How to Burn Eight Pounds of Fat

A practical guide with tips for success

You clicked on this article because you want to know how to learn to lose fat. You probably are not sure why it is eight pounds instead of any other number. Read this entire guide for both the fat loss plan and some hacks I have learned from my own experience with fat loss dieting.

The cold hard facts

If you want to lose fat you have to be in a calorie deficit. That means you have to eat fewer calories than you burn each day.

One pound of fat is 3,500 calories. If you want to lose one pound you have to burn 3,500 more calories than you consume. I can attest from personal experience that this ratio is correct.

There is no special diet or meal timing that will make you burn fat if you are not in a calorie deficit. Fad diets like Keto or Intermittent Fasting only work because they cause their adherents to restrict their calorie intake.

Counting calories works. It has worked for me numerous times for both bulking and fat loss dieting.

If you think you can’t count calories, ask yourself “why?”. Plenty of people dumber and lazier than you count calories and achieve their fitness goals.

Why eight pounds?

One mistake people make with their fat loss diets is that they are too long and slow. You can lose a significant amount of body fat in just eight weeks then go back to maintaining your new lower bodyweight.

Long diets are hard to adhere to and after sustained calorie deficits and weight loss people experience diet resistance. Diet resistance is when your bodies hormonal systems adjust themselves to preserve energy after sustained calorie deficits. Each week that you diet, the diet becomes less effective because your body naturally down regulates your metabolism.

Short aggressive fat loss periods followed by a period of weight maintenance help to avoid diet resistance.

Sustaining a daily calorie deficit of 500 calories per day for eight weeks is a short and aggressive diet that will produce a fat loss of eight pounds.

The Prep

Find out your daily calorie expenditure. If you have an Apple watch I found the Resting Energy (Basal Metabolic Rate) estimate to be accurate enough to lose fat. I add the Resting Energy to my average Active Energy from my Apple watch over the last six months to get my average daily calorie expenditure.

You can also use one of the many free calorie expenditure online applications to compute a rough estimate.

The diet

Take your average daily calorie expenditure and subtract 500. That is your daily calorie alotment.

Consume one gram of protein per pound of bodyweight. This will ensure you have enough protein to sustain your existing muscle mass. Protein is the most satiating macronutrient and it takes more energy to digest than fats and carbohydrates. Get protein from lean protein sources like chicken breast, canned tuna in water, or at least 90% lean ground beef, for example.

Fill the rest of your calories with whole food sources of carbohydrates. Focus on highly satiating foods cooked without any oil. Fats are the easiest macronutrients to convert to fat and are not satiating like high fiber fruits and whole grains (try eating 500 calories of baked sweet potato without any butter or olive oil). Root vegetables are great sources of satiating carbs.

Eat between two and four, roughly evenly spaced, meals per day. Keep all the meals to the same calorie intake to keep things very simple.

If you want to have a cheat meal included in the diet plan pick a packaged desert like Dove ice cream bars that has the calories on the nutrition label. Take the number of calories on the label, divide it by seven then reduce your daily calorie limit by that amount, then set one day per week that you can eat that desert.

Exercise

Do resistance training at least three days per week but more days is better. Ensure that your resistance training plan allows for enough recovery for each muscle group between sessions. Compound lifts will burn more calories than isolation.

Lifting ensures your body will do its best to hold on to muscle. It is very unlikely that you will actually lose any muscle tissue.

Walk for at least forty five minutes a day or at least 12,000 steps. Again more is better as long as your aren’t having foot or ankle pain from walking too much. Walking burns extra calories without interfering with your ability to recover from lifting.

Sleep

Make sure to get eight hours of quality sleep at least six nights a week and get at least six hours of quality sleep every night per week.

If you are getting hungry at night before bed and it is making it hard to sleep try to move all your meals later in the day. Personally I do not do this because I am prone to heart burn.

The scale

For the first week, if you weigh yourself, you may notice that you lose way more weight than you expect. This is because you are eating less food and therefore less salt and carbohydrates which cause your body to store water in your muscles and other cells.

You may notice that the scale fluctuates a lot during this period. The scale isn’t going to be very reliable as your body is adjusting to this drastic change in activity and calorie intake. If you generally feel extra hungry then you are likely hitting your planned calorie deficit or you are close.

After the fat loss phase

Immediately after the fat loss phase begin to eat at maintenance calories. Your maintenance phase should be at least two weeks. To do this increase the amount of highly satiating carbs like fruit and root vegetables in each meal. Basically your diet will be almost exactly the same except a little bit more filling.

The longer the maintenance phase the more your body will adjust to the new level of bodyfat you have and your new calorie intake. During this maintenance phase it is extremely important to monitor your monitor your weight.

If over a period of two weeks you are still losing a noticeable amount of weight (a half a pound or more per week) then you are still in a calorie deficit and can increase the amount of calories you eat. If you start to gain the weight back take the daily calories down by 500 calories per additional pound per week.

Sticking to the maintenance phase and the “clean” diet will prevent you from gaining the weight back immediately. The reason so many people go from fat to skinny back to fat again is that as soon as they reach their goal they start to eat cheat meals and junk food again.

Once you have maintained your weight for several months you should start to feel more full throughout the day and after each meal. Your lower body fat level is now becoming your new homeostasis point.

Tips for success

Make the meals you eat satiating with a lot of fiber and protein. Make the meals boring. The more tasty the food is the more you will want to eat it.

Think protein first, then root vegetables or fruit, then grains last to fill in any remaining calories. This will again make you feel more satiated and less likely to overeat.

I personally eat almost the same thing for every single meal. This reduces the amount of thinking that goes into the diet so all I need to do is execute.

Planning the number and size of meals and keeping to that plan make success much easier. If your plan is to eat four 500 calorie meals per day with 40 grams of protein per each meal and you execute on that plan you will definitely lose weight. Snacking will make tracking calories more difficult and make it more likely you will overeat. I don’t even snack when I am bulking.

Remove will power from the equation by removing all easy sources of calories from your home. All the chips, pretzels, and crackers you keep in your house need to go. If you live with other people who eat those foods only purchase enough for them to eat and tell yourself that they are not yours.

Choose your own path

Depending on your goals you may decide to go for another eight week fat loss period, build more muscle by bulking, or continue to maintain your healthier new weight.

Through this short transformation period you will learn a lot about discipline, mental resilliance