How to Lose Excess Weight, for Good! : the definitive guide (part 3)

Cool, so Part 1 and Part 2 you got grounded on the reality of western food diets and practical principles to deploy in order to take control of your body shape and diet.

In this final part, you can expect to get more specific techniques, tips and insights to use day to day in order to obey the principles of Part 2. 

Part 3 – Top 10 Practical Tips & Insights For Fat Loss

• Covering Intermittent Fasting, Tracking, Meal Timing, Meal Frequency
• Guidance on how to Diet and still Eat Out
• Importance of Sleep to controlling weight
• Healthy Fat Loss Rates, what to expect in first week, and cals in 1lbs of Fat
• Two Bonus Insights for Women only

TOP 10 PRACTICAL TIPS & INSIGHTS FOR FAT LOSS

#1 – Intermittent Fast (IF) For health & Calorie Restriction

A healthy and effective tool to use to work within your calorie budget, without feeling the need to sacrifice tasty satisfying meals. Plus intermittent fasting puts you in an ultra productive, resourceful and creative state in the morning. For more information on how fasting offers these benefits, plus a cool Coffee tip to supercharge your IF mornings, check out the Bulletproof Coffee article and the AdapNation Fasting Masterclass Podcast episode.

In practical terms, have your last meal at 7pm or so and skip all food until 1pm or so. With this technique, you save all the calories you would have consumed at breakfast, plus you won’t be hungry. have a light lunch, and allow yourself a full and proper dinner, with the flavours, fats and carbs that you enjoy.

#2 – Food Measuring & Tracking

This is much simpler than it sounds. Download MyNetDiary or MyFitnessPal Apps and simple search or scan the foods you are eating. Type in the portion size, or grab the weight using a cheap electronic kitchen weighing scales. The apps have a huge database of whole and packaged food – it’s rare they don’t have what you are looking for. Plus, they remember what you eat, making repeat meal logging a doddle.

You don’t need to do this forever, but you need to do it long enough until you can eyeball food and know rough calories etc. I’ve been calorie counting for a couple of years. It’s probably 5-10mins max of effort a day, but gives me the precision control of my weight and achieving my body weight goals.

#3 – Meal Timing & Frequency Does Not Matter

Eating one meal a day or six meals a day does not make a difference to fat loss or gain. Again, calories are king when it comes to body fat loss. I personally like a big dinner, and need to fuel my workouts. So I prioritise have the necessary calories and volumes pre/post workout and at dinner. I will happily skip breakfast and have a lighter lunch. Ultimately, eat with the frequency and timing that works best for you, just keep an eye on total calorie intake.

#4 – Paleo, Keto, Carb Cycling, Atkins, Juice Diet…

Whatever. Again, follow the rule of calorie restriction and making smart food choices as offered above. Take a look at the Food Diary Micro-Blog for inspiration. You don’t need to go on any diet that restricts a particular food, macro or dogmatically describes how/when/what you should eat.

Saying that, I would say the recommendations in this article mostly resemble the IIFYM+ Thrive Eating Lifestyle Approach, which is a cross between Paleo and IIFYM diets, but without the unnecessary restrictions imposed or the disregard for food quality.

#5 – Sleep Deprivation Causes You To Crave Sugary Foods

This is fact. If your body has not had sufficient rest, you body needs extra glycogen in the blood to persevere and dig deep. Your body will naturally draw you towards high glucose foods, and you will struggle to resist.

Getting good quality 7-8h of sleep a night is a game changer for your health, weight and mental state if you are chronically under sleeping. For more insights into sleep deprivation, what happens when you sleep, and my Top 10 Tricks you can stack together to sleep like a baby, check out Top 10 Sleeping Hacks – & Why You Should Care Article.

#6 – In First Week Of A Crash Diet, You Will Lose Several Pounds

Sounds great, but don’t be lead down the path of thinking it was all fat, or that it is a sustainable weight loss you can expect every week. As you dial down to a calorie restrictive diet, the macro that will be dropped most from modern diets will be carbs. With a reduction in carb intake, you will naturally hold less water and glycogen.

So week one, you will lose maybe a pound of fat, and perhaps a few more pounds of water and glycogen. This is a one off loss though, and will jump back on as soon as you have a carb heavy day or couple of days.

#7 – Aim For A Healthy 0.5 – 2lbs Weekly Weight Loss

Aiming for 0.5-2lbs of weekly body fat loss for as long as you need to lose weight is both acceptable and healthy. Beyond the first week of your crash diet, you should be happy with this level of weekly progress.

If you happen to fall below this range, it might make sense to analyse the situation. Have you been logging everything? Are you being as active as you suggested in the TDEE calculator? Perhaps your TDEE budget was set slightly to high for your individual body. What can you do next week to improve the situation incrementally?

Bear in mind that your weight can fluctuate by a few pounds daily. This is mostly to do with carb, sodium and potassium intake, plus frequency of bowel movement. This is completely normal, and does not indicate lots of daily weight gan or loss between from one day to the next.

That said, I recommend daily measurement first thing in the morning. Plug it into MyNetDiary or MyFitnessPal. These apps give you a graph – and you can see the general direction and trend.

THE BEST APP FOR WEIGHT TRENDING – Whether you log your daily weigh-ins in MyNetDiary, MyFitnessPal or another app, these apps should store the data into your Health App (if on iOS).  The graphs are OK here, but if you want better visualisation of your weight, taking out the erratic  daily swings, the emotion, and getting a clearer picture on where things are going, then I highly recommend Happy Scale. This App is so good. You can log the weight in here, or pull your existing data from another app. Check it out!

#8 – A Pound Of Fat Is Equivalent To 3,500 Calories

This is important to note. In essence, if you restrict yourself by 3,500 calories more than you burn within a given time period, then you will have dropped 1lbs of body fat. Likely, if you massively over consumed on a binge weekend between food, drink and snacks, you could quite possibly over consumed versus your expenditure by 3,500+ calories too. This will result in 1lbs+ in body fat gain.

#9 – You Absolutely Can Eat Out & Enjoy Social Events

You just need to plan for them with how you consume your food that day or doing that week. I wrote a full piece on how to have your cake and eat it (so to speak). Dieting & Eating Out.

#10 – Keeping Busy Is A Great Way To Keep Your Mind Off Food

This works every time for me.  If I’m idle mentally and/or physically, I naturally think about food way too much. On the flip side, give me something I can commit to mentally for a chunk of time and I simply do not have the capacity to think about food. It’s definitely helpful to ensure you are kept busy and productive, to avoid day dreaming about food.

Bonus Insights for Women Only

11# – Ladies, Your Menstrual Cycle will throw the Scales Off

Women can gain between 0.5 and 10 lbs (!) on the scales when they are on the last phase of their menstrual cycle. Sounds unfair, but please note it’s water retention – not fat. Unless of course you choose to binge during those few days. Don’t worry, its perfectly natural. It’s wise to compare bodyweight from 30 days ago versus daily, to be a more accurate assessment of fat loss for women.

Michelle’s article on Training whilst going through your Menstrual Cycle goes into much more detail and behind this phenemon, plus other practical guidance on training and eating for women. 

12# – Minimum Calorie Intake for Women is ~1,200-1,400 calories

This is considered the minimum for metabolic and hormonal health. Being chronically lower than this, combined with being active, will lead to malnourishment and a slew of potential problems. See Michelle’s Body Journey intro blog to explain some of the potential downsides. Whilst going below these numbers (including multi-day fasts) for short periods of time will not be damaging, staying below these levels for a sustained period of time is not a good idea for your health and wellbeing.

In Summary

There your have it. We covered a lot, but hopefully you have gains some extra insight, knowledge and tools to go sculpt the body you deserve and live a life of optimum vitality and health. Let us know how you get on! Have fun being healthier, leaner and empowered. 😁

This is what we covered in the three part Article:

• Part 1– level-setting on some Key Facts regarding our Western DietsFeedback on AdapNation Food Diary Meals
  • Do we actually know how many calories we are eating and burning?
  • The deliberate Lies and Misdirection we’ve been told for decades
  • You’re not Hungry, you’re Addicted to modern food
• Part 2 – Practical Principles & Knowledge to Take ControlCalculating your Calorie Expenditure and Calorie Goals
  • How to think about Exercise and Movement
  • Which and how much Macronutrients to have
  • Foods to Remove/Reduce and foods to Add/Increase
  • Meal ideas and inspiration
• Part 3 – Top 10 Practical Tips & Insights For Fat LossCovering Intermittent Fasting, Tracking, Meal Timing, Meal Frequency
  • Guidance on how to Diet and still Eat Out
  • Importance of Sleep to controlling weight
  • Healthy Fat Loss Rates, what to expect in first week, and cals in 1lbs of Fat
  • Two Bonus Insights for Women only