Transcript
Speaker: Welcome back to the Fit-ish Project with your host, Lathan Bass. We make Vanessa Health simple for regular people like you and I. It is time for that weekly episode, as we always do. Before I get into that, just a reminder to leave a review if you have not done so. Continue to share this with people who you think can get some value from this. Just hope to really continue to grow this show, get it out to more people who can use this info to live better lives, look better, feel better, all those good things that we all want from health and fitness. I appreciate your help in making that happen.
Speaker: The weekly episode, I'm going to go through a step-by-step guide to losing your next 20 pounds. So by the end of this episode, a couple of things that you will understand.
Speaker: You will understand four main things to focus on when losing weight. There's four main targets that I like to focus on and I have my clients focus on when weight loss is the goal. You'll understand a few things that you can focus on to help speed this process up or make this process a little bit easier. You'll understand some common mistakes to avoid. And I'll drop in some other little tidbits here there that will be very helpful with helping you set this up in a practical way, but also just really explaining the explanation behind why I do these certain things and just some little mindset tricks and tips and little things like that, that you can get some value out of this.
Speaker: The reason that I landed on this episode is because I myself currently want to go into a fat loss phase. I have been wanting to do it for a while, but I told myself going into summer that I wasn't really going to pay as much attention to food and different things like that. I've still been exercising a bunch, running a bunch, lifting a bunch. But as far as eating goes and just consuming some extra calories, I just told myself I was going to let myself do that. And so yesterday when I stepped on the scale, I was 217, which is up quite a bit from what i typically am. I typically sit around somewhere between like 205 to 208. But I also know that this was coming off of Labor Day weekend where I was holding on to a bunch of excess water because I had more alcohol. had more food, had more carbs, had more salt, didn't work out as much. And so I knew that my body was holding on to quite a bit of water. And so I figured that a good five to six, maybe seven pounds of this was going to drop off pretty quickly. And today, this morning, when I weighed myself, I was 210.5. So I've already lost six and a half of that, which again, is exactly what i just told you, a bunch of water just releasing. And so I'm down to about 210 right now. And so I want to lose a good eight to 10 pounds or so over the next like eight to 10 weeks. I'm not sure exactly how long it's going to take. I really don't think it's going to take that long to lose that amount of weight just with the amount of activity that I am doing right now. But I thought it'd be really helpful to just go through this whole process and how you actually set this up for yourself so that if you're somebody who wants to lose 10, 15, 20 pounds over an eight to 12 week span, you know exactly how to do that. And this is also not just helpful for losing 20 pounds, but this exact same cycle that I'm about to walk you through. is something that you can use if you have 40 pounds to lose, 60 pounds to lose, 100 pounds to lose. Like in my case, it's all really the same stuff. You just have to know exactly what to focus on and how to set this up in a more long-term approach. So I'm going to go through that and just explain all those little details and how you can set this up for yourself so that you can lose that weight in a way that's actually going to be sustainable. So with that being said, a couple just takeaways that I wanted to hop into before I actually get into the meat of this episode. I think just realizing that like in my case here, I knew that I was putting on a little bit of body fat, five pounds, 10 pounds, something like that. And I was okay with that. And I think one of the things that is really comforting, once you actually understand how this process works and you have a good system that you can rely on, you don't have to feel the need to
Speaker: focus on every single little calorie to track calories every single day to focus on being perfect all the time, because I think taking that approach for myself and just for a lot of people, I've worked with quite a few different people now, that kind of mindset is just exhausting.
Speaker: It's fun sometimes just to be able to relax and to have some beers with friends and to go out to eat a little bit more and to go on vacation and not worry about putting on an extra three pounds five pounds maybe even 10 pounds over a certain amount of time because you know that when push comes to shove like i know exactly how i can get this weight off so once you know how to do it in a sustainable way and you've done it before you don't stress about putting on an extra five pounds or 10 pounds it's like you go into a fat loss phase which is exactly what i do usually one to two times a year i'll see my weight start creeping up a little bit and i'll just say okay in the next four weeks or in a month or when this certain time period is over i'm going to go into a fat loss phase to get into a better position where i feel better about how my body looks how i feel all those different things because i do start to notice as i start to put on a little bit of body fat i start to notice that a little bit more sluggish. Like I don't move quite as well when I'm exercising or doing different things like that. I don't like the way that I look as much when I started putting on some excess weight, but I don't stress about those things in the moment because I know that I'm going to get back to the position where I want to be. And I think just knowing that is a relief because so many people just really struggle or they think about, oh, what's going to happen? Like, am I going be able to keep the weight off? Do I have to focus on just being so detailed and tracking calories for the rest of my life? Do I have to never out to eat or give up all these things all the time and answer is no you don't have to do that the second thing that i would say about this whole thing is that just understanding when it comes to weight loss food is by far the biggest driver of your body composition goals i've been working out more this year than i have in quite some time just because i've added running and so i've been still hitting the gym four times a week, at least sometimes five, just depending on what the week looked like. And if I wanted to get a little bit of extra workout in, I've been running somewhere between 30 to 40 miles per week.
Speaker: I think at the time of the recording of this podcast, I'm over 1,150 miles on this year alone. And because of all that extra running, I'm also getting some extra steps. And so on average over these last six months or so, I've been getting around 17,000 steps. There's plenty of activity going on.
Speaker: And that rounds out to about nine to 10 hours a week on average of structured exercise. And even with that, like with how much I'm exercising and how many calories that I can eat, I was still putting on a little bit of fat over time just because I was allowing myself to snack more, to eat more, to go out to eat, to have some alcohol, to do some of those different things. And the reason that I say this is because I think too many people they put their focus on the wrong things when weight loss is the goal. Like anytime that people say, oh, I really want to start to lose weight, their first thought is I need to go work out as much as possible.
Speaker: of course, working out is a good thing. You're going to burn a few extra calories and it's going to help with a lot of different other things that don't necessarily focus on weight loss. But just from a body composition goal, from losing weight, exercise only helps so much. And I think people over-index how important that exercise part is on weight loss itself. And I really don't want you to think that I'm saying exercise is worthless when it comes to losing weight, because obviously it helps. You burn more calories and different things like that. And it is helpful. But to the extent that most people think it is diet so much more than it is exercise when it comes to losing fat. And because your body starts to adapt over time, you don't burn as many calories, your body becomes more efficient. Your body starts to down regulate in other ways. If you start to increase activity, in a bunch of other ways. And so exercise is important. It's always going to be important. There's tons of reasons you should exercise even outside of just losing weight, but really understand if you do want to lose weight, if you want to change the way you look, if you have certain body composition goals, diet is always going to be that main driver.
Speaker: And then the last thing that I wanted to touch on just before getting into this podcast too, just from this whole experience of this last summer and just allowing myself to gain a little bit of weight, not worry too much about that. It's just understand that it's never has to be all or nothing.
Speaker: I was intentionally allowing myself to eat a little bit more, drink a little bit more, enjoy more of a social life without have having to be so strict and regimented with food and nutrition and things like that. But at the same time, I wasn't just completely going off the hinges. Like I was still eating a lot of really good meals. I was still eating a lot of whole foods, a lot of lean proteins, a lot of fruits, a lot of vegetables, a lot of fiber, getting a high protein diet, doing all those things. I was still exercising quite a bit, getting my steps in. And so I was doing a lot of other good things. I wasn't just completely just letting everything go by the wayside. This is so essential too for making this a long-term sustainable thing because even when you do have certain times where maybe your diet isn't quite as dialed in maybe your exercise is slacking a little bit, you never want to just go all or nothing with it. Like just because one thing is a little bit off or isn't as tight or dialed as you want it to be, that doesn't mean everything has to just go by the wayside. So if your diet is slacking a little bit, then maybe that means you want to ramp it up with your exercise and your movement and your steps a little bit. If your diet is pretty dialed in and You can't exercise as much. That's okay. Like it doesn't ever have to be all or nothing because one thing that I have found with myself and with just like training other people, coaching other people, it is so much easier to stay in shape than it is to get in shape. When you have that long period of time where you end up not doing anything for months, like you stop working out for multiple months or you start eating, not very well and you let yourself gain 20 pounds 30 pounds a bunch of extra weight it is much harder to start that whole process back up than it is to maybe just let things slip a little bit but continue to stay dialed in in certain areas and so with all that being said i just wanted to point out a couple things with this whole process and just a couple things that i learned in now that you have those i think just getting into this bulk of this episode and just understanding exactly how you can use this process for yourself the first part of this whole thing is to set proper expectations bad expectations can make or break a good fat loss phase and i've seen this a lot like people have certain expectations around weight loss or around fat loss And oftentimes they're making really good progress, but the amount of progress or the rate of progress that they think they should be making when it comes to weight loss is just unrealistic. So you could have somebody who's been consistently losing a pound a week.
Speaker: And so they're losing five pounds a month. And then they'll say something to me like, oh, I don't think I'm making fast enough progress. I think I should add more exercise or I think I should cut more calories. When in reality, they're making great progress. But if you have bad expectations going into it, you could end up sabotaging yourself and doing things that are going to be unsustainable or trying to make this process a lot harder than it needs to be because your expectations are just not in alignment with what's actually supposed to be happening. So I wanted to do this section on setting the proper expectations. So with this, like with my own process here, I'm looking to lose like 10 or so pounds, but I'm laying this whole episode out within this timeframe of about eight to 12 weeks.
Speaker: You could lose 10, 15, maybe even 20 pounds. And the reason that I give those ranges is because it's going to be a little bit different for everybody. Some people will have an easier time losing weight just based on how much activity they're getting, their knee levels. If they're a bigger person with more muscle mass, they're probably going to lose weight a little bit quicker and easier. And so that's why I give that range. If you give this a solid 8 to 12 weeks, you can easily lose at least 10 pounds, maybe 15, maybe even up to 20 pounds. And Understanding with this whole process, a good rate of progress with this is about a pound a week. So if you do this well for eight weeks, 12 weeks, you could easily hit that 10, 15 pounds because also something you have to realize with this is that
Speaker: in the initial phase of this weight loss with a lot of people they will lose quite a bit of water weight and they'll drop that weight pretty quickly in the beginning and so that could end up being by the time they're done with this that 15 pounds 20 pounds something like that as well so even if it's 12 weeks and you're losing a pound a week you might lose initially a little bit more and drop that weight a little bit easier so that's where you end up getting into that 15 pound or 20 pound range and so that's why there's a bigger range for how much weight you can actually lose in this certain time frame when it comes to the timeline the reason that i pick eight to 12 weeks is for a lot of people that's a good time frame that people can focus in on dieting there's absolutely times where you can diet for longer if that's something that you want to do or if you just have a lot of weight to lose and you feel that you can stay pretty dialed in with dieting but what i found through just working with lots of people is Over a certain amount of time, people will start to experience what's called diet fatigue, which just means like mentally, it's just hard to stay really focused in for super long periods of time with tracking calories, with hitting these daily targets, with measuring out food and the different things that come with weight loss. It can just become a lot, not to mention that you also have the things outside of losing weight that start to interfere with your social life, with family, with relationships, with work.
Speaker: So different things like that can start to also add on top of the stresses of dieting, doing it in chunks of like eight weeks or 12 weeks, which is basically two or three months at a time. And then maybe taking some breaks where you don't have to focus so much on losing fat can be a really good strategy for a lot of people.
Speaker: When we're thinking about the expectations with all of this, one thing that I want to point out is you do not have to be perfect with these things, but focusing on consistency is always going to be really important. And so the range that I tell people to focus on is throughout this timeframe, trying to be at least 80% to 90% consistent. And when you break that down,
Speaker: In a month, being 80% consistent means that 24 days out of 30 days of the month, you are hitting all your daily and weekly targets. If you're trying to get up to that 90%, that is 27 days where you are on point with your steps, your protein, your calories, your workouts, all those different things. And so that doesn't mean you have to be perfect. Obviously, 27 days leaves three days out of the month where maybe you You miss a workout. You go a little bit over on your calories.
Speaker: You don't hit your steps. You don't get your protein. And so being perfect isn't the goal here. You don't have to be perfect to see good progress. But I think really giving yourself some sort of range, some sort of target to focus in when it comes to consistency is important because you can't control exactly how many pounds you're going to lose within this exercise. timeframe, but you can control the inputs.
Speaker: And what I mean by that is the inputs, like the steps, the protein, the calories, those different things, you can focus how consistent you are going to be with those things. And that is going to drive the kind of results that you get. So putting your focus on the things that you can actually control is going to be helpful within this whole process. And then just a few other things to point out some other things to expect with weight loss, the scale will fluctuate. I've made entire episodes on this because it's one thing that people always really struggle with is seeing that scale go up and down, up and down. Sometimes you have big spikes on that scale and that can really deter a lot of people and discourage a lot of people if you don't really understand what's going on.
Speaker: But when you start to do this for a longer period of time, you start to realize that all those fluctuations are normal. You're not gaining a bunch of fat overnight. You're not losing a bunch of fat overnight. Like fat loss takes weeks. It takes months. And those big fluctuations that you're seeing in the day to day is much more about those water fluctuations. But as long as we are weighing ourself daily or at least multiple times per week, we can see those trends and we can see those weekly averages. And if that average is going down over time, you're going to be in good shape. So understand it will fluctuate, but as long as we're trending in the right direction over several weeks, over several months, then we're in good shape.
Speaker: Second thing that I point out is you won't be perfect. You're not going to have every single day within the next eight to 12 weeks where you absolutely nail every single target. Things are going to happen. You're going fall off maybe a day or two. Maybe something comes up with life. You have to work a little bit later where somebody gets sick or you get sick or there's a life situation that you have to handle and you have to miss workout or you have to eat out or you have too much. Like you're just not going to be perfect over these next eight to 12 weeks. And as I said, when talking about consistency, you don't have to be perfect. That is not the goal. We're trying to be consistent. We're not trying to be perfect. And the last thing that I would say just with these expectations around this whole fat loss phase is that you won't always feel like it. And that is okay.
Speaker: Stick to the plan. As long as you are focusing on the things that you need to focus on those daily targets, and you are continuing to do the work, you're going to be okay. Remember why you started this whole process. Make sure this is a good time. Make sure this is something that you are committed to and something that you want to do. And make sure this is something that's actually important to you because there's many of times where I've seen people who say like, I want to lose some fat or I want to go into a fat loss phase, but it's just not a good time for them to do that. Like they have too much going on. They can't really put the effort and focus into it it's just not really something that they want to do more times than I can count. People will be like, Oh, i want to lose some weight.
Speaker: But then when we kind of dig into it, it's like, ah, they're not really willing to do the things that they need to do in order to lose weight over the next eight to 12 weeks. So then Again, it's not a good time for them to do that. Maybe sometime down the road, it becomes a little bit more important where they have a little bit more free time or it just becomes something that they really want focus on. And then that would make it a better time. But if this is a good time for you, this is something that you want to do and you're committed to it, then let's do it. And so we'll get into these daily targets so that you know exactly how you can set this up for yourself moving forward.
Speaker: And so getting into our next section, we need to define our daily targets. So there's some daily disciplines or some daily goals that we want to focus on when it comes to losing weight. And there's four things that I always have myself or clients that I'm working with. focus on and track to make sure that they are getting the results that they want to get when it comes to weight loss. So we have a daily calorie goal.
Speaker: We have a daily step goal. We have a daily protein goal. And then we have a weekly workout goal. Since you're not going to work out every single day, most likely we have a weekly workout goal rather than that daily workout. goal so when we get into our first one our daily calorie goal if you know anything about weight loss which you probably heard me reference or somebody reference at some time you need to be in a calorie deficit all that means is that your body is taking in less energy or in other words less calories than it needs to maintain your current weight so if your body currently needs 2500 calories we're going to give it 2000 calories which puts you in a calorie deficit
Speaker: since your body needs to get that energy from somewhere it's going to get that from stored fat on your body already and that is how you lose weight over time in order to figure out your daily calorie goal there's couple different ways you can do this and i'll give you two of them that are super simple so what you could do right now and you can do this while we're talking through this is take your body weight in pounds then multiply it by either 12 13 or 14 and the 12 13 or 14 is based on your activity level so most people are going to either use 12 or 13 so you'd use 12 if you work a sedentary job if you on average get 10 000 or less steps a day or maybe you only work out like one to two times a week that sort of thing if you're just not as active you would use 12. if you are a little bit more active more moderately active say you're getting 10 000 steps a day you work out three four times a week maybe you work a somewhat active job you could use that 13 and then if you're somebody who is very active You have a really active job. You're getting 12 to 15,000 steps a day. You're working out three, four or five times a week. Then you could use that 14 number. Another thing you could is you could just use ChatGPT, enter your height, your weight, daily step average, how much you're working out per week, and then just tell it that you want to use a moderate calorie deficit and it'll spit out a number. I use both of these things and the number that I came up with was very similar when I use these two things. So for me, I'd use that 14 number or could just enter it in the chat GPT and get a number and it recommended for me to use somewhere around 3000 to 3100 calories to be in a calorie deficit just because I am so active right now with all the running and walking and lifting weights and things that I'm doing right now. So that would be my number. The thing you have to realize when you're figuring out these numbers, like people sometimes hyper fixate on this individual number when they start with, but it doesn't matter all that much because you're going to use this number. You're going to track, you're going to assess, and then you're going to make adjustments as needed. So even if the number that you get, isn't the exact number that you need, which it probably won't be the exact number because there's no really There's no way to tell exactly how many calories your body is burning other than some really high tech equipment, which we don't have access to. So this gets us close enough. And then we just track over two week period.
Speaker: If you use this number that you get for two weeks and if you lose somewhere between two to three, four pounds, If your hunger isn't anything crazy, maybe you have a little bit of hunger, but it's not like anything crazy. And if you feel like you can actually keep this up for a good six to eight to 10 more weeks, you're probably in a pretty good spot to start with. And again, we can continue to track that over time, continue to see if that weight is trending in the right direction, we're losing at a good rate. all those good different things. But if that number is way off, like let's say you're not really losing any weight, then you might need to subtract a couple hundred extra calories off that number that you get to put you in a deeper calorie deficit.
Speaker: If you're losing way too much, which is pretty rare, this doesn't really happen, Or if you just are find yourself extremely hungry after two weeks, then your number is probably too low and you might need to actually add a few hundred calories because we don't want to crash diet because that's not going to be really sustainable. And you're probably going have pretty bad rebound effect if you try to crash diet throughout this next eight to 12 weeks. so We want to try to find that good number. And then once you have that number, you're tracking for a couple of weeks, make sure that you're losing at a good rate, about that half a pound to a pound, maybe even up to two pounds, depending on how much weight you have to lose. And if you're losing at that good rate, you're not crazy hungry. it feels like this is pretty sustainable. You're having some hunger, but nothing too crazy. Then you're probably in a good spot and you can continue to use that.
Speaker: Daily protein is the next thing that you need to figure out. This one's pretty simple. Take your body weight, multiply that by 0.7 grams. This is going to be your minimum number that you want aim for. So for me right now, 217 pounds, multiply that by 0.7, that gives me 150 grams of protein at a minimum per day. If you get more than that, that's awesome. You can shoot for more. A lot of times you'll hear people reference one gram per pound of body weight, which is perfectly fine if that's what you want to do.
Speaker: one thing that you need to understand is that protein does help quite a bit with how full and satiated you feel after your meals and can help with managing hunger. So for that reason, eating a little bit higher protein, like that one gram per pound of body weight can be super helpful for some people. But as long as you're getting that minimum number, you're going to be in good shape. You're going to be getting a lot of those benefits that we want to get from protein with feeling full, managing hunger, with building muscle from lifting weights and all those different things.
Speaker: few practical tips with that. Just make sure that you're getting more leaner sources of protein because with your protein, since we are in a calorie deficit and we're paying attention to not overeating our calories, we don't want to be getting protein with a bunch of extra fat with it. So like if you're eating fattier cuts of meat and you're getting high amount of protein, you're also going to be getting a high amount of fat, which is going to drive your calories way up. We want to eat leaner sources of protein. So like you're 93.7 ground turkey, ground beef. You're eating egg whites. You're eating some leaner sources of dairy. You're eating some fish that's a little bit leaner. There's lots of different things that you can eat eat with protein and with leaner sources that gives you plenty of protein, but without all the extra calories. So trying to get some sort of lean source of protein at each meal, if that doesn't get you to your protein goal, then adding in one to two high protein snacks, like your cottage cheese, your Greek yogurt, your protein shake, your protein bar, your beef jerky, any of that stuff is really good. And then if you're not hitting your protein goal from there,
Speaker: then you can always add in a protein powder supplement as well. You can mix that in with different foods like some yogurt. You can mix that in ice cream. You can just drink that in a shake. And so if you do those three things, you're going have no issues with hitting your protein goal. Some of this is going to be a little bit of trial and error, just figuring out.
Speaker: what sources of protein are higher in protein but less in calories and you get better at those things over time so if you have some days where you're coming in a little bit high on calories because you're still trying to figure out some good protein sources and different things like that like don't stress that too much you get better at that over time and you figure out foods that you really like and foods that also fit into your goals and that will make this whole process easier as you start to figure out more of those things The third target that we're focusing on daily step goal.
Speaker: Ideally, you want to work up to somewhere between eight to 10,000 steps. We've all heard of the 10,000 step rule, but as long as you're getting up to that 8,000 steps, you're going to be in pretty good shape. If you want to get 10,000 even more than 10,000, means, for it. But working up to at least that 8,000. So based on where you're starting at now, that's going to determine what kind of approach you want to take. So if you're somebody who's only getting 2,000, 3,000, maybe 4,000 steps right now, jumping straight up to that 8,000 and doubling or tripling the amount of steps that you're getting. probably isn't going to be the most successful way to go about hitting that step goal because it's just too big of a jump. But if you're somebody who is getting 5,000, 6,000 steps a day, then maybe jumping straight up to that 8,000 isn't going to be as big of a deal and you'll have no issues doing that. But if you're on the lower end and you're getting 3,000 steps right now, then my recommendation would be to just add
Speaker: 2,000 steps to that. So you go from 3,000 to 5,000 on average, do that for two weeks. And if that feels pretty easy and manageable after two weeks, then you can have another one to 2,000 for the next two weeks. And then you just do that until you get to that eight to 10,000 step goal.
Speaker: This is important because too many people try to add too many things at once. And when you're going from zero to 100 and you're trying to do that with three or four different things, like you're trying to hit a new calorie goal, you're trying to hit a protein goal, you're trying to up your steps, you're trying to add workouts. It's just hard to do all those things at the same time. But if you can gradually build your way up to that, it doesn't feel like such a drastic change and it doesn't feel like something that's so hard.
Speaker: and psychologically too it just feels easier when you're slowly stepping it up over time versus just trying to make this huge overhaul overnight and as you start to be able to hit that step goal that protein goal that calorie goal and you can do those things consistently then if you want to do a little bit of extra you want to get a few more extra steps you want to get an extra workout in here or there those sorts of things build that up over time but it's much easier to start on the lower end and build that up versus trying to go all in and hit 10,000 steps, hit five workouts a week, hit the exact calorie goal, hit the perfect protein goal and try to do that perfectly and then fail miserably and feel crappy about it.
Speaker: It just doesn't work that well. So just in my experience, it's much better to start on lower end and then just slowly work your way up over time. because again we want to do this in a sustainable way when you're trying to develop new habits it's easier to start on the lower end build up over time so that it doesn't feel like it sets this drastic change and it's very difficult to do the fourth thing that we are focusing on is our weekly workouts so somewhere between two to four times a week of strength training You want to pick what you can nail for these first two weeks. So if that's two workouts, you know you can absolutely get two workouts done in the next two weeks, then do that. If it's three workouts, do that. If it's four workouts, do that. But be super honest with yourself here. You don't need to go, oh, i'm gonna work out seven days a week and then
Speaker: By week three, you're like working out one time a week. Again, you don't want to start off with too much. It's much better to start in the lower end and then build up. So if you start with two workouts a week and then after two weeks, you're like, oh, that was pretty solid. I can add in another day and I can do that consistently. Then you go up to three and then so on every two weeks. If you're trying to work your way up to four or five workouts a week, then add that slowly over time versus trying to just jump right into it and go with five workouts a week.
Speaker: within these strength training sessions, 30 to 60 minutes, focusing on a lot of compound lifts, focusing on progressive overload, emphasis on getting stronger and building muscle. I won't go into too much detail about that because I've done entire episodes about this, but understanding strength training is super essential when losing weight, especially because want to look different and feel different, you want to make sure that you have a lot of muscle mass and that you're not losing a bunch of muscle mass as you are losing weight. And the way you do that is by strength training, number one, and then making sure that you're focusing on protein as well. But strength training is so essential to looking how you want to look, to feeling how you want to feel, to keeping your metabolism working the way that you want it to work to making sure that you feel really good and functional and strong and all those different things. Strength training is essential for all those things. So those are your four targets that you want to focus on. Those are going to be your bread and butter. When in doubt, hitting those targets and focusing on being 80 to 90% consistent in those things. If you do those things, you will see progress over time. So your steps, your workouts, your calories and your protein, those are the four things that you want to focus on.
Speaker: Making sure that as you are doing these things, you wanna make sure that you're tracking these metrics. So those four things are gonna be essential. Some things that you can use to actually track those. So for calories and protein, just use a food tracking app. I typically just use MyFitnessPal.
Speaker: which is a free tracking app that you can use to track food and different things like that it's pretty user friendly once you've used it for a while you figure out that it doesn't take a ton of time and it's pretty easy to use that for training you can use good old notebook and pen or you can use some sort of training app you can use your notes app on your phone but just track your reps your sets your weights over time to make sure that you are getting stronger so that you know that you're not losing a bunch of muscle throughout this process To track your steps, you can use a fitness tracker, you can use your phone, you can use an app on your phone, you can use the health app on your phone. There's lots of different ways that you can track steps. I think lots of people wear fitness trackers now or wear some sort of device or that can track their steps. So that's a simple way that you can do that. And then a few other things that you wanna make sure that you're tracking as well. Body weight, I recommend tracking this daily, but at the very least, at least three times a week. And the reason that I like tracking this multiple times a week versus just once a week is because that scale will fluctuate, as we mentioned earlier in this podcast. It's much better to have multiple data points than just to do it randomly once every week. Because let's say the time that you step on it that week, maybe you had some extra carbs or some salt or you had a bad night of sleep or you hit a heavy leg day and you're holding on to tons of water, that scale could be spiked up two pounds, three pounds, four pounds.
Speaker: And you could be thinking that you're actually gaining weight throughout this process, not really knowing that it was just one of those days that that scale happened to be up. But if you weigh yourself three times throughout the week or every single day you can get a much better picture of where your weekly average is versus just looking at one singular data point so weighing yourself at least three times a week but preferably every single day also track progress pics so when you start this whole process and then about every two to four weeks if you want to do it every two weeks you can take a picture if you want to do it every month take a picture but Take progress pictures because there may come a time where you're not seeing a ton of progress. And then you look at where you started from or you look at your previous progress picture and you can see that you're still continuing to make progress because that scale doesn't always show all the progress that you're making. So having some other ways to track progress is going to be important as well. And then the last thing that I like to use is just how your clothes are fitting. You can also take measurements if you want to do that. But to be quite honest, I just like using the way my clothes are fitting. So if I have a pair of jeans that may be a little snug or i have a t-shirt that is more snug than usual, as I'm starting to lose weight, I'll use those clothes as a reference point as well. So if things are starting to fit a little bit looser, maybe around the waist, or if your shirts are starting to fit a little bit differently, you have some sort of clothing that you just noticed is starting to fit differently.
Speaker: Even if that scale isn't moving a ton, that's a good sign that you are losing inches and you're losing fat. building a little bit of muscle, all that good stuff. So making sure that you're tracking things is super important in this process because it's going to help drive your decisions. One of the reasons that I like to have people do these things, and I know it seems like a little bit of extra work, it's much easier to have objective data points to use to drive your decisions than to just simply be trying to guess your way through this whole process. Because since weight loss takes time,
Speaker: Sometimes that progress doesn't always show up on a scale every day, every week, sometimes not even every couple of weeks, like you may hit a slight plateau where for whatever reason that scale isn't dropping too much or you don't really know if you're making progress, different things like that. But if you have these numbers, if I know that my clothes are starting to fit better, if I know that. I'm tracking my calories and hitting my daily calorie goal.
Speaker: I know that if I'm getting my steps in, then it's just a matter of time until that progress starts to show up, even if it isn't showing up today. So by tracking these things, you help yourself to not only stay consistent and stay accountable, but you also can just ease your mind a little bit and not worry about wasting all this time and effort and energy into losing this weight and it not going to happen. Because if you're hitting those numbers, if you're hitting your targets,
Speaker: progress is going to happen. It's just inevitable. At some point that progress is going to show up. The next section that I wanted to get into is fat loss accelerators. So these are just a couple of things that I've noticed to be super helpful when it comes to losing weight. So sleep is a big one. Trying to focus on getting at least seven to eight hours of sleep is going to make fat loss easier.
Speaker: Pretty much everything that you do when it comes to weight loss is harder if your sleep is crappy and it is easier if your sleep is better because when you have crappy sleep, you're typically more hungry. typically have more cravings. You typically don't feel as full and satiated. It can start to affect different hormones. It can... Start to affect your workouts and your energy levels if your sleep is crappy and just the opposite happens if you're having good sleep. So you want to make sure that you're focusing on a good sleep because you can lose weight even if you do have crappy sleep, but you can also run a mile on flat ground and you can run a mile straight uphill.
Speaker: One of those two is going to be vastly different experience than the other. And so since weight loss is already a process that takes some time and isn't always easy, why wouldn't we try to do things that are going to make this process easier and a little bit more enjoyable as we're going through this whole thing? And sleep is one of those things that can make a pretty big difference.
Speaker: Second on this list is just managing hunger. When it comes to losing weight, you're going to have some hunger. That is completely normal. And it's actually a good sign that you are losing weight. If you never feel any sort of hunger, you probably aren't in calorie deficit. You should feel some hunger at different times. Like if you wake up in the morning and you're a little bit hungry, or maybe before going to bed, you're a little bit hungry between meals, you're a little bit hungry. You should have some hunger sometimes when trying to lose weight.
Speaker: At the same time, we don't want to feel like that hunger is controlling us or it's the only thing we can think about because we're eating too little. And there's some different things that you can do to help mitigate some of that hunger. So focusing on getting 30 to 40 grams of fiber, that's going to help with feeling more full and satiated, managing that hunger a little bit, focusing on higher volume foods.
Speaker: And so foods that you can eat very large quantities of for less calories. So we'll think of like big salads, lots of vegetables, oats, potatoes, lean proteins, different fruits, things that you can eat large amounts of and they're not going to blow up your calories. Those type of high volume foods are going to make this process easier.
Speaker: Limiting liquid calories. So when we have a certain amount of calories that we need to stick to, we don't want to be wasting those calories on liquid calories. So Things like drinks, things like sauces, things like cooking oils. Those are things that aren't really going to do a whole lot for your hunger. So we don't want to be using a ton of calories on those things. We'd rather eat our food rather than drinking our food and not even really noticing those liquid calories that we're taking in that are adding to our total, but not really doing a whole lot for our hunger or our nourishment.
Speaker: Keep a good food environment. So when I say this, all I mean is that keep the higher quality things that you actually wanna be eating in your house and keep some of those things that are very easy to overeat and that don't make staying in a fat loss phase easier. Keep those things out of your house or at least out of sight.
Speaker: It's much easier to stay on track and to stay consistent with these goals when you're not feeling that you're fighting an uphill battle. If you have tons of cookies and treats and chips and different very easy to overeat foods in your house all the time all over the place, it makes sticking to your diet a little bit more difficult. so Just make it easier on yourself. Buy more of the things that are going to make it easier to stick to your diet. Buy less of the stuff that is going to make it harder to stick to your diet. Keep those things out of the house. And it's not to say that you can never have those things, but if you want those things, like go to the store, go get some, go out to eat, go have those things, and then just be done with it. Don't keep those things around all the time because you're just going to be more tempted to have those things.
Speaker: And then last with managing hunger is just to keep a routine eating schedule. Your body is pretty good at regulating itself and getting used to the type of schedule that you put it on. And it's easier to manage hunger when you're eating at similar times throughout the day. If you're eating super erratically, it's sometimes hard to really know like when that hunger is gonna hit or when you're gonna have certain cravings and different things like that. But back to sort of managing expectations, if you know when those things are going to be happening, it's a little bit easier to manage those things.
Speaker: And then the last thing that I would say about just these fat loss accelerators is just to plan ahead. It sounds so simple, but the clients that I have that do the best are the people who plan the best. They meal prep.
Speaker: couple times a week, they have their meals all ready to go. Or at the very least, they know what they're going to be eating that day. They have backup plans. If maybe they're in a pinch where they need quick go-to meals, they know exactly what they can do. They plan ahead when they're going to have some busier weeks, or maybe they're going to be on the road, or maybe they're going to be traveling. Maybe they have a social event and they need to budget some extra calories. They just plan ahead. They have a plan for what's going to be going on throughout the week. and the people that can do that more consistently they typically are going to have better results because they can just stay consistent they can still stay in alignment with their goals even when they do have some of these hiccups or when they have some of these things that pop up that aren't necessarily things that make it easier to be in a fat loss phase they know how to handle those things when they happen if you can handle those things before they happen think about them have some sort of plan you're going to be in much better shape than if you just try to wing it and do those things on the fly all the time and then the last section that I wanted to get into is just some common mistakes to avoid. So the all or nothing mindset is something that I see so often. So don't let one little slip up, one off meal, one day of overeating become multiple slip ups or multiple days of missing workouts, overeating, that sort of thing. You're always one single meal, one choice, one workout from being right back on track. So don't let those things get to you. Slip ups, different things like that are part of this process. It's not that big of a deal. Just get back on track sooner.
Speaker: Second thing, understanding progress isn't always going to be linear. So don't let those little spikes on the scale, don't let when you have a bad workout, don't let when things don't seem like they're going well, don't let those things deter you from doing all the things that you need to be doing because you're not gonna be 100% consistent. That scale is gonna fluctuate. You are gonna have some bad workouts. All that stuff is normal. Stick to the plan, stick to your daily targets, stick to being consistent, and you're going to see progress over time.
Speaker: Third on this list of common mistakes to avoid is not tracking consistently. All those things that I mentioned, so your workouts, your calories, your protein, tracking your body weight, your steps, those are what give you the data in order to make the right decisions moving forward.
Speaker: Because as you're doing these things, you can just look back at the data and see, okay, where do I need to make any changes or maybe I don't need to make any changes at all. I just need to be consistent for longer. When you have the data to back that up, you can make better decisions and you can continue to see better progress because there's been so many times we'll have clients say something like, I feel like I'm not really making that much progress. And then we look back at their progress pictures. We look back at their calories and their body weight and see that they're trending down in the right direction. They're losing a pound and a half a week. So they're making great progress or
Speaker: Clients will say, I feel like I need to be doing more. I need to cut more calories. But then we look at the data and they're making the right amount of progress. So having this data to refer back to helps you to make better decisions and see better progress and just make this more sustainable over the long term. so focus on tracking things consistently and you're going to make this process much easier and you're going to get better results when you get to the end of this process now that you have all that that's exactly what you need to do you go through your eight weeks or your 10 weeks or your 12 weeks and then after you get through that
Speaker: you have a couple different options you can take a diet break and just focus on maintaining eat a little bit more food not have to worry about tracking as closely and those sorts of things or if you have a lot of weight to lose you could continue in a fat loss phase so if your energy is good you feel like you're adhering to the diet really well you're not crazy hungry your workouts are still feeling really good you could continue to focus on losing weight and this is exactly what i did when i lost my first 75 pounds I basically stay in a diet for a 15 month straight. I don't really know about diet breaks. don't really know about this different kind of method where I could just take some time off and do this in phases. I just knew that I wanted to get 75 pounds off. And so i just focused on doing that until I hit that goal. And when you have a lot of weight to lose, this approach is much easier to do. As you start to get closer to your goal,
Speaker: then it starts to make more sense where you do this more in phases or more in cycles because losing that last 25 pounds of my 100 pound weight loss was much more difficult and it took a little bit more detail, it took more focus, it took more effort on those things. And so for me, just trying to go straight through and lose that 25 pounds, I don't think if I were have did that, i would have been able to maintain it. So I had to do it in smaller phases, smaller chunks of losing 10 pounds and then take a break, 15 pounds and then take a break. just so that I could practice on maintaining on those certain habits. So there's not necessarily a right or wrong answer, but I think the structure of focusing on it for eight to 12 weeks and then taking a little bit of break is a really good strategy for a lot of people. Based on your situation, how much weight you have to lose, all those different factors, you can kind of decide which one of those two routes that you want to go with.
Speaker: With that being said, just to wrap this all up, just a couple of practical takeaways with all this, because I know this was a ton of information and you can always listen to this back if you need to set up your own fat loss phase or different things like that. But set your targets, track for a while, track for a couple of weeks and then just assess and make changes when needed.
Speaker: This process takes consistency. It takes patience. But if you are using the right plan, if you are tracking, if you have that data, if you allow yourself to use that data to make good decisions, then you will get to your end result. There's no guesswork involved. There's no getting super frustrated because you know that if I'm doing these things, if I'm hitting my targets, I'm eventually going to see the progress that I need to see.
Speaker: And if I'm not seeing the progress that I want to see after a couple of weeks, then I know I can make changes to do that. And the last thing I would say about this too is just doing this and really starting to believe in this system and really understand these things, it just takes some practice. I've had this multiple times with clients where once they start tracking calories, once they start really focusing on these things, they start weighing themselves more often. and they see the things that they are doing, like they're eating good diet, but they're also maybe sprinkling in some little treats or different things like that, and they're still seeing that scale go down, or maybe they miss a couple workouts, they have a couple days where they overeat, and they still see that scale going down. It's such a light bulb moment for them because they realize, oh, I don't have to necessarily be perfect.
Speaker: I can still include some of my favorite foods and still lose weight. And you don't get that unless you practice these things and unless you really start to track these things and focus in on these things, which is why, again, I'm such a big proponent of this. But once you really start to. focus in on this whole process and you really start to embrace it and just really learn about how all this stuff works it makes this stuff so much more sustainable for the long term and the amount of things that you will learn through doing this fat loss phase where you're tracking all these different things will prove to be invaluable for keeping this weight off for a really long time because experience is the best teacher and hopefully by laying out this process and some of the expectations and some of the little tips and tricks about this whole process it'll allow you to try this out but also make a few less mistakes and have a little bit less frustration with this whole thing but if you go through this eight weeks or 12 weeks and you really track these things and really focus on these things i feel like you'll have a much better understanding about how all this stuff works and feel like you can continue to not only lose this weight but keep this weight off for the long term and With that being said, i know, again, this was a ton of information, which is exactly why I help people with this process and coach people through this stuff, because it is helpful to have somebody who has been there, who has gone through this, who has helped other people through this, to ask questions, to to hold them accountable, all that different stuff. So if that's you, if you do want some help, you can always apply for coaching in the show notes, see if that's a good fit. But as always, i appreciate you listening and we will see you next
