The Best Way To Systematically Lose Weight
Hello dear readers! This is an important post, if you are wanting to lose weight for real and are willing to put in the effort, please read until the end. This will get you 80% of the way there in terms of understanding.
So you want to lose weight? You get all excited, you throw away all of your junk food and say to yourself, "This time is different, hello abs, here I come!". You pick X diet and go to town. The first couple of days you lose some weight! Yay! A week in, and that progress starts to slow down. Soon you start thinking, why did I do this to myself? All of that initial fire is gone, and the grandiose of X diet fades away. Soon you return to normal and completely forget about the diet. That is until several months later, for a moment when you think about it, and kick yourself - If you were to have just stuck with it, you would have reached your goals. Sound familiar? I know it does for me. So what happened? In my opinion, it boils down to 2 things: lack of a plan, and lack of trust in the system.
Alright, Christian, Mr. Smarty pants, I HAD a plan. I just had to follow X diet! To that, I say, ok - how much weight do you want to lose? How long would you have to be on X diet? What happens when you reach your goal? Do you eat like X forever? My guess is that those questions, at most, have vague answers. Unfortunately, that's why a lot of diets fail - there is no plan.
“If you fail to plan, you are planning to fail!”
The second reason for the failure is a lack of trust in the system. When influencers tout all of the health benefits of X diet, you feel like an expert. How could anyone not eat like X?! Enjoy a life of failure followers of diets Y and Z! Well, I’ll let you in on a little secret - those influencers are all salespeople. Your boi included. However, I'll be honest about that. Health and fitness is a multi-billion dollar industry. These people want to pit X, Y, and Z against each other - conflict sells. However, if you look at all of the diets, they all result in the same things - weight loss, mental clarity, a longer, happier, healthier life. How can this be if X is clearly better than Y!? Right? Well, for every research paper that Influencer Guy sites for X, there is also one for Y. The reality is, nutrition is exceptionally tough to study, and there is a lot of contrary information. At some level, we all know this by constant diet-bashing exposure. So it's no wonder we lose trust in the system. Now that's not to say, X, Y, or Z are all phony - as I said before, all diets can work - some even have some great benefits. But it's never as cut and dry as the influencers want you to believe. However, this does not mean all is lost. We just need a plan and a simple understanding of a system that works.
To find that system, let's look to the professionals of losing weight - bodybuilders. Every bodybuilder I know uses a method called Food Budgeting or Macro Tracking. Ok, Christian, you traded one diet for another! BOO! Well, just hold on! Let's change our paradigm a bit. Let's think of losing weight like getting out of debt: debt in the form of unwanted stored body fat. Every time you spend (eat) more than your necessary expenses (Total Daily Energy Expenditure), you go further into debt (gain fat). Conversely, the more you can cut spending below your TDEE you get out of debt (loose fat). Food budgeting is precisely that, a budget. How you choose to spend your allowance is your actual diet. The beauty is that you can spend on anything you want, but it’s highly advised to make sound investment decisions with healthy whole foods. And you'll find within your budget that whole foods get you way farther in terms of satiation.
Alright, with that understanding, we need a plan. The setup is easy, we just need to answer some simple questions: How much weight do I want to lose, how long will that take, and how do I maintain my progress. The first question of how much weight to lose is up to you; if you're not sure, look at what a healthy BMI would be. The second answer is solved by a simple equation:
Weeks until goal =
(Weight to Lose) * (Calories in a Pound of Fat)
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(Weekly Calories In) - (Weekly Calories Out)
There are 3500C (C for calories) in a pound of fat. So we need to budget for a total loss of 3500C (C for calories) multiplied by how many pounds you want to lose. For example 10lbs * 3500C = 35,000C. To find how many weeks it will take, we divide that number by our weekly calorie deficit (how much we want to cut weekly). We find our weekly calorie deficit by subtracting our weekly calories in by our weekly calories out. We control the calories in (how much we eat), calories out, unfortunately, is mostly out of our control - but we can get a good estimate of how much that is. This estimate is called our Total Daily Energy Expenditure (TDEE) or how many calories your body will naturally burn daily. This is calculated based on our height, age, weight, gender, and activity level. There are plenty of calculators that help you find this number (P.S. The Fitness Frenzy App has one too!). To lose weight, we need to cut out some calories daily and maintain that cut weekly. Pick a modest number; please don't starve yourself; shoot for a daily intake 500C under your TDEE. So if your TDEE is 2500C, shoot to eat 2000C a day. This 500C deficit multiplied by 7 days gives us 3500C or 1 pound of fat per week. So it'd take 10 weeks to lose 10 pounds.
So you're saying it'll take 10 weeks to lose 10 pounds?! I want to lose it in a week; I'm going on vacation! Well, here is the last hard reality: Losing weight is not sexy; it takes a lot of time - there is no quick fix. The faster you do it, the more you put yourself at risk of quitting, losing muscle, and other adverse side effects. Slow and steady wins the race. Anyone who says otherwise is selling you something, on drugs, or trying to sell you drugs. And if you've lost 10 pounds in a week before, I'm letting you know; it's mostly water weight - not fat. Once you understand and accept that this is a journey, not a get fit quick scheme, you'll be ready to actually make changes.
So for actually reaching your goal, this is what you have to do:
Calculate your TDEE
Choose on a reasonable deficit
Plan to lose around 1 to 2 pounds a week
Track your calorie intake and average that over the week
Average your weight over the week
Find your weekly weight change (delta Δ) - how much you’ve lost since last week
Do this by subtracting this week’s average weight by last week’s average weight
This number should be -1 to -2 pounds depending on your deficit
When you hit a plateau (no longer losing weight week to week) use your last weekly calorie intake to be your new TDEE
Repeat steps 2-6 until you reach your goal
Simple! Right? If not, I know an excellent tool that'll help *cough *shamlessplug *cough Fitness Frenzy.
Alright, now to answer the last question. How do I maintain all of my progress? The answer is what’s called a reverse diet. This is the light at the end of the tunnel. You don't have to eat like a bird for the rest of your life to stay looking and feeling amazing! Reverse diets are simple but extremely important to get right - or otherwise; you'll end up erasing all of your hard work. You do all of the same steps as above but in reverse. The idea is we very slowly increase your calorie intake without raising your weight. We refeed your body slowly, adapting your metabolism to match your input. Once we can no longer increase calories without gaining weight, you stay eating around that amount for however long you want to keep your particular physique - this is called eating at maintenance. Here is what the process looks like:
Use your last average weekly calorie intake as your TDEE
Decided on a reasonable surplus
No more than 100C
Track your calorie intake and average that over the week
Average your weight over the week
Find your weekly weight change (delta Δ) - how much you’ve changed since last week
Do this by subtracting this week’s average weight by last week’s average weight
This number should be 0, or close to it
Repeat steps 1-6 until you start gaining weight
Go back to your last weekly intake where your weight stayed constant
This is now your maintenance intake - keep eating this amount.
Well, dear readers, if you made it this far, congratulations! You are now prepared to systematically lose weight. That's all there is to it. The journey is not sexy, and it's not particularly fun. There is a price (debt) to pay. But trust me, the confidence you gain from your new body and proving that you can stick to something is unparalleled. So dear readers, I hope you start the journey, it may be uncomfortable at times, but I promise it will pay off.
P.S. The last 20% of the way there has to do with weight training and progressive overload.
If you’d like to show some love and use the tool CREATED for this process, consider downloading the app: Here
Amendment - I made a tutorial video!
