After a previous history of 24 pounds of weight loss, a 36-year-old male moved his body fat percent from 19% to 15% largely due to simple increases in protein intake. J was enjoying 3 days per week of circuit-based resistance training and 1 day of long-duration, low-intensity cardio despite an extremely busy work and home life. Given his history, we focused largely on increasing protein and vegetable intake as opposed to emphasizing further explicit restriction as he was accustomed to. This can serve to better help control hunger cues, crowd out excessive calorie intake from carbohydrate and fat, establish meal pattern consistency, and provide sufficient amino acids to support muscle recovery and retention while in a caloric deficit for weight loss. Protein intake moved from ~0.6 to ~1.0 grams per pound per day, a difference of 75 grams or 300-400 calories. J achieved a caloric deficit as evidenced by weight and fat loss (9 pounds), yet added significant muscle mass (5 pounds) – the benefits of which to performance, aesthetics, and health are of great magnitude... all without alterations – and thus great effort investments – to training frequency, intensity, or duration.
