Hey,
Let’s be honest: “eat more to lose fat” sounds like clickbait from the land of broken promises.
I’ve coached enough people and been in the fitness industry long enough to know how the story usually goes.
Someone on the internet swears they’ve got secret hacks, you sign up, and it turns out the only thing getting lighter is your wallet.
Here’s the thing though, there is a real physiological path to eating more and losing fat. It’s just not magic, it’s physiology. And once you understand that physiology, you stop white-knuckling your weeks, stop rebounding on weekends, and start getting predictable results without feeling like a hungry zombie.
Picture your week. Monday to Friday you’re “perfect”. You eat tiny portions, have saintly discipline, and caffeine is doing half your personality’s heavy lifting.
Then Saturday hits like a freight
train: hunger, cravings, “I deserve it,” social plans, and suddenly your deficit dissolves into maintenance, or even a surplus.
You didn’t fail. The plan did. It made the weekdays too hard to keep the weekends under control.
Now flip the script. We raise weekday calories a notch. Not excessively, but enough to steady appetite, fuel training, and keep your brain from bargaining with every snack in the house. You feel human again. Workouts have higher gears. You move more without forcing it. And because you’re no longer ravenous by Saturday, your weekly calories finally land where they needed to be all along: in a
true, consistent deficit.
That’s the “eat more to lose fat” magic. Adherence.
How this work is simple enough. You see, if you
diet too hard, a few silent levers pull down the “calories out” side of the equation:
- You eat less → digestion burns a bit fewer calories (TEF dips).
- You weigh less → everyday movement costs fewer calories.
- Training output often drops (EAT), and your fidgeting/steps (NEAT) sink without you noticing.
So yes, the CICO equation still rules. But the inputs are dynamic. Under-fuel and “calories out” shrinks; fuel smartly and you preserve training quality, keep NEAT higher, and the maths works for you. More food than your crash-diet brain expects, and better fat loss than your weekend brain keeps
sabotaging.
Here’s how I coach this in the real world:
First, we audit reality, not the imaginary weekday you, but the full
Monday-through-Sunday you. Where do calories spike? Where does movement tank? Then we nudge weekday calories up to the highest level that still trends the scale and measurements down over time.
Think “comfortably in control,” not “constantly negotiating with the fridge.”
From there, we protect performance: two to three strength sessions, daily step targets to safeguard NEAT, and a reasonable calorie range you can repeat, not endure.
When you fuel
like a human, a few good things happen fast: workouts feel like progress again (not penance), steps creep up without trying, and that end-of-week “I blew it” loop quietens down. You don’t need secrets. You need a plan built around how metabolism really behaves and how people actually eat.
And if anyone is
still selling you “super-duper high-calorie fat loss” as a secret protocol, they’re just setting up the basics properly.
Adequate calories for adherence, resistance training to keep muscle, NEAT that doesn’t nosedive, plus a realistic weekly view of things.
You can do this yourself and save your wallet!
You don’t need to suffer to make progress. You need a plan that lets you show up again tomorrow.
If you need help applying this to your own situation, you can always check out our coaching. We don’t always have spaces open, but you can join the waitlist and we’ll reach out when spots are available.”
