Body fat is stored energy.

When it comes to fat loss, it’s all about balancing your energy budget!

When we take in more energy in our food than our bodies use, the extra energy gets stored as fat for later use. This is kind of like our bodies’ energy “insurance” policy—if we at some point find ourselves in a situation where we can’t eat as much as we need, we can still live off the stored energy in our body fat. 

Body fat also serves other important functions in our health. Subcutaneous fat (the fat stored under our skin) has an important insulation function—keeping our bodies at the right temperature. The visceral fat in your torso protects your organs from damage. Body fat also helps to maintain cell health and to regulate our hormones. So it’s actually a good thing to have *some* fat stored in our bodies!

However, there are health problems that can occur when the amount of fat in your body is either too low or too high.

What Happens When Body Fat is Too Low or too high?

Everyone has a certain amount of fat that is necessary for maintaining health—this is called “essential fat.” For male bodies, essential fat is usually about 5%. For female bodies, essential fat is about 15%. Your unique body may require more or less before you begin to experience health problems.

When your body fat percentage drops below essential fat, you become increasingly at risk of getting sick due to decreased immune system functioning. You also risk developing heart problems, and you’ll have a much harder time recovering from your workouts. Having too low a body fat percentage can also lead to problems in your reproductive system. In men, low body fat percentages can cause testosterone levels to drop as well as sperm count and libido. Women who drop below essential body fat often lose their periods and have difficulty getting pregnant.

On the other side of the spectrum, having too much body fat can lead to other health problems—including an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, type II diabetes, and some kinds of cancers.

To stay healthy, it’s best to keep your body fat within a certain range of percentages, depending on your age. For men that looks like (source):

• Ages 20-29: between 8% and 18.6%

• Ages 30-39: between 8% and 21.3%

• Ages 40-49: between 8% and 23.4%

• Ages 50-59: between 8% and 24.6%

• Over 60: between 8% and 25.2%

For women, healthy body fat percentages are:

• Ages 20-29: between 14% and 22.7%

• Ages 30-39: between 14% and 24.6%

• Ages 40-49: between 14% and 27.6%

• Ages 50-59: between 14% and 30.4%

• Over 60: between 14% and 31.3%

If you find yourself on the higher end of the spectrum and would like to focus on burning fat—remember it’s all about that energy balance! In general, you’ll need to keep your body burning more calories than what you take in over an extended period of time to burn body fat.

3 Steps to Fat Loss

In training, a fat loss phase is called a “cut.” There are generally three main things you need to do for an effective cut phase: 

1. Reduce Calorie Intake

2. Get Moving

3. Build Muscle

The main focus of a cut phase is keeping your body in a caloric deficit--meaning you eat fewer calories than what your body burns. We first do this by reducing your calorie intake below your maintenance level of calories.

Step 1: Reduce Calorie Intake 

We all have a certain amount of calories that our bodies need just to maintain their everyday functions. This is called our maintenance level of calories. 

You can get an estimate of what your maintenance level of calories is by using an online calculator to determine your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE). This will give you a rough idea of how many calories you would need to eat every day just to keep your body weight the same. 

To go into a caloric deficit—you should plan to eat *below* your maintenance level of calories. 

It takes about 3500 calories total below maintenance to burn 1 pound of fat—but it’s best to spread that deficit out over the course of 1-2 weeks. 

So to burn 1 pound of fat per week, you could eat 500 calories below your maintenance level every day. That way, over the course of 7 days, you’d have a total deficit of 3500 calories.

For a more moderate approach of burning 0.5 pounds of fat per week, you could eat 250 calories below maintenance every day (over the course of one week, this would be a 1750 calorie deficit). 

For extreme cases of fat loss, you could go into a 1,000 calorie deficit every day to lose 2 pounds of fat per week. However a deficit this steep is only recommended for people who are severely overweight and already have a high maintenance level of calories to begin with. It’s best not to exceed the 1,000 calorie deficit to avoid developing health problems as you lose weight.

To keep your calorie intake within your daily goal, track what you eat in an app like MyFitnessPal or follow a meal plan designed for the goal number of calories you’re aiming to eat.

Step 2: Get Moving

At the same time that you reduce your calorie intake, you should also focus on exercising in a way that gets your body burning more calories. You can do this by increasing the amount of cardiovascular exercise that you do each week.

The American Heart Association recommends 150 minutes total each week of moderate-intensity cardiovascular exercise to maintain health. For fat loss, the AHA recommends 300 minutes. You can break that time up into 5 days each week by going on a 45-60 minute walk—or doing some other activity that has you up and moving to get your heart rate up into your moderate-intensity zone. Remember—the more you move, the more calories you burn!

Learn more about how to do Cardiovascular exercise for burning fat in my article How to Burn Fat with Cardio.

Step 3: Build Muscle

At the same time that you get more active, it’s also important to incorporate muscle-building resistance training into your weekly training routine as well. Muscle is one of the main drivers of our metabolisms—the more you have, the more calories you burn!

As we burn fat in a caloric deficit, our bodies break down muscle as well as fat to make up for the energy we aren’t getting in our diets. As our muscle breaks down, our metabolisms slow down—making it harder and harder to continue losing weight over time. You can keep your body from slowing down and avoid hitting a weight loss plateau by performing resistance training 2-3 times per week.

Resistance training for fat loss should focus on building muscle—so bodybuilding programs or high-volume programs for hypertrophy are best. Check out my Body Sculpt program to learn more.

Sustaining Your Fat Loss

These three pieces are essential to achieving sustainable fat loss! So if you’ve found yourself struggling in the past, check your plan to make sure that you’re doing all of the—eating a calorie deficit, get in that cardio, and build some muscle.

Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains)

Jayd Harrison (Jaydigains) is a personal trainer, nutrition coach, and affiliate streamer on Twitch. Check out some of Jayd’s coaching videos on Youtube, or join Jayd live on Twitch on Tuesdays & Thursdays 11am EST. Follow Jayd on social media by clicking on the icons below: