An Idiots Guide To Losing Weight
Cut Your F*cking Calories.
That’s it.
All joking aside, weight loss is easy. All you have to do is eat less and move more.
It sounds too good to be true. It couldn’t possibly be so simple. But it really is. Repeatedly, in experimentation and practice, it has been found that what you eat is not important, how much you eat is. If you eat a diet of trash food, candy, and ice cream it is still possible to lose weight if you can maintain a calorie deficit. It’s much harder to do with trash food but it is still doable. The key is eating less, maintaining lower calorie totals.
At thee end of the day keto, Paleo, Carnivore, Etc. are all just fad diets that aren’t sustainable over long time frames, but if you want to lose weight you need to give it time. Weight loss happens over months it doesn’t happen over night so patience and discipline are key, not only maintaining a calorie deficit but keeping it consistently for extended periods. There’s no need for celebrity endorsed diet plans with pre-made meals. Eat less. Move more.
Now falling short in weight loss is easy to do. Nobody is perfect all the time. Everyone f*cks up at some point. But it’s easy to avoid these mistakes if you are willing to put in the work, but let’s look at some of the mistakes that are fairly common and some easy ways to avoid slipping.
The first common mistake, which most people do by accident, is miscalculating your maintenance calories. When you calculate you daily maintenance calories most people over estimate their activity level and get a bloated figure for the calories they need to maintain weight. From there when they begin reducing calories they really never get the necessary gap in calories that their body needs to lose weight. Think about the last time you went to the gym, worked up a hard sweat, and maintained that pace for 30-45 minutes. A sustained elevated heart rate is what constitutes “intense exercise” and most people never work that hard in the gym. Be honest when you build your plans and try to assess everything thoroughly and critically from day 1.
The second common mistake comes from not giving yourself enough room in your diet to lose weight effectively. Most people when they build their nutrition plan they will cut their calories by 200-300 per day. This is all well and good for some people who have excellent impulse control and strict discipline. For the rest of us mere mortals we need to take a more drastic approach. I find that reducing daily calories by 1000- 1300 is hugely effective when considering the “human” element of weight loss, which is laziness and inconsistency. When you only cut calories by 200 per day you make your results reliant on a deficit which is a bowl of chips or a few french fries away. The larger gap may seem extreme but its to plan for inevitable slips, snacking, and other forms of nutritional cheating. If you have a deficit of 1000 calories and your cave to your lesser impulses and cram a honey bun in your mouth your still maintain a few hundred calories of leeway to continue marching towards your goals.
Third mistake, Which goes hand in hand with mistake #2, is sustaining a calorie deficit for way too long. The human body is an adaptive organism, when exposed to prolonged stimulation it physically changes to match the stimulus. So if you keep the same calorie intake for 6 months, a year, or longer eventually your body will adapt and reset your metabolic rate to make the calorie intake work, and you will quickly stop losing weight and possibly even gain some. Over time if we continuously have the same calorie intake day after day eventually our bodies react and reset our metabolism to keep us functioning as best as possible. The easy way to avoid this is the concept of “periodization”. This is a fancy term for what gym bros call “bulking” and “cutting”, the idea being that you take time to maintain maintenance calories or even a calorie surplus in order to gain mass and strength as well as resetting the metabolism for higher intake and then shifting into a calorie deficit to allow for fat loss. It sounds complicated but its really not. After you diet down for a while take a few weeks and eat more and regain your energy, then once you feel healthy and strong you cut your calories again.
The fourth mistake is really more of a misconception. Weight loss is not as obscure or complex as it is often made out to be. It becomes really easy to overcomplicate something that is actually quite simple. Simply put; Weight loss is starvation. Now it is controlled starvation with a specific purpose, but it is still the act of eating less to the point of borderline starvation. Spoiler alert! If you want six pack abs then you are going to be very hungry very frequently. It’s uncomfortable, It’s stressful, and ultimately not all that incredible. But the process is always the same, Starvation. Weight loss is not a complicated or comfortable process and it’s not something that everyone can handle. Hunger pains suck, Nutrition plans are hard to follow, calorie counting is boring, but if you’re tough enough the pain and tedium will get results.
The rest of the big mistakes people make boil down to a few key problem which everyone has to deal with to some extent. Here is the problem. People are lazy as hell, they lie to themselves just as much as they lie to everyone else, they have zero discipline, zero control over themselves or their actions, and most people will take being comfortable over being healthy every time. Losing weight is challenging and uncomfortable. Training is stressful and grueling. Most people do not have what it takes to get results simply because they are lazy, dishonest, and will do anything to avoid discomfort. If you aren’t tough you won’t make it. If you don’t work hard you won’t make it. If you aren’t honest and patient then you won’t make it.
The hard truth is that obesity is much more than a sign of being unhealthy. Obesity is a symptom of spiritual ugliness. The greedy, glutinous, and the slothful are obese and they stay that way by choice. A greedy man can choose to be charitable, a glutinous man can feed to hungry, and a slothful man can choose to take up hard work. Obesity is a choice. Choose something better for yourself.
Work Harder.
Eat Less.
Move More.
Be Patient.
Stay Humble.
You have all of the tools at your disposal to succeed in any task that you set your mind too. Your goals are only unattainable if you never start working towards them.
Get After It.
God Bless
