Calorie Deficit From Day 1? Maybe not.

You need to drop someones calories from day 1 to get their body to change right?

Not so fast. Considering most people eat horrendously or drastically under eat, simply cleaning up their diet and in many cases giving them more food is all thats needed initially to get the body working right, losing fat, weight and building muscle.

The image here is a from a client that was eating significantly less and who I’ve spent the first 5ish weeks doing nothing more than starting him on a nice level of food and then slowly increasing it.

The result? 4% body fat down. 5kg fat loss. 3kg lean mass gain. Thats his body just working right and the training telling the body to use the food and build muscle.

The body will adapt to anything you do. So if you put it into a calorie deficit from day 1, the body will adapt to that and the changes will all but stop. With the body slowing down due to a lack of fuel. You cant keep going further and further into a deficit. You’ll start to negatively affect training, mood, energy and life in general. So you’re stuck. Eating no food. Feeling like crap AND not even changing. Cue the cravings, inevitable broken diet and potential rebound.

On the other hand, if you give the body plenty of food and a signal to use that food to build muscle, a signal like weight training, then the body is in a wonderful position. It has the fuel it needs. Its building muscle. Energy is good. Mood is great. Happy days! And when the body eventually adapts to that food and the changes stop, you can THEN start to lower calories in order to restart the fat burning. But youre doing this from a much higher calorie position than had you started from day 1 in a massive calorie deficit.

Yes, starting low immediately will give you some quick instant results. But the results dry up real quick and then you’re left with no room to move. Starting higher and getting the body used to running on lots of food may not give you the instant drops, but it gives you more options for manipulating the food without being detrimental to every facet of life which will ultimately lead to better long term results.

Anyone can starve a person down and get a transformation. What isn’t shown is what happens when the starved person stops living on air and they rebound back to worse than where they started.

At some point in all dieting, calories need to drop. But that drop doesn’t need to be from day 1. The body is normally more than happy to change for a time if its simply fed right.