Double Edge Fitness

How to Crush Your Workouts While on a Calorie Deficit

• Deek and Jacob Wellock

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Struggling with energy during workouts while trying to lose weight? You're not alone. This deep dive into the science of training while in a calorie deficit reveals why so many athletes feel sluggish when cutting calories—and offers practical solutions to maintain performance while still achieving weight loss goals.

The conversation tackles a crucial nutritional dilemma faced by dedicated fitness enthusiasts: how to preserve workout intensity while creating the calorie deficit necessary for weight loss. While conventional wisdom often pushes low-carb approaches for shedding pounds, this strategy can severely undermine performance for those engaged in high-intensity training. We explore why your anaerobic energy systems demand glycogen (stored carbs) and why fat, despite being an excellent fuel source during low-intensity activities, simply cannot be mobilized quickly enough to power through heavy lifts or HIIT sessions.

Rather than following the standard "cut carbs to lose weight" advice, active individuals often benefit from a counterintuitive approach—maintaining adequate carbohydrate intake while creating a deficit primarily by reducing dietary fat. This strategy provides your muscles with the glycogen they need for powerful training sessions while still achieving the overall calorie reduction necessary for weight loss. You'll discover practical nutrition timing strategies, specific pre-workout meal suggestions, and even natural carbohydrate sources that can help fuel morning workouts without digestive discomfort. Whether you're struggling with morning workouts or trying to balance your fitness and physique goals, these evidence-based recommendations will help you train hard while getting lean. Ready to stop sacrificing performance for weight loss? This episode shows you don't have to choose between the two.

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Speaker 1:

All right answering a member's question here. I think it's a good question. This member worked out in the morning hours, usually around 7 am, and they've recently taken on a calorie deficit. You know, the only reason to be on a calorie deficit is to lose weight. That is the goal. And they asked me I'm feeling sluggish during my workouts. I don't feel like I have the go that I had, you know, before taking on this calorie deficit.

Speaker 1:

That's me about some, you know, ideas and thoughts on potentially being able to still get the most out of that workout but maintain a calorie deficit. So I don't have a blanket like this is the answer for this, because this is very individual in many ways, because some folks folks are just very fat adapted. So if you're more fat adapted either genetically or training adaptation over time you are going to be able to mobilize body fat into energy more efficiently. This will be difficult at an anaerobic high intensity for everybody, because when you're anaerobic your body really prefers glycogen as its main source of fuel converting to ATP, because fat takes longer to convert to ATP and it only happens at a lower heart rate in that aerobic phase of training. So, depending on where your heart rate's running during most of our workouts and our workouts are designed for the most part, to be pretty high intensity. So chances are, if you're functioning in an anaerobic state, if you're on a calorie deficit, being short on carbohydrates could be affecting you short term on your performance in the gym.

Speaker 1:

So what are some ideas on where we could potentially overcome here? First off, how are we achieving this calorie deficit? Protein should always be standard, so that's going to be consistent across the board. So, regardless of your calorie deficit or calorie maintenance or calorie surplus, protein should be consistent across the board. So we're not going to play with the calorie equation on protein. What we're going to play with the calorie equation is going to be carbohydrates and fat, our energy sources, and I know most people reduce carbohydrate. You lose weight. That is society's answer. But the reality is you reduce calories, you lose weight. But when we are training, I would say that we need to reduce the calories more from fat than carbohydrates. Then the sedentary person trying to lose weight or the very low activity person trying to lose weight I would say we need to reduce calories from carbohydrates and not fat and maintain fat calories, because when you're sedentary, your body is going to be functioning in an aerobic state more and being at that deficit, you're going to be able to mobilize fat and use it as energy. But those of us that train and enjoy training and enjoy high intensity training, enjoy weightlifting. I will argue that being at a calorie deficit by pulling fat down but keeping carbohydrates a little bit higher is going to be much more beneficial.

Speaker 1:

Now we do need to weigh and measure. We need to make sure we're actually at a calorie deficit. Most people over underestimate how much they're eating, so they're like I don't eat a lot but I'm not losing weight. If you're not losing weight, you're not at a calorie deficit. It's the laws of thermodynamics. When it comes to the body. It's pretty hard, objective facts. If you're at a calorie deficit for sustained periods of time, your body has no choice but to lose weight. You get the. I'm not even going to get into it in this video.

Speaker 1:

So those of us that like to train, I would suggest let's see where we can get that fat down. We might be moving to leaner cuts of meat. We might be moving towards not using olive oil, which is another topic on weight loss, but getting away from cooking oils, getting away from butter, things that are high in fat, making sure we're using low fat milk or non-fat milk, low fat, non-fat yogurts, you know, really seeing where, in the protein side of things, can we pull down our fat intake to get that calorie deficit? That's something I personally do Reducing calories, because you got, you know, nine calories per gram of fat. So if we can get to our calorie deficit by reducing fat, by keeping carbs up, especially on training days and recovering for the next training day, if we're going to go into a sedentary three days weekend or long trip, no, we're not going to want to use carbs.

Speaker 1:

Carbohydrates need to be ingested for activity. That is their intended use. For physical activity they're not intended. They're not going to be a great source because unused carbohydrates are going to be turned into stored body fat. So if we're not using it, we are going to store it All right. So we need to be intentional with our carbohydrate intake.

Speaker 1:

So, working out early in the morning, feeling a little drained, I would suggest let's first weigh and measure our food, see how much protein, fats and carbs we're getting on average. It doesn't need to be a perfect deal, but this isn't something I would intuitively try to get out. I would want to know the hard numbers. So weigh and measure you know a few days worth of food, track it, let's get some hard numbers there. And then if our carbohydrates, say, hypothetically, are around 200 grams per day, I think that's a great starting point, depending on your body size. And if we get an in-body scan, we can fine tune this, we can dial this in a little better, but I think for the most part that's still, in some realms, a low carb diet by all accounts. But any given one hour of training, we're gonna probably use 20, maybe 30 grams of carbohydrate total during that training session.

Speaker 1:

But then carbohydrates are used for muscle protein synthesis. They're used for recovery. We got to replenish that muscle glycogen over the next 24 hours to train the next day. And there's two ways you're going to get that blood glycogen, that muscle glycogen, restored. It's going to be consuming carbohydrates, body's going to break it down. It's going to go in your bloodstream. Your muscles are going to absorb it. The other way is when you are at rest, your body is going to mobilize fat and it's going to go into your liver and through gluconeogenesis it's going to kick out blood glucose and your muscles can absorb it that way. So you're going to create. You're going to get and or create the glucose, no matter what it's the time frame that it's going to happen in to recover for the next workout. So we want our muscles saturated Now.

Speaker 1:

Also, if we're just recently went into this calorie deficit, we need to let our body have some time to adapt. It's used to having all the food that it needs and a surplus of it probably. So your body kind of figuring out its mechanisms for its activity and let it come to kind of a homeostasis, if you will at this new caloric deficit Could take a little time, a couple weeks. Uh, could take a, you know, a little time, a couple weeks. But in general, if we can pull back on the fat to achieve our deficit, keep our carbs maybe 200, you know some folks take it down to 100 and to be a little. That's a low carb diet. So this depends on your size, your muscle mass, how hard you train, how often you train, and I would play with that carbohydrate number. I would try to consume that carbohydrates most of it around training. Literature out there is showing that as long as you're consuming it in a 24-hour cycle consistently, your body is going to consistently replenish.

Speaker 1:

I personally find better for myself that if I consume the bulk of my calories and then protein and carbohydrates, I consume the bulk of my carbohydrates around training. I tend to recover the best with that and I feel better the rest of that day and then going into the next day Before working out. I do personally train better and feel better when I have carbohydrate in my system. I don't like doing high intensity or heavy weight lifting with a fast being on an empty stomach. It's not something that I particularly feel the best at. I can do it as a wrestler. So training hard starved is built into my DNA at this point although that was 20 some years ago I feel so much better.

Speaker 1:

So for me, two hours before I train, I do consume about 20, 30 grams of carbohydrate. I make a smoothie of blueberries, milk, my fiber, creatine and protein powder. I blend that every morning or I have overnight oats, which has approximately the same ratio of carbohydrates and protein. That's about two hours before I train and that does me solid. But if I can't have that 30 minutes before I train, it doesn't sit well in my stomach. So if I'm going to have something and we're going to do like once in a while, jump into a 5am workout.

Speaker 1:

What I have then is a supplement called Ignition and it's from First Form and that's a carbohydrate mineral supplement. Fast digested. It is straight dextrose, so it's pretty much straight sugar. I've watched it on my glucose monitor. It hits my bloodstream fast 15 minutes. It's in my bloodstream because my blood glucose goes through the roof and with that big of a what do you want to say glucose dump into my body, I want to make sure that's something my body is going to consume. From an energy usage standpoint, you know, I thought is not as much insulin is going to be produced to chase that blood spike down. It's going to be. My muscles are going to be grabbing onto that, using it up.

Speaker 1:

I do feel good when I do that and you can get anywhere easily. I mean, I think one scoop of it's 40 grams of carbohydrates, so you can easily hit that 20 to 30 gram range that I like for training in our workouts with ignition and a scoop of protein. So you're getting know 28 grams of protein if you're using transparent labs and you know anywhere from 15 to 30 grams of carbohydrate that's quickly absorbed into your blood ready to be used. You got amino acids. You got glucose ready to go and you play with this. You start out low. Okay, I'm going to do a quarter scoop of ignition. How do I feel? Yeah, I feel better, but I still don't have the whole workout, I'm not. I still feel that I did not feel prior to my caloric deficit. So then go up to a half scoop, do that for a week. Okay, feeling better, and you kind of find a sweet spot to where it's like okay, now I'm getting enough carbohydrate to feel great for the whole workout. The same way I felt prior to taking on this caloric deficit.

Speaker 1:

And I bring up prior to taking on this caloric deficit because if you bonked before, it might be a lack of fitness issue versus the calories per se. But that's a whole nother conversation where you talk about condition versus decondition athlete and being able to understand how your body is responding to the training. A deconditioned athlete can eat all the carbohydrates in the world and still going to bonk in the workout. Deconditioned athlete can eat all the carbohydrates in the world and still going to bonk in the workout. So this what I'm talking about is a person who is a, somebody who trains consistently, who puts in good efforts every single day, and this is advice for that human being. Of that, the deconditioned person's, a different conversation. That makes sense. So yeah, to recap here, we'll go in modify carbohydrates, increase carbohydrates, modify fats down to achieve our caloric deficit. That way, protein is going to stay the same.

Speaker 1:

Again, with a good in-body scan, I can figure out some great starting numbers for you, anybody to work with. And, like I said, these are starting numbers. There's no like this is your number, these are starting numbers. We do it for, you know, two to six weeks, see how we feel, how we're responding and we make pivots and adjustments. But then I'd isolate carbohydrates around training so we are getting replenished with our blood glycogen. I happen to know this person and I know you're going to watch this, but I would do around 200 grams of carbohydrates per day and I would try to isolate a big chunk of that in your post-workout meal. So you're getting that, that glucose, into your bloodstream and your muscles and protein synthesis and recovery are starting to happen, you know, earlier in the day versus later in the day, so that when you're going to bed and wake up the next day you know a lot of that replenishment has taken place. Then I would just play around with.

Speaker 1:

If you can't, if you're not feeling good digesting whole food like fruit and honey as a carb source before working out, you can play around increasing the ignition. I think that's a great carbohydrate supplement. There's a handful of different companies out there with different carbohydrate supplements. That's the one I've used for years when I can't eat in the morning. Honey is really easily digested. I think it is a great source of carbohydrate for training and I would consider looking into honey if you want a more natural, non-supplement way to increase your glucose intake. One or two tablespoons of honey. I can't remember off the top of my head the exact carbohydrate concentrations of that, but I do think honey is a great easily digested whole food tool to use for training carbohydrates.

Speaker 1:

And yeah, hope this answers some questions, maybe spawns a few more questions, but if anything comes up, you guys you can throw in the comments, you can text me, email me and I will do my best to answer them as intelligently as I can, and if I don't know the answer, I'll tell you I don't know the answer and I will do my best to answer them as intelligently as I can, and if I don't know the answer, I'll tell you I don't know the answer and I will do the research to hopefully find the answer, and I'm here to help you guys on your health and fitness journey. Yeah, love you guys and I will see you. I don't even know what the next video I'm gonna make is, but I got a laundry list of them from questions and stuff that have come in.