SIZE MATTERS

Fat loss FOR SMALL PEOPLE

From one small human to the next, unfortunately, weight loss is harder for us.
We need to accept this. It is what it is, let’s not cry about it.

But it’s not an excuse for it to be impossible.

Let me explain a few reasons why it’s harder, and then this will help have a better understanding.

Being smaller means you need fewer calories.

Fairly straightforward but I’ll put it into perspective...

A 6ft male who is 90kg and only walks for exercise needs roughly 2250 calories to maintain their weight
A 5ft 3 female who is 70kg and only walks for exercise needs roughly 1700 calories

If these same two people wanted to lose weight, we now need to add in a deficit. Usually, 10% is a pretty good target for sustainable weight loss and without having the urge to eat the fridge every other day.

For our male here, this is around 2000cal
For our female, this is around 1530cal

But the thing is, for her to lose 5kg on these calories, it will take roughly 32 weeks.
For our male friend, for him to lose 5kg it will only take around 22 weeks.

For our female, in order for her to lose 5kg in 22 weeks, she's now needing to drop her calories down to 1450 per day.

Now, I’m not sure if you’ve ever tried dieting on 1450 calories for multiple weeks, but it’s hard to maintain if you don’t know what you’re doing. It’s so easy for calories to creep in with the milk & additives to coffees, loaded smoothies that don’t do anything for hunger, meals out, alcohol, the odd piece of chocolate here and there, etc. 

As I mentioned, this 5kg weight loss is going to take roughly 5 months. If our small human wanted to drop down in a faster period, say for a holiday, you’re going into really low calories where you’re looking at 1270 calories a day.

You can start to see how this becomes even harder.

I’m now going to call them Kevin and Karen. Kevin and Karen are a married couple going on a holiday together, which is why they’re on this weight loss journey. This will make it much easier to write...

Being small means you have much less wiggle room

Kevin has 2,000calories to play with each day. He might have a 500cal breakfast which is full of oats, berries, yoghurt and a latte. For lunch, he’ll have another 500calorie lunch that's a chicken and salad wrap and a piece of fruit, and for dinner he has a stir-fry that is another 500calories. He has 500calories of wiggle room. He can add in a piece of chocolate or an extra snack if he needs it, a smoothie or dessert.

Poor Karen is at her limit. No more food for Karen if she wants to stay on target. If she wants some wiggle room for a few pieces of chocolate at the end of the day and a glass of wine, she’s now dropping down to 350-400calories for each meal. Doable, but not easy. It requires more thought and knowing how to make adjustments.

This becomes even more difficult when you go out for dinner. They have one-size-fits-all meals. Kevin orders the spaghetti bowl, and Karen does too. Both come out the same size, there is no big person serve vs little person serve (unless of course, you order an entree size). And when food is presented in front of people, they are more than likely to eat it all because they’ve paid for it, it’s there, and they don’t want to waste it.

The same problem tends to pop up at home. Living together, most meals are shared. Now this is where Kevin is influencing Karen's results unknowingly. He makes the same breakfast, same lunch and same dinner for her (he’s a good husband), but if they eat the same thing as each other, then you guessed it, they're eating the same calories because sizes haven’t been adjusted, or if they have, maybe only marginally.

Kevin is trying to be nice, he’s unintentionally overfeeding her.

QUALITY MATTERS MORE

Macros and food quality matter just as much as the calorie number itself when it comes to body composition changes - two people eating 1500 calories can build very different bodies depending on what those calories are made of.

In any weight loss plan you want to maintain as much muscle tissue as possible so you want to keep your protein high. For Kevin at 85kg, you’d want to aim for 135- 150g of protein a day and for Karen, 115-125g. 

So let’s run the maths out. 

Kevin's on 2000cal a day. Take out his 540-600cal for protein, and he's left with roughly 1400-1460cal to split between carbs and fats. Plenty of room for a few extra carbs, and still enjoy some of the foods he likes.

Karen's on 1530cal. Take out her 460-500cal for protein, and she's left with just 1030-1070cal for everything else. Considerably less room to move, and exactly why food quality matters more for her than it does for Kevin. Every gram needs to work harder when the buffer is this small.

Being small means you burn fewer calories walking

Kevin and Karen are walking for exercise, they aim for 10,000 steps a day. But lugging around additional weight requires more calories so despite them doing the same amount of walking, Kevin is actually burning more calories.

Kevin would burn roughly 500cal
Karen would burn roughly 360cal

They’re doing the same amount of work but you can see why Karen will soon start to get frustrated thinking she’s trying as hard as she can, but seeing very little in return.

Now let’s factor in the big influencer… consistency!

Being consistent week in, week out on a diet is hard! Social events, nights out, nights on the booze, bad days, ‘arh fuck it moments’, these all come into play. 

So let’s say that these guys are 80% compliant. On their non-compliant days they kick over their maintenance calories by around 200cal each time (I’m guessing it’s probably worse!). But this now affects timelines. 80% compliance is now going to kick them both into roughly 58 weeks to achieve their 5kg goals.

Now I know weight loss is not linear and there are many factors that come into play when it comes to changing your body composition, eg food quality, but you can see what I’m trying to highlight here.

I’m impatient, and I’m guessing if your goal is weight loss, you’d want to see some good results fairly quickly. By 58 weeks, I would be pretty close to giving up and blaming it on hormones.

If you need help with losing weight so you don’t have
to diet for over a year, start a conversation - link