Cutting Without Cutting
There are five factors that determine how much energy your body needs to survive on the daily. Those factors are:
1. BMR or Basal Metabolic Rate – these are the factors that keep your body alive while sleeping, i.e. heart beating, blood pumping, breathing
2. RMR or Resting Metabolic Rate – similar to BMR, it is how your body burns energy at rest
3. TEF or Thermic Effect of Food – this is how much energy it takes for you body to breakdown the food that you put in it. This is what makes us all different when it comes to diets, some people process fats more efficiently than others while some process carbs better. In general, proteins have a higher thermic response (takes more energy to process protein) and fats have a lower thermic response (takes less energy)
4. Physical Activity – how much energy you burn or expend during exercise
5. NEAT or Non-Exercise Activity Thermogenesis – think of this as your extraneous movements, squirming in your chair, walking to the bathroom, cleaning the house, etc.
So based on all of that information, how do you continue in a cut without cutting calories? Factors 1-3 are fairly pre-determined by genetics so you can’t make changes to them overnight. Individuals with greater muscle mass can improve their RMR but again, that does not happen overnight. Moving onto factor 4, say you are already training 5-6 days per week so increasing your exercise program is not necessarily the smartest move to make without completely overtraining and burning yourself out. That leaves factor 5. Do you have a desk job that leaves you fairly sedentary throughout the day? If possible, try increasing the number of steps you get each day. Wake up 15 minutes earlier and take a walk before work and then another one on your lunch break. Stand up during meetings, take the stairs instead of the elevator, park further away from the store entrance, you get the idea. By increasing your NEAT you will burn extra calories throughout the day. It may not seem like much but over time this can make a big difference in your weight loss journey.
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