I can make anyone lose weight. All I have to do is restrict your food and make you do two hours of cardio a day. But how long can you do that for before burning out or binging on snacks?
Here are some key concepts of sustainable fat loss, along with 10 steps on how to change for the healthier!
Diet is everything. You can workout everyday but not lose fat if you don’t change your eating habits. The only way to lose fat is to create a DEFICIT — burn more than you eat. BUT it’s not that simple because the choice in food and the emotions we attach to eating can be hard to navigate. Eating 1500 calories of natural whole foods vs pizza and chips have two different results.
You can’t be eating at deficit for the rest of your lives - your body WILL push back at some point. If you are eating 1000 calories a day, one day your body will hold onto fat and you can’t lose anymore. THAT’S why you also need to lift weights to increase your metabolism. Building muscle will allow your body to burn fat at rest. Exercise is also how we change our body composition for the better - if you just lose weight without any muscle, you can also be skinny fat. Muscle also protects your JOINTS!
The only way to create sustainable, life-long changes is to change your entire lifestyle. If you lose 100 pounds over 10 years vs 3 months, I promise you those 10 years will create some amazing life-long habits to keep the weight off. The longer it takes for you to get there, the more lasting the impact. SLOW CHANGES ARE THE MOST LASTING ONES.
There is no “best” method of weight loss for YOU. No doctor, no trainer, no therapist, nobody can tell you the BEST method that works for your body. You have to figure that out for yourself. Because no one person is the same. There is only trial and error of what works for your body and mind. People can guide you, give you suggestions, but only YOU can decide if you are going to commit to it and if it works for you.
The actual weight loss is the easy part. The hard part is keeping it off for the rest of your life while feeling energetic, happy and healthy. And the only way to do this is to be open minded, try new things, and realize this is not a quick process. It is not unusual to spend years trying new things to find out what works best for you.
10 STEPS TO CHANGING YOUR BODY COMPOSITION FOR A HEALTHIER YOU:
Track your food on an app like My Fitness Pal. Yes, it’s tedious and no, you don’t have to do it forever. But without writing it all down, you will not be 100% aware of what you are putting in your body or the macros it contains. After tracking for 2-3 weeks, you can start to examine your macronutrient breakdowns of carbs/protein/fat.
Aim for 1g of protein per pound of bodyweight. It should feel like you are always eating protein. Eat protein first before carbs for all meals/snacks. This step is EXTREMELY important if not one of the most important things most people have to focus on.
Meal Prep on Sundays. Sorry, there is no easy way to have long-lasting body composition changes without cooking and eating healthy. You can buy meal plans or go to some weight loss clinic to give you the food, but if you want to keep it off the rest of your life, you will need to learn to cook for yourself. Even if it’s a few simple recipes that you can call your “home base.”
Figure out your HOME BASE meals. Pick a few recipes that you enjoy and that are made of all whole, non processed foods, with both protein and veggies. Beef, chicken, turkey are all great choices. Any veggies but aim for some green veggies too. Eating healthy does not have to be BORING or NOT TASTY. You have to experiment and find ones you like. Those few recipes will be your HOME BASE. Anytime you have weeks or weekends of not-so-great eating (like weddings, vacations, holidays), go back to HOME BASE on Sundays and start next week with those healthy recipes.
Following weeks or weekends where you are eating a lot of sugars/heavy carbs - cut out anything processed for a few days to a week - anything from a box, plastic bag, booze, sugars, no take-outs, etc. The purpose of this is to give you an awareness of how much your body can change in terms of how you can feel just by eating ALL non processed foods. Your body needs to get rid of some of that inflammation. Take a before and after pic of that week - same angle, same lighting, same underwear. I promise you you will see body comp changes for that one week - not to mention feeling better. This will demonstrate to you the power of unprocessed foods, even if it’s for a short period. Not only that, we are teaching your body to associate how it FEELS with whole, natural foods after a sugar/processed food binge. You may need to do this a few times to get the mind-body connection.
Make sure you get daily N.E.A.T.
Lift weights or do some sort of resistance training (bands, TRX). Make sure the effort is at least 7 out of 10.
Drink water. Drink twice as much as you do now to see how it feels. Your body holds onto more water the less you drink!!!
Get 7-8 hours of sleep.
Consistency trumps everything. If you do well one week and then don’t revisit for 2 weeks, you won’t see results. It’s better to be consistent for 1-2 days a week over a year, then 5 days a week for half the weeks of the year.
If you feel like you are doing all 10 steps and not seeing results, it is probably due to a few things:
You are still eating in maintenance or surplus while not burning enough calories per day. You need to go longer without unprocessed foods. I promise it’s not forever. Once your body reaches a point where it feels like it's in a deficit (but on HEALTHY whole foods) then you can slowly be more relaxed and add stuff back in. But sometimes that initial jump start needs to be longer - with unprocessed foods.
Increase your daily NEAT combined with a longer period of unprocessed foods until your body responds. I like to use NEAT vs cardio because if you do too much cardio to create a deficit, your body can adapt quickly and it stops working. You don’t want to get to a point where your body can only lose weight by running 2 hours a day and eating less calories. That’s why this is a slow process!
Do not forget to do some resistance training as part of this process.
Everyone is different - these are just guidelines that work well for the general population. If you can afford it, hire a trainer who can customize your plan and guide you through the process and give you accountability.
Slow and steady wins the race. If you want to lose weight quickly, then eat nothing and do 2 hours of cardio a day. If you want to lose weight and keep it off, you know what to do now :-)