An Explanation and Solution for Slow Female Fat Loss

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You may have heard, or learned from experience, that it’s more difficult for women to lose fat than men. People immediately think it must be estrogen or hormonal issues at play here. Perhaps the biggest factor is NOT hormones, but the simple fact that women are usually smaller and lighter than men.

When you have a smaller body, you have lower calorie needs. When you have lower calorie needs, your relative caloric deficit of 20% to 30% gives you a smaller absolute deficit to work with and therefore you lose fat more slowly than someone who is larger and can create a larger caloric deficit.

I know this bit about calorie deficits may sound confusing to you so please allow me to explain myself.

My Calorie Deficit and Fat Loss Ratio

If my TDEE (Total Daily Energy Expenditure) is 3300 calories, then a 20% deficit would be 660 calories, which brings me to 2640 calories a day. On paper, that gives me around 1.3 lbs of weight loss per week.

If I bumped up the number of calories I burn or decreased my calorie intake another 340 a day, that would increase my fat loss to two pounds per week.

That’s hardly a starvation diet (Ahhh, the benefits of being a man). For smaller women, the math equation is very different.

Your Calorie Deficit and Fat Loss Ratio

If your total daily energy expenditure is only 1970 calories, even at a VERY high exercise level, then a 20% deficit for you is only 394 calories which would put you at 1576 calories a day for only 8/10th of a pound of fat loss per week.

If you pursued a more aggressive plan to get to a 30% calorie deficit, then that would put you at a 591 calorie deficit. This would drop you down to 1382 calories of intake per day. That’s getting pretty low on calories. However, your calorie deficit would still be small compared to mine. Looking at the numbers I would get to eat almost twice as many calories as you and still achieve twice the weekly rate of fat loss because of the higher calorie deficit.

What does this mean?

What this all means is that women who are petite or have a small body size are going to lose fat more slowly than larger women and much more slowly than men, so you cannot compare yourself to them.

Who’s Fat Loss Example Should You Follow?

It’s great to be inspired by weight loss success stories, but if you’re looking for someone to model yourself after, choose a success story of someone with your body size and weight, rather than folks who are much larger than you and started out 100 pounds overweight and were therefore capable of shedding three pounds of fat per week.

ONE POUND a week of fat loss is much more in line with a realistic goal for someone of a smaller body size. Overweight people can lose fat faster do to the simple fact that they have more fat to lose. The best thing you can do is to be extremely consistent with your nutrition over time and eventually you will lose the fat you need to lose.

5 Suggestions to Help Women Combat Slow Fat Loss

Suggestion #1: Weigh and measure all your food any time you feel you are stuck at a plateau, just to be sure. When your calorie expenditure is on the low side, you don’t have much margin for error.

Suggestion #2: Take your body comp measurements with a grain of salt, especially if you are using Bioelectric Impedance Analysis (BIA) scales (they are a bit wonky) and remember that body comp testing is seldom perfect. Pay attention to your circumference measurements, how your clothes fit and how you look in the mirror and in photos as well.

Suggestion #3: You might actually want to take fewer refeeds – once a week instead of every 4th day, or even just once every 10-14 days, so you can get a larger weekly deficit.

Suggestion #4: You may want to take 2 or 3 of your long cardio sessions on the treadmill and switch them to intense intervals or ANY other type of activity that has potential to burn more than 362 calories for an hour’s investment of time, or perhaps that equivalent calorie burn in less time. No need to add more days of cardio or more time – get the most out of the time you are already spending.

Suggestion #5: If you do intervals, don’t make the workout too brief (ignore the advertisements for those "4 Minute Miracle" workouts, etc.), or you may burn fewer calories than you were before! In fact, you might even try the method where you do HIIT
for 15-20 min, then continue for another 30-40 at slow to medium intensity. Increasing total calories burned should be your focus.

Dropping only ONE pound per week (or less) may seem excruciatingly slow, but it’s actually the same type of thing I do. As a bodybuilder, I go from lean to extremely lean when I diet and I don’t expect more than a pound a week during contest cuts.

Weight loss is weight loss even if it is slow!

You are in a similar situation, even if not competing on the level that I do. Even if you get a half a pound a week fat loss, if you get that progress every week, that’s what you’re looking for – steady progress — even if slow.

It’s entirely possible that you HAVE been making progress, only very slowly. With the way water weight and glycogen levels can fluctuate (and lean mass may increase), a half a pound or pound fat loss in a week could have been easily masked… and therefore, missed. That’s one of the drawbacks of going by the scale alone.

Understand the calorie math I explained above and be patient, watching for slow and steady progress, paying special attention to the trend over time on your progress chart.

Keep after it – the persistence will pay, I promise!

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Tom Venuto is a lifetime natural bodybuilder, an NSCA-certified personal trainer (CPT), certified strength and conditioning specialist (CSCS), and author of the all-time best-selling e-book, "Burn the Fat, Feed The Muscle."

Tom has written more than 200 articles and has been featured in print magazines such as IRONMAN, Australian IRONMAN, Natural Bodybuilding, Muscular Development, Exercise for Men and Men’s Exercise, as well as on hundreds of websites worldwide.

For information on Tom’s Fat Loss program, visit: Burn the Fat, Feed the Muscle

 

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