You want to lose weight, but should your first step be to dive in?
You should always have fitness goals, but they should be also be commensurate with your abilities, your timeframe, and what is most important. You wouldn’t try and squat on a broken leg, so take the same approach to your fitness: work on the most urgent things first.
Before you even start thinking about weight loss, you need to look at it the right way. This means cutting out all the nonsense information, dropping all the fad diets, and getting the right perspective on what weight loss is and how it happens.
The fact you’re reading this article means you’re on the right track – and that’s why we put the education centre together.
Before you lose weight, know that it is a commitment to a change of lifestyle, not a quick fix to get a six pack or feel great on the beach. Look at it this way: every change you make should be possible for months, if not years, to come.
This is the #1 tip for losing weight. Consistency and commitment are where success starts.
You are going to have days and even weeks when you don’t lose weight or even gain a little. This is totally normal and if you let it throw you off, you’ll never achieve your goals.
Plan for long-term consistency and a diet that keeps going even after holiday eating, water retention, or even falling off the wagon.
In the long run, the best way to deal with a bad day on your diet is to pretend it never happened. Just get the next one right and keep going – you’ll do great.
Setting goals is the first step in achieving goals.
This ties into not giving up, but setting sustainable goals is key. If you want to lose 3 stone by next Tuesday, you’re setting yourself up to fail. If you want to lose 3 stone in the next 6-12 months, then maybe that’s possible.
Pick a timeframe that allows you to lose weight at a good pace – 1 or 2lbs ever 7-10 days – and stick with it. There’s no rushing a lifetime’s worth of satisfaction with your body and your habits.
It’s also good to pick a conservative goal, rather than a stretch goal. Finding a goal you can achieve within your timeframe, smashing it, and then setting another step for yourself is going to be a great way to stay on track and keep motivated.
When it comes to weight loss, another way to set yourself up for success is to be realistic about your transitions.
If you’re over-eating and need to cut out 1000 calories to get to a good weight-loss diet, don’t do it all at once.
Tapering your way into a weight-loss diet provides a way of controlling your cravings, improving your health, and getting towards better habits without being too drastic.
It might take you a few more weeks to achieve your long-term goals, but it also cuts your risk of falling off the wagon. After all, this can mean the difference between a lifelong dietary change, at the simple cost of a little longer until you reach your goals.
Try reducing your calorie intake a little, every 2-4 days, rather than going ‘cold turkey’ and eating clean and restricted. If you’re not used to that approach, it’ll be a huge shock and you’ll only end up miserable and defeated.
Eating more is a good way to lose weight.
This might not be what you’re used to, but once you’ve gotten your proteins, essential carbs and fats in, eat as much as you can.
Obviously not just with any food: the key focus should be on low-calorie, high-density, vegetables. These could include anything from lettuce to green beans to leafy greens. They’re all going to fill you up without fattening you up.
Just find a few staple veggies that you can snack on – they don’t have to be your favourite foods, just neutral – and prepare a bowl whenever you want to feel full. Eat them after your key proteins/fats/carbs, and you’ll experience fullness as well as getting bonus nutrients.
Strength training is the most underrated weight loss tip and tool.
To start with, the science shows that strength training burns the most calories of any form of exercise when you measure it over a 24-36 hour period. This is because your body uses far more calories to repair and build muscle than it does during an hour on the treadmill.
Secondly, building muscle increases your resting metabolism for years to come. This is crucial to keeping your body weight and composition under control as you age and makes future weight-loss even easier.
There are dozens of other benefits to strength training that I’ve discussed elsewhere. A simple strength program can be combined with endurance exercise to maximise weight loss. This doesn’t necessarily mean hours on the treadmill: find something you enjoy and do that.
Getting into better shape doesn’t just mean going to the gym.
Going to the gym is one of the best activities in world for getting into better habits and it provides a wealth of strength training and cardio opportunities that can benefit your life. However, what you do in the rest of your life will also come to define your fitness.
Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (or NEAT) accounts for up to 2000 calories of difference between individuals. This is simply the activity you do that isn’t exercise – from walking to fidgeting – and it’s why some people have “fast metabolisms” and others don’t.
Find little ways to increase your activity levels outside the gym: cycle more, take the stairs (two at a time, if you’re brave), walk more, and find activities you love that involve movement.
NEAT isn’t about trying hard – it’s about finding ways to celebrate movement and an active lifestyle. Play with the kids, wrestle with the dogs, wash the car by hand, whatever. All of these calories add up and make a huge difference to your body and health.
Weight loss is a simple, but challenging, process.
It starts with improving dietary habits and ends with the types of activity you perform in and out of the gym.
The way you handle these simple things is not a matter of tricks – we might call them weight loss tips, but they’re really just ways of finding the best way to handle weight loss. This doesn’t just mean the fastest or thinnest, but the most sustainable, healthy, and psychologically beneficial.
Remember that there’s a human at the middle of any weight loss diet/routine. Habit and consistency make weight loss work, so these weight loss tips are all about giving yourself the best chance to achieve your goals with good behaviours and a positive approach to every step of the process.
These weight loss tips won’t do the hard work for you, but they’ll provide the perspective and tools you need to make the hard work pay off.