The 5 Do’s and Dont’s of Fat Loss

It doesn’t matter who you are, the same rules apply. Eating “carefully” and trying to move more without actually measuring what is happening, paying attention during the week but all hell breaks loose on the weekends, or overcompensating one day and paying for it the next… leads to the constant cycle of “hope” each time you step on the scale.

So, make a plan, and give yourself a timeline no longer than 12 weeks. After 12 weeks you’ll experience diet fatigue, plateaus and start to run the risk of lowering your metabolic rate (how much your body burns at rest). Take 12 weeks off then diet again if you still have fat to lose. Each time you “diet” it gets slightly harder and harder. So dial in, do it and then get out!

Here are the 5 MUST Do’s of Fat Loss:

1. Figure out how you will create, and most importantly adhere, to a calorie deficit (eat less food)

2. Eat high quality foods (whole foods, lean proteins & healthy fats)

3. Move more during the day, get more steps, take the stairs, go on an extra walk.

4. Going for that toned look? You need muscle. Strength train at least 2x/week!

5. Get your zzzzz’s and manage daily stress!

Simple, but not easy. Especially when reality sets in and life gets in the way…

I hate to be negative but here are the 5 Dont’s of Fat Loss:

1. Plan for the week, but not the weekend! TREAT THE WEEKEND LIKE A WEEKDAY!

2. Eat out too often. COOK MOST MEALS AT HOME!

3. Liquid calories creep in. DRINK CALORIE-FREE BEVERAGES ONLY!

4. Don’t account for “snacking,” or licks and bites while cooking or off other people’s plates. LIMIT OR PLAN ALL SNACKS AND STOP THE LICKS & BITES!

5. Fail to measure cooking oils, dressings and sauces. TRACK and MEASURE COOKING OILS, AND USE LOW-CALORIE DRESSINGS AND SAUCES!

Ok we’ve established the Do’s and Dont’s, great. But what do they actually entail?

1. Calorie Deficit. There are many ways to create a calorie deficit, they all boil down to EATING LESS than you are expending. The biggest trap here is WAY over-estimating how much you are expending during exercise, and then over-compensating with food and finding yourself back at square one, or even GAINING! Choose a way to create your deficit by either following a meal plan, tracking food intake through an app, cutting out a food group like white flours, low carb, or low fat, you can even shorten your eating window using intermittent fasting. There is little room for error here, it takes (roughly) 250 less calories per day to lose ½ pound per week, and 500 calories less per day to lose 1 pound per week! If you have only 5-10 pounds to lose, 250 calories is the way to go, if you have more then you probably have more calories to pull from and 500 may be the way to go. Either way, one or two large meals out, or a few alcoholic drinks can erase a week’s deficit just like that.

2. Eat Whole Foods. Sure you can lose “weight” on a diet of twinkies and coke, but you might not like the body composition or the health outcomes! Whole foods fill you up with less calories, and give your body what it needs to build and maintain beautiful muscle tone, skin and a healthy gut. Fill your plate with half vegetables, eat your bodyweight in protein with lean meats, lean dairy and plant proteins, and fill the rest in with complex carbs/starches like whole grains, legumes, potatoes, rice and fruit, and healthy fats. If you do this, you will not even notice you are in a “diet” phase as hunger is highly minimized and satisfaction optimized!

3. Move more. Yes, organized cardio exercise can be helpful but your overall movement over the course of a day is much more meaningful for fat loss. Instead of adding hours and hours or cardio, increase your current step count by 2500-3000 steps (basically walk an extra mile). If you currently walk 5,000 steps then shoot for 7500, etc. do this by taking the stairs, parking farther away, meet up with friends for walks and the best trick? Take a 10-20 minute walk after each meal, this will not only get you steps but help your digestion and keep your blood sugar stable.

4. Keep your muscle! We want to lose fat, not muscle. Muscle burns more energy, and gives us the athletic, toned look we are after, but it is very expensive to keep so if you are eating less, your body may lose muscle as well as fat if it is not receiving the stimulus to keep it around. That means strength training fairly intensely (for you), at least 2x/week and eating enough protein. It is possible to gain muscle for some people while in a deficit with the proper nutrition and training stimulus.

5. Quality Sleep and Stress management. If you are not sleeping well, everything goes haywire. You are tired and don’t recover as well, you crave more high sugar foods, your training suffers, and the list goes on. Same happens with stress, if you are training too hard, or sleeping poorly, or not managing work or family stress, it takes a toll on hormone regulation and makes it really hard to remain disciplined. It seems like an intangible thing and hard to measure, but it will put a break on fat loss if it is not under control.

But still… HOW do you implement these? THAT is the real question. 5 real world examples of what this actually looks like for myself and my clients:

1. I can track food forever, but until I realized instead of “tracking” at the end of a meal (which is kinda backwards), I could use the information to “plan” ahead! Doh!

2. It wasn’t until I started using the Dinner Blueprint or Flexible Meal Plan Builder to cook meals based around vegetables, lean meats, complex carbs and healthy fats, that things really fell into place. The more I practiced cooking like this, over and over again, I figured out what worked best for me and created a HABIT, so I always had leftovers like this to create meals for days!

You may be left feeling unsure where to start, or how to actually implement these rules, check out this Keep it SIMPLE post here!