If you want to lose body fat and feel leaner and stronger, it’s easier than you think. There’s no single approach that works for everyone, but once the pieces are in place, the process isn’t complicated. The real challenge is staying consistent.In this episode, I break down the essentials: the most effective combination of exercise and nutrition, the best workouts for fat loss, and the biggest mistake people make with food.The research is clear: cutting calories without changing activity leads to muscle loss, not just fat. And muscle is gold for your health. To protect it, you need a smart mix of strength training, cardio, and higher protein intake. I’ll walk you through the evidence and show you exactly why this works.We’ll cover two proven strategies:Calorie restriction paired with strength training, with progressive overload and consistency.Mixed exercise (strength plus cardio) with higher protein intake of 1.1–1.7 grams per kilogram of body weight.Both approaches work, but combining all three—strength, cardio, and nutrition—delivers the best results. From there, it’s just fine-tuning.When it comes to strength training, almost any plan works if you stick to progression, volume, and smart exercise selection. But for women over 40, combining compound movements with single joint exercises is especially powerful, producing a stronger hormonal response and better results.The key is following a structured program week after week. Random workouts from social media won’t cut it.On the nutrition side, fat loss requires a calorie deficit. You need to burn more than you consume. For most of my clients, that’s just 300–500 calories per day. It doesn’t mean cutting out favorite foods or going extreme. Balanced macronutrients make it easier and help reduce fatigue, cravings, and mood swings.One common pitfall is eating clean during the week, then loosening up too much on weekends. Even small surpluses can wipe out progress. Adopting a 7-day approach instead of a 5-day one changes everything. You can still enjoy weekends, but being intentional and consistent makes results come much faster.If this all feels overwhelming, you don’t have to go it alone. Coaching can make the process simple and sustainable. And stay tuned—I’ll be hosting a free three-day live workshop called Midlife Muscle Mastery this September. You won’t want to miss it.I hope you enjoyed this episode! You can get FREE access to my 4-week Strength Without Stress program right now! This program will help you reduce the systemic inflammation that’s caused by overly intense or lengthy workouts. It’ll help you build and maintain valuable lean muscle without the fatigue from other programsTo get free access to Strength Without Stress, post a Review wherever you’re listening. Grab a screenshot of your review before you post it and upload at: https://www.hollyperkins.com/reviewThis is a limited-time offer before it sells for $197–grab it while you can for lifetime access.Topics covered(02:10) There is no one size fits all approach to losing body fat(05:38) Reducing energy intake (ie calories) only leads to loss of muscle(12:25) The power of calorie restriction, strength training and nutrition(20:42) My secret exercise protocols for women over 40(27:21) Calorie deficit, or restriction, doesn’t have to be extreme or scary!(33:09) During calorie deficit, you will have symptoms and that’s OKResources MentionedResearch about nutrition and exercise to improve body composition near...
If you want to lose body fat and feel leaner and stronger, it’s easier than you think. There’s no single approach that works for everyone, but once the pieces are in place, the process isn’t complicated.
In this episode, I break down the essentials for health: the most effective combination of strength training and nutrition, the best workouts for body fat loss, and the biggest mistake people make with food.
The research is clear: Cutting calories without changing activity leads to muscle loss, not just the loss of body fat. And muscle is gold for your health. To protect it, you need a smart mix of strength training, cardio, and the right protein intake. I’ll walk you through the evidence and show you exactly why this works.
We’ll cover two proven strategies:
Calorie restriction paired with strength training, with progressive overload and consistency
Mixed exercise (strength plus cardio) with higher protein intake of 1.1–1.7 grams per kilogram of body weight
Both approaches work, but combining all three—strength, cardio, and nutrition—delivers the best in terms of holistic health. From there, it’s just fine-tuning.
When it comes to strength training, almost any plan works if you stick to progression, volume, and smart exercise selection. But for women over 40, combining compound movements with single joint exercises is especially powerful, producing a stronger hormonal response and better results.
The key is following a structured program week after week. Random workouts from social media won’t cut it.
On the nutrition side, fat loss requires a calorie deficit. You need to burn more than you consume. For most of my clients, that’s just 300–500 calories per day. It doesn’t mean cutting out favorite foods or going extreme. Balanced macronutrients make it easier and help reduce fatigue, cravings, and mood swings.
One common pitfall is eating clean during the week, then loosening up too much on weekends. Even small surpluses can wipe out progress. Adopting a 7-day approach instead of a 5-day one changes everything. You can still enjoy weekends, but being intentional and consistent makes results come much faster.
If this all feels overwhelming, you don’t have to go it alone. Coaching can make the process simple and sustainable.
If you're ready to learn how to become more muscle (and less fat), my FREE 3-day live workshop will show you how. It's called Midlife Muscle Mastery Workshop and you can grab your spot here.
I hope you enjoyed this episode!
Topics covered
(02:10) There is no one size fits all approach to losing body fat
(05:38) Reducing energy intake (ie calories) only leads to loss of muscle
(12:25) The power of calorie restriction, strength training and nutrition
(20:42) My secret exercise protocols for women over 40
(27:21) Calorie deficit, or restriction, doesn’t have to be extreme or scary!
(33:09) During calorie deficit, you will have symptoms and that’s OK
Resources Mentioned
Follow Me:
Find me on Instagram: @hollyperkins
Learn more on my website: hollyperkins.com
Connect with me on Facebook: facebook.com/HollyPerkinsFitness
Holly Perkins 0:00
If you're focused on losing body fat so that you can feel smaller, tighter, and leaner, you might find it interesting to discover that it's actually easier than you think when you get the right mix of variables. A 2023 systematic review found the most effective strategy was combining energy restriction with resistance training or mixed exercise and high protein. I'm breaking it all down for you so you'll know the exact best way to lose body fat. So keep listening.
Holly Perkins 0:39
Welcome to the Holly Perkins Health Podcast. If you're a woman over the age of 35 and have health, fitness, or nutrition questions for your body, you're in the right place. I'm Holly Perkins, a women's strength and nutrition expert with over 30 years of experience helping thousands of women transform their bodies to be stronger, more resilient, and more energetic inside and out. Every week, you'll walk away with a real plan for improving your body composition so you can feel better now, reduce inflammation, and create lasting health. So if you're ready to create the body that you need to keep up with the life that you love, let's dive in. Hello and welcome.
Holly Perkins 1:28
I'm Holly Perkins, and I help women, mostly over 40, transform their bodies to be at least 70 percent lean muscle. Why, you ask? Because that is how you slash your risk of disease, age powerfully, and keep up with the life that you love. And around here, we don't talk about slowing down. We talk about staying in the game of life and never letting that darn rocking chair catch you. I'll just say it. I love today's episode. I found some new research, and it is so good. As always, I will link it wherever you're listening.
Holly Perkins 2:10
After 30 years in practice, I'll be honest with you, there really is not a one size fits all strategy for losing body fat. And as kind of trite as that sounds, it really is true, and there are many different methodologies that do work. If you hear an expert like myself say, there is only one way to lose body fat, run the other direction. It's actually not true. There are a number of ways that work. Once you get the pieces right, losing fat really isn't hard. I swear my clients are doing it all the time. It's really just an equation.
Holly Perkins 2:52
What's hard is keeping yourself consistent. That's the hard thing: actually following through, actually applying the pieces, and doing what you need to do consistently enough, long enough to see it through. But it really isn't hard. At some point, you'll get to the place where you are truly just ready to take action so that you can lose the fat and improve your body composition. And sometimes it just takes a little bit of time to get sick of sounding like a broken record in your own head. At some point, you'll finally be sick and tired of being sick and tired, and you'll be ready to take action.
Holly Perkins 3:36
And if that hasn't happened for you yet, I really encourage you to keep compiling the information so that when that day comes, very soon, you can just take action. Because the truth is, do you really want to live out the rest of your life being where you are now or being unhappy with your body now? Listen, I am all about body acceptance no matter where you are. I do believe that you have to radically accept yourself for exactly where you are right now. You have to, and you can also desire to become better, to become stronger or leaner. But that doesn't have to come from a place of self loathing. It can come from a place of wanting to be happy, be better, and to be in the body that you deserve.
Holly Perkins 4:25
Do you really want to be in the same place as where you are right now, one year from now? And if not, if you're ready, this episode is your roadmap. In this episode, you'll learn the best combination of exercise and nutrition to drop body fat according to the research, some of the best exercises for fat loss and how much of them you need, and the biggest hindrance to getting your food right. Every week, women in my programs are getting lean. I've got the DEXA scans to prove it, and on average, they're losing about 3 percent of their body weight as fat each month.
Holly Perkins 5:13
These are women in their 40s, their 50s, their 60s, their 70s and beyond, who are losing fat without losing muscle. In fact, not only that, they're actually building muscle, and that's why they're losing the fat. So in this episode, you are getting some of the details on how to lose body fat, especially if you're over 40. So first, I want to offer a disclaimer. There are probably 100 different protocols for losing fat. In truth, you really could just eat less, and most likely, you'll lose some fat if you're legitimately eating less. But the research shows that when you only reduce your energy intake, i.e., you eat less, or you reduce your actual calories, right? Because sometimes eating less doesn't mean you're necessarily reducing calories depending on what you've been eating. But when you do that, you lose muscle.
Holly Perkins 6:13
Hear that loud and clear, because this is what the research says: if you only reduce your energy intake, you cut back on your calories, and you lose fat because of energy restriction, you will lose muscle if you don't change your physical activity and you just restrict calories. The research shows that you're likely to lose between 25 and 30 percent of that weight lost from muscle, and that's really scary. Let's say you lose 10 pounds. This means that potentially three of those 10 pounds came from muscle, and you might be like, I don't care. I lost 10 pounds. Woohoo. You didn't. You lost seven pounds of fat, and you lost three pounds of valuable, important metabolic health coming from muscle.
Holly Perkins 7:07
So I'm pulling back my curtain on my practices and giving you some of my best secrets. And I've got three key concepts that have helped my clients lose body fat for good, and that's what you're getting today. The first thing to know is that there is a precise combination of programming variables that produce the best results. You may be tempted to believe that there's just one diet change to make or one exercise change to make, and that's going to unlock your fat burning. It's really not. It's a combination, at least that's what the research is saying. A very interesting systematic review and network meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials in 2023 in the journal Advances in Nutrition found that overall, the most effective strategy for nearly all outcomes was combining energy restriction with resistance training.
Holly Perkins 8:08
So that's option one, or mixed exercise and high protein, and everything else that you do outside of those two options leads to muscle loss. The goal was to assess which nutrition and exercise interventions most effectively improve body composition in people who were overweight between the ages of 55 and 70. And now you might think, well, I only have a few pounds to lose, but overweight is actually a very narrow margin. The bar is quite low. What they found is that without training, an energy-restricted diet, i.e., a calorie deficit, with or without added protein, helped individuals lose fat mass but also tended to result in the loss of muscle mass. And to me, therefore, that's just spinning your wheels, because muscle loss means so many problematic things. If you're a new listener of mine, please make sure that you binge several of my episodes because I talk a lot about why muscle is the magic in your body, and it's precisely the reason why the topic of my upcoming book, Muscle and Bone, is about this topic.
Holly Perkins 9:26
Oh, by the way, that's coming out in 2026, so stay tuned. But it's such an important concept here. And if I haven't already convinced you that your muscle is everything, please take time and listen to my other podcast episodes that really appeal to you. There are 66 of them now. No, actually, this is 69, proud to say. So many women think that losing weight on the scale is all that matters. So I ask you if you would say that you want to lose weight, right? As innocently as that is, yes or no, do you want to lose weight? If you just had a knee-jerk reaction and were like, yep, then here's the thing: I want you to check yourself. Because if you really think about it and really ask yourself, a lot of women really think losing weight means the scale goes down. It's this automatic association, and there's a tendency to do that at all costs. Because if that is your barometer, if that is your measure of success, to weigh less, well, then you're going to do whatever you got to do to see that scale go down.
Holly Perkins 10:34
And what I'm saying here is you might be cutting off your nose to spite your face. I see it so much recently, not in my clients, I'm proud to say, but in the general public, in other women that I know, in first degrees of separation of other colleagues of mine. What I see is that when women start taking some of the weight loss medications, in particular GLP ones, there becomes this strange hyper fixation on the scale, because that's why they're taking the medication most of the time, right?
Holly Perkins 11:09
But the truth is, these medications simply cause you to eat less, really at the end of the day. That's why they're working. Now it's not that simple. GLP one agonists really are a pretty amazing compound when they're taken for the right reasons, and they really do improve very important biology. That's how it helps you to lose weight. It reduces your appetite partially through regulating blood sugar. But at the end of the day, the weight loss is happening because the medication makes it a little easier to eat less. That's really all it's doing.
Holly Perkins 11:53
So technically, it's simply a calorie deficit. Now I'm not here to talk about GLP ones, in my opinion. I've done that on other episodes, but I just want to point out how we are in such a time where there is this preoccupation with getting the scale lower. But the truth is, if the scale is three or five pounds lower, but one or two or even three pounds of that came from muscle, is that really, really what you want at the end of the day? Take a moment and think about it.
Holly Perkins 12:22
So this research, along with my own observations and experiences in practice working with women every single week, found that overall, the most effective strategy was one of two possible combinations, and I'm going to talk you through them. The first is a combination of energy restriction, so a calorie deficit, with progressive resistance strength training. It's got to be those two things. And yes, there are specific protocols. This means that you're doing both, and you're nailing both of them, right? Like you may think you're, quote, unquote, eating less or dieting.
Holly Perkins 13:01
But are you, if you're not tracking and you're not strategizing, you may not know, and you might be lifting weights, but are you actually following a progressive resistance strength protocol, eating in a calorie deficit, and strength training where you're increasing your weight loads? Is the combination—and it's not one or the other. So you might be thinking, I'm going to go strength train, but just let my diet be. And while that's great for a number of health reasons, it's not the best way for you to lose body fat. It may or may not work. Most chances are it's not going to work, right?
Holly Perkins 13:37
And as you know, I've got very specific guidelines for knowing how much of a calorie deficit you should have. We'll talk about that in a moment. So there are protocols around it, but for now, the takeaway is option one is really getting into a calorie deficit with specifically and only strength training. Okay? The second combination that the research showed, and I see this in my practice as well, is what they call mixed exercise, and I'll define that in a moment, with quote, unquote, high protein. This is their terminology, but wait until you hear the exact definition of high protein before you run off and just start eating a ton of protein, because this is another one of those viral topics that we're hearing all over social media. Protein, protein. I mean, you can't open the media without somebody telling you about how much protein to eat. Protein, protein, protein.
Holly Perkins 14:34
And while it is important—pause while we define what high protein actually means—according to this research, I was shocked. So mixed exercise is a combination of cardio and strength training with high protein, and their definition was only 1.1 to 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight. So when you sit down and do the math, this actually isn't that high. It's higher than government standards, but it isn't high according to what we're seeing in popular research and popular practices these days. So this means for a 150-pound woman, their version of high protein would be between 75 and 116 grams of protein. This is dangerous territory for me, because for me to even just start talking about this, I have a tendency to go down the rabbit hole on it.
Holly Perkins 15:37
And I'm going to try not to—make sure that you listen to my other episodes on protein and nutrition in general, because I go in depth about where you really should be. So I would say 1.1 to 1.7 grams of protein per kilogram of body weight is fine for most people, and it's actually within the target of where I often start my clients. It's within the target. I tend to give a wee bit more, but when a person is also losing body fat, there is an argument that you may need a little bit more protein than that. The key takeaway here is that the best way to lose body fat is to ensure that you're getting the right combination of strength training, nutrition, and cardio. See, all three need to be united and programmed towards the same goal. I call this the trifecta of body transformation, because it has to be all three of your programming variables.
Holly Perkins 16:36
So, for example, you might be following a certain cardiovascular program, whether you realize it or not. Whatever your heart rate is doing in a given week, that is reflective of your cardio programming. You might be lifting weights, but what's the nature of that programming? And you might be trying to follow a certain diet strategy, let's say, but what is the actual, legitimate, honest outcome of that diet strategy? And do all three of your programming variables play nice? When I figured this out for my clients, everything changed, because then fat loss became moving levers.
Holly Perkins 17:15
So if a client, let's say Michelle, because I have a ton of Michelles in my community, comes to me and she's like, okay, Holly, tell me what to do. I give her the program with these three different specific programming variables: cardio, nutrition, strength training. And she comes back, let's say, in four weeks. Now, generally, I check in on my clients every two weeks, but four weeks is where we will see really concrete results. And if she comes back and I look at her photos, and there isn't the level of progress that I want to see, I'm able to ask a couple questions: Are you following the nutrition, yes or no? And if she is, well, then we know there's something within cardio or strength training we need to tweak. Are you doing your cardio at my prescribed heart rate ranges?
Holly Perkins 18:03
Yep, exactly. I'm wearing my heart rate monitor. Well, then I know there's something in her strength protocol that she's actually not following through on, either because she simply doesn't realize or understand that she's not following my advice. That happens all the time. Sometimes people just don't hear me—truly, honestly, and innocently, they don't hear me. And so then it's just a function of educating her on what needs to change in the strength training.
Holly Perkins 18:33
But it's so systematic, and it's so simple for me to troubleshoot, because the cardio has specific parameters. The nutrition has a specific deficit and parameters. And then strength training has really specific protocols in terms of actually increasing your weight loads over time. Up next, I'm going to break this down a bit more into very specific targets for strength training, frequency, the best exercises, and getting your calorie deficit right. But first, let's
Holly Perkins 19:08
talk about one of my favorite topics: sleep. It isn't just about rest. It's when your body repairs and your brain resets. I believe that one of my secrets to getting better results from less effort is my commitment to high-quality sleep. These days, I sleep through the entire night without waking up, and I feel rested in the morning. That's why I am so excited to share something that has made a real difference in my life: Beam's Dream powder.
Holly Perkins 19:43
Dream is a healthy nighttime blend packed with science-backed ingredients shown to improve sleep so you can wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day, whether that's going to work or getting in a workout. I have become obsessed with Dream. Dream is now my favorite bedtime routine, because it tastes amazing and it gives me that super cozy, deep sleep feeling that I craved for years. Dream is made with a powerful blend of all-natural ingredients: reishi, magnesium, L-theanine, apigenin, and melatonin. No artificial flavors, sweeteners, or unnecessary additives—just clean, high-quality ingredients. Beam has already improved over 17.5 million nights of sleep, helping people across the country wake up and feel their best.
Holly Perkins 20:42
Here's the bottom line: better sleep equals better performance. Beam is giving my listeners their best offer yet of up to 40% off. Try their best-selling Dream powder and get up to 40% off for a limited time. Go to shopbeam.com/hollyp and use code HOLLYP at checkout. Wake up refreshed. No mystery, just science. Try Beam today. If the best way to lose body fat is through a combination of strength training and calorie deficit, you may be curious to break this down a bit more, because there are many different ways to strength train, right? How much, how often, what protocol, etc.
Holly Perkins 21:45
And the truth is, any and all strength training can produce results if you adhere to a few rules of weekly volume, progression, and exercise selection. As long as you are progressing your workouts, which means they are getting harder, truly, and as long as you are actually overloading your muscles, you're going to get some results. But this is where I tend to get real specific, because there are some protocols that I think work better for women over 40—specifically women, and specifically women over 40. And the older you are, after 40, 50, 60, 70, whatever decade you're in, it gets more and more specific. There are certain protocols that work best.
Holly Perkins 22:36
So let me let you in on some of my secret methods, just in case you're not ready to coach with me directly. My most successful clients include a combination of single joint exercises with compound movement patterns. It's both, and I believe this is the special sauce, because you can't do all single joint exercises and vice versa. There is value in single joint exercises, like a bicep curl, tricep extension, leg extension, straight leg abduction, any of the straight leg hip exercises, and you will get the best results when you combine those with big moves, like a barbell back squat, barbell bench press, deadlift, Romanian deadlift, and walking lunges.
Holly Perkins 23:29
And I would even argue women do need some of the single joint stuff alongside these big mac daddy moves. You can't only be doing these complex compound exercises all by themselves, unless you're super advanced. If you've been strength training for a number of years, and you can whittle down some of the single joint exercises, there is value, but that really is for someone who's quite advanced. These big moves involve more muscles during the exercise, and therefore they trigger a larger hormonal benefit. It's a systemic response if you're lifting heavy enough, and that's another reason why I like these big moves, because you're actually able to move more weight since you're using more muscles, and potentially an apparatus like a barbell makes it easier to move 100 pounds or 135 pounds. Then it's not enough to haphazardly do a few sets here and a few sets there of these exercises.
Holly Perkins 24:35
It really is important to have a professionally created program that you are following week after week. If you are not educated and skilled in this field, you've got no business putting together your favorite exercises that you saw so-and-so do on Instagram. It's not okay for someone who doesn't know you to say, I love this exercise because. Does, and you throw that together with another exercise that that influencer loves, and you throw them together in random order, or on random days, or when you feel like it, or when you don't. It's really important. It's critically important if you want to lose body fat, to be following the same program, good old boring program, week after week for at least eight to 12 weeks. I actually like 16 weeks or more.
Holly Perkins 25:33
And again, to reveal a bit more about my methods, I like to aim for a weekly total of somewhere around 40 to 50 total working sets per week. Now, again, that is a general estimate. I'm speaking to people that I don't know in the public, and so please know that when you work with me, I might actually adjust that for your specific needs. But a general sweet spot is this: 40 to 50 total working sets per week. So if you were only strength training, let's say twice a week, that would mean you'd be doing 20 to 25 sets in each workout, twice per week. Right now, in general, I prefer three workouts a week, sometimes maybe four, depending on the person, specifically strength sessions, so that you can split up this weekly total among the three workouts.
Holly Perkins 26:29
And what this does is it creates the perfect dose per workout, because if your strength workout is too short, you're not going to get enough of a stimulus. And if your strength workouts are way too long, you're probably just getting into systemic fatigue. You're doing more than you need, and then you're going to get into overreaching, or potentially overtraining. Now that you have a sense of the strength training part for the best way to lose fat, let's break down some of the nutrition. Because, remember, it's the combination of resistance training and eating a bit less than you actually need each day. This is the part that so many women get wrong, because the word restriction really does have such a negative connotation, understandably.
Holly Perkins 27:21
Now, when we look at research, the terminology in the language that research always uses is resistance training and energy restriction. Now I changed that language a little bit, and you might roll your eyes and say it's nuanced, but I prefer to talk about strength training, right, because that implies we're improving your strength. We're not just resistance training. And I also like to say a calorie deficit, because it removes that word restriction.
Holly Perkins 27:51
Restriction really is a trigger for a lot of women, understandably, but that's what the research says. So when I use that language, that is why. But here's what I hope you can come to understand, because if your goal is to lose body fat, you have to get this right. You really do, otherwise, you're going to be frustrated, you're going to be disgruntled, you're going to feel like you failed. You're going to feel like nothing works, when that's actually not the truth. You have to get these metrics right. An energy deficit is the same as a calorie deficit, which is also the same as energy restriction. When we talk about energy, we're talking about calories. All this means is that in order to burn off body fat, you have to be expending
Holly Perkins 28:51
more energy each day than you take in, than you eat. You have to move and expend more than you take in. There has to be a deficit between what goes in and what goes out. And when I say goes out, I don't mean bathroom habits. I mean how you're moving, your workouts, your activity. Do you sit all day? Do you stand all day? At the end of the day, if we were to put you in a lab and measure how much energy you expend during the day, that is the calories that you're burning, and that has to be more than the calories that you're taking in.
Holly Perkins 29:33
But what's really cool is that deficit does not have to be big. And that's why I hate that word restriction, because a lot of times when women hear it, it's like, oh, I gotta restrict. I have to stop eating all of my beloved foods because I will never lose weight if I eat a pizza again. And that is absolutely not true. There just has to be a deficit, and it doesn't have to be big. In fact, even just a bit too extreme of a calorie deficit, and you'll lose muscle here too. There really is a sweet spot. Too extreme, you're going to slow your metabolism.
Holly Perkins 30:15
You really will, and you're going to lose muscle. I think sometimes women think that in order to restrict their calories, they have to drastically reduce their intake. They go extreme with eating way less, or they think that they have to cut way back. They have to flip their diet on its head. And that's not true. You really don't. You simply need to eat a little less than what is currently keeping you at your current body weight. So if you're not gaining weight every, call it, 10 to 14 days, then you're really somewhere around maintenance. And in my practice, the calorie deficit usually only needs to be about 300 to 500 calories per day, which is nothing.
Holly Perkins 31:08
If I have a client who is the personality type that takes their marching orders and follows it to a T accurately, I can get you to lose body fat with just 300 calories less per day. That's it, and that's like nothing. That's like take the bagel out of your diet and you'll save yourself 300 calories. Now that does ride on someone really being structured and detail oriented and really following the program. So for most people, if they want wiggle room, we gotta target about 500 calories less per day. Really, it's not that much. You won't even miss it. The best way to lose body fat is pairing your strength training with a mild calorie deficit. Now I know you'll feel best and you'll be more successful if you also get your macronutrients balanced, but you could simply just reduce what you're eating a bit.
Holly Perkins 32:13
In fact, one of my favorite exercises for people who are brand new to my conversation is to have them change nothing in their diet. Whatever you eat today, tomorrow, repeat it—your normal foods in your normal serving sizes—but simply put it into a diet tracking app and see where you fall. Don't make any changes. Just track and log and observe for three to five days. See where you are, because really and truly, you could just cut back 300 calories, regardless of where your macronutrients are, and you'll start to see progress. Now, weight loss does bring symptoms, so if you are in a body fat loss phase and you're actually in the metrics of it right now, you will have symptoms.
Holly Perkins 33:09
I don't think I've talked about this a lot on the podcast, maybe in my first 10 episodes. I did. I should talk about it again. But a big misunderstanding that women have is that they think it's possible to lose weight, get leaner, or lose body fat easily, with lots of energy, never hungry, no cravings, perfectly happy. And there are a lot of advertisements that will lead you to believe that, and it is absolutely, without a doubt, false. If you are on a weight loss program, whether you're doing it right or wrong, my way or someone else's way, or if you are in the metrics of a calorie deficit to lose body fat, you're going to have symptoms. You're going to have moments of deep fatigue.
Holly Perkins 33:58
You're going to have moments of big hunger. You're gonna have food cravings. You're gonna want to eat the thing but have to choose not to. Losing weight, losing body fat is stressful on the body because it threatens homeostasis. It threatens everything about our survival. So it's uncomfortable, and this is where so many women go wrong. They follow a fat loss program. They follow it perfectly to a T for seven to 10 days, and then all of a sudden something happens, and they eat more. Whether it's hunger or something emotional happens in their life, and they turn to food, it's all sneaky business by your homeostasis to keep you from losing body fat.
Holly Perkins 34:49
So just know that if you're not following my protocols, pretty much, I would argue, most of the protocols out there—I'm going to say 70% of the protocols out there in the world—if they are focused on weight loss or fat loss, you're going to have to breathe through some discomfort. I don't believe you have to white knuckle. I don't believe it has to be torturous. I don't believe you have to starve yourself. You don't have to go to bed crying because you're so hungry.
Holly Perkins 35:19
That is all baloney, but you are going to have some symptoms. I really wanted to drive this home because I can tell you a secret. If you want my best insider's tip, if you combine your calorie deficit with perfectly balanced macronutrients, you're going to reduce your symptoms. Then, if you combine a calorie deficit with my approach to macronutrient balancing, and you choose beautiful earth-based foods—vegetables, plants, fruits, whole, complex, starchy vegetables and carbohydrates—like if you chose the most perfect foods ever, I promise you that is the path to the least amount of symptoms possible, because we're able to keep the calorie deficit very small, around 300 calories. It works. It works like magic.
Holly Perkins 36:26
But like I said at the top of the episode, the hard part is wrangling yourself and getting yourself to actually follow through. Now, here is what can hinder your progress: eating a certain way Monday to Thursday and then letting go, or maybe loosening it up a bit on the weekends, can really derail you. Nine times out of 10, when a client comes to me struggling, this is at play. They say—and I catch my clients, even the clients that are working with me in my coaching programs right now, one-on-one—
Holly Perkins 37:03
They'll say, Holly, I'm following my macros. I'm doing everything that you're telling me to do. And I say, seven days a week? And they pause. Well, I do loosen up a little bit on the weekends, but definitely Monday to Thursday or Monday to Friday, I am following the playbook. But that's the catch. You have to check yourself honestly because you need to know: what are you actually doing on the weekends? Does it have an impact on these metrics? Because it's really easy. It is, sadly, shockingly easy to eat more than you need on the weekends and then counter what you did during the week.
Holly Perkins 37:50
And you might think, Well, I'm not deviating that much. Oh boy, it is so easy. And I'll walk you through in a moment. And here's the thing: all it takes to stall fat loss is 100 to 200 calories or so, really and truly. So if you're eating just 100 calories per day more than you need, it could stall fat loss. And I would say it will stall fat loss. That's been my experience. Listen, there may be some other expert out there that does not believe me, and that is okay. There's room for all of our opinions. But I will say, in my practice, working with clients for 30
Holly Perkins 38:32
years, this is what works for us. Argue with me if you want, but this is what works. I see it every single week. Let me break it down so that you can see it more clearly, because once you get this, everything will change. But right now, first, I want to ask a question, and I want you to ask yourself this question honestly. If you believe you are on a program and you are working towards losing body fat and/or losing weight, and it's not working, or you've stalled, or you've plateaued, or it's not working as quickly as you think it should,
Holly Perkins 39:09
I want you to ask yourself, do your weekends look like your weekdays? It's a yes or no binary answer. It's not well, sort of, or kind of, or closely; it's yes or no. When you adopt a seven-day-a-week eating strategy, you will lose fat shockingly faster. I'm talking in a few days. When you get this right now, the body doesn't actually lose weight or lose body fat in a seven-day cycle or a 24-hour cycle. It's a mysterious time frame. In my practice, when I've experimented with this, it's usually around 10 days if a person is following a program exactly. But it's a bit mysterious.
Holly Perkins 39:56
But let's say, in a 10-day cycle, your calories are a little over, right? That's gonna extend that cycle, and it's almost like you're starting over every week. So if you're eating 567, 800 calories more on the weekend than your body actually needs, okay? You're gonna wake up on Monday, go back to your Monday to Thursday diet, and start the whole process over again. You're spinning your wheels, and that is why you're not seeing changes either as fast as you want them, or at all.
Holly Perkins 40:29
So let's use a specific example of a 150-pound woman. In my practice, I have really sophisticated ways to determine the perfect amount of calories for you and your body, where you'll be in a calorie deficit. So we're going to talk a bit general here, but I'll keep it useful and practical for you. So let's say that woman is targeting 1500 calories per day, and that would be in a calorie deficit for her. Now, here's the thing: I don't like big deficits, because, as I said earlier, people feel restricted or hungry or just miserable. So I like to find the perfect daily intake where you're in a deficit, but it's not a big deficit.
Holly Perkins 41:36
So with it, as you can imagine, that means there's less wiggle room. So if I put you in a 1000-calorie-a-day deficit, right, you've got wiggle room, and even if you do embellish a little bit, maybe you'll still land at that 500-calorie deficit. I don't like to do it that way.
Holly Perkins 41:36
And oh, by the way, that's what most diet programs out there do. They give you a huge daily deficit because you will lose weight faster. They're also accounting for human error. I don't like to do it that way. I like to prescribe you exactly where I want you, and then help you actually follow that. So let's say she follows the target Monday to Thursday, or maybe even Monday to Friday—okay, four or five days a week—but then on Saturday and maybe Sunday as well, she loosens up a bit, and maybe she has a drink or two, or a few chips and some guac, or even just a few bites of her friend's dessert. If she's not actually tracking her food, those little nibbles can so easily add up to 500 to 1000 additional calories so easily, especially fat. Wow. Fat has nine calories per gram, which means it adds up really, really quickly.
Holly Perkins 42:42
Do you know how easy it is to eat 500 calories? It's about 10 chips and half a cup of guacamole. That is not much at all. So some women like to plan for weekends like this because they know they're going to deviate, and they want the wiggle room. Therefore, they intentionally eat less during the week so they can eat more on the weekend. Let's take a look at that, because I'm not against it. It's not my favorite strategy, but I do have some clients that can do it. I do it, and most of the time, it doesn't work. I would say it's a successful strategy, maybe 60% of the time.
Holly Perkins 43:27
And again, if you are a straight-A student and you are able to be non-emotional about tracking your food, if you're able to be just objective about weighing and measuring, and if you're also able to be super accurate in your food tracking app, like what you're actually eating is accurate to what you're actually putting in your diet tracking app, if you are someone who's really structured that way and educated, this can totally work. And we call this "poverty macros" during the week, so that you're able to eat a little bit more on the weekend. You can absolutely do it, but it does ride on proficiency and accuracy. Now remember, in this case, her daily target is 1500 calories, right?
Holly Perkins 44:15
So when we calculate it, let's assume 1500 calories is the perfect calorie deficit for her to lose body fat on a weekly basis. Right? Because your body doesn't lose weight in a 24-hour period, per se. We don't know what the actual time range is. So on a weekly basis, 1500 calories a day is 10,500 calories over a seven-day period. Let's say she wants to eat less Monday to Friday, so she eats 1400 calories instead of 1500. That's a total of 7000 calories. So that means she's got 3500 calories to spend over the weekend. If we divide that up evenly, it's 1750 each day.
Holly Perkins 45:08
So Saturday and Sunday, she's got 1750 calories—call it 1800—to play with. And while that seems like a lot, it's actually not. I lose weight at 1800 calories. I starve at 1800 calories a day. And that's because of everything that I teach you. I practice now. My current weight is about 130 pounds, and so my calorie deficit is reflective of my current body weight. If you haven't already figured that out with my methodology, let me say it explicitly: if you weigh 206 pounds or 186 pounds, my 1800 calories is way too low for you. I'm losing weight at 1800 calories and 130 pounds.
Holly Perkins 45:51
So remember that your calories are reflective of where you are currently, and the heavier you are beyond 150 or 180 pounds, you really do get to have more calories and still be in a calorie deficit. It's a really beautiful thing. I'll point out one more mistake that a lot of people make. If your current body weight is over 200 pounds, you've actually got to be eating more calories. And if someone puts you on a 1400- or 1600-calorie-per-day diet, run the other direction because you are going to crash and burn. It's way too low of calories per pound of your current body weight.
Holly Perkins 46:37
Follow me. All right. Let's move on. While you may think more calories on the weekend feels like so much—it's a few cocktails, it's a burger, it's some fries, it's really any restaurant meal—it can so easily push you over that additional calorie surplus that you're giving yourself on the weekend. And so again, of course, this is if you're actually tracking. If you're not tracking, this is problematic.
Holly Perkins 47:11
If you are tracking, it can work, but it's not my preferred method. I'd rather you eat the same seven days a week, or find little ways to navigate weekend fun eating. So ultimately, the mistake that I see a lot is not being conscious about weekend eating and, somewhat unconsciously, just letting go of the reins a little bit. You were good all week. You were structured all week, so you're going to ease up a bit. I'm guilty of this. Now, I allow myself to do this because I'm not in a body fat loss phase right now, although har har, I probably should be, but I'm not, and I'm okay with that. When I move into a fat loss phase, my Saturday night eating looks like my Monday night eating. Now listen, you are welcome to do whatever you want, but you're still listening.
Holly Perkins 48:06
So the best way to lose body fat is to stay as consistent as you absolutely can and adopt a seven day per week eating protocol, and that can include some fun on the weekends, but you have to be very deliberate with it. And if you are, you're going to get results super fast. And there you have it, the best way to lose body fat. It's really simple: either focus on strength training and diet, or do that and add in some cardio, which is really my favorite way, because you really do need some cardio, true cardio activity each week, for cardiovascular health, for recovery, for mood, for mental outlook, general health, biochemistry, all of that. You do need some cardio, and so my preferred method is combining all three.
Holly Perkins 49:09
You may be tempted to think that this all sounds a bit confusing, maybe overwhelming. I promise you it's not. It's really not, but I do offer coaching if you feel that you want some help, because there really is an art and science to improving your body composition. So if you're overwhelmed and you want help, just reach out and let me know. I hope you enjoyed this episode and stay tuned, because in a few weeks, I am hosting a brand new three day live workshop called Midlife Muscle Mastery, and you do not want to miss it. It's going to start in September.
Holly Perkins 49:48
You can get on the first to be notified VIP list right now by going to hollyperkins.com forward slash free workshop, all one word. hollyperkins.com, it's my website. Just google me, then add a forward slash and type in free workshop, and stay tuned for another brand new episode on Tuesday of next week. Stay strong, my friend. Thank you so much for tuning into this week's episode. I am so happy that you're here, and I hope you loved it. If you did, please take a moment to subscribe, share with your friends, and leave a review. And if you want more from me, check out my blog and coaching programs over at hollyperkins.com. That's all for now. I'll see you next week.