THE ARTICLE
Before we begin, this isn’t going to be another one of those articles that promise the world and deliver very little. There are three main objectives of this article:
- Educate you on the basic science behind how to lose weight
- Motivate you to begin your weight loss journey
- Keep that weight off for good!
As the owner of Amino Z, I receive numerous enquiries each day asking me for advice on how to lose weight. I just performed some research and found that there were over 18,000 people who searched up “how to lose weight” in Google last month! So, you’re not alone in your struggle for a lean, trim and taut body. There are many, many other people out there trying to figure out the answer to this exact same question.
I’m sure you’ve seen a handful of people with an amazing physique and asked yourself “Why can’t I look like that?”. The fact is, you can. But of course, there are several strings attached:
You need to believe that you can. If you don’t think that you will ever achieve that desired physique, you are never going to stay motivated enough to finally achieve it.
You need to know how to achieve that figure. Guess what, many of those people didn't wake up one day to find themselves in the best shape of their lives. Most weren't blessed with super-human genetics either. Many of them however have some idea of how they can maintain their current physique for the long-term. I will concede however that a small minority of these people are genetically blessed and do very little to maintain their physique.
You need to actually do something about it. All the knowledge and belief in the world won't make the smallest difference unless you actually make some changes in your life. Forget the excuses; nothing will change if you change nothing.
How to lose weight is simple, but it doesn't seem that way!
So, your goal is to lose weight which seems simple enough. Maybe you want to tone your stomach, bum and thighs. Still pretty straight forward. But here's the big question:
How are you going to achieve this goal?
If you asked one hundred different people, I would estimate that you would receive at least fifty different answers. Here are some common responses:
- Go on a particular diet (of which there are hundreds)
- Eat healthier
- Join the gym
- Go for a walk every day
- Read a weight loss book
- Follow a particular exercise regime from a book, magazine or off the internet
- Purchase a particular exercise product (for example, an abdominal machine, a legs machine etc.)
- Buy weight loss supplements
As an exercise professional, I would advise that a few of the above suggestions "could" be good advice for losing weight if they were not recommended in isolation. By "just" eating healthier, or "just" going to the gym, or "just" reading a book on weight loss, or "just" going for a walk every day, you are not going to guarantee yourself that you will lose weight, as I will explain later in this article. The remaining suggestions are in my opinion, very poor recommendations that you will often receive from ill-advised and ignorant people. Whilst they may be genuinely trying to help you in your weight loss endeavours, it's frankly bad advice, for reasons that I will not delve into.
So as you can see, the method that you employ to lose weight can be very, very confusing. Which method do you chose? Do you choose multiple approaches? Let's start with the basics and discuss the fundamental science behind weight loss.
How to lose weight, the science.
I'm sure you've heard the term "calorie" thrown around lately. In a nutshell, a calorie is a unit of energy. We need to consume calories to fuel our bodies. Our bodies also burn calories just to survive, in addition to when we move around and exercise.
As a side note, kilojoules are also a measure of energy. Just like kilometers and miles measure distance, both kilojoules and calories measure energy. The conversion is approximately 1 calorie = 4.18 kilojoules.
The more calories contained within a food, the more potential it has to result in weight gain. Whilst an apple may contain 80 calories, a greasy hamburger may contain 500 calories! You can therefore see that because the hamburger contains more than 6 times the calories than an apple, it's probably not the best option for weight loss.
As I mentioned, our bodies naturally burn calories throughout the day. Because there are numerous chemical reactions occurring simultaneously throughout the body, we are constantly expending energy. Every time our heart beats, that requires energy. Every time we breath, we burn calories. However, by moving around, we burn even more calories.
You can probably see where I'm going here. If we term the food that we consume as "calories in" and term the calories that we expend as "calories out", then the following three equations are the golden answers to that infamous problem, how to lose weight:
1. If Calories IN equals Calories OUT => NO WEIGHT CHANGE
2. If Calories IN is greater than Calories OUT => WEIGHT INCREASE
3. If Calories IN is less than Calories OUT => WEIGHT LOSS
Yes, it really is that simple. So let's now go back to some of our previous suggestions for methods on how to lose weight and explain why they "could" work in conjunction with these scientifically proven rules:
- Go for a walk every day or go to the gym - This increases your calories OUT and therefore increases the likelihood of weight loss.
- Eat healthier - By eating healthier, you would eat more natural foods which are far less in calories (take the apple versus hamburger for example). Therefore, you reduce your calories IN and increase the likelihood of weight loss.
- Buy a weight loss supplement - These supplements claim to increase your calories OUT and thus increase the likelihood of weight loss. But the reality of the situation is that I am yet to find a product that significantly increases your caloric expenditure that is available within Australia. Therefore, I'd suggest saving your money and reading on.
But remember, none of the above examples guarantee weight loss. Let's say you consume 500 calories more than what you expend each day. As a result, you are gaining weight. Therefore, if you undertake a walk that expends an additional 300 calories, you've still consumed 200 calories more than what you've expended. Whilst you won't gain weight as quickly, you will still gain weight.
If you're interested in going into greater depth with the science behind "how to lose weight", I strongly suggest that you read our free course Conquering Your Body. For the purposes of this introductory article, we will not get any more technical than calories in versus calories out explained above.
Education is absolutely paramount to losing weight. If you don't know how to lose weight, then you're probably not going to achieve it by following the next latest and greatest diet. It's like trying to do times tables without understanding the basics of maths. If you cannot do your basic addition, you have very little chance of guessing the right answer to a more complex multiplication problem! It's exactly the same story with weight loss. Please, avoid the wasted time, effort and money and educate yourself.
As a side note, if you are interested in reading further on why diet's often don't work, be sure to read a couple of the articles published on this web site: Fad Diet, Fad Result and Yo-Yo Dieting - No-No Dieting.
Theory doesn't equal reality.
The theory seems simple enough. Simply eat less calories and do a little bit of exercise to create a calorie deficit. The problem is whilst you may have tried doing this before, and it may (or may not) have resulted in weight loss, you're here reading this article. Therefore, it just didn't work.
One of my favourite quotes is by Einstein, "The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results". Accept that the previous approach didn't work and ascertain why it didn't work. Were you:
- Doing too much exercise that wasn't sustainable
- Restricting your diet too much that it became unbearable
- Not losing weight at all, or even gaining weight
- Unable to adhere to the guidelines of your approach
- Running out of time
- Making too many excuses
- or something else?
Whatever the reasons, identify them. Once identified, work out what a suitable alternative would be. Here's a few examples that I regularly discuss with clients:
- Doing too much exercise that wasn't sustainable. Back it off. Instead of exercising 6 days a week, try exercising 2 or 3 days a week. If you keep the exercise format the same, you will be reducing the number of calories OUT each week. As a result, you may need to change up your training routine to expend more calories each workout to accommodate for this. Additionally, you may need to adjust your dietary intake to reduce the number of calories IN and thus create a caloric deficit.
- Running out of time. Did you know that you don't have to exercise for hours to lose weight? In fact, you can complete an awesome workout in 15 minutes and burn more calories than you did in 60 minutes. Yes, it's a much harder workout, but it's up to 9 times more effective. More information in our article "The Fat Burning Zone".
- Making too many excuses. This is hard to honestly admit, so congratulations if this is one reason why you have been unable to lose weight in the past. You need to revisit your goals and identify why you really need to lose weight. What is going to really motivate you to achieve this? Is it a self-reward, is it a personal trainer, or is it as simple as looking at a picture of the body of your dreams?
How to lose weight permanently within your lifestyle.
If you want to be able to lose weight and keep it off, then your weight loss activities (mainly nutrition and exercise) must be in harmony with your lifestyle. If you are a party animal and love going out for drinks regularly, then it makes no sense to stop altogether and go on a non-alcoholic diet. If you loath the gym, then why join the gym in the first place? If you enjoy pizza, then why cut it out of your dietary intake?
After reviewing that above paragraph, it sounds overly optimistic and promising. I'm definitely not articulating that by drinking alcohol, eating pizza and quitting the gym that you'll lose weight. Instead, I am insinuating that your weight loss approach cannot conflict with your life, your hobbies or your interests. Here is a possible approach for each of the above people to lose weight:
- The regular drinker. Reduce the number of alcoholic drinks that you have. This could be accomplished by reducing the frequency of drinking, or by drinking less when you go out. You could even try drinking less calorie dense alcoholic beverages. Whilst alcohol is very dense in calories (yes, including straight vodka!), a shot of vodka will contain less calories than a tumbler of soft drink plus a vodka shot. You could even opt for diet mixers to further reduce the calories in.
- The gym hater. Do something else that you enjoy. You could go for a walk, ride a bike, run outdoors, play a sport, undertake physical leisure activities, set up a home gym, go to the beach etc.
- The pizza-holic. Cutting out pizza is just going to make you crave it more and more. Have it less often. Maybe once a week, but in conjunction with a healthier and lower calorie nutritional intake. Try making your own pizza's at home with a whole grain and low-fat toppings. A lot less calories, much tastier and much better for you!
As soon as you find that balance between lifestyle and weight loss, just watch the kilograms drop off. Weight loss becomes easy because it is part of your lifestyle and is no longer a struggle. Remember those people with great physiques that I mentioned before? Most of them have developed a lifestyle that they enjoy and therefore sustain. What they eat and how they exercise is something that is sustainable for the long-term. They eat and exercise in a way that their body is able to maintain that particular physique. Even though some people may have super-fast metabolisms, they still live a lifestyle that supports their current physique.
Actually losing the weight.
As you can see, it's all about educating yourself and then re-aligning your lifestyle to something that reflects weight loss. They key for long-term success is developing an approach that you enjoy whilst being effective regarding your weight loss goals.
Since this article has been written as an introductory piece, you cannot expect yourself to have all the answers to weight loss now. Whilst I hope that you're not confused by the content contained within, I do hope that you have been enlightened as to the fundamentals of "how to lose weight".
We have thousands of pages on this web site that go into far more depth and will further educate you on this topic. A few have been quoted within this article and I strongly suggest that you continue reading.
We also provide a world class personal training service based on the aforementioned principles. What we do is analyse your lifestyle and develop a specific approach to assist you in losing weight permanently. We also support you every step of the way. What we don't do under any circumstances provide you with a generic "diet" or generic "exercise plan" and then expect you to lose weight on your own. If you are interested, please find out more about our online personal training services.
All the best with your weight loss endeavours!
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