups were usually they didn't have very high protein, and in many cases, they weren't lifting weight, lifting weights. So of course they're gonna lose muscle. So a lack of protein in training will itself accelerate your drop in metabolism as well. And look, a lot of you when we talk, forget rapid fat loss, just talk about life in general. You get into your 40s, 50s, where like, oh, my metabolism's not what it used to be. That's what's happening. You're losing muscle mass. You need more protein as you age, not less, and you probably didn't have much to begin with. You're if you're not even lifting weights, that's the biggest piece of all. That's the biggest piece of all. So whoever you are lifting weights, eating enough, eating enough protein, it solves most of these issues, guys. All right, now what about the refeeds and diet breaks?
Refeeds, diet breaks, and metabolic adaptation
Philip Pape 26:12
Okay, the the structured higher calorie periods that are in these protocols. Well, I would say the evidence is still mixed. It's really hard to tease things out. There's the famous Matador study where they did the blocks, the intervals that we've talked about. I think it was like two weeks on, two weeks off. And it seems like they had better results, but it could just be an adherence thing. We've had studies that compare continuous dieting to dieting with breaks that did not find a difference between fat loss, muscle, metabolic rate. So I think the strongest case for a refeed and why we include them is adherence and the psychology of it, right? Knowing that refeed is coming up in four days, it helps you get through those four days. However, there may be a physiological benefit as well. And this is again where you will have to experiment and see. And this is why you may not need the full maintenance calories. That was my point. Like if the only benefit is adherence, then that logic means you don't necessarily have to get fully up to maintenance on those days, right? Because the whole leptin argument that has been debunked. So, where does that leave metabolic adaptation itself in this conversation? Well, it's probably gonna happen, but it's not gonna be that big and it's temporary anyway. So don't worry about it. In fact, when I run people through a two or three-week rapid fat loss phase, we're not really even paying attention to what happens to our expenditure during that time because you can't really have that level of precision. Even if you are using macrofactor, it's too short of duration, and then you're done with the diet. Well, what can you do with that information? You're not gonna change your calories as a result because you're already doing these big swings anyway, from dieting to refeeds, right? The size of the adaptation on your meta in your metabolism tends to track with the size of the deficit, how much fast you lose, fat you lose, and the duration. But then it's going to bounce back. All of your metabolic rate is gonna come back. And the only change will be if you are lighter on the scale than before the diet, you're gonna burn fewer calories from that. But if you have more muscle, you'll burn more calories from that. So I would use the smallest deficit that gets you the loss that you want. But then in this case, what we're talking about today is that deficit being extremely high, but for a short duration for those who have trouble, sticking with a longer, slow diet. That's really what I'm talking about. So, who is this for? And who isn't it for? This is very important. And as always, I like to be direct here. So
Who an aggressive cut is for (and NOT for)
Philip Pape 28:33
knowing that this protocol exists and works in a certain context is different from you should do it, because I know everybody listening, especially if you've heard this for the first time, you're hearing this for the first time, you're like, oh my God, I didn't know this exists. I don't want to do a crash diet, but yeah, I would love to do this rapid fat loss phase. I can drop like five pounds of fat. Let's do it. All right, here we go. So I think this is ideal if, for example, you carry a lot of body fat to start with. So it's kind of like you have fuel in your body already. I think it's great. If you are, you know, quite overweight or even obese, perfect. Okay. I would say if you have a deadline, an event, a trip, a specific date, and you're just trying to do a quick cut for that, as much as I cringe a little bit on time-based constraints for these things, for some people, they're like, okay, I have the day, I might as well do it the right way. And assuming you've already done proper, set up your nutrition properly ahead of time and you've been training, go for it. Don't do it though if you've never done a fat loss before phase before and you haven't done all the things you're supposed to do for a fat loss phase, like strength training. Okay. If you know yourself well enough that longer diets are really hard, but you actually can do really well for a short duration aggressively and be disciplined and all that, you could be this could be perfect for you. A short block, clear finish line to you might be more sustainable, right? Over the macro period, like over the months, over the years, to have those short bursts in there. And I think the research backs it up. There's actually a study I found by Purcell in 2014 that was kind of counterintuitive. People losing weight rapidly were more likely to hit their target and less likely to drop out than a slow group. And it's because of this psychology of humans love to go after things and like to have events and goals. A clear, fast, defined push toward this goal, it kept more people in the game. And that finish line is motivating, right? So that's not just me theorizing about psychology that we do have evidence for this. And then one more thing on the rate of loss, where coat guys like Brandon DeCruz talk about this a lot. The right rate of loss is not even necessarily fixed across a single cut. Now, a rapid fat loss phase is so short, you're not even worried about the rate of loss. You're just setting up the deficit and doing it and you're done. But if we're talking a little longer, like a mini cut or longer, you don't have to stick to the same thing the whole time. We're gonna touch on this again in the end of the episode because this is where I think people don't think out of the box, and we should, and it would make things easier. Also, though, you should not do an aggressive cut. Okay. This is so this is the this is who it's not for. You should not do an aggressive cut or rapid fat loss phase if you have any history of disordered eating, period. Not worth worth the risk. Not worth the risk. I just had a call with somebody yesterday who has a history of very low calorie binge restricted cycles. She's actually in a muscle building phase, which is awesome. Okay. And I said, let's let's crank that out for like six months. And then when you're ready for a fat loss phase, we're gonna do it very moderate and we're not gonna do it for that long. And I said, who cares if it's like five pounds? It will prove to yourself you can do this in a sustainable way. So that's a different situation. She's not gonna do rapid fat loss. I would never recommend it. If you're already pretty lean, it's hard as well because I think you have a higher risk of muscle loss. If you cannot or will not hit that protein level while you're lifting hard, obviously you got to do that. It's probably not for you. In other words, you if you already struggle to hit your protein not on a diet, you're not ready. You've got to get there. You have to be ready for it and go to maintenance and successfully build those skills, right? That's something we do and eat more lift heavy. Just to throw my program out there is build that skill, those skills of each of those things. How do we track? How do we eat our protein? How do we solve all the problems in our own lives first? And then we can go to fat loss, whether it's rapid or not. Now, if you're a lady, if you're a woman in perimenopause and menopause, a lot of you listening, you're over 40. I would say for some, the downside risk is higher. And for others, this is exactly ideal. It's really individualistic.
Considerations in perimenopause and over 40
Philip Pape 32:25
Okay. When you're concerned about things like bone density and energy availability and stress and holding on to estrogen with lower or holding on to muscle with lower estrogen, all that stuff. As long as you are lifting consistently and with the proper effort and volume, and you can hit the protein like we've already talked about, and you're the type of person who's not really super responsive to longer diets, give it a shot. Why not? Like go for it. However, pushing energy too low is probably gonna have an impact on your hormones, like thyroid output, on your recovery, your sleep, your mood, your cycle. And it happens very fast. So my honest position is be very careful about setting yourself up for success during this, following the protocol the way it's supposed to be, doing the prerequisites. Don't be be honest with yourself that you are ready for it. But it could be a great tool. So the difference between a proper aggressive fat loss phase, rapid fat loss phase that works well is really in this level of precision, monitoring, protein, training, and then just watching how it works for you and tracking whatever you can so that next time you do it, you know what things you want to adjust. Should I go higher on the protein? Should I add another refeed? Should I go shorter or longer? Should I go more aggressive with the deficit, et cetera? So to put the whole thing together, slow and moderate is still the right default for the vast majority of you here. I would say 80%, 90% of the time. Another 10% are probably better off with mini cuts. And then maybe 5% of you, 10% of you are good with these rapid fat loss phases, just as a default. Anybody can do the rapid fat loss phase or experiment with it, of course. But listen through this episode again and go download my guide and just walk through the protocol. Wits and weights.com slash free or use the link in the show notes. Get the rapid fat loss guide. Okay.
Bonus: Deficit to make your fat loss easier
Philip Pape 34:12
So before we wrap up, I promised you a rule for setting your rate of loss that's out of the box that's going to help you out. And again, the resource today is a rapid fat loss guide. Go to wits and weights.com slash free. Get the link in the show notes. If you need more help than that, reach out, go to eatmoreliftheavy.com and see how we can help you develop the skills needed to get ready for successful fat loss, whether it's done this way or not. That's eatmorliftheavy.com. All right. Here is what I call the descending deficit. And it's something that I stumbled across randomly while working with clients and doing it for myself. And then I noticed folks like Brandon DeCruz and others talking about this. And it is stop picking just one rate of loss and trying to hold it the whole way. Instead, plan out a very, very aggressive rate of loss that then titrates down as you go. Because what's good, what it's going to do, it's going to feel like you're actually eating more food because you are eating more food as you go into the diet, which sounds counterintuitive, but it actually makes a lot of sense. Because at the start of a cut, your motivation's super high. You don't have any diet fatigue. You're carrying the most fat you're going to carry for the phase. Your muscles at the lowest risk it will be for muscle loss. That's when you can push. That's when you can jack it up to say 1% of your body weight a week. Or for some of you that are larger, even more than that. And then as you get leaner and the fatigue starts to build, you ease it off down to 0.75, down to half a percent a week as you're getting lean. Now, these are for longer diets, maybe not a it's not for the rapid fat loss phase, but it's an little tip that I think is super helpful if you're planning a longer diet. It's fat, you're doing it faster when it's easy, when it's safer, slower, when it gets harder and risky. And then you actually, you know, you're eating more food as you go. You're actually increasing the calories up into a smaller deficit. And it's interesting, right? Psychologically. A lot of people do the opposite. They start kind of cautious, they dip their foot in, they're like, I'm gonna go with a moderate deficit because I've heard I need to hold onto my muscle. And then they just kind of like barely get going, right? And then they start to get tired. And, you know, then you try to get more aggressive because you're making up for it, but now you're getting more metabolic adaptation and more diaphysic. It's the wrong way to do it. So try very aggressive and taper off to less aggressive. And by the way, when you start very aggressive, if you find that you can stay there for a little bit longer, go for it, right? It'll kind of tell you where your limits are. All right, until next time, keep using your wits, lifting those weights. And remember, the right speed for fat loss isn't slow or fast. It's the one that matches what you're capable of to stick to it and get the result. I'm Philip Pape, and I'll talk to you next time here on the Wits and Weights podcast.
