Episode 20: How To Lose Fat, Without Losing Strength

Trying to lose fat but don’t want your strength to fall off a cliff?

This is where most people mess it up.

They cut calories too aggressively, add more cardio, train with less intent… and end up weaker, flatter, and burnt out.

In this episode, we break down exactly how to lose fat while maintaining (and even improving) your strength — especially if you’re balancing running and lifting.

We cover:

- Why strength is a skill you need to keep practicing
- How to train with intensity in a calorie deficit
- The role of carbs in performance
- Why high protein is non-negotiable
- How aggressive dieting is killing your progress
- Managing cardio when you’re already running
- When and why to use diet breaks
- Why consistency (including weekends) is everything

If you want to get lean without sacrificing performance, this is how you do it.

LINKS

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Podcast (Spotify):

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Lift Heavy, Run Fast Podcast Intro

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:08

What's going on, guys? Welcome back to another episode of the Lift Heavy Run Fast Podcast. I'm your host, hybrid coach Mike, and today's episode is a little bit of a continuation on the last episode that I did. Today we're talking about how to lose fat without losing strength. The last episode, if you haven't listened to it yet, I highly recommend you go and listen to it, was how to stay jacked while getting faster, to how to maintain your muscle size. And now I want to talk about how to not lose your strength while getting faster, basically, or how to lose fat without losing strength. And I'm going to discuss that a little bit. So, first of all, why would you want to be losing fat? Other than looking better, which many hybrids do, you want to look better, you want to physically be more fit or more healthy, losing fat is the way to do that, or a great way to do that. If you're particularly someone who's overweight and a doctor or your dietitian or your coach has recommended, hey bro, you really should look at losing some weight, which I do with many of my clients just to make them a little bit healthier. It's something you definitely want to do. Losing fat, there's no reason in the world of hybrid training, I will say, that being high body fat is going to help you. When you are exclusively a strength athlete, strongman powerlifting, I'm speaking about in some cases weightlifting. If you're someone in the higher weight classes, having higher body fat can definitely help you. It can help you recover better, eating more is always a good thing, all that kind of stuff. Basically gives you more muscle to grow and then also to build strength and more cushion for the push in, they say. But in terms of being a hybrid athlete, someone that wants to run and lift at the same time or compete in some form of cardiovascular activity and lift at the same time, having high body fat can really, really diminish your ability to perform in that cardiovascular world. Having high body fat or having more size on you is great in terms of strength and muscle gain, but not so much if your goal is to be fitter and/or faster. So other than being healthy, I am not a health coach, so I'm not going to talk to you about that too much, but losing fat in some cases and in most of the losing fat in almost all cases, I will say, will make you faster and fitter. Fat does not use oxygen for fat does not really use oxygen in order to propel you forward or to make you run faster. It doesn't help you move any quicker. It really just slows you down. Way to think about it, right? When I first started running, okay, I was 103 kilos, I think, when I first started running. Or maybe 102, but I was heavy, way heavier than I am now. As of today, I weighed in at 87.8 kilos, which is the lightest I've been in a very long time. Uh, I'm in the middle of a race prep. I have a race coming up if you weren't aware. I mentioned it a little bit in the last episode. Race is three weeks away, and I've been trying to get leaner in the lead up to that race. I'm realistically only going to be dieting for another week or so. Uh so I think my weight will probably be about 87, uh, maybe 86 and a half. I won't be dieting the week of the race. I'll see where I'm at, but I don't see myself getting much leaner than where I am right now. But the reason why I have particularly tried to lean down from 92, 93 kilos when I started this prep was because I wanted to be as fast as possible and as efficient as I can be on the race overcome race day. Now, the next thing to think about here is the next thing to think about here is how do you want to lose fat? Why would you want to do it? So, what's your main goal? First of all, think of what your main goal is. If your goal is to get stronger, you probably want a little bit more body fat. You're someone that's quite skinny and you're you're training hybrid. Like I have a couple guys, like one guy I coach right now is a low 67, maybe he's up closer to 68 or 69 kilos right now. He's quite fit, but he wants to get bigger and he wants to get stronger. And I said, Look, we're probably gonna have to gain a little bit of body fat. He's quite quick on his legs, he's a relatively a fast runner, probably running close to four-minute pace. Um, for like a half marathon, I think he's done a 10k in under 40 minutes from memory. Um excellent runner, clearly quite fit. But if he wants to get bigger and stronger, he probably has to gain a little bit of body fat. So, in that instance, eating more is gonna help him, and he may need to accept the fact that he's gonna be running a little bit slower for a short period of time while we gain some of that size, and then when we have a race coming up or when we're in race prep, we'll probably look at reducing his body fat a little bit again. So, similar to what I'm doing right now, my priority is being as fast as possible over the next three weeks. I've been dieting probably for six weeks now, uh, so it'll be like a nine-week diet altogether. I did get back from overseas not long ago, so my diet was a bit all over the place while I was there, but for the most part, I would say I've been dieting for about eight weeks, uh, maybe a little bit more, and I've lost about five and a half or something kilos. So, will I lose much more? I don't know, and we'll see. Anyway, how to lose fat without losing strength. Here's what I reckon you should do. So, first of all, strength is a skill, okay? And you need to ensure that the lifts you're trying to be strong at or the lifts that are going to be getting you stronger are still in your program regularly, okay? So if you want to have a good bench press, you should be bench pressing frequently. And in fact, if you're in a deficit, you should be maybe doing that a little bit more frequently. So you should be putting more of your focus towards keeping those lifts in your program that are getting you stronger or maintaining your strength, and doing maybe a little bit less of the other ones that aren't going to be doing as much for your strength, like the bicep kills and all that kind of stuff. You may want to then add an extra set or maybe do an extra day of bench pressing or squatting or deadlifting or overhead pressing, whatever it is you want to keep the strength at. It's okay to do it more than once, twice, three times. If you're training four times a week, you can do bench pressing four times a week for exercises like squats and deadlifts. I probably don't recommend doing those four times a week. One, just because you're going to be cooked whether you run or not, but two, because you cook, because you run, you're not going to be able to maintain your fitness or maintain your uh running capabilities whatsoever, squatting four times a week or training legs four times a week, in my opinion, uh, unless you're doing really, really low volume, um, or you're not a very good runner at all. But for the most part, you know, upper body you can hit frequently and often, and that's the same with the strength-based exercises that are are of the upper body, you know, rows, presses. But when it comes to lower body strength-based movements, deadlifts, squats, you really don't want to be doing them more than once or twice a week. Even in like high-level power lifters, most of them really aren't doing them once or more than once or twice a week in some cases, like if you're quite strong. Uh, for me, I've deadlifted 300 kilos before. The last time I did it, I think it was like 93 kilos. I was only deadlifting once a week at that time, so I couldn't recover if I did it more than that. Once a week was more than enough for me to do it, and then I just went and hit it again the next week and I was able to continuously build quite easily. But I found when I actually tried to incorporate a second session, even though it was low volume and lower intensity, I just didn't have enough energy for that main session. So I just did it once a week and I responded better. So there's some cases where you don't want to do it all the time, but for most athletes, I will say that if you're in a deficit and you're losing weight, you may need to look at increasing the frequency and doing less junk volume. So maybe doing those deadlifts twice a week, maybe doing those squats twice a week, maybe doing that bench press three or four times a week, but then reducing other uh the volume that you would put elsewhere on exercises like your bicep curls, your re-adults, and stuff like that. Because it's really just fluff and it's probably not going to be doing a whole lot for your overall strength performance. It'll make you look jacked though, so something to think about. Keep the intensity high. Don't just uh keep just like lift like a little bitch now. Basically, you still want to keep the intensity high in the gym. You should be lifting at a high RP or high difficulty, you know, six to ten range is where you want to be. You want to be a six out of ten, seven out of ten, eight out of ten. You don't want to be lifting really anything below that. The intensity should be quite high, but you should be quite efficient with your workouts, you shouldn't be doing a lot of fluff, you should be going in, hitting it hard, and getting the fuck out of there. Um, you don't want to be doing it for too long because eventually, if you're just doing junk volume all the time, you are gonna find you're just carrying extra fatigue, which is then gonna limit your next session, which is then gonna make you weaker over a long period of time if done frequently. Next up, eat carbs around your training sessions. So before a training session, have a banana. Maybe during a training session, sip a Gatorade after your training session, you know, have your tuna and rice, eat your carbs around your training sessions. It helps both in recovery and performance. Same goes for running, really. If you can have gels on you while you're running, if you can have a little bit of carbs before you run, not necessarily right before, but you know, 30 minutes, an hour, whatever it is, you got to figure out whatever your stomach can handle. Um, you know, a couple hours before. Then do the same when you go into uh you know your weight trading sessions. Generally, with weight training sessions, you can eat a little bit closer to your training session because you're not moving as much. But the key thing is eat the carbs around your sessions, don't remove them from your diet altogether. You may need to reduce your carb intake overall because you're in a deficit. Your fat and carb intake may need to be reduced, but you just need to be more particular as to where you place those carbs in your day, particularly if you're training that day. So having them around your training session can help a lot. The next thing while we're on the diet topic is make sure your protein is still high. If you're in a deficit, you're trying to lose body fat, you should be eating at least, in my opinion, 1.8 grams of uh protein per kilo of body weight. So for a benchmark, just eat two times your body weight in protein, at least. If you're in a really hard deficit and you're losing a lot of weight, maybe even want to go higher than that, maybe 2.2 up to 2.4, and then the remaining of your macronutrients should really be coming from carbs with a little bit of fats mixed in there. But it's really should be important that you keep your protein intake quite high, keep your carbs you know, moderate, your fats can be quite low in with the sports that we're training at, and you want to make sure you're eating protein throughout the day, and then you're getting your carbs in around your training sessions, but also then a little bit throughout the day as well. Fats don't matter so much just because it's not a primary fuel source in the sports that we're doing. The next thing, use a small controlled calorie deficit. So don't do too much of an aggressive calorie deficit. If you cut aggressively, you will fuck yourself up. You will feel fatigued, you'll feel tired, and you will find that you're probably not able to uh push your sessions as much, you're not recovering. You will literally be doing a set of say dumbbell bench press, a weight that you've done, you know, the weeks prior, and all of a sudden it feels so much higher, uh so much harder. Maybe in the weeks before you did it for 10 or 12 reps, and all of a sudden today you're only able to get it for six or seven reps, and you find you might need to drop the weight in order to still hit that volume. So that is generally a case of someone that maybe is dieting too hard or maybe not eating carbs sufficiently around their workouts. So I really recommend um not aggressively cutting. When I say what aggressive is, I would say anything beyond a four to five hundred calorie deficit is going to be quite aggressive, is going to be very aggressive. I would even say a 500 calorie deficit is quite aggressive. Because you're running so much as well as a hybrid, you could probably even get away with as little as a 300 calorie deficit or something. I right now am on, I wouldn't even know, but I would say I'm on about a four or five hundred calorie deficit. I'm probably losing close to a kilo a week, which makes sounds about right, and that's where most people are at in terms of their weight loss progression in that kind of deficit. But for me, I really have to make sure my diet is on point so I don't feel too cooked both when I run and when I lift in the gym. Uh so something to keep in mind. Really, really need to make sure you don't be too aggressive with your diet. The other thing is you should be out of a diet every six or so weeks. Don't diet continuously for two, three months at a time. Take a diet break every six or eight weeks, depending on how your weight is tracking. Take that diet break for one to two weeks at a time, come back up to maintenance and then go again. You don't want to sit in a deficit for too long. Eventually, that deficit is going to be reduced because your metabolism will likely slow down to meet the demand. Your body will be like, okay, we don't need to burn this many calories, we're not using as many. My metabolism is now going to slow down. So that deficit that was once 500 calories is now maybe two or three hundred or maybe even nothing. So it's important you go back to maintenance frequently in order to just keep your uh keep the diet easier and more realistic for you to be able to stick to. But I find it also just ensures that your metabolism doesn't slow down too much and you don't feel like um you have to then take an even more aggressive deficit and continuously just drop the cows in order to get you to your goal. Next thing, don't overdo the cardio if you're already running. So, you know, a lot of people want to do more cardio when they're on a diet because they think it's just gonna burn calories faster, which it probably will, but at what cost? If you're trying to be stronger, doing more cardio is gonna use up more energy, it's gonna cause you to be in a larger calorie deficit than you probably were already initially intending to be throughout your diet. So now you'll likely find that your strength will take an impact and your strength will likely decrease, which is not what we want. We don't want our strength to drop, we want to keep our strength up as much as we can, which means adding endless cardio into your program is not a good idea either. Just stick to the program, do whatever you're supposed to do, but don't go and do extra because you think it's gonna help you lose weight faster. I don't think that's a good way to go about it. I think if you're gonna do anything, just add in extra walks here and there, but I wouldn't be adding in extra runs just for the sake of it. It you're one, you're already in a deficit, you're probably not gonna recover from them. Two, it's not gonna improve your performance any faster. Three, it's just gonna impact your ability to lift in the gym, which is gonna impact your strength overall. Lastly but not least, treat your diet like it's a full-time job and weekends are included. Do not do not just eat like like excellent Monday to Friday and then eat like shit on a on a weekend and then continuously wonder why your weight isn't going down or you haven't lost as much weight, which means you now need to drag this diet out even longer. Just treat your diet like it's a full-time job. If you're on a deficit, do what you've got to do to lose that weight. If you've given yourself a four to five week deficit in that four to five week time span, track your calories, stick to the diet plan that you've been given, whatever it is, and just stick to it for that period of time and don't fuck around. It's that simple. Just stick to it, treat it like it's a full-time job, prepare your meals in advance, do whatever you've got to do. If you can't cook, order some meals online, do anything to ensure that you stay on track because you're only going to be reducing your extending the time that you have to diet long term, which isn't a good thing, and it's also just going to be delaying your progress and therefore delaying your performance long term because ultimately being in a diet for too long is only going to negatively impact you. You do not want to do it for long periods of time. You want to get out of that diet as soon as you can and just go back to maintenance at least to ensure that your performance can then match what your body needs, basically, or your body can match what your performance needs. Sorry. Okay. Think that's everything. That's how to lose fat without losing strength. Other than that, I hope you oh, last thing I want to say is I also recommend not losing any more than maybe one percent of your body weight per week. I should have mentioned that a little bit before. You don't want to lose much more than one percent of your body weight per week. If you're losing more than that, that means you'll be in a more aggressive calorie deficit. You will find just your strength will probably be dropping. So just keep that in mind. 1% of your body weight is usually the upper limit as to what you want. So if you're 100 kilos, a kilo a week, um that that's plenty. Keep in mind again, you might find that in the beginning you will lose a little bit more weight faster. You might drop two kilos in the first week. That's usually water and glycogen, but after that, you kind of don't want to see it drop that quickly if you don't have to lose it. If it's beyond one percent of your body weight per week, you will definitely find after a few weeks your strength is gonna dip and you're gonna feel flat and look flat and and and just not feel that good. So make your life easier. One percent a week is excellent, and if it means you just have to stick through that diet a little bit longer, you just have to do it in order to get to that goal weight, but your performance will thank you for it because it won't dip, and you'll have better energy because of it. That's the last thing. Other than that, as always, if you need help losing fat while getting stronger or while getting faster, whatever it is, as always, I have online coaching spots available. All you have to do is click one of the links or hit me up on Instagram, and I'll be able to help you reach out to me. We can chat, make sure I'm the right fit for you. I'll do all the thinking. All you have to do is follow the plan. Thank you for listening. As always, I'm hybrid coach Mike. Like, comment, subscribe, do whatever you got to do wherever you're listening or watching this. I'll see you guys next time. Lift heavy, run fast.