The generic go to for weight loss is to exercise every day and to cut either one of or all of the carbs, sugars and fats from a diet, and possibly to drink lots of detox water
And to start with this does work; but the weight doesn’t stay off – you know that and I know that. It may not be what you want to hear, but i’m not putting this togther to convince you fairy dust and unicorns will help you lose weight.
This is an honest, unfiltered how to and what to expect blue print for weight loss. How to lose it and keep it off. I’ve also given an explanation below on each of the necessary steps to try and help guide you through as best I can
1. Accept what you’ve been doing doesn’t work. I’ll put it to you like this. How long have you been trying to lose the same 5 or 10kg ? Last year, the year before? How many times have you regained it? If these “diets” worked you wouldn’t have regained the weight. So it’s time to step away from the diet mentality you’ve been harbouring and be prepared to learn something new.
2. Accept the scales mean fck all.
Yes it’s exciting to see them moving down but it’s not a true representation of weight loss. For example; if you’ve cut carbohydrates from your diet the scales will move down quite fast. But the fact is carbohydrates retain water in our body. Reduce the carbohydrates we reduce the water retention. So really the scales are showing a loss in water weight, not body fat. The best way to measure progress is by your clothes. If they are getting looser you are obviously getting smaller. And isn’t that the point of fat loss – to reduce our size?
3. Fix your shitty habits. I know it doesn’t seem to have much to do with weight loss right? Only it has everything to do with weight loss.
If you skip breakfast your missing an opportunity to kick your metabolism along for the day. So why do you skip breakfast? Is it because you stay up to late, so you wake up late and don’t have time? Why do you stay up late. What habit is leading to this?
Do you find you are starving after work, so you grab some of the kids school snacks just to tide you over till dinner? Why are you so hungry? Is it because you didn’t eat enough through the day? Why didn’t you eat enough – lack of meal prep? Why aren’t you meal prepping so you have the food on hand easily – lack of organisation/structure? What habit is leading to this?
Bottom line is it does not matter how good your food or exercise intentions are – if you have shitty habits they will always get in the way of your intentions.
4. Start Eating. Here’s a fun fact you may not know. Digesting food uses energy, particularly if you eat lots of unprocessed foods. In fact the digestion process can be worth up to 15% of you calorie expenditure in a day. Eating less means you have to digest less which means you’re using less calories – not a result you want.
Still not convinced you need to eat ? Look at it from this example – if you have been eating processed food that is heavy with calories and you remove it from your diet, you need to replace that with better calories. If you don’t your body will hold on to fat as a reserve energy source making it harder and harder to lose weight – this is your body survival instinct; i’m sure you’ve heard of it.
You will find it’s pretty hard to overeat unprocessed options. Just have a look at this picture. Lets say for argument sake you remove 1 burger meal from your diet, you need to replace that meal with the option on the left to equal the calories you consumed in one burger and one serve of fries. Pretty obvious there is no need to worry about overeating when you look at it like this right?
5. Start Lifting and overload while you’re at it. Don’t stress, you will not get bulky, you will not look like a condom filled with walnuts. You are the master of your body and the amount of muscle you show depends on how much body fat you want to lose. The simple science of it is the more muscle you have, the more calories you burn in a day. Progressively overloading; increasing the volume each week forces the muscles to adapt and grow. Meaning you burn more calories which reduces your body fat and creates that toned and defined look most men and women want.
6. Use Cardio sparingly 2 -3 HIIT type sessions a week is all you need in conjunction with weight training to promote fat loss. Work as hard as you can for 20-30 mins and you create an effect that your body has to work hard to recover from. Longer state cardio means you can’t work at a maximum level for that period of time so the recovery time and effort is less.
7. Recover Stop flogging yourself with exercise. More is not better. You have to allow your body to recover. your body uses a lot of energy when it is recovering. If you’ve trained hard enough your body should have a lot of work to do. If you don’t let it recover 1; you can’t train as hard in the next session and 2; you’re not allowing your body to use energy to recover properly. Basically you’re cutting your nose of to spite your face
8. Be aware of the jiggly stage This is more relevant to those who have a reasonable amount of weight to lose and have been more of a “solid” build. As your body fat reduces you will experience a “jiggly” feel to your body. Where once it was firm it will start to feel loose. This is not a pleasant stage but a necessary one. Basically it’s your solid fat breaking down and as it disappears its leaving space where it once was whilst your skin tightens back up to the best of its ability’s – this is individual to each person. From personal experience this was one of the hardest things for me to accept and work through; so its important to be aware and prepared for it so you don’t sabotage your hard work because of this stage being uncomfortable.
9. Calories, Macros, supersets and all those fun things All of these mean absolutely nothing if you haven’t taken care of the first 7 points above.
What does it matter if you’re hitting your protein goals if you don’t get enough sleep? Your body will be bloated and inflamed from not sleeping properly – Fix that first.
What does is matter what calories you are eating if the calories are coming from bad choices because you haven’t dealt with your emotional eating – fix that habit first
What is the benefit of supersets if you haven’t established a consistent history of weight training, are proficient in the compound moves and have built enough muscle already to work with the supersets? Work on that first
Only when you are eating enough food
Only when you have been consistently weight training for an extended period of time
Only when you have fixed your shitty habits
Only then, do you look at things like calories and macros.
The truth of the matter is; if you try to take a short cut and skip any of these steps, you’ll just end up back at square one again
Accept that the weight isn’t what needs to be changed – all the underlying factors that lead to the weight gain need to be changed
Address the problem, not the symptom
