- Keep it simple.
Focus on a “calories-in, calories-out” (CICO) approach. - Don’t rush it.
Commit to a full year or longer to reach your goal weight. - Vary your calories.
Alter the number of calories you eat every day. - Eat whole foods.
Avoid processed, sugary foods. BUT: - Don’t deprive yourself.
Allow yourself to partake of your favorite “bad” foods in small amounts. - Exercise in moderation.
Be careful about over-committing to exercise. In the beginning, three times per week is often ideal. - Don’t stop when you achieve your goal.
Once you’ve hit your goal weight, you can eat more calories, but you still need to keep track of your calories and weight for 5 years.
That’s the nutshell version. For a more detailed explanation of each item, keep reading.
Keep it simple
There’s only one fixed rule to losing weight: eat fewer calories than you burn. Calories in, calories out (CICO).
Everything else is variable, and can be adjusted based on your needs and your lifestyle.
The most important thing is that you maintain a caloric deficit (burn more than you consume) and that you create an eating plan you can stick to. This sounds obvious, but one of the main reasons fad diets fail is because they force you into unnatural or unsustainable eating habits. This is going to be a long-term commitment, so sustainability is key.
Don’t rush it
Effective weight loss—which means not just losing weight, but keeping it off for good—will take time. Embrace that. Accept that it might take a year to reach your goal weight (or less, or more, depending on how much you’re trying to lose).
This is critical: the more quickly you drop weight, the more likely you are to regain it. If you’re overweight, the odds are stacked against you. Most people who lose weight regain it, and some even gain more than they started with.
To beat these odds, you need to be patient. True success will require a complete lifestyle change, and changing habits takes time. Make this fact part of your plan from the outset. Make it your goal to lose weight very gradually: a pound every week or two. Yes, that means it’s going to take you a year to lose 50 pounds, but it also means that you are far more likely to keep that weight off for the rest of your life. Don’t jump back on the diet merry-go-round. This is not about looking good for that wedding next month: it’s about recreating yourself and taking control of a key aspect of your life. Take the long view.
And remember: one pound every week or two is an average. Some weeks you’ll lose more, others you may lose nothing. If you go a month without any weight loss, add a day of exercise, or knock a few calories off your daily menu. Tweak your plan, but stick to it. Don’t let setbacks derail your weight-loss efforts, and don’t let a plateau drive you to a more extreme diet.
Vary your calories
“Calorie cycling” is a great way to keep yourself from getting bored or feeling deprived for too long.
The TDEE calculator we like best will actually give you a variable daily caloric intake recommendation that is based on a 7-day cycle. Some people prefer longer cycles, but we have found that the week-long cycle meshes well with most people’s regular schedules (if you spend Sundays watching sports, for instance, you might want to make every Sunday your highest-calorie day).
This might sound complicated, but the calculator we link to above does all the work for you, and there are real benefits to calorie cycling, including increased weight loss.
If you want to create your own calorie-cycling plan, it’s not that difficult. If the calculator above says your daily caloric intake should be 1371, simply multiply that by 7 days to find your total weekly calorie allotment (just shy of 9600 calories). You can then assign calories to each day of the week (within reason… try not to go more than 10% or 15% below your daily allotment, which in this case would mean the lowest-calorie day is a day when you’d eat 1200 calories).
In this example, your week might look something like this:
| Monday | 1200 Kcal |
| Tuesday | 1400 Kcal |
| Wednesday | 1200 Kcal |
| Thursday | 1600 Kcal |
| Friday | 1200 Kcal |
| Saturday | 1700 Kcal |
| Sunday | 1300 Kcal |
Eat whole foods
Eat as much whole, unprocessed food as possible.
Many processed foods are intentionally engineered to make you eat more than you should by artificially stimulating dopamine release, just like narcotics do (this might be one reason so many of us are overweight in the first place). Even foods that say “organic” or “natural” on the label are often packed with added sugars and other ingredients that wreak havoc on our appetites.
If the simplicity of CICO appeals to you, consider adding another ridiculously simple rule to your diet: eat only real, whole foods. This rule cuts out all the “bad” foods you eat in one fell swoop. No more Kraft Mac n’ Cheese, no more Diet Coke, no more Entenmann’s.
If this sounds extreme, that’s because it is. But it’s also a wonderful way to re-calibrate your taste buds and your metabolism. After a short period of time, whole, unprocessed foods like whole wheat bread (or, even better, bread made from sprouted grains like Food For Life’s Ezekiel 4:9 bread) and fruit for dessert will taste completely normal to you.
When you must eat processed foods–hey, it happens–look for minimally processed food. Trader Joe’s is a great resource for boxed and packaged foods that aren’t loaded with additives.
Don’t deprive yourself
Having said all that about unprocessed foods, it’s important to remember that this is not a new diet but a new lifestyle, so it must be sustainable.
If you love Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, for instance, it’s not realistic to expect yourself to stop having them forever.
Have one occasionally. Don’t binge, just nibble. As you do, remember that it has little nutritional value, so they’re mostly “empty” calories. The majority of your diet should be whole foods, but the occasional indulgence should absolutely be part of your plan.
Remember, you’re in this for the long term. You need to have some fun.
Exercise in moderation
Exercise is wonderful, but don’t overdo it at first.
You won’t read that very often one health-based sites, but the fact is that if you’re going to make a lifestyle change you need to do it slowly. Instead of signing up for a 10K run–unless you’re already active, in which case go for it–simply commit to three exercise sessions every week.
Work into your new routine slowly, warming up before each session to avoid injury. Then, elevate your heart rate for twenty or thirty minutes. Over time, try to increase frequency and intensity. HIIT or weightlifting are ideal forms of exercise, but a steady jog or power walk is far, far better than nothing.
Exercise isn’t mandatory when it comes to losing weight, but its benefits are worth the effort. It will help you build and maintain muscle, and make you healthier overall (and probably happier, too). Best of all, if you exercise you can eat more calories.
One last note on exercise: don’t be surprised if your weigh loss slows when you start exercising intensely. If you’re watching your calories and exercising hard, you’re almost certainly still losing fat; you’re just gaining muscle. If you decide to start exercising vigorously and frequently, consider springing for a DXA scan so you know your body’s exact composition.
Don’t stop when you hit your goal
This is important, so get used to this idea from the outset.
When you do reach your goal weight, you’re only halfway done. Your new job is to keep that weight off for five full years or more, allowing your body to normalize at your new weight.
Remember, this is where most successful dieters go wrong: they “finish” their diet, and their body, suddenly crammed with all those foods that made it fat in the first place, begins packing on weight again.
Once you’ve reached your goal weight, you will have come too far to allow that to happen. By all means, have a day of decadence to celebrate reaching your goal. But after that, start counting again, staying in maintenance mode.
This is also where your new “whole foods” habit will come in handy. If you’re in the habit of eating whole foods, you’ll notice that it is actually difficult to overeat. You can only eat so many bananas.