Here’s exactly how I’d lose 20 pounds of fat as fast as possible if I needed to get in shape for a vacation (or if I wanted to start an OnlyFans channel).
I recommend taking notes if you’re serious about making this happen.
Outline Your Fat Loss Plan
A pilot wouldn’t take off without knowing where he was headed, how much fuel he needed, and what he was going to do when he arrived.
Don’t start your fat loss plan without knowing when it’s going to be over.
Start by finding 1 percent of your body weight.
(bodyweight x 0.01)
This is roughly how much weight you’re going to aim to lose every single week.
Then divide 20 pounds by that number to find out how long it’s going to take.
If you’re 200 pounds, then it’s going to take you about 10 weeks at 2 pounds a week.
This is just a rule of thumb you can use.
You’re going to see some quick weight loss initially when you start your fat loss diet.
It might slow down a little bit later when you have to fight a little bit harder to lose that weight, but this is a good way to estimate things.
I’d also want to make sure that I was consistently losing weight at that 1% rate.
A big game changer for me has been weighing myself every single day, then looking at how the trend changes from week to week.
So I don’t have to get a month into my plan only to realize that I wasn’t making any progress.
Yikes.
If you’ve ever weighed yourself, you’ll notice that your weight fluctuates up and down throughout the week.
When you weigh yourself regularly, you have more of those data points, which makes it a lot easier to assess whether or not you’re moving in the right direction.
I’d also take progress pictures and body measurements every two to four weeks or so, so I could get a more complete picture of how I was doing.
Pictures would be done from the front, the side, and the back, and on the same days where I did my measurements.
This whole process only takes about five minutes.
If you’ve never kept track of your progress in a detailed way that I just outlined, you might be missing out on something big.
Having confirmation that what you’re doing is moving you in the right direction consistently is a huge advantage.
When things get difficult and you’re having a hard time sticking to your plan, it’s great to know that what you’re doing is working.
Here’s the BodPod results from a client of mine, who’s down 8lb of fat, and up 3.6lb of muscle in one month.
It’s a fairly accurate body composition analysis device, that shows you what you’re made of.
“This will never work”
You might not believe that you can make substantial fat loss progress in the next 10 to 12 weeks if you’ve never been successful with this before…
I don’t blame you for that.
Long before I started coaching online, other trainers would tell me, “You’ve gotta try coaching online – It’s great! I get to be more flexible with my hours and I’m helping more clients!”
But at the time it sounded too good to be true – because I didn’t know what was possible at that time.
And losing fat is the same.
When you learn how to do it properly once, your perception of what’s possible changes forever.
The questions you ask are no longer:
How do I lose fat?
What are the best foods for fat loss?
Which diet should I follow?
Instead they become:
How lean do I want to get?
How quickly do I want to get there?
Can you see the difference between these questions?
One is coming from a place of discomfort and confusion.
The other is coming from a place of freedom where you are ultimately deciding exactly what kind of a situation you would like.
If I was getting paid to lose fat
Changing up my nutrition would be a primary focus.
I keep my lights on by helping guys lose fat and get in shape, so I literally bet the house on what I’m about to tell you every single day of the week:
Without calorie control, you will never see the reliable and consistent weight loss progress you’re after.
Would I do a keto diet, or carnivore, or fasting, or something else that sounds exciting and aggressive?
That stuff is cool, but I see it like stock picking or crypto investing.
While they are enticing, and the allure of all the results you see online make it pretty appealing…
It’s far more likely that you’ll succeed with some good old fashioned index funds.
They’re not sexy or flashy, but damn do they ever work!
So what would I use instead?
Good Old-Fashioned Calorie Tracking
The undefeated and undisputed champion for losing fat.
It gets to the heart of the problem.
Keto, carnivore, and all of those trendy diets ultimately work by helping you reduce your calorie intake.
Many people (myself included) have tried these diets, but still have a hard time losing the fat and getting the scale or our belt notches to move in the right direction.
It’s frustrating, and you’ve probably experienced this too.
Instead of a flashy diet promising to get you down four pant sizes in two weeks, you might be looking for something more reliable – something that can get the needle moving consistently.
Or maybe you’re just tired of the half-assed attempts and you’re ready to finally do this thing for real.
If that’s you, I’d recommend taking a more hands on approach.
That’s why The Four Point Fat Loss Framework works so well.
It’s assertive.
Do It For Real
That means whipping out the food scale to weigh out my foods, and tracking everything I eat to consistently stay at or below my calorie goals.
Now I know what you’re thinking…
“Matteo, calorie tracking is crazy, it doesn’t work! What about the family meals I have? What about when I go out with friends to a restaurant? I don’t know how many calories are in the lasagna!!”
That’s where the 250 method comes in.
The 250 method is a strategy I created to help my clients estimate the calorie values in family meals, treats, or any food with unknown calorie values.
This means that you can still lose weight and make great progress without having to live like a fitness model who carries a Tupperware container to their family meals.
Instead of trying to decipher the exact calorie content of your random meals, just estimate the calories of the food in front of you using 250 calorie increments.
Here’s what this looks like in action:
Let’s say you’re out with your friends at this killer Italian restaurant that’s famous for their lasagna.
Conventional diet advice would tell you to just order a salad – but you’re prepared for this.
Before you dive in, you take a look at the slab of lasagna and ask yourself:
“Is this lasagna zero calories?”
Probably not.
So is it 250 calories? 500? 750?
Whatever you decide, just be sure to round up.
When you get home later that evening, you open up your calorie tracking app and search for the nearest entry.
In this case, let’s say it’s ‘Homemade Lasagna’, and you’d just crank the serving size up until it says a thousand calories.
And then you move on with your life.
Now, if I was really serious about trying to make this happen as fast as I could, then restaurant meals like this would probably only happen a handful of times.
All of these big cheat meals slow down your progress, and they’re an easy way to undo an entire week of fat loss dieting.
No, thank you!
How many calories should you eat to lose fat quickly?
You’ve got two options here.
Firstly, you can grab my free weight loss calculator and it’ll spit out targets for you based on your height, your age, your body weight, and your activity levels.
Option number two is to let MacroFactor decide for you.
This is my absolute favorite calorie tracking app. I’ve been using it for years now, and just last year I used it to lose 50 lbs.
It’s a smart calorie tracking app that tracks your progress and adjusts your calorie targets based on your weight loss results.
Jaye and I both buy the annual subscription, which works out to about seven bucks per month.
If you use my last name code MARRA at the checkout you get an extended two week free trial, and it supports me at no cost to you.
Once you get logged into the app, just tell it that you want to lose one percent of your body weight every week.
If it spits out a calorie target that’s roughly 10 to 12 times your body weight (in pounds) then that’s probably a pretty good place to start.
Eating for Fat Loss
The next step is to just pick a few simple repeatable meals that you can eat each day.
Here’s what a day of eating for fat loss could look like if your calorie goal is 2000 calories per day.
Breakfast:
Greek Yogurt + Whey Protein + Toast
Lunch:
Turkey deli meat + pre-mixed salad + wrap + low-calorie dressing.
Dinner:
Chicken thighs + baked potato + a mountain of green beans
McDonald’s ice cream cone
As long as you’re hitting your calorie goals consistently, you’re going to get your weight moving in the right direction.
For me, most days are going to be full of lean protein sources, with some fruits and veggies, some starches and whole grains, and some fats thrown in the mix to keep my hormones healthy.
For all the nerds out there, I wouldn’t let my fats dip below 0.3 grams per pound of my body weight each day to keep my hormones in check.
For protein I’d shoot for something like 0.7 grams to 1 gram per pound of my body weight as a daily goal.
If you’re a bigger dude out there who has lots of weight to lose, you can calculate this using your goal weight instead.
What about the workouts?
Would I be lifting weights or doing cardio? Both? What’s better for fat loss?
Cardio makes me feel amazing.
It helps me sleep better, improves my mood, and it’s great for my health.
It’s something I do all the time, not just during fat loss diets.
It’s not necessarily going to make fat loss happen that much faster, but it will allow me to eat a few extra calories.
Or I’ll be able to eat the same amount and just lose a little bit more fat.
Staying Active
This could look like spending 30 minutes to an hour doing something active, 1-2 times (or more / week).
Whether that’s jujitsu, or going for a bike ride with my girlfriend and my dog.
The other cool part about an active hobby is that you’ll meet other active people that’ll help you solidify this leaner lifestyle that you’re trying to build.
It allows you to say:
“Hey Bill, do you want to go for a hike this weekend?”
You might not realize just how much your environment and the people in your life impact your ability to be healthy.
Alright – it’s time for some real talk.
Getting in shape is not a purely physical thing.
It’s not just about doing reps and tracking calories.
There’s more to it than that.
You might have had a difficult period in your life where you took on a stressful job and now you’ve gained all this weight.
Or maybe you tell yourself that you’ve ‘always been a bigger guy’ or that it ‘runs in the family.’
Maybe once you get in shape, you find yourself exuding more confidence, having more sex or asking for a raise.
This is just scratching the surface of how your beliefs influence your actions
Here’s a belief I want to share with you:
Walking is an extremely effective exercise for losing fat.
It’s incredibly simple, and here’s how you can do it.
Step 1:
Get some kind of a Fitbit / Garmin, or enable step tracking on your phone.
This allows you to start keeping track of exactly how many steps you do every day.
Step 2:
Set a daily step goal of around 7,500 steps per day.
This can make all the difference for people who are super inactive.
And I know what you’re thinking…
“But Matteo, where do I find the time to do 7, 500 steps per day?”
That’s actually where the magic of step tracking comes in.
Step 3:
Find those steps.
All those steps are hiding throughout your day.
- Walking to the gym instead of driving
- Parking a few stalls further from the grocery store
- Instead of scrolling on your phone after lunch for 10 minutes you go for a brisk walk
- Getting off the couch in the evening to go tidy up your room and put some things away.
Now for the workout side of things, I’d definitely train for muscle growth to ensure that more of every pound I lose was coming from body fat and not muscle.
You can check out this article I wrote recently to learn more about this here.
Anywhere from three to six workouts a week would be great, but I’d probably opt for the higher end because I just love training.
My Top 3 Fat Loss Supplements
There are only a couple of supplements I’d even consider taking, because most of them are a complete waste of money.
Number One: Whey Protein Powder
While this is technically a supplement, I consider this more of a powdered food product.
It makes it easier for me to hit my protein goal, it’s delicious, it’s convenient, and it’s relatively low in calories.
Number Two: Melatonin
I’ve taken this in the past because I find my sleep sometimes takes a hit when I start dieting for fat loss.
I’ve also combated this successfully in the past by putting some extra carbs in my pre-bed meal, but the occasional three milligrams of melatonin has helped me a lot.
Number Three: Multivitamin
Now I think this does basically nothing, but it also costs basically nothing in time and money, so it can’t hurt.
A Critical Shift
At this point we’ve got a solid plan for food and workouts, but there’s more we can do to really crank this fat loss up and get the best possible results.
If you really had unlimited time and energy to spend on things, here’s what I’d recommend.
The first seems small, but it has the biggest impact by far.
Start taking your sleep and your stress management more seriously.
This should not be a time in your life where you’re moving house, taking on big work projects, or staying up late for no reason.
I love to relax every night before bed, even just for 10 or 15 minutes, and spending time with Jaye and my dog Kiba to help me stay grounded.
Fat loss dieting is stressful enough on the body as is, so you want to give your body the best environment and chances to adapt to it as possible.
Sleep is incredibly potent for enhancing fat loss and muscle building results.
I’d shoot for at least eight hours of sleep per night, because I know my body feels best around eight to nine hours.
But If you feel great with seven, that’s fine too.
Just imagine you’re a professional athlete getting paid to perform at your best,
If you bring that professional mindset to your fat loss efforts, you’ll get professional fat loss results.
And lastly, this will sound a little bit harsh for some of you out there…
If you want to see serious results, you need to push harder than you ever have.
Hit your calorie and protein goals every single day – even if you’re hungry.
Don’t skip your workouts – even if you’re tired.
Don’t miss your step goal – even if it’s raining.
Go over on your calories a little bit one day?
Just eat a little bit less the next day or two to make up for it.
The weekly averages matter a lot more than what’s happening on a day to day basis.
I’m not saying this is what you have to do if you want to lose weight…
But if you really want to see what your body is capable of you’re going to need to push a little bit harder than you’re comfortable with, for a little bit longer than you probably ever have.
You might actually learn that you’re capable of much more than you expected.
I hope this helps you get started on doing things the smart way.
Go kick some ass out there.
– Matteo
PS: to keep learning, check out my free guide to losing fat while building muscle at the same time – Body Recomp 101
