What’s the best program for getting lean and redefining your body composition?

Probably the exact same one that helped you gain that muscle in the first place.

The program that’s best for muscle gain is also going to be the best one for muscle retention when you’re cutting calories.

But before we get into the tactics, let’s talk for a minute about how to manage getting leaner while still having performance goals.

You’ve probably heard other coaches say that if you’re in a caloric deficit then you’re going to be under-recovered from training. Not recovering fully can lead to some serious issues that result in depleted energy levels and not maximizing the adaptation you seek from the stress imposed by training.

At the same time, carrying excess body fat is a performance decrement.

The more non-functional mass you carry (i.e. adipose tissue – body fat), the more challenging it is to move your body dynamically, your risk levels for cardiovascular disease increases, you incur additional stress on your joints, etc, etc…

It’s not good.

So, logically, reducing body fat should be part of your performance plan.

If that means being in a slight caloric deficit for a period of time, then so be it. The benefit of reduced body fat far outweighs the risk of risk of inadequate recovery while in a calorie deficit.

BUT…that doesn’t mean there aren’t more intelligent ways to achieve this than others.

Here’s one way that I do it (and is incredibly simple for you to do to).

1. Visit tdeecalculator.net and get an idea of how many calories you burn in a day. You don’t need to worry about BMR or RMR. The number that this calculator will spit out is your Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) – the total amount of calories you burn in a day that accounts for your activity level.
2. Adjust your calorie goal to be 300-500 calories shy of your TDEE. Given that you’re reading this, I assume you are somebody driven not only by body composition, but by performance. I suggest that you keep your calories from protein and carbohydrates high to support your performance goals. You don’t need to worry about keto, carnivore, or anything with a faddish name. You especially don’t need to worry about a diet that excludes entire food groups. Again, you’re here for both body comp and performance, and any time a diet is going to just eliminate an entire food group or macronutrient you are likely creating a major deficiency in micronutrients that are important for functioning at optimal levels. Side note – while it also may seem that you’re losing weight quickly on a low or no carb diet, the initial weight loss is from water weight – not body fat. That’s why the scale doesn’t tell the full story. What we are looking for is a lower body fat percentage – not just a reduction in scale weight.
3. Track your progress. My personal technique is to weigh myself daily. While you don’t necessarily need to weigh yourself that frequently, I like to because I can see the trends. Your weight can fluctuate daily based on the amount of sodium you consumed the day prior, whether or not you’ve used the bathroom, and numerous other factors. The reason I weigh myself daily is that I can see the trend in weight over the period of a week and I don’t adjust my nutrition based on what may be an outlier data point if I were only weighing, say…once a week. The more data I have the more I’m able to get a true look at how effective my nutrition strategy is.

And that’s pretty much it. I make any diet adjustments once a week after getting a week of data and aim to lose at a rate of 1 – 1.2 pounds a week (generally).

A large mistake that I often see people make is wanting to accelerate fat loss beyond what is sustainable and what they end up doing is crashing energy levels then rebounding hard with a period of binge eating after being overly restrictive.

Does that sound familiar?

Restrict – binge – restrict – binge.

For a lot of you, I bet that it does. I know. I’ve been there too.

But if you are going to do this sustainably and in a way that doesn’t diminish performance, then we have to expand our timeline for accomplishment.

We have had people make MASSIVE changes in 90 days on our 1:1 coaching program, 90 Unchained, but you have to accept 90 days as a realistic timeline and not one week.

But you know what takes a lot longer than 90 days?

Trying and failing 6 different crash diets or training plans and still googling things like “best diet for abs” a year from now.

I also highly advise during your period of sustainable cutting that you take the time to listen to your body.

Yes, you are going to be slightly hungry if you’re in a deficit and training hard.

However, know the difference between just being a little hungry and needing to suck it up, and having your energy levels drained, feeling lethargic, and allowing your performance to suffer.

If you hit this point after weeks in a deficit then there’s nothing wrong with increasing your calories for a week to get back to maintenance level.

Which brings me to another point that we must address…

The importance of protein and carbohydrates in your diet.

I actually increase my protein intake while cutting over what I typically consume on maintenance.

Why? It’s highly satiating. Not only do you need it for building muscle, but it will help you stay full. This is a key tactic in preventing hunger pangs while in a deficit (along with properly hydrating).

You should also consider eating more carbohydrates.

If protein is the muscle building macronutrient, then carbohydrates are the performance macronutrient.

Without jumping too deep into the science, when you consume carbohydrates, you are providing the body with the energy it needs to perform.

Look at it like this – each gram of carbohydrate you consume is going to enter the bloodstream as glucose, in which it can be used immediately as energy, or it can get stored in the muscles and liver as glycogen for later use.

Through a process called glycolysis, glucose is broken down either anaerobically (without oxygen) or aerobically (with oxygen). Anaerobic glycolysis occurs during short, intense efforts when the glucose is converted into lactate and is immediately available.

Aerobic glycolysis occurs during longer lower intensity bouts of exercise and involves glucose being further converted to pyruvate and acetyl-CoA, ultimately resulting in Adenosine Triphosphate (ATP) that provides the body with energy (for all my nerds out there, excuse the extremely broad overview of aerobic respiration but it would throw this entire substack way off course).

Here’s why it’s important to know the wave tops though…

While it is possible for your body to convert protein to energy, you don’t really want it to.

Wouldn’t that protein be better used for something like muscle protein synthesis? It’s clearly not the preferred source for energy production.

I’d much rather my body have to get through all that glycogen before tapping into my protein for energy.

But what about fats? Fats can be a great source of energy, but unlike carbohydrates, fat metabolism (lipolysis and fat oxidation) don’t have an anaerobic mechanism to deliver energy, so the availability of energy produced from fats is much more delayed than energy produced from carbohydrates.

I digress…

Though I hope this helps illustrate why maintaining a high protein and carbohydrate intake during your cut is significant when balancing fat loss with maintaining high levels of performance.

That’s it for today.

Remember, getting better body composition doesn’t mean you have to sacrifice all your performance goals.

It also doesn’t mean you need to go on a bodybuilding style training plan.

Continue to train like an athlete while making slight caloric manipulations to your diet until you are at a place where you can sustainably trim fat while keeping your energy levels high.

And if you need a program to do that on, I hope you join me on Warfighter.