In this 10‑minute YouTube update, fitness coach Eric Roberts shares his experience after two weeks of a 10‑week calorie‑deficit program. He explains why daily step counts are crucial for maintaining metabolic rate, recounts his step goal of 8,000 steps and the shortfall of 1,000‑2,000 steps on several days, and emphasizes that missing a target does not justify quitting. Roberts then walks through his daily calorie and protein intake for a full week, showing actual numbers from his Clubhouse tracking app (2,600‑2,800 kcal target, occasional 3,000 kcal days, 215‑267 g protein). He argues that modest over‑eating (100‑300 kcal) still keeps him in a deficit and can improve energy and workout performance, contrasting this with a prior, more aggressive deficit that caused fatigue and poor sleep. He details his four HYROX‑style workouts, the importance of maintaining strength while cutting, and presents his weight trend over the two weeks (starting at 246.8 lb, ending at 244.7 lb, with daily fluctuations). Roberts uses the data to debunk myths about daily weigh‑ins and to illustrate the value of consistent tracking. Throughout, he adopts a motivational, candid tone, rejecting an all‑or‑nothing mindset and urging viewers to stay the course, use his free calorie calculator and Clubhouse app, and consider his online coaching for accountability.
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2 weeks ago, I started a 10-week calorie deficit diet. And in this video, I'm going to update you on how much weight I've lost, what my diet has looked like, and more. And I've been a fitness coach for almost 10 years, and I've coached over 25,000 clients in person and online. So in this video, I'm going to show you exactly how I've set up my calorie deficit, what adjustments I've needed to make, and knowing if it's working or not so that you can steal my plan, my method for yourself to start seeing faster progress immediately. But before I show you and get into all of that, I need to confess about how I've failed my calorie deficit and why I'm going to Quit. So one major part of a calorie deficit is your daily steps. Most people think about nutrition, and that's a part of it, and we'll get into that, but your daily steps are key. Why? When you go into a calorie deficit, you start eating less, your body wants to burn less calories. You may have heard before, a calorie deficit slows down your metabolism. To a degree, this is right. Because it's a survival mechanism for your body. When it's not getting in enough calories to maintain your weight, it wants to start decreasing your calorie burn in other areas. So you don't want this to happen because you want to keep your calorie burn high so that you can continue to lose body fat. So what is the best way to do this? You set and keep a daily step goal because when your body is consciously or subconsciously trying to decrease your calorie burn, you're saying, no, no, no, we're keeping our daily steps and our daily movement high. So it forces your body to keep your metabolism higher, which combined with eating the right amount of calories will produce the calorie deficit and the fat loss that you want. And by the way, if you didn't know this, your daily steps take up 15% of your daily calorie burn. Do you know how much exercise your workout takes up? 5%. I know it sounds crazy, but you're only working out for maybe 60 minutes, maybe 30 minutes, maybe 90 minutes out of the entire day. And it's only a couple of times per week. So your daily movement is all day long. And by the way, it's not just steps. It also could be fidgeting, moving your hands, tapping your feet. But this takes up a large portion of your daily calorie burn, which also makes it so important. So for all of those reasons, I set my daily step goal to 8,000 steps per day. And week 1 of my calorie deficit, I hit it, no problem. I was rocking it out every single day, 7 days a week. This past week, I did not hit my 8,000-step goal every single day. In fact, a couple of days this week, I was at least 1,000 to 2,000 short. So I was only getting, let's say, 6,000 steps per day. And obviously, since I didn't hit that one goal, I'm just gonna quit, right? I'm a loser. I suck. And I'm just going to quit on my calorie deficit now. So this series is over. You'll get no more updates, all because I was 2,000 steps short of my goal. That doesn't make any fucking sense, does it? No. That's weird. Why do you do that when you're not perfect on your calorie deficit goals? Why do you think you should quit and you suck and you're a loser When you overeat on your calories a couple of days, which by the way, I did that too. We're going to get into that. You tell yourself you suck and you should quit, but you would never tell me that, nor would you tell your best friend that. You wouldn't even tell your worst enemy that. But for some reason, you do it to yourself. So no, I'm not going to quit. I'm not quitting. I got other stuff that we're going to talk about in other parts of this journey that I'm going to run you through, but I'm not going to quit. And you shouldn't quit either. Why? Because even if you can't do everything perfectly, doing some of the things less than perfect consistently is enough to see progress. Something is better than nothing. And also, I'm not beating myself up. I'm fine. You might be beating yourself up if you're 2,000 steps short one day. I'm not. You know why? I know this is a long game and I got 8 more weeks on this calorie deficit and I'm going to work as hard as I can to get my steps and to show up and to be consistent. So no, I'm not quitting. I got you there a little bit, didn't I? I know, but that's what you think and that's why most people fall off of their calorie deficit. You think if you're not doing all the things, calories, steps, workouts, eating clean, then you should just quit. And that makes no sense. And I'm trying to show you I don't get into this all or nothing mentality and neither should you. So after that confession, I'm not quitting. I'm not leaving. What's that movie? Wolf of Wall Street. I'm not fucking leaving. Not leaving. We're going to talk about the calorie deficit update, but that does bring me into part number 2. And I want to walk you through what my daily calories have looked like for this past week. And I'm going to pull up my daily calories on my Clubhouse app. And by the way, if you're interested in using and getting my Clubhouse app, there'll be a link in the description below of this video. It's where I track my calories, where I track my steps, where I do my workouts. Every single thing will be inside. You see, it's on my shirt as well. So I'm recording this on Thursday. So I'm going to take you from Thursday to Thursday. And a quick reminder, my calorie goal is 2,600 calories to 2,800 calories. That creates roughly a 500-calorie deficit. What that means, it's 500 less calories than what my maintenance calories are, roughly. Maybe some days it's 600, some days it's 400, some days it's 700. Depends, but roughly a 500-calorie deficit. And so that's my goal. And I, again, I have that set up in my app. And if you need to know what your calorie deficit number is, there's also a free calorie calculator in the description below of this video. And again, it's the same one I use inside of my app. You can get it for free. So all that being said, let's go to Thursday. So Thursday was 2,794 calories with 240 grams of protein. So that was a thumbs up. Friday, 2,827 calories with 220 grams of protein. 27 calories over. I'm not freaking out about that. Saturday, Saturday I went over my calories and it's because, and I'll talk about this a little bit later, on Friday I did my higher intensity cardio workout and I'm not going to lie, I was fucking starving. So I just, I made a conscious decision. I'm going to go over my calories today. Now again, I'm not perfect. I went— I ate 3,000 calories on Saturday. I got 267 grams of protein, which is a lot, but 3,000 calories, that's a little bit over. We'll talk about this in a second. Sunday, also a little bit over. Now, on Sunday, I had 2,945. You can see that with, again, 267 grams of protein. That was kind of a guesstimate because I went out to eat on Sunday. And honestly, I don't think I ate that many calories. I think I guesstimated higher, which is what I would recommend all of our online coaching clients to do. And I would recommend you to do is when you go out to eat, you can guesstimate to the best of your ability and just over-guesstimate. Like I had some nice steak frites, if you can see. Right here. And I also had like some escargot. It was a nice French restaurant. Very good. So I overestimated. I don't think I actually ate that, but let's just say for the talk of this conversation, I went over calories on Sunday as well. Now, back on Monday, 2,687 was 235 grams of protein. Tuesday, 2,713, 215 grams of protein. And yesterday, 2,660 with 240 grams of protein. So there were 2 days out of these 7 that I went over my calorie intake. And again, 2 big things here. Number one, going over my calories by 100 or 200, not only does that not ruin my progress, I'm still in a calorie deficit. It's just a smaller one. That's what she said. Because if I created a 500 calorie deficit with 2,600 to 2,800, okay, well, if I eat 2,000, 3,000, that might just be a 300 calorie deficit instead, but it's still a calorie deficit. So I'm still going to lose fat, which you'll see when we talk about my body weight in a second. And number 2, consciously deciding to go over your calories by 200 or 300 Is much different than saying, oh, well, I can't be perfect. I'm not going to hit my calories perfectly. There's no way I'm going to stay on track. Fuck it. I already ruined all of my progress. I might as well just keep going. I might as well eat everything while I have the chance, and I'll start fresh on Monday eating clean again. I didn't do that. And I'm the trainer. I'm the coach. I'm the guy who helps people do this for a living. If I don't do that, why the fuck would you do that? Doesn't make any sense. And again, when you see my progress thus far, you're going to understand why this is so important that you understand this. So that was my daily calorie intake for the last 7 days. And this is actually also a good thing that I overate those couple of days. And you're probably thinking, Eric, how is that a good thing for for your fat loss journey? Well, last calorie deficit that I did was back in February, January, February of 2025. I was eating lower calories than what I'm eating now. I was eating about 2,200 to 2,400 calories, and I was dropping weight pretty rapidly. It's like 2 to 3 pounds a week consistently, week over week. The issue, I had terrible energy. I had awful workouts. I remember going into my workouts and I couldn't even do like one full set because I felt so weak in my workouts. I had terrible sleep, terrible mood. I was irritable. Everything sucked. Yeah, I was losing weight really quickly, but I hated my life. And at the end, I actually stopped that calorie deficit early because I felt so bad. So this time around, I did not want to have that negative biofeedback is what we call it. It's something we check every single week with our online coaching clients. How you feeling? How the workout's going? What are your hunger levels? Not to mention on my previous calorie deficit, I had this constant food noise. It's like all I thought about was food. All I had was this food anxiety because my calories were so low. And so this time around, I did not want that. And I can happily say I haven't had that. I've had really good energy. My workouts have been really good. Those couple of days that I went over my calories, I had great workouts the next day. I had good energy the next day. I felt recovered. I felt strong. I was still able to lift heavier. And I'm somebody who, I take my workouts very seriously. Some people on the internet say I don't look like I work out. It is what it is, but I do in fact work out and I do take them seriously. And so I wanted to keep that this time around and I can confidently say I've done that. I've got all 4 of my workouts done. So, you know, from Thursday to Thursday I got all 4 of my workouts done and I did that HYROX style workout, which by the way, for those of you watching this, I may be signing up for a HYROX event today. I think the tickets go on sale at noon. So if I get them, I'm excited. If I'm able to be in the list of getting them, I'm going to be doing a HYROX and I'll talk more about that coming soon. But I did all those and I felt good. Even though I felt a little bit short of my step goal, all the other activity I wanted to do, I've done. And that's really what a calorie deficit is about to me and the way that I approach it with myself and our clients. It's not just about being as skinny as possible. If that's your goal, I'm probably not the guy for you because the way I approach fitness and health and fat loss and muscle building, it's about fueling your body to lose body fat if that is your goal, but you still should be able to do your activity like you need to and like you want to. You should still be able to push heavier in your workouts. Like, I get this question, am I going to lose my strength in my calorie deficit? No, you shouldn't. If you're doing it right, if your workouts are set up, if you're not eating too few calories, which by the way, if you need to know how many calories you should be eating, again, there's a link in the description of this video below for my free calorie deficit calculator. But it's about fueling your body properly and still having good energy. And that's really what I wanted to prioritize in this calorie deficit. And that's why going over my calories by 100 or 200 a couple of days Or eating at the top end of my calorie range is not a bad thing. Even if technically I could lose weight faster if I ate fewer calories, I don't want to lose weight faster. I want to lose a sustainable amount of weight, see progress, but not hate my life doing it. That's one final takeaway you can take from this section. Notice how I have a range for my calories, 2,600 to 2,800. It's okay to eat at the top end of that range as long as you're making progress. And I am making progress, and I'll talk about that right now as we go through my daily weigh-ins. Now, most people have a myth about their daily weigh-ins when they're doing a calorie deficit. You think it's going to be Monday I weigh 200 pounds, Tuesday I weigh 199, Wednesday I weigh 198, and you expect The scale to go down day over day. Unfortunately, that is not how this works. And I want to show you, and I'll kind of bring up my daily weigh-ins here in my Clubhouse app. I want to show you my weigh-ins from Thursday to Thursday. And for those of you who have watched my previous week 1 calorie deficit update, if you haven't, I have that video on my channel. You can go watch after this, but I said I was probably going to drop 1 to 2 more pounds and then hang around there this week. Let's see if I was right. So last Thursday I weighed 246.8. Last Friday I weighed 247. Last Saturday I weighed 248.9. That was a spike up. That was a spike up on the scale. Why did it spike up? I really don't know. Friday I was on point. That was within my calorie range. I didn't do anything crazy. Didn't go out to eat or anything. So just spiked up. It is what it is. And then so Saturday, like I said, was 248.9. Sunday, this was after, this was after my 3,000 calorie day. where I went over my calories, I hit a new low on the scale at 246. You see that? You understand this, right? That was the day— the day before I went over my calories only by 200 though. And the next day I hit a new low on the scale. Just goes to show, if you stick with it, we'll talk about this in a second. On Monday morning, hit another new low on On the scale of 245 pounds. So you might be thinking, oh man, like, you know, you're moving in the right direction. Hold on. Because Tuesday my weight spiked up to 247. That's a 2-pound weight spike. And again, I didn't— on Monday, that was my lowest calorie intake day. I was well within my calorie range, but on Tuesday it spiked up. Why did it spike up? It happens. On Wednesday, you might think, oh, well, maybe your weight spiked down. Nope. My weight spiked up again at 247.6. So now I'm not going to lie. I was like, shit, I'm going to do this calorie deficit update on Thursday for my YouTube homies and my weight's going to be up and I'm not going to lose weight. Son of a bitch. I'm going to look like a fraud. I was kind of freaking out, but not really, but kind of. But here's what happened today. I woke up and again, I've done nothing different. Didn't change my diet, didn't do anything. I woke up at another new low of 244.7, 244.7. And that's after 2 or 3 days in a row of my weight spiking up. That's after not losing much weight throughout the week. My weight was kind of just bouncing around. But today I woke up at a new low that I've ever been on this 2-week calorie deficit thus far. And this is why it's important to not freak out over the daily fluctuations. Your body weight is going to fluctuate just like my body weight is going to fluctuate. But this is why we don't look at Tuesday to Friday. We look at what was 2 weeks ago. Which I'll show you in a second. What was a week ago? And then as I get further on in this journey, what was the trend for the entire month? But I knew as long as I stuck to it and as long as I kept doing what the plan was, I was gonna see progress. And that's something I also want to encourage you on your journey. This is why, for example, I love tracking everything so much. That's why I love tracking my weight, tracking my nutrition, tracking my steps. Why? Because I can come in here in my app and say, like yesterday when my weight spiked up, I don't freak out because I come back and look at, well, what did I do yesterday? I hit all my goals. I hit within my calorie range. I hit my steps. Yesterday wasn't a workout day, but the day before I hit my workout, I'm good. And I'm not lying to myself. Like, These calories that I tracked, it wasn't like I didn't actually track or I'm just like bullshitting it. I know it's there. So for me, I didn't freak out and you don't have to freak out if you know you're doing the right things. Now granted, that's under the assumption that you know you have the right plan, which if you don't know you have the right plan, that's where myself and my team can come in and help you and you can join our app and you can get on a right plan. You can click the link in the description below if you want to learn more about that. But as long as you're on the right plan, you can have the confidence in your actions to know fluctuations are normal. But if you stick with it over the long haul, you'll get there. And I think that's some of the last things I want to mention to you in kind of the overall progress thus far. So if you look at my weight chart, if you can see this right here, In the last 2 weeks, I have lost 10 pounds. Not bad. Now again, I would say 6 of that is water weight and probably 4 of that is body fat. I've probably lost 3 to 4 pounds of fat so far in these last 2 weeks. The rest initially especially was water weight. Can you imagine if When I didn't hit my step goal those couple of days this week, I would have just quit. Can you imagine when I had those couple of days that were over calories? I would have just quit. I wouldn't be down 10 pounds right now. I wouldn't be hitting a new low today. Can you imagine if I would have quit yesterday when my weight spiked up to the highest that it was this week? And I would say, oh well, this isn't working. It's not going fast enough. I'm just gonna say fuck it today and eat whatever I want. That's what you do. That's why you're not where you want to be. Not trying to be mean, just being honest with you. You have to stop doing that. You have to trust the process. Stop being so impatient. You didn't gain all the weight in a month. You're not going to lose all of the weight in a month. You have to know you're doing the right things. You have to trust that, understand it's going to take time. It's like having a baby. No matter what, it's going to take 9 months. Maybe some people, things happen, whatever, but it's going to take 9 months. There's some things you just can't get around the time. Or if you try to bake a cake and it says 400 degrees is what you have to bake it at, and you're like, well, I want it faster. So you go to 800 degrees. You're not gonna bake the cake faster. You're gonna burn it and have to restart. Some things just take time. And if you keep quitting when it doesn't happen fast enough, or you think it's not working— like most people, they would've done my weight this past week and like, oh, my weight spiked up 3 times. I'm just— this isn't working. I'm gonna quit. I'm gonna change my plan. I didn't change. I didn't change anything, nor am I going to change anything for this upcoming week. I've lost 10 pounds in 2 weeks. Why would I change anything? You don't need to change anything either. And looking ahead into the upcoming weeks in this calorie deficit, which by the way, every week I'm going to be posting an update. So feel free if you haven't subscribed to the channel, turn on the notifications. And you'll get notified when I do these updates every single week. But I foresee me probably keeping the same amount of calories. And I can see the entire time I'll probably have to make one adjustment, maybe 2 adjustments max. But I don't foresee me changing anything because if it's working, if it ain't broke, don't fix it. Just stick with it long enough. So all this to say, I'm not quitting. You are not quitting anymore. And you need to stop quitting on yourself, on your calorie deficit, on your fat loss, on your fitness. Just stick with it. Trust the process. Get help if you need to. Get accountability if you need to. Make sure you have the right plan, but keep going because I promise, just like me, you know, this weight chart that you just saw, Looks nice, right? It's a nice trend down. You can have that same thing if you stick with it. And if you need help getting on a proper plan, having accountability, having a coach to ask questions and concerns, click the link in the description below to learn more about my online app, about our online coaching, and see how we can help you see the progress that you want to see. And after you do that, you can watch this video here. To learn 7 strange signs that your body is burning fat.
