If you’re looking for a comprehensive guide that covers:
 

• What you need to do to get abs
• The pros and cons of getting and maintaining visible abs
• Differences between trans masc people and cis men

 
Keep reading.

Is it true that “abs are made in the kitchen”?

To use a phrase that’s equally cheesy but more accurate, abs are built in the gym and revealed in the kitchen.

Getting abs involves a two-step process:

1. Build them.

2. Get lean enough to expose them.

For some people, these two steps are relatively easy.

These are people who:
 

• Stay lean easily and, if anything, struggle to gain weight
• Have enough abdominal muscle
• Have a favourable body fat distribution (due to genetics), so they don’t carry much fat around the abdomen

 
For others, getting abs requires a longer timeframe and greater effort.

How to build your abs

By “abs”, I’m referring to the rectus abdominis, which is the “six-pack” muscle running from the bottom of your ribcage to the top of your pelvis:

To build them, you need to apply the following principles of hypertrophy:

1. Specificity

Choose exercises that train the rectus abdominis directly.

I usually program one exercise that feels harder in the upper portion of the abs (ribs to pelvis), like a crunch, and one that feels harder in the lower portion (pelvis to ribs), like a leg raise.

2. Volume and proximity to failure

While volume needs are individual, 10 to 20 sets close enough to failure per week is a good rule of thumb for hypertrophy (click, click).

Since abs tend to recover pretty easily from training, and ab exercises are pretty safe, I usually train and program every set to muscular failure.

Furthermore, recent research suggests that doing more than 11 sets for the same muscle in a single session doesn’t seem to yield any more detectable muscle growth.

In addition, the more sets you do, the more fatigued you get, which leads to a decrease in performance.

Taking these two factors into account, it may be better to spread the same number of sets across multiple sessions, especially if you’re doing more than 11 sets per week.

That’s why I tend to program abs multiple times per week, including on back-to-back days.

3. Targeted form

Your form should enable you to stimulate the specific muscle you’re trying to grow, without notable compensation from other structures or from momentum.

These are the two most common form mistakes I’ve seen:

• Turning standard and decline crunches into sit-ups
• Moving your hips back and forth on cable crunches

 
These mistakes typically involve the hip flexors and/or the lower back muscles, thus reducing the emphasis on the abs.

To help you avoid them, I made this reel on form fundamentals.

How to expose your abs

If you’ve been training abs but can’t see them yet, you need to cut until you’ve lost enough fat from around your abdomen to display them.

Most people lose fat from the inside out (visceral fat around your organs first, then subcutaneous fat under your skin) and from the top down (head to toe).

For this reason, you’ll likely uncover the two upper abs first, followed by the rest.

For most cis men, trans masc people who’ve undergone fat redistribution, and cis women with a more typically “male” fat distribution pattern, the lower abdomen is one of the most stubborn fat loss areas and will likely take the longest to lean out.

Can anyone get visible abs and maintain them?

Anyone who’s built them can get visible abs.

Maintaining them is a different story, depending on how visible we’re talking relative to your current dieting skills and to the lowest body fat percentage you can healthily maintain.

If you want really shredded abs, you’ll likely be cutting for a long time, which is already difficult enough to accomplish in and of itself. So your dieting skills need to match this level of challenge.

When and if you do succeed, if your goal leanness is pretty extreme, you can end up dieting below your lower body fat intervention point, based on Speakman’s dual set point theory.

In other words, you end up dieting below the minimum amount of fat your body requires to feel good and perform all its physiological functions properly.

This lower intervention point isn’t the same for everyone.

If you get below this threshold, you usually experience the following on a regular basis:

• Fatigue
• Hunger
• High food focus
• Mood swings
• Difficulty sleeping
• Low libido

 
You’ll also feel highly critical of your appearance, struggle to make much or any progress with your training, and develop disordered eating behaviours and negative body image thoughts.

Internally, your thyroid and sex hormone levels will be tanked – unless you’re on exogenous hormones – which is not ideal for your long-term health.

Moreover, your body is in a state of low energy availability (LEA), in which the calories you’re eating aren’t enough to support the body’s essential physiological functions after accounting for the calories you’re burning through exercise.
 
In other words, the body doesn’t have enough available energy to perform both functions that are necessary for life, like breathing, and those that aren’t, like having children or growing muscle.

As a result, it slows down or stops all unnecessary physiological functions. That’s why cis women in this state don’t have a menstrual cycle, and why people in general tend to struggle to make progress in the gym.

Even if you are on exogenous hormones, you can still experience these unsavoury symptoms and LEA. Therefore, whether taking exogenous hormones or not, this is not a healthy state to be in for prolonged periods of time.

So, if you need to get to this point for your abs to be as visible as you want them to be, it’s probably better to accept a slightly higher body fat percentage. Even without being shredded to the bone, you can still have somewhat visible abs and thrive in life.

As a visual example, I dieted past my lower intervention point for my last photoshoot back in 2022.

At the time, my physique looked like this at around 96-98 lbs:

​I loved having such shredded abs, but I absolutely hated how I felt.

As of March 2026, as you can see in the picture below, my abs are still visible, but not quite to the same extent. Most importantly, I’m not in a state of LEA and I’m not compromising my long-term health.

How long will it take to achieve visible abs?

I started bodybuilding in 2018 and spent four years cutting and bulking before achieving my 2022 photoshoot shape. The photoshoot diet itself lasted nearly seven months, from the start of February to mid-August 2022.

Importantly, I wouldn’t have been able to sustain such a long and gruelling diet if I hadn’t already developed good fat loss skills in previous cutting phases.

I can’t give you a one-size-fits-all answer, but I can give you some perspective based on my personal experience and nearly seven years of coaching hundreds of clients.
 
For most people like me, for whom it isn’t easy to have visible abs, achieving them takes at least three to five years of consistent training and nutrition, even if you don’t intend to get as shredded as I did for my shoot.

If you want to expedite this process, hiring a good coach is the single best investment you can make for three reasons.

First off, a coach will strategically map out your cutting and bulking phases instead of jumping from one to the other with no rhyme or reason.

Second, they will help you develop your dieting and training skills, increase muscle mass, and nurture the right mindset to complete the kind of challenging diet required to achieve your goal.

Last but not least, they can help you accomplish all this in the healthiest way possible, lowering your risk of worsening your physical health and psychological relationship with food, your body, and training.

What changes for trans masc people compared to cis men?

Physiologically, nothing.

However, the following three key differences in your lived experience can affect the process:
 
1.Body fat redistribution from testosterone (T) therapy
2.Length of time spent on T
3.Diet culture messaging
 
1. Body fat redistribution from T therapy
 
After a long enough time on testosterone therapy – and assuming your levels are within the cis male range – your body fat will likely redistribute in a more typically “male” pattern, with leaner limbs and more fat around the abdomen.
 
This will make getting visible abs harder than it was pre-T.

In some cases, though, building enough muscle will make up for this.

For example, take a look at the pictures below.

In the first one, from 2019, I weighed around 100 lbs and hadn’t started T yet. My body was small and relatively lean, but my stomach was pretty flat rather than muscular:

2. Length of time spent on T

Research suggests that both sexes can build the same relative amount of muscle (click, click). However, AMAB people make greater absolute gains because they have more muscle mass to begin with, which they develop when their testosterone levels rise during puberty.
 
If you haven’t had the same T levels as a cis man for as long as one of them, then you won’t have developed that extra baseline muscle during puberty.

For this reason, it may take you longer to grow your abs than if you’d had the same testosterone levels all along.

3. Diet culture messaging

It’s more common for AFAB than for AMAB individuals to grow up surrounded by diet culture messages pressuring them to be as small and light as possible. As a result, they may be more likely to have a restrictive relationship with food.

In addition, eating disorder rates in the trans community as a whole are relatively high.

Personally, I first thought I wanted to lose weight when I was three years old.

Eleven years later, at about fourteen, I developed anorexia nervosa.

While full-blown eating disorders are rarer, disordered eating behaviours and thoughts are more common. I’ve certainly worked and currently work with many clients who need(ed) to repair their relationship with food because of similar childhood experiences.

This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to get visible abs.

But you may need to be more mindful of nurturing your relationship with food and body image in this pursuit than if you hadn’t been fed diet culture bullshit since you were little.

In summary:

• To build your abs, you need to train them directly, with proper form, enough volume, and a close enough proximity to failure.
• To reveal them, you need to have a lean enough stomach, either naturally or by cutting.
• While anyone can get visible abs, whether you can maintain them or not depends on how shredded you want them to be and whether you need to dip below your lower body fat intervention point to get there.

 
Bonus:

These are some free bonus resources specifically dedicated to cutting:

• If you haven’t taken it yet, sign up for my free “No Quit Kit” five-day email course on how to lose fat and keep it off for the long haul
• Podcast: Should you cut or bulk first?
• Podcast: Six skills to develop BEFORE a successful fat loss phase
• Podcast: Why you stop sticking to your diet (and what to do about it)

 
Thanks for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
To receive helpful fitness information like this on a regular basis, you can sign up for my newsletter by clicking here.

To learn from my podcast as well as from my writing, click here.

Technically, this article applies to any social meal, but it’s Christmas season, so “ho ho ho” and all that.
 
Anyway, if you decided to track calories and macros during the winter holidays, the following would be the most logical strategy to stay on track with nutrition and enjoy some higher-calorie food on Christmas Day:
 

• Aim to hit your calorie target as an average across the week instead of every single day
• Lower your calories leading up to Christmas Day
• Add the calories you “borrowed” from other days onto Christmas Day

 
At least in theory.
 
Given its sensible premise, this used to be my go-to suggestion whenever a client had an upcoming big social meal and was also using calorie-tracking as a tool.

In truth, it still is my go-to in this situation, but I’ve coached people for long enough to realise that it isn’t a “one-size-fits-all” solution for everyone.

In practice, humans aren’t perfectly logical or mathematically perfect creatures.

So, if you’ve tried this strategy before but you keep going over your calories anyway, these are the most common reasons why, with the solutions my clients and I find most effective:

#1. You’re borrowing too many calories from other days.

For instance, you’re planning to eat 3000 calories on Christmas Day and decide to borrow 400 calories from three days in a row to make it happen.

But the lower calories hit you harder than expected.

You start accumulating hunger and resentment, thinking to yourself: “I’ve suffered this whole time, so I deserve to enjoy all this Christmas food…”

Finally, on the big day, you’re so hangry that you end up eating 4000 calories instead of the planned 3000.

Which makes complete sense.

I feel this way when I’m uncomfortably famished, too. That’s why I’m writing about it!

Here’s a more effective approach: Borrow fewer calories from more days in order to keep hunger in check.

For instance, instead of 400 calories over three days, try 200 over six.
 
You’ll still save 1200 calories, but with less daily effort.

#2. Saving calories ahead of time is tripping you up.

This is your problem if this vicious cycle looks familiar:
 

• Starving all day
• Blow your calories out of the water within the first 10 minutes of Christmas dinner
• End up too full, uncomfortable, and decidedly not hungry afterwards

 
This is how to break the cycle: Harness your body’s physiological response to a very filling meal and lower your calories in the days after, not before.

For most people, a holiday dinner is more bountiful than your run-of-the-mill weekday meal, so they’ll wake up the next day feeling considerably less hungry than usual.

Therefore, eating in a deficit afterwards to compensate for the previous high-calorie day is going to be a little easier than doing it the other way around.

#3. You’re eating too little on the same day.

If Christmas dinner starts at 4 pm and you’re trying to last until then with just a protein shake in your stomach, possibly after several lower-calorie days…

Good luck.

Instead, be a bit more generous with your calories leading up to the meal and, if needed, reduce them afterwards.

As a practical example, assuming Christmas dinner starts at 4 pm, you can have your typical breakfast or a slightly lower-calorie but still filling enough variation of it.

For instance, if your “typical breakfast” is oats, fruit, nut butter, and 0% fat Greek yogurt, you could make it lower in calories by swapping the oats for a little more fruit and/or Greek yogurt, which will help you feel satiated thanks to the combo of fibre and protein.

Contrary to what you might expect, I’d also recommend keeping ~15g of nuts, nut butter, or another dietary fat source of choice in this meal.

Yes, these foods are calorific and don’t feel particularly filling in the moment, but they do seem to have a long-term effect on satiation according to research, so they can keep you fuller for longer.

To be specific, unsaturated fats––which are typically found in plant-based sources––appear to be more effective in this regard than saturated fats. Moreover, plant-based fats are higher in fibre, which will also contribute to keeping you full.

(As a side note, I discussed this and more in a podcast interview on evidence-based appetite regulation strategies with Calvin Scheller here.)

If you’re not particularly interested in food as soon as you wake up, have breakfast later than usual, when you get truly hungry. As an added bonus, there’ll be less time to wait until Christmas dinner and thus less time to get excessively hungry.

When the meal takes place so early in the afternoon, you probably don’t need your typical lunch, but you can still have a protein shake with some fruit, vegetables, and/or rice cakes to tide you over.

Here’s a complete example day, including ingredients and calories:

Breakfast

150g berries = 75 kcals
300g 0% Greek yogurt = 162 kcals
15g smooth peanut butter = 90 kcals
Total = 327 kcals

Snack

Two rice cakes or 110g banana or 200g berries = 100 kcals
30g whey isolate protein powder = 110 kcals
Water for the protein shake
Total = 210 kcals

Christmas dinner = 1000 kcals

Total for the day = 1537 kcals

I assumed a low calorie budget of 1500 calories so that the example could apply to as many people as possible. You can obviously make higher-calorie choices depending on your individual budget.

#4. You’re winging it and hoping for the best.

Cue your jaw hitting the floor harder than you can hit a new squat PR when you log the meal in hindsight and discover that Christmas pudding has 500 more calories than you thought it did…

The less experience you have tracking calories and macros, the less knowledge you have of the caloric and macronutrient content of food.

So, unless you’re an expert calorie- and macro-tracker, you’re not going to be able to estimate your calories on the fly. Therefore, it’d be best to have at least a ballpark idea of the calories in the food you’ll be eating.

This is the most effective step-by-step process to make your guesstimation if you can ask for the details of the menu ahead of time:

1. Find out about which food and drinks will be served.

2. Choose what you want ahead of time.

3. Listen to my comprehensive podcast on how to track calories and macros to find out how to track a meal you’re not making yourself.

4. Out of the options described in said podcast, this is one of the best for this situation: Use AI to help you estimate calories and macros by giving it prompts, such as, “Estimate calories and macros in a typical homemade British Christmas pudding like this.”

The more detailed you can be, the better. For instance, providing reference pictures and recipes helps AI come up with a more accurate estimate.

5. Log your estimated Christmas meal into your calorie-tracking app before the event, so you can plan around it.

6. During the event, if you deviate from the original plan, take pictures of what you end up eating and drinking, use AI again to estimate calories and macros afterwards, log the changes, and plan the following days accordingly.

It goes without saying, but, to make this strategy work effectively, any deviations should be minor, such as choosing Brussels sprouts instead of parsnips, or panettone instead of Christmas pudding.

As a result, even if you do make slightly different choices compared to the original plan, you’re still going to get much closer to your goal than if you went into the meal blind and hoped for the best.

Pro tip: If you have data from previous years, use it!

Go back through your food diary, look at the choices you made at the time, and straight-up copy and paste them if you still like them.

Now, there are times when you won’t find out what kind of food will be available until the day you show up for the meal, so you can’t follow the above-mentioned process.

Don’t despair!
 
Just because you can’t be particularly accurate, doesn’t mean that making no plan is a better option. Even an educated guess is better than nothing, especially if paired with a healthy dose of caution.

You have two options here.

Option A. For traditional meals, like Christmas dinner at your parents’, you may have at least a vague idea of the food and drinks involved, so you can use AI to help.

For instance, you could ask: “What’s the caloric content of a typical Christmas dinner in the UK, including Brussels sprouts, parsnips, one standard-size Yorkshire pudding, four turkey meatballs, and gravy?”

AI will give you a range of calories, like 1000 to 1200 calories. To be on the safe side, pick the highest end of the range, then plug AI’s answer into your calorie-tracking app, and off you go.

Option B. If you have so little clue about what you’ll be eating that you wouldn’t even know which questions to ask AI, pre-log 1000 calories.

As suggested previously, you can then take pictures of everything you’re eating and drinking, and use AI in order to calculate calories and macros in hindsight to replace your original guesstimation.

#5. You’re trying to be “too good”.

In other words, you’re pre-tracking the “perfect” Christmas meal:
 

• Parsnips and Brussels sprouts without oil or butter
• Skinless turkey breast without gravy
• A baked potato with salt and pepper

 
But what you actually want is:
 

• Two Yorkshire puddings
• A jug of gravy on its own (hey, I don’t judge)
• One hearty bowl of Christmas pudding

 
If you pre-track the “perfect” Christmas meal but always end up having the second example, you’re setting yourself up for a double failure:
 

1. The calories and macros you pre-logged will be nowhere near what you actually eat.
2. Now you feel like shit because you “went off plan” and “ate bad food”.

 
In some cases, you may even end up following the plan, eat everything you’d pre-logged… then also eat everything you actually wanted to eat, thus consuming double the calories you would have if you’d just stuck to the latter from the get-go.

After all, it’s one day.

Some people will make health-promoting choices because that’s where they’re at in their own fitness journey.

Others will make more palatable choices because that’s where they’re at in their own fitness journey.

As long as the average of your behaviours over time is aligned with your fitness goals, this won’t matter.

So just eat what you want, and be honest about it from the beginning.

#6. Your relationship with food isn’t there yet.

If none of the previous reasons resonate with you, or if they do and you do apply the solutions, but still end up overshooting your calorie target… then you may need to work on your relationship with food around this time of year.

For example, you may be struggling with:
 

• Tempting Christmas food
• Specific family members modelling or enabling unhelpful habits
• Events or people triggering emotions you tend to use food to cope with

 
In this case, trying to manage your calories alone is not going to do the trick. You also need to do some deeper mindset work to address your thoughts and emotions.

In summary, if trying to save calories for a meal keeps blowing up in your face…
 

1. You’re eating too little on the preceding days.
2. You should try saving calories afterwards, not beforehand.
3. You’re eating too little on the same day.
4. You’re going into it unprepared.
5. You’re trying to be “too good”.
6. You may not have the right relationship with food to get the results you want (yet).

 
Thank you for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
To receive helpful fitness information like this on a regular basis, you can sign up for my newsletter by clicking here.

To learn how to develop an effective mindset for long-term fat loss success, you can sign up for my free email course, No Quit Kit, by clicking here.

To learn from my podcast as well as from my writing, click here.
 
To subscribe to my YouTube channel, click here.

Cutting and bulking can feel different if you’re trans.
 
The difference isn’t physiological, but rather psychological and emotional.
 
In this article, I’m going to share three strategies I’ve found very effective to help my clients navigate these complex and difficult emotions.

Like cis people, we gender-diverse individuals are influenced by some frankly ridiculous societal standards, such as:
 
1) How a man’s/woman’s body “should” look;
 
2) How a man or a woman “should” look in order to “best” express their “masculinity” or “femininity”; and
 
3) The idea that “lean and muscular” is good, whereas “fat” is bad.
 
Unlike cis people, we also struggle with…
 
1) Gender dysphoria.
 
Bulking can be a bit of a mindfuck because, even when you’re taking the most effective approach, it’s inevitable to gain some extra fat.
 
For some, this additional tissue can amplify AFAB or AMAB features that are incongruent with their identity, such as the hip and thigh area for a lot of trans masculine individuals.
 
For others, cutting can be a problem for the same reason, whereby being in a smaller body highlights physical traits that trigger dysphoria, like a small chest for trans feminine people.
 
2) We also struggle with feeling like our body “has no place”.
 
For instance, in a society that only provides “ideals” and “representation” for cis men’s and women’s bodies, where do non-binary people fit in?
 
What about trans men and women who prefer a different presentation than the archetypical “standard”?
 
While the current appearance-related societal standards can be harmful, having no direction or sense of belonging at all can be painful, too.
 
I’m trans myself, and so are the majority of my clients.
 
And these are three effective strategies to navigate these emotions:
 
#1. Reframe.
 
Both your “cutting” and “bulking” physiques are temporary.
 
They serve a purpose––to help you build your ideal physique. They’re not your ideal physique yet.
 
Try to appreciate them as steps towards the body you’re trying to build, even though they may feel uncomfortable at times.
 
#2. Work on your body image.
 
In 2024, I took a course on how to help my clients nurture their body image.
 
One of the most important learning points for me was that building muscle or losing fat alone will not always help you improve your body image because this concept goes beyond appearance.
 
In fact, body image is defined in the scientific literature as the collection of thoughts and feelings we have about our appearance, and the actions that these thoughts and feelings can trigger.
 
So, while changing your appearance in a way that feels more aligned with your gender and aesthetic preferences can help enhance your body image, it will not help you if you tie too much of your confidence, identity, and/or self-worth to the way you look.
 
In that case, you also need to do some mental work in order to build your confidence with your actions rather than your appearance, and to separate your identity and self-worth from your physique.
 
For gender-diverse people dealing with dysphoria in the pursuit of their physique goals, this question is a great starting point:
 
How can you express your identity through your actions instead of your appearance?
 
#3. Reflect on the pros and cons of each phase, not just the cons.
 
Maybe you’re not comfortable with gaining fat in certain places when bulking, but…
 
You love the extra energy.
 
And the extra food.
 
And training feels amazing.
 
Conversely, maybe you’re not comfortable with looking smaller in certain areas when cutting, but…
 
You can finally see the muscle you were building before the cut.
 
Your veins are popping, which is very cool if you ask me.
 
And, if you struggle with your appetite, it’s nice not to feel as full as when you were bulking.
 
Conclusion
 
How do you experience cutting and bulking as a gender-diverse person? I’d love to hear your thoughts in a comment.
 
Thank you for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
To receive helpful fitness information like this on a regular basis, you can sign up for my newsletter by clicking here.

To learn how to develop an effective mindset for long-term fat loss success, you can sign up for my free email course, No Quit Kit, by clicking here.

To learn from my podcast as well as from my writing, click here.
 
To subscribe to my YouTube channel, click here.

Processed foods.
 
Our worst enemy? Harmless? Somewhere in between?
 
Read on for my science-informed take.

What even are processed foods?

According to the NHS website in the UK, a processed food is “any food or drink that has been changed in some way when it’s made or prepared.”

By this definition, pasteurised milk and a packet of crisps are both considered processed, even though they provide very different nutritional benefits.

To make finer distinctions among processed foods, the most commonly used classification system is NOVA, which categorises foods and beverages based on the extent of their processing and the purpose behind it.

NOVA includes four main food groups:
 

1. Unprocessed or natural foods and minimally processed foods
2. Processed culinary ingredients: oils, fats, salt, and sugar
3. Processed foods
4. Ultra-processed foods (UPFs)

 
You can read a detailed breakdown and example foods for each group in this paper.

These distinctions are important because not all processing is inherently unhealthy. For example, pasteurising milk kills harmful bacteria and pathogens.

On the other hand, many UPFs (Group 4), such as cookies, ice-cream, and frozen pizza, are heavily processed in order to make them more palatable and thus easier to sell rather than better for human health.

Based on this, you might think, “Surely Group 4 is the ‘worst’ then,” but this isn’t entirely correct.

While most Group 4 foods tend to be nutrient-poor, high-fat, and high-sugar items, others are not, such as fruit-flavoured yogurts, sports and energy drinks, and packaged breads.

This is because NOVA isn’t trying to differentiate foods based on their degree of “healthfulness”––which is a tricky term to define to begin with––but rather based on their degree of processing.

Understanding NOVA is useful because much research on processed foods utilises it as a reference. Indeed, both of the studies I’ll discuss in the next section of this article used it.

However, I think that the best practical definition of those processed foods you may want to consume in moderation, is “commonsensical”.

For instance, while fruit-flavoured yogurts are technically UPFs, I think most will agree with me that a 0% fat, high-protein, strawberry-flavoured yogurt is more nutritious than a bottle of vodka (also a Group 4 UPF).

We all know that fruit is good for you and that it’s best not to eat your weight in deep-fried chicken and pastries on a daily basis.

So don’t get caught up in influencer-chatter demonising the processed nature of pasteurised milk, oats, and whatever else they’re “warning you against” in their reels.

What does research suggest?

While health is a multi-faceted concept that extends beyond weight and size, excess fat is proven to be harmful. Therefore, in this article, I’m going to focus on the link between UPFs and excess adiposity.

Most studies show that ultra-processed diets tend to cause more weight gain than less processed diets due to an overconsumption of calories.

But what are the factors driving the overconsumption?

Compared to less processed foods, UPFs have:
 

• A greater energy density, which I’ll define later in the article
• Less protein per gram
• Less fibre per gram

 
Furthermore, many UPFs, like French fries and cookies, are highly palatable, which makes them easier to over-eat than less processed and less tempting foods.

Taken together, these characteristics make ultra-processed diets less satiating and easier to over-indulge on.

But that’s not all.

There are other factors that seem to affect our inclination to over-eat on ultra-processed diets.

The following two studies shed light on these:

• A 2019 paper by Hall and colleagues, which is one of the most well-known studies on ultra-processed diets to date
• A 2025 paper by Hamano and colleagues, which has a very similar study design

 
In both studies:
 

• The researchers provided all meals and snacks to the participants.
• The participants could eat as much or as little as they wanted.
• For half of each study, the participants followed an ultra-processed diet. For the other half, they followed a minimally processed diet.
• In the Hall study, the researchers matched the two diets for energy, macronutrients, sugar, fat, and fibre.
• In the Hamano study, the three daily meals were matched for total energy, macronutrients, and energy density, whereas the snacks were matched for total energy and macronutrients, but not energy density.

 
By attempting to match the ultra-processed and minimally processed diets for all these different characteristics, the authors of both studies were trying to answer the following questions:

1. Will participants still over-eat on the ultra-processed diet compared to the less processed one, even when both provide the same total energy and macronutrients (in addition to sugar, fat, and fibre in the Hall study)?
2. If they do over-eat on the ultra-processed diet, what are the factors beyond energy and macronutrient composition that might be causing this?

 
In both studies, the participants consumed far more calories on the ultra-processed diet than on the less processed diet.

Specifically, the participants in the Hall study ate 500+ extra calories per day, whereas in the Hamano study they consumed 800+ extra calories per day.

Why did the subjects eat so many more calories on the ultra-processed diets?

In other words, which factors do the two studies have in common, which seem to contribute to overconsumption?

• Eating speed

Likely due to the extra processing, which makes UPFs softer and easier to chew and swallow, the participants ate faster on the ultra-processed diet.

This probably prevented them from noticing that they were full as quickly as they might have on the minimally processed diet, so they ended up eating more.

• Satiation effect

In both studies, the researchers took blood samples to assess the participants’ appetite-related hormones.

Based on the findings, the ultra-processed diets tended to produce lower levels of appetite-suppressing hormones (the fullness hormones) compared to the less processed diets.

• Overconsumption of carbs and fats

On the ultra-processed diet, the participants of both studies over-ate carbs and fat, but there were no significant differences in protein intake.

• Energy density

The concept of energy density refers to the amount of calories per gram within a certain food or beverage. The higher the calories per gram, the higher the energy density.

UPFs have a greater energy density than less processed foods, which means you’ll have to eat a smaller portion of a UPF if you wanted to calorie-match it to a less processed food.

For instance, 100g of minimally processed fresh strawberries––equivalent to about ten small fruits––contains 30 kcals. You can get the same 30 kcals from a measly 5g of chocolate, which is about three quarters of a small square.

Assuming everything else is equal, a bigger portion of food usually results in greater satiety than a smaller portion. Therefore, it’s easier to over-consume calories when eating UPFs because each portion contains a lot more calories than the same-weight portion of a less processed food.

While the authors in the Hall study tried to match the two diets for energy density by adding fibre powder to the participants’ beverages, they also acknowledged that fluids don’t have the same satiating effect as solids.

Therefore, it’s likely that the increase in energy density wasn’t enough to offset the overall lower satiating properties of the ultra-processed diet.

On the other hand, in the Hamano study, energy density was 50% higher on the ultra-processed diet.

What can we make of this?

In summary, ultra-processed diets tend to cause more weight gain than less processed diets for the following reasons:

• They’re lower in protein and fibre;
• They’re higher in energy density;
• They’re less satiating;
• They result in a greater eating speed, so you tend to eat more within the same timeframe;
• Many UPFs included in these diets are highly palatable.

 
Importantly, I’ve been careful to use the term ultra-processed diets instead of ultra-processed foods because the overall dietary pattern seems to be far more important for the maintenance of a healthy weight and body fat level than any single food.

In the Hall and Hamano studies, it was consuming a solely ultra-processed diet that caused the caloric overconsumption, not one food in particular.

For this reason, I don’t think you need to worry about having frozen pizza every now and again if the rest of your diet is nutritious and satiating.

Conclusion

While there is a well-established link between UPFs, caloric overconsumption, and weight gain, what seems to affect weight and body fat levels the most isn’t a single food or food group, but rather the characteristics of your overall dietary pattern.

Therefore, as long as this pattern is nutritious and satiating enough for you, you’re likely to offset the negative outcomes of consuming the odd highly processed ice-cream.

If you want to learn more about all the evidence-based ways in which you can design your diet to check these boxes, I have two free resources for you:

• A podcast interview on the science of appetite regulation with Calvin Scheller
• A blog article or solo podcast on maximising satiety on a diet

 
Thank you for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
To receive helpful fitness information like this on a regular basis, you can sign up for my newsletter by clicking here.

To learn how to develop an effective mindset for long-term fat loss success, you can sign up for my free email course, No Quit Kit, by clicking here.

To learn from my podcast as well as from my writing, click here.

But first, why does this matter?

Saturday and Sunday are only two days. How much of an impact can they really have?
 
You’d be surprised.

While two days doesn’t seem like a lot, consider the fact that, in order to lose fat, you need to be in a caloric deficit over a sustained period of time.

For example, let’s say you’re targeting a 1lb average loss per week.

To achieve this, you need to eat ~3500 kcals below your maintenance intake across the week, since this is the estimated caloric content of 1lb of fat.

3500 / 7 (the days of the week) = 500
 
This means that your daily fat loss target to lose 1lb per week is 500 calories below your maintenance calories.

For instance, if you maintain on 2000 calories, your daily calorie target is 1500 calories.

On a weekly basis, 1500 * 7 = 10,500 calories

So, in order to lose 1lb, you must eat around 10,500 calories every week.

If you eat 1500 calories Monday to Friday, then 3000 calories on Saturday and Sunday––which isn’t as wild as you may think when you add up a meal out, like burgers and fries, and several drinks––your total weekly consumption is 13,500 calories.

Divide this by 7, and you get 1929 calories… which is 429 more calories than you’re aiming for. And, if you maintain weight on 2000 calories…

You’re definitely not going to lose 1lb per week, and possibly no fat at all.

That’s why you want to follow my six strategies:

#1. Track your calories.

There are very few people who can eat out and drink at the weekend, eyeball their portions, and lose fat.

These people are usually very experienced dieters.

If you’re struggling not to exceed your calorie budget at the weekend, you’re not one of them.

So track your calories.

#2. Plan your meal(s) and/or drink(s) ahead of time.

Tracking calories alone won’t usually cut it.

Most people who are blowing their calories at the weekend despite tracking them, have this problem: they don’t know how many calories they’re eating until they track them… which often happens the day after a night out.

That’s when the “WTF, how could that pasta dish have 1200 calories?!” moment happens.

So I encourage my clients to pre-plan and pre-track their meal out, then budget their calories for the rest of the week to account for it.

It’s easiest to do if the menu provides nutritional information (duh), but you can do it even if it doesn’t. In fact, I have a comprehensive podcast episode on calorie-tracking that covers how to estimate calories and macros in a meal out when the establishment doesn’t provide these data.

#3. Set bright-line boundaries, especially around alcohol.

A bright-line boundary is a clear, unambiguous rule.

These are some examples:

• I’m not going to drink any alcohol.
• I’m only going to drink [insert number] of [insert beverage of choice].

 
You can apply bright-line boundaries to any specific aspect that you struggle with.

The reason why I bring up alcohol in particular is that it can easily derail your fat loss efforts because it contains a considerable amount of calories, but it’s not satiating. In fact, it’s dehydrating and can even give you the munchies.

Last but not least, it lowers your inhibitions and makes it harder to make fat loss-friendly food choices.

For these reasons, it’s not uncommon to have one too many drinks, which can contain several hundred calories on their own, then feel peckish and tell yourself, “One peanut won’t hurt…”

And, before you know it, you’ve eaten five handfuls of peanuts, two packets of crisps, and three pieces of cheesecake, and then proceeded to drown the guilt in an extra pint of beer or six.

#4. Budget your calories accordingly.

As I alluded to earlier, you don’t need to hit the exact same calorie target every day; you can achieve that same average over a longer timeframe with higher- and lower-calorie days. That’s why I give my clients a weekly rather than daily calorie range as their fat loss target.

From a physiological standpoint, it doesn’t matter whether they eat 1500 calories for seven days or whether they eat 2000 calories for two days and 1300 for the remaining five. If you average out both options, the outcome is still a weekly average of 1500 calories per day.

This approach can be especially successful if you work Monday to Friday, because being busy does wonders for your hunger management, so it’s easier to stick to lower calories on hectic days.

It’s when you’re not at work or otherwise occupied that you can get hungrier, usually because you have more time on your hands to get bored and think about food.

However, be mindful of your daily energy needs. If you have a very active lifestyle and lift weights, you may not be able to drop your calories as low as someone who’s more sedentary, with a standard 9-5 job.

If your resistance training sessions, mood, sleep, hunger, and/or stress levels are taking a larger hit than you’re comfortable with––in other words, if you’re turning into Mr. Hyde Monday to Friday––then your lower-calorie days are too low.

As a rule of thumb, I don’t recommend lowering your calories by much more than ~10-15% for multiple days in a row during a fat loss phase, even though it may be sustainable for a single day every now and again. For instance, if you have a 1500-calorie budget, I wouldn’t go much below 1275-1350 calories.

This isn’t only to prevent the above-mentioned Mr. Hyde experience. It’s also easier to consume enough nutrients on a higher number of calories.

Furthermore, taking this strategy to an extreme can become a planned binge-restrict cycle for some people, thus having a negative impact on their long-term relationship with food.

I’m not completely against lowering your calories by more than 10-15% for more than one day, as I’ve worked with individuals who can do it without any of the issues I’ve discussed.

However, those who are most successful with the more extreme version of any nutritional strategy, usually have:

• A lot of experience with successful diets
• A stable relationship with food, and
• Strong pre-existing health-promoting habits

 
If you’re still in the process of making your lifestyle change, nurturing your relationship with fitness, and understanding nutrition, you’d likely benefit from being more conservative.

#5. Sleep in.

Sounds odd? Hear me out.

If you sleep in and skip breakfast, you’re essentially intermittent-fasting: you’re shortening your eating window, or the timeframe within which you eat. This makes it far easier not to go overboard with your calories whilst still enjoying a meal out and/or some drinks.

While this strategy can work with any meal, it’s especially beneficial if you’re having brunch, as you can almost literally roll out of bed and into the restaurant, then usually have enough calories left for dinner and maybe an afternoon snack.

Sleeping in is a valuable component of the approach because, of course, you could just fast until lunchtime.

And, if it works for you, great! For one, I’m not particularly fussed about breakfast and sometimes skip it if I’m not training in the morning, but I also don’t feel excessively famished if I go without food until 11 to noon.

However, unlike me, some people can get so “hangry” they’ll end up over-eating later in the day. 0/10 recommend.

#6. Plan filling, highly nutritious, and lower-calorie breakfast options.

If fasting isn’t a good option for you, you can still save some calories on a weekend day without starving yourself and then “accidentally” devouring your meal out, the table, and the server.

The solution is to have a low-calorie, high-protein, high-volume breakfast.

Any combination of lean protein + fruit or vegetables contains minimal calories whilst being very filling and highly nutritious.

These are some suggestions that fit the bill:

• 0% fat Greek yogurt, flavoured protein powder, and fruit of choice

 
One of my favourite ways to make this consists of 225g 0% fat Greek yogurt, 25g lemon-flavoured clear whey isolate protein powder, and 100 to 125g of blueberries. This comes out at around ~271 kcals, with 46g protein.

Mix the protein powder into the yogurt to add flavour and make it creamier.

I love using vegan protein powder because you can add a little water to it to make it into a pudding-like consistency, thus getting a more voluminous portion than if you used whey.

Soy isolate is the lowest-calorie, highest-protein option. Depending on the brand, it can be just as low-calorie as whey isolate, which is usually one of the most calorie-friendly types of protein powder.

If you really need to save as many calories as possible, then clear whey isolate, also known as whey hydrolysate, is the lowest-calorie option I’m aware of that mixes well with Greek yogurt.

Pro tip: Get frozen fruit and mix it with the yogurt and powder before thawing it, then leave the bowl in the fridge overnight. As the fruit defrosts, the fruit juice will seep into the Greek yogurt, which makes it taste incredible. It’s reminiscent of cheesecake if you use vanilla protein powder and a very thick Greek yogurt like Fage.

• Turkey bacon and vegetables

 
Six slices of low-fat turkey bacon contain ~175 calories and 37g of protein.

If you have it with a side salad of 100g fresh spinach leaves and 150g cherry tomatoes with salt and pepper, it comes out at ~220 calories in total.

• High protein wrap with fruit

 
The following recipe comes out at ~234 kcals and 40g protein.
 
I also usually add some fruit, like strawberries or raspberries, to bump up the fibre content and volume with a minimal caloric load.

This makes one large wrap or two smaller wraps, depending on the size of your pan.

Ingredients:

• 40g self-rising wholemeal flour
• 20g vanilla whey isolate powder (or any other flavour of your choice)
• 30g granulated erythritol
• 155ml liquid egg whites
• 30g 0% fat Greek yogurt

 
Mix everything in a bowl and stir until you get a lump-free batter, then fry it on both sides for a few minutes. Use a non-stick pan, so you don’t need oil, or add low-calorie oil spray.

Conclusion

In a fat loss phase, you don’t have to give up food and alcohol at the weekend if it’s an important part of your life…

… But you can’t wing it and expect to see results.

Instead, budget for the caloric content of these experiences ahead of time, so you can have the extra flexibility to eat, drink, and remain in a deficit.
 
Thanks for reading. May you make the best gains.
 
To receive helpful fitness information like this on a regular basis, you can sign up for my newsletter by clicking here.

To learn how to develop an effective mindset for long-term fat loss success, you can sign up for my free email course, No Quit Kit, by clicking here.

To learn from my podcast as well as from my writing, click here.