Fat Loss Roundtable With The Experts - Question 1 - What is the most important determinant of fat loss?

1. Fat Loss Roundtable
With The Experts
Question 1
What is the most important
determinant of fat loss?

2. Layne Norton
What is the most important determinant of fat loss?
“Well there are a lot of things but the biggest thing is to
make sure that you are in a caloric deficit.
Obviously protein/carb/fat breakdown is going to heavily
influence substrate utilization and exercise is important to
maintain muscle mass but at the end of the day if you
aren't oxidizing more than you take in you won't be
seeing significantly fat loss in most cases.”

3. Alan Aragon
What is the most important determinant of fat loss?
“The most important thing is to sustain a caloric
deficit over a prolonged period. The deficit will
periodically close up, and plateaus in fat loss will
occur, and getting past those plateaus is a matter
of re-opening the deficit with either a further
decrease in intake, increase in training output, or
both.”

4. Borge Fagerli
What is the most important determinant of fat loss?
“I would say Consistency.
It´s not usually a matter of the diet failing the dieter, it´s the
dieter failing the diet.
When things start to slow down, which it inevitably does on any
diet when you get into low single digit bf%, is when you need a
hefty dose of patience to stick it out. And by that, I´m not only
talking about binge eating episodes, I´m talking about being
over-ambitious and cutting calories harder or adding cardio to an
already borderline excessive deficit.
Trust the process and make sure you have sufficient nutrients to
not only maintain training intensity, but to function in daily life.
Take your time. If you´re always hungry and obsessed with food,
you should seriously consider adding calories or changing your
macros around - unless you´re at the very end of a contest diet
where some suffering is bound to happen, of course...”

5. Gavin Allinson
What is the most important determinant of fat loss?
“Your diet.
You can't out train a poor diet. With diet my starting
points are 4 meals a day, high protein, healthy fats
and no starchy carbs.”

6. Matt Lovell
What is the most important determinant of fat loss?
“Finding a balance which you can stick to which
contains the right mix of deficit, muscle
protection, nutrient delivery and sustainable
longer term adherence.”

7. Layne Norton
What is the most important determinant of fat loss?
“I'd like to respond to the no starchy carbs comment by
Gavin:
While I agree some people are extremely carb intolerant and
need to limit their intake of starchy carbs, this is still a
minority of people. Most can have a modest amount of
starchy carbs in balance with a healthy, high protein/fiber
diet.
I think that completely eliminating food groups is a big
mistake as classifying foods as 'good' or 'bad' is over simplistic
and can lead to people developing disordered eating habits
and awkward/unhealthy relationships with food.
Besides, if you are someone who can get lean eating starches
why wouldn't you include them in moderation?”